Monday, 6.29.09, 6:00 am
July in Music
Slim pickings, culturally, is the trademark of an average Washington summer, which makes travel so attractive. Perhaps you remember Lorin Mazel’s terrific Turn of the Screw three years ago at the Terrace Theater. His Châteauville Foundation will put it on again—now at Mazel’s own little theater at Castleton Farms in Virginia as part of his Castleton Festival. (July 3rd through 5th and continuing with more Britten operas throughout the month.)
Free organ recitals take place Sunday evenings at 6 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The more interesting ones are on July 19th with Mark Shepherd playing Bach and Vierne and on July 26th with Adam Brakel who takes to César Franck, Francois Couperin, and Jean Langlais.
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra actively fights the cultural drought with its Strathmore Summer Season: Still excellent music and notable conductors, but without the silly alliterative titles of yesteryear. On July 23rd (8PM) and 24th (7.30PM), Günther Herbig and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony are on the program.
Emil de Cou, Washington’s steadfast and discriminate champion of classy music no matter how light, will fight the good fight at Wolf Trap and his tool is Orff’s Carmina Burana. That will happen on July 23rd and is, if you are in the right mood, bound to be a hoot. And since de Cou is already out there, he’ll throw in two more concerts on July 30th and 31st: First Sarah Chang with the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, and a few Dance Episodes from Copland’s Rodeo. Then, err… film music: George Fenton’s original score from The Blue Planet performed by full orchestra and choir, with the movie shown on giant screens. (All at 8.15PM)
Tuesday, 6.23.09, 6:00 am
“I’m American, You know” - Interview with Marc Minkowski, Part 2
This continues the interview with Marc Minkowski.
Sitting in the small backstage dressing room of Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus during a rehearsal break, Marc Minkowski and I move on from Bach and his new recording of the B-minor Mass to talk about the vast repertoire for Minkowski isn’t known to those who only follow his recordings: Bruckner’s “Nullte” Symphony and Wagner’s The Feast of Pentecost (“a very moving and problematic piece, best done in the [Dresden] Frauenkirche”) were on his programs recently; there are plans to do Wagner’s Fairies; he did John Adams’s Fearful Symmetries (“one of my favorite pieces”); and volunteers how much he likes performing Gershwin, Bernstein.
Given that Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique is successfully doing Brahms and Les Musiciens recently recorded Bizet (see review), I wonder how far into Romantic music the HIP bands can or should advance and what it is they can bring to it that is special. “We’re doing [Stravinsky’s] Pulcinella next year,” chuckles Minkowski. “In some pieces, some combinations of instruments are really magic, and very different to reproduce in the modern symphonic sound. I definitely think there is some interesting work to be done with Brahms, and even with several composers of the 20th century the use of gut strings can be very interesting. In Pulcinella I’m trying to find some instruments that are a little less round and a little less massive than today. If you listen to the disc of Stravinsky, the sound is so razor sharp and so full of life; that’s the sort of thing I try to reproduce. If you have a freelance orchestra that is so good and get some soloist to play some of these pieces, they can be quite wonderful. Or consider Berlioz; there’s an incredible range of colors using old instruments. But for me it is very important that the people are extremely good, that they have time to rehearse and to research what we want to achieve; but certainly a modern excellent symphony orchestra would also do it very well.
“Just recently I’ve done a Haydn symphony with the Cleveland Orchestra and I had a great time. Of course, it’s not the same sound I have with Les Musiciens du Louvre (because we are also recording the complete London Symphonies in some months), but they know their Haydn very well, they have their tradition of playing, and they’re very at ease with it. But many other modern orchestras completely panic when you bring Haydn.” When I tell him that it’s Dennis Russell Davies’s goal to “wrestle Haydn and Mozart back from the clutches of historical performance-practice groups” he empathizes, but says that he prefers to do it if the orchestra has a culture of playing Haydn already. “But being a teacher to an orchestra, that’s too heavy when you have to explain everything. Some of my colleagues can do it well, but it’s not at all my thing. It’s not just a question of time, but also of patience. Sometimes they want to learn, and sometimes they want to but can’t. But generally, yes: no segregation of Haydn.”
On the question of how he motivates an orchestra to perform above its usual standards—his orchestral concert with the Bavarian State Orchestra last season was one such standout event—he can’t think of something special. “It just happens. I am just what I am and I go there to make music in the way I want to do it and people follow me. And most of the time it works. Not always,” he adds laughing.
Will being music director of the Sinfonia Varsovia bring new music to his repertoire and recorded output? “We should practice a little more together before recording, I think, because we need to know each other better, but we are thinking about Gershwin and some other American music, which has worked very well. But also Polish music, of course, like Penderecki and Górecki. We’ll have to see, but something different from Les Musiciens it will be, that’s very important.
“There is something I’d like to say,” he interjects before I get on with my questions. “I am not usually thought of as American, but I actually am half American through my mother and have dual citizenship. My grandmother was the American violinist Edith Wade (a student of George Enescu’s, Carl Flesh, and Fritz Kreisler’s, who made her New York debut at Aeolian Hall in April of 1915). Through her I am actually a descendent of William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame). But for some reason, I perform very rarely in the United States—something that will hopefully change in the future, because it’s an important part of me.” So if Peter Gelb called you up, you wouldn’t say no? “No,” Minkowski says, and smiles from ear to ear.
His repertoire choices are not different from his choices of what to record, except that he doesn’t get to record everything he plays in concert, of course. “When I have a very important project, though, it helps to have a recording project like this crazy St. Cecilia project. Haydn, Purcell, and Handel, all of which have anniversaries this year. And then I wait for a lot of repertoire until I am ready to do it. That’s why I waited so long for Mozart—and Beethoven.” Upcoming projects are the Haydn, possibly a Vivaldi program with Nathalie Stutzman, and perhaps some Berlioz. When I ask him if there are still a few composers he feels could be brought out of neglect through his advocacy, he’s ambivalent. “I did a lot for Offenbach, a lot for Rameau, a lot for Handel. Maybe Gershwin,” he adds after a while, “because you always hear the same things, but there are other interesting parts to his output. But really, I would like to record famous pieces now.” 
Photo of Marc Minkowsky © Philippe Gonthier, courtesy naïve
Monday, 6.22.09, 6:00 am
“I’m American, You know” - Interview with Marc Minkowski, Part 1
Marc Minkowski, still exhausted from recording sessions of Handel, Haydn, and Purcell’s tributes to St. Cecilia, squeezes me in for a short interview during a rehearsal break in Salzburg where he and his orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre, are practicing for a performance of a Haydn concerto, Mozart arias, and the “Posthorn” Serenade. Going over the sixth movement of the Serenade, Minkowski gently, quietly coaxes his original-instrument players into getting phrasing and transitions just right. Suddenly, a rare sight: posthorn soloist Jean-Baptiste Lapierre, at first heard playing his part offstage, enters stage left—on a bicycle! Maneuvering carefully around the second violins, Minkowski, and then the first violins, he steers with one hand and manages to perform his part—flawlessly, at that—holding his instrument in the other. Better yet, he navigates the small strip between podium and the edge of the stage apron, back and forth, without crashing into the orchestra seating of the House for Mozart. His colleagues acknowledge this feat, twice repeated, with generous, bemused applause. (Surely this skill was not part of his job description when he joined Les Musiciens.) Too bad I have to leave Salzburg that night, missing the actual performance and audience reaction.
Minkowski apologizes for having little time; his exhaustion, visible and audible, is not put on. But he patiently listens to questions, volunteers anecdotes, and inquires if I’ve received “the Bach.” Bach is the obvious starting point for the conversation, since his recording of the B-Minor Mass has just been released in France and I had duly listened to it over the last few days. On the notion of “talking about Bach,” Minkowski takes a deep breath, shakes his head as if to jog his brain, and laughs. So much music has piled up since the recording sessions that he needs a moment to get into Bach mode.
The Mass is the first Bach Minkowski has recorded as a conductor, and the beginning of a series of recordings of the great sacred Bach works. This will include the Passions, obviously, and also the Christmas Oratorio? “Maybe.” Why Bach only now? “I stopped myself to record any note of Bach for many, many years—same with Mozart. Mozart, actually, I was performing a lot on the concert stage, but I thought I should be mature enough, because there are so many recordings of all these things and—better be sure you are in the mood. And the same with Bach. And with him that feeling was even stronger, because I played very little of Bach’s music in concert. A cantata here and there, some orchestral suites, but not a lot. After doing a lot of different repertoire, after performing a lot of Handel, Rameau, 19th-century composers, practicing Brahms, Beethoven, there is a moment where I had to go to the roots of this music, which are all coming from Bach. So I thought it was time.”
So when exactly does the point come where one thinks, “The world needs my B-Minor Mass”? Minkowski is nearly horrified of the presumptuousness implied in that question and he waves his hand saying “No, no, no, that’s not the point, no, no!” in that inimitable way only a French accent can vocalize “nonononono.”
“It’s just that all these studies about one singer to a part, they took a long time to be convincing. But for me, now I am convinced and I am happy that I waited, because if you read the writings of Mr. Parrot and Mr. Rifkin it’s so clear”—here he seems to pick up on my quizzically raised eyebrow, because he specifies, “Well, it’s not so clear . . . it’s clear, but there is”—he pauses to think for a few seconds and chuckles—“there is no chorus evidence, anyway.
“In any case, I thought that was a good, new world, a new sound, a new way of having the polyphony of Bach performed. And I’m a great fan of Glenn Gould playing Bach on the piano, because I think there is so much architecture and grandeur present. And I think that if you have a small body of singers, you can achieve the same clear polyphony in his works like a pianist alone or an organist or violinist.” Clear doesn’t mean small or timid, though, and that’s certainly true when listening to his recording. “Well, no, I hope not. The Mass is a monument, I think, like the Bach Chaconne for violin, it’s so incredibly—‘big,’ even with just one instrument.”
Which Bach recordings, since he has mentioned listening to them, did he enjoy particularly? “There are many, and they are maybe of opposite styles, but definitely Peter Schreier when he sings and conducts. His St. John Passion is fabulous. I think it’s so intense and so dramatic—and sounds to me so Germanic, so true. I mean it’s not done in a way I would do it, of course, but I’m completely convinced by the interpretation and the quality of the work. On the completely opposite side, I was a member of Philip Herreweghe’s orchestra [as a bassoonist] and I recorded the B-Minor Mass and the Matthew Passion and some cantatas with him. That was a completely different approach, but I was probably also influenced playing these works with him. Another B-Minor Mass I’ve been listening to for many, many years is Parrot’s recording, but also Rifkin’s, Junghänel’s, and even one of Karajan’s; there are always things that I enjoy and don’t like. And when it comes to Bach, generally, of course most of all Harnoncourt and Leonhardt. I was raised with their cantatas, the big LP sets, the brown covers, the score inside: that’s my adolescence right there.”
When I point out that he takes some parts of the Mass quite a bit slower than other HIP conductors, he chuckles, rather pleased, which, at the time of the interview I interpreted as a sort of approving “Mission Accomplished” agreement. But in direct comparison with two other recent HIP accounts, Veldhoven and Suzuki, the numbers don’t bear that out. Not only is Minkowski at 101 minutes faster than either, there are only two parts, the Agnus Dei and “Qui sedes ad dextram patris,” that are slower than both of theirs. In fact, upon closer inspection, Minkowski’s turns out to be the second swiftest B-Minor Mass on record, bested only by Junghänel, and even then only by a matter of seconds. Still, there are parts where he sounds rather more deliberate than Veldhoven and less hectic than Suzuki. In any case, he doesn’t address the question of tempos except by acknowledging that he is not ideological about such matters.
He is keener to point out that the first part of the Mass strikes him as substantially different from the rest, “darker, more extreme.” The second part he finds “more a story of contrast, of different styles, a small mosaic, very moving but a bit lighter, more of a panorama and inspired from liturgy, whereas the first part is a real prayer. When I see trumpets, timpani, and a 3/8, for me it’s a sign that this is a ‘fly to the sky,’ something that needs to lift off. So my idea is to make the beginning ‘flying’ as much as possible. Certainly [this in response to my suggesting his Gloria imparts hints of a Missa in tempore belli] I never have any feelings of aggressiveness in it. But of course it’s virtuoso music and 3/8 is a sign for me that we should play ‘in one.’ If you have agile enough singers who can do these coloraturas, then it can work. Which I think is what Bach had done. When Bach writes for virtuosity, whether it be for instruments or for the voice, as in Cantata 51, it’s because there were people who could do it.”
To Minkowski’s merriment, I ask him about the birds that contributed to the recording. If you listen closely—he asks me to point it out—very, very closely and loudly or with good headphones, and only between movements—you can hear the chorus of chirping birds delightedly extolling the virtues of Bach and sunshine.
“Yes—they already recorded in this church (Santiago de Compostela). Gardiner did a very nice cantata disc to which I listened and, although I heard the birds, I very much liked the acoustic. So I went there one year before our recording and I heard them even more than last summer, because the weather was a bit colder last summer. The birds are in a big tree, just behind the church, but our recording engineers said it wouldn’t be a problem and I thought that birds are part of nature, after all. There is a recording of Jordi Savall of Marin Marais (“Suitte d’un Goût Etranger”) and they’re much louder on his than on mine.”
Photo of Marc Minkowsky © Philippe Gonthier, courtesy naïve
Thursday, 6.18.09, 9:00 pm
American Music Month: George Rochberg
“My music isn’t goo-goo-eyed Romantic slop.” I love that warning response of George Rochberg to the appropriate, if potentially misleading label ‘neo-Romantic’. “There’s a certain acerbity to it, but it does have a big melodic flow”, he continues. That’s an aspect true for all his works, from his most accessible (String Quartet No.3, “Part B” or the Transcendental Studies) to denser ones like the 12-tone Second Symphony.
Describing Rochberg’s String Quartets, is surprisingly easy: early Schönberg. Everything that can and has been said about early Schoenberg—think: worlds of romanticism and modernism that meet, a voluptuous subsuming of the past by the modern, etc.—could equally be said about Rochberg’s sound. And you won’t even need to emulate an American accent either. When Rochberg—in musical terms—speaks ‘straddling romanticism’, it is pure and accent-free inter-war Viennese and not a trace of Gershwinian or Coplandesque twang.
Although not ‘easy’ works, any chamber music aficionado would do well to start his Rochberg-exploration with the New Worlds Record CDs that bring us String Quartets Three through Six (of six); superb music superbly performed from the suspended astringency of the introduction of the Third to the ‘Pachelbel Canon Variations’ of the Sixth. The performing Concord String Quartet, not coincidentally, commissioned those quartets from Rochberg in the first place and became, as Harold Schonberg once quipped, ‘Rochberg’s own quartet’.
Rochberg was a bit of a rebel when he wrote his Second Symphony as a twelve tone work which, in 1958 America (the avant garde in Europe was just getting its hard core dodecaphonic feet wet), was still very much out of the ordinary. His reasoning was simple enough: “I needed a language expressive and expansive enough to say what I had to…. I was distressed at the growing slovenliness of people’s bad thinking and grew increasingly nauseated by a rising tide of narcissism that surfaced in public comment[ary]. [In light of] a never-ending stream of bad taste, bum ideas, and sloppy craftsmanship there was no recourse but to pursue my own purposes stubbornly…”
But you can tell Rochberg was no avant-gardist at heart when he extols the virtues of the premiere performance under George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra: “By the time of the premiere, the Second had miraculously taken on, in Szell’s hands, the quality of a work in the grand Romantic tradition that Szell and his orchestra had played many times before, knew intimately, and believe in thoroughly. There was none of that soulless, self-consciousness of playing ‘new music’ that has plagued music in the twentieth century and that I have come to abhor.” And comparing Szell’s performance to a later one under Paul Dunkel and the American Composers Orchestra, he doesn’t pull punches: “Dunkel played the identical work [, but] it came out sounding avant-garde, serial—in short, like a performance of ‘new music’… Hard –edged modernism triumphed over emotionally expressive romanticism. What had been expansive was flattened out, what sang lost its lyricism. A kind of strict musical accounting won out over what was uncertain, in pain, struggling with being human. Where Szell had been open and large-gestured, Dunkel was tight and compressed; where Szell had allowed wind solos to take on the hues of individual coloration, creating a rich, kaleidoscopic instrumental palette, Dunkel tended to depersonalize and homogenize this palette into a single wind color. Where Szell had made his strings passionate, tender, ferocious, soaring by turns, Dunkel made them hard, without expressive gradation, metallic.”
This refreshingly candid assessment of a conductors’ merits (one of many, critical and admiring) is from Rochberg’s just published auto-biography which he finished just before his death in May of 2005 (“Five Lines, Four Spaces”, Illinois University Press), and he goes on to describe the first recording of his Second Symphony which, unfortunately, wasn’t with Rochberg’s former teacher Szell. It was, instead, with the New York Philharmonic and Naumburg Foundation conducting award winner, Werner Torkanowsky. Rochberg was frightened by how badly things went as Torkanowsky proved inept. Before the recording sessions, finally, the players of the New York Philharmonic went up to Rochberg and assured him: “We understand the situation and the whole orchestra is behind you. No matter what happens, we’re going to play your work so it comes out right.” The orchestra pulled the conductor through and Rochberg attests, with gratitude though perhaps lacking enthusiasm, that the “recording sessions did, in fact, realize its purpose by producing a true representation of my Symphony. And I owe this entirely to the players of the New York Philharmonic [and their] remarkable sense of probity.”
The Torkanowsky recording—or rather: the New York Philharmonic recording—is still available, as is an even better recording on Naxos with the Saarbrücken RSO under Christopher Lyndon-Gee. But it’s difficult not to think of what Szell’s Rochberg-as-Schumann approach with the Cleveland Orchestra must have sounded like.
Rochberg describes his 1970 solo violin Caprice Variations (modeled on Paganini’s 24th Caprice, inspired by Brahms’ two sets of variations of the latter) as a work “tonal in all its manifestations including the chromatic, and atonal in its wide range of possibilities without necessarily relying on twelve-tone or serial methods”. Like with the “cubism of Picasso or Braque [it is] the reordering of disassembled features and elements, new and unexpected juxtapositions and reconfigurations that baffle or disorient conventional norms of perceptions”. Michelle Makarski (ECM) plays ten of the ‘modern’ variations absolutely impeccably (“Caoine”) and again four of the lyrical ones with “delicate refinement” (Rochberg’s comment about the disc titled “Elogio Per un’Ombra”), either of which is a better deal for the ears than hearing all 51 with the enthused but technically lacking Peter Sheppard Skærved (Metier). (Rochberg, it should be noted, has only the highest praise for Skærved’s performances.) I’ve not heard the alternative performance, which would be Zvi Zeitlin’s (formerly Musical Heritage, now Gasparo) who worked very closely with Rochberg on the recording. But Gidon Kremer, who got to know the “CVs” when he judged a competition and consequently played and recorded 24 of the Variations (DG), is the only one Rochberg gets excited about, recalling his performances. Elliot Fisk’s daunting, gorgeous sounding transcriptions of the whole variations for guitar seem available only as mp3 downloads.
Perhaps you heard Rochberg’s Violin Concerto on the radio last week, where it was played as part of WETA’s “American Composer Month”. (You can also hear his Transcendental Studies, a second time around, later this month.) The recording chosen was Isaac Stern’s with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under André Previn (Sony). It’s the obvious choice, since Stern and Pittsburgh’s William Steinberg (who died before he could premiere it) commissioned the work. Stern went on to play it some fifty more times. The Carnegie Hall premiere of the revised, condensed, version was one of Rochberg’s greatest successes. Rightly so. It’s a terrific work not the least because it speaks so well to the kind of composer Rochberg is. Modern, never pandering, never, as he said, “goo-goo-eyed”, but with a very big heart. Just demanding enough to assure that only concentrated listening will yield results, but never overly demanding to the point where only studying the score would yield results. He knew, long before Salonen pointed it out, that people listen with their bellies, not their brains.
Rochberg’s autobiography is ordinary in the sense that it tells of his meetings with famous, important, and interesting personalities of his trade. Struggling to turn pages as a student while his teachers Szell and Leopold Mannes race through a score of Elektra on two pianos. Hitting Gian Carlo Menotti up for rent money at Cinecittá. Violent kerfuffles with Ormandy. Or overhearing his mother after a concert: “It’s nice, but why can’t George write more like Beethoven?” But it is extraordinary for the warmth and calm with which he goes through the chapters of his life, each linking to important compositions and the artists that inspired and performed them. In reading his experiences, struggles, and successes, one is vividly reminded of how much contemporary classical music was the everyday reality of conductors and orchestras we don’t particularly associate with contemporary music anymore: Ormandy and Szell (whose mutual disdain Rochberg experienced firsthand), Mitropoulos, Mehta, Maazel etc. (Perhaps that is still so, but we are not recognizing the Rochbergs of today until we read their autobiographies.) Very rarely—altogether less than three pages—does he get into compositional and musicological detail that would be of cursory interest to the general reader.
Distractions, sparked by a remark or thought, often lead him to an entirely different story than the one he set out to tell. These are charming and natural excursions, not enervating experiences. In any case, his pace is unhurried enough so that no strand of his stories must be nervously awaited. It’s the kind of book that, assuming sympathy for (or interest in) its writer and his “struggle to extricate [himself] from the binds of serialism and atonality”, asks to be liked even in its last few, haltingly told, chapters. That’s an easy presumption, in any case—why would one otherwise read an autobiography? Sympathy also helps to disregard that Rochberg becomes least interesting at his most personal. The struggle with the premature death of his son Paul should be touching. While it is absolutely central to Rochberg’s story and his “turning [...] against serialism as expressively empty” (Robert R. Reilly), it—strangely—doesn’t make for very engrossing reading.
The best source for the orchestral music of Rochberg is Naxos, which has dedicated five discs to ten of his major worksg. The spring for most of these Rochberg riches is the English conductor Christopher Lyndon-Gee who first came in contact with Rochberg’s music at the premiere of the Fifth Symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Georg Solti, who had commissioned the piece. Lyndon-Gee’s association with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra and Naxos allowed for these recordings (including the premiere of the revised and reconstructed “original version” of the Violin Concerto) in close cooperation with the composer himself. Especially the discs with the Violin Concerto and the Fifth Symphony would grace every collection of American classical music. Along with the String Quartets, the Caprice Variations, and perhaps the fugal two-piano homage to Bach “Circles of Fire” (Gasparo), they are essential Rochberg. 
Wednesday, 6.17.09, 6:00 am
It’s Never Too Late for Piazzolla: The Artemis Quartet Tangos
You might think that the train for Piazzolla recordings by classical musicians had left quite a while ago, but the Artemis Quartet are tangoing their way into the tasteful crossover limelight with their latest disc on Virgin Classics: “The Piazzolla Project”. The name reminds me of something pompous the Emerson Quartet might do, but the content is of such quality that the transcriptions for Piano Quintet, Piano Trio, and String Quartet are good listening any time, unfazed by the coming and going of tango fads. (It had to be done now, too, because before long the Quatuor Ebène, fresh on Virgin, will want to record similar crossover material that they already regale audiences with.)
It’s all there: Estaciones Porteñas, Piazzola’s homage to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. La Muerte del Angel and the rest of the Angel Suite, which everyone has played, from Emanuel Ax (with Pablo Ziegler), to Gidon Kremer, to the 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic. Fuga y Misterio (from “Maria di Buenos Aires”), that has been brought to us by the likes of LAGQ and Imani Winds. None of that gets old, because it’s fabulous music. The Concierto para quinteto, the one rarely recorded work, is the most charming of them all. And while the Artemis Quartet and wonderful pianist Jacques Ammon interpret and play Piazzolla in a way that remains solidly in the classical concert realm, their passion and virtuosity brings them close to the free-wheeling, almost improvisatory spirit that lies at the core of the music.
Among the classical-Piazzolla discs I most cherish are Barenboim’s “Mi Buenos Aires Querido” and Josep Pons’ orchestral disc on Harmonia Mundi. The Artemis Quartet, led by their long time Piazzolla adoring and performing cellist Eckart Runge, has a good shot at joining them.
Sunday, 6.14.09, 4:00 am
Days of Strauss: The Munich Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann in Music They’re at Home With
June 25th through the 27th the NSO will perform Richard Strauss’ Hölderlin Hymns with Karita Mattila. Mikko Franck conducts. Earlier this year, I heard Mattila in those very songs with the same orchestra with which I also first heard Mikko Franck conduct. This is a recollection of the little Strauss cycle of the Munich Philharmonic this spring.
If the music of Richard Strauss is associated with any particular city, that city is not Berlin (where he got his conducting-feet wet), or Dresden (where most of his operas where premiered), or Vienna (where he was co-director of the State Opera), but Munich. Richard Strauss was born in Munich, son of the first horn player at the Munich Court Orchestra (now the Opera’s Bavarian State Orchestra), second cousin to that ensemble’s concertmaster (who taught him violin), and nephew to the brewery owner George Pschorr.
And among Munich Orchestras, none have currently made Strauss more their own than the Munich Philharmonic. Neither Mariss Jansons of the BRSO (despite a terrific Till Eulenspiegel recently) nor Kent Nagano heading the Bavarian State Orchestra are explicit Straussians. Christian Thielemann—utterly un-Bavarian in so many ways but more in tune with the late romantic musical soul than perhaps any other conductor of his generation—is an overt Straussian. The first this city has had since Wolfgang Sawallisch left the opera house in 1992. Good Strauss, any orchestra in Munich is capable of. For consistently great Strauss, the Munich Philharmonic is the address of choice.
This isn’t really news, but it was impressively reaffirmed in three Strauss concerts the orchestra put on earlier this year. Strauss rarities were on the menu for the middle string of concerts (March 5th, 6th, 8th) that included works so rarely played that even Thielemann had not been familiar with them and used—a rarity with him in Strauss—the score.
The first concert opened tenderly with the Capriccio’s sublime prelude—a sextet so fragile, so moving that it encapsulates the character of the Countess from the most beautiful of Strauss’ neglected operas. If you like Metamorphosen in principle, but find that a touch too meandering, the Capriccio Sextet was made for you. As the front bench string players of the Munich Philharmonic delivered beyond the call of duty, Thielemann and half the Philharmonic, on his encouragement, listened from the orchestra stalls. A fitting prelude followed by the three Hölderlin Hymns op.71 (1921) with Karita Mattila whose bold outfit made her look like a East German discus thrower in evening dress and heels. That image wasn’t quite inappropriate given the required—and more than sufficiently supplied—force necessary for to compete with the unbridled orchestral explosion that Thielemann encouraged.
These songs are very rarely heard, but apart from the demands on the soloist who needs to sing right ‘through’ the orchestral luster, there is no reason for this neglect. Among the three songs is contained everything from the very wistful essence of Strauss à la “Frau ohne Schatten” (in “Hymn to Love”) to Strauss’ boldest harmonies in “Love” (encored) which sounds as though Sibelius’ Forth Symphony was dropped into the Straussian crock pot. Mattila, who overcame the acoustic challenges of the Philharmonic hall easily enough, sang as if made for these particular, mercilessly gorgeous pieces.
After intermission, the Second Horn Concerto (the pendant to his youthful and brilliant first such work) created pensive, even fragile mood of late Straus with the Philharmonic’s solo hornist Ivo Gass not letting the challenging but idiomatic concerto get the better of him. Equally off the beaten Strauss-path and equally enthralling the “Intermezzo Interludes”. Intermezzo, even less often performed outside Germany than Capriccio, is typical Strauss: A sturdy-rustic counterpart to the mythical realm of his “FrOSch”, ‘earthing’ his art and opera by tackling an utterly domestic, unashamedly autobiographical situation with more than a wink of the eye, lest the genre be taken to seriously. Strauss asked Hofmannsthal for this theatrically linked complement, but his librettist declined, citing lack of competence in the desired genre of matrimonial love and jealousy. Mundane (though always deeply sympathetic) the topic of a jealous wife may be, but that cannot faze the gorgeousness of the music which, if listened to in the filtered form of the Interludes, becomes plain obvious.
The last concert in this Strauss trilogy—from March 11th to March 15th—added Pfitzner and Henze to the mix, making it an example of inspired programming, an ideal night for the bleeding heart romantic, and a feast for Strauss lovers thanks to Diana Damrau. At the center of the evening were 16 of orchestral songs, eight on either side of intermission. Reaching toward Strauss’ musical language from either side of the 20th century romanticism were two three-partite orchestral suites (one culled from an opera, the other from an orchestral cantata) by Hans Werner Henze and Hans Pfitzner. The suite from the Bassarids by the former to open the evening, the Eichendorff Cantata Suite of the latter to cap it.
Henze’s red-blooded 1960s Bassarids, of which the Philharmonic gave the first Munich (concert) performance and part of the Bavarian State Opera’s 2008 season, might be based on 12 tone rows, but it cannot deny its romantic core, its luxuriant nature, its (appropriately) Bacchanalian outbursts of emotion. Thielemann even sees the Suite, taken from the third act climax of the opera and put together upon request from Christoph von Dohnányi, in the direct lineage of Pfitzner. It stretches conservative ears without overburdening them and readies them to hear the Eichendorff Cantata Suite which contains some of Pfitzner’s most daring harmonic episodes. The quasi symphonic Suite contains some truly great music (some of which was plagiarized by the Lord of the Rings soundtrack); a cello cantilena, a brass chorale, and the longest flute solo of any orchestral piece are particular highlights. Even the Philharmonic’s string section pulled together to make for a memorable reading—important since for the aching beauty to come through, Pfitzner must be played with absolute precision.
Diana Damrau, in a cobalt blue dress with a harlequinesque breastplate, is a bundle of unbridled energy with a good touch of childlike joy in what she does, whose dramatic talent befits these songs almost as much as it odes her operatic characters. She’s a vocal phenomenon who can sing above (not ‘through’) a full orchestra with ease, yet not devoid of insecurities. Some of the Strauss songs—”Amor”, “Ständchen”, “Wiegenlied”, “Allerseelen”, and “Cäcilie” among them, all very different from the Hölderlin songs Mattila sang—Strauss could well have written for her. Unfortunately there are too many seats in the Philharmonic Hall where some of her subtleties won’t have been noticeable… then again, if she had made herself fully audible for everyone on that acoustic, there wouldn’t have been any subtleties left. If Virgin will release a disc with these orchestral and orchestrated songs of Strauss (as planned), I know it will be high up on my want-list.
The Third—chronologically the first—concert in this Strauss series was a concert performance of Der Rosenkavalier. With three of the best singers in the female roles that can be had—Renée Fleming as the Feldmarschallin, Sophie Koch as Octavian, and Diana Damrau as Sophie—and Christian Thielemann conducting, this was a Strauss lover’s ‘quadfecta’. Koch and Damrau, which I heard in these roles two years ago, also in Munich, are simply stunning. Koch, even in a concert performance, can act the most convincing Octavian I have seen, and her voice—not per se the prettiest instrument—fits perfectly. Diana Damrau eats up any Strauss role she is given, a dramatic and vocal dream boat. Fleming, once she starts getting involved in the role, rather than projecting herself, is marvelous and has acquired just the seductive matronly touch—quite like Adrianne Pieczonka—that makes her Feldmarschallin so believable.
The great advantage of a concert performance is that the orchestral part is heard in all its detail—some of which usually gets stuck in the pit. The Munich Philharmonic showed again what great potential they have as an opera orchestra. Thielemann, who supports his singers without being particularly easy on them, got splendid details from the score. The crude sexual brass that backs Ochs (Franz Hawlata, in creaky voice but more than making up for it with his acting) called to mind most vividly the trombones used to similar effect by Shostakovich in Lady Macbeth. Telling of the quality of the cast (assuming one didn’t mind Hawlata) was that Ramón Vargas’ Italian singer was among the weaker links in the chain. In the DVD recording of this performance form Baden-Baden (staged—to be issued by Unitel later this year), Jonas Kaufmann takes that part, undoubtedly adding a little extra glamour.
Saturday, 6.6.09, 6:00 am
Sometimes the Beauty Isn’t So Obvious - Interview with Violinist Carolin Widmann, Part 2
This continues the interview with Carolin Widmann.
Widmann and I touch on the definition of ‘entertainment’ having morphed to meaning “no effort involved” and about the existence (or lack) of a vocabulary that might make it more difficult to listen to contemporary music. But if the greatest challenge for modernity in music is the unfamiliarity of the vocabulary, why is modernity in painting such a hit? Why do entire families cue up to see a Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, or Andy Warhol exhibit? The latter, we reason, has to do with the “patience” of paintings and the intense concentration necessary to follow a temporal art like music.
Widmann also suggests that the experience of the Second World War has something to do with it. The increasing academicism in composing, a shift in listening habits, the rejection of everything “romantic,” especially in German-speaking countries. “Not in English-speaking countries so much, but John Adams would not have been possible here.” The only American modern composer accepted as avant-garde in Europe is Elliot Carter (with the possible exceptions of John Cage and Morton Feldman). And even his music, we agree, is much more “smiling” music than Boulez. “John Corigliano” she says, “—I am sorry—could not make a living in Germany.
“I learned a lot recently when I played a new piece by Esa-Pekka Salonen, “Lachen verlernt”, for solo violin. I have to be honest; in the beginning I was quite skeptical because with my brother being a composer and Boulez and Nono early heroes of mine, I grew up in this ‘hard-core’ tradition—and there comes this Salonen, this very simple, Californian ‘feel-good’ music. And I liked it actually. I was ashamed, but I liked it and there was something very techno-like about it. And then I met him and he said, ‘You know, when I was in Finland, everything was brainy, everything was cerebral, and then I came to America and learned that people listen with their bellies, not just their brains.’ I really learned a lot from that.”
From having a composer-brother, meanwhile, she learned that “the composer” isn’t a saint, that he’s a person you can talk to (in the case of contemporary composers), and a score not necessarily sacrosanct. “My brother would be the first to change a note if it is uncomfortable, or he might say ‘No, it has to be just that harmony.’ And that’s also an approach I am beginning to take to the great masters, which takes away a bit of that ‘total distance.’ Zealous Texttreue can get in the way—there are so many freedoms, perfectly within the score, that we never take.” With some liberties taken, it might be easy to disagree with an interpretation, but it can also make it easy to fall in love with. When we ask anew what it means to write a certain phrase like that, rather than reproducing that which we know because we’ve heard it done that way a thousand times, you might come up with really interesting, new answers.
Speaking of Carter (“not even in the same category as Adams”), Widmann isn’t afraid of using the word “great.” She is equally ardent about the lamentable, populist disdain on alleged elitism as she is critical about the “ghettoization” of modern music that takes place in—usually highly subsidized—specialist events that present only contemporary works.
“That’s why the Schumann (her debut recording of the three Schumann sonatas for ECM) had to come out now, so that people don’t even think I’m interested only in modern music—before I’m pigeonholed. I love to play the Brahms and Beethoven concertos, for example.”
“Absolutely, entirely” is her take on these concertos informed by her work with modern pieces. “Because I can see the modernity in these works so much, in a way that people who will only listen to a Mozart symphony probably cannot. And that contributes to a much leaner, less cluttered approach. Because modern works are ‘all new notes’ to me, in the beginning, I can take Beethoven on the same way, too. So I am much more ready to ask myself ‘what does it mean if this concerto opens with octaves that go up, up. Hindemith and Janáček and Ysaÿe open your mind.
“Although,” she continues, “it is really important to say that sometimes I have trouble with modern music too. The audience is not the only one. Sometimes when we rehearse—like Kurtag’s Kafka Fragmente—it’s difficult, because there is not one harmony that sounds soothing to us; it’s painful. And you have to credit the audience finding it painful. It often takes a lot of time and exposure. Sometimes the beauty is not as obvious.”
Finally we get to the raison d’entrevue, her Schumann recording that made me seek out the meeting with her in the first place. Why Schumann? “For one, because I feel extremely close to the music, an extreme kinship with Schumann’s music, with the improvising, with the storytelling, the fairy-tale characters that come and go. Another reason was that the Third Sonata is so neglected and I want to show that it’s not weaker than the others. I want to show the development of the very late Schumann and ultimately get into his mind, which, at that point, was deteriorating—with the music getting so very desperate. In the beginning of the Third Sonata, especially, there’s just nothing to hold onto anymore—and you can feel that in the music.”
Since recording is different from performing, because there’s the added element of competition that goes beyond “just” playing it well and having something to say, does that also mean she approaches Schumann differently in the recording studio than she would live? Widmann isn’t sure, but knows comparison was certainly not on her mind. “I can’t think of the market when I record. I have to burn for it, and in this case I really felt that fire. No matter who has recorded it. I mean, Argerich and Kremer recorded them, of course, but it will always be the case that someone amazing has recorded something I like. But I thought that I had to say something with this; moreover, I needed to say something with this and that’s why it had to be that way.”
Just the mention of the Second Sonata’s slow movement makes her chuckle because she knows which question is coming. The opening is marked pizzicato. But what you hear on her recording doesn’t remotely sound like a regular old pizzicato. In places, it sounds more like a breathy spiccato. Just what exactly is going on there? “My students always say I have a pizzicato-fetish” she sniggers, “because I find it so sad that people switch the music off when they see a ‘pizzicato’ in the score. Perhaps because they don’t realize what you can do with that. I use different fingers, I use different directions, I like to experiment with that. You use your hands, of course, but you also have to use love and try to make the most beautiful music you can make. I hear how a guitar can sound and I am inspired by that so I try several techniques. And when we played that movement as it ended up on the CD—in one take, almost without any editing—we weren’t aware that it was being recorded. We came back after dinner and thought, ‘Let’s just play a bit, improvising,’ in one of those moods you cannot recreate. For me, that was the most ideal state that I could get into concerning music in that studio in Lugano, two years ago. For me that was as close as I can get to paradise. Which you’d never expect from any recording.”
Friday, 6.5.09, 6:00 am
Sometimes the Beauty Isn’t So Obvious - Interview with Violinist Carolin Widmann, Part 1
Salzburg’s New Mozarteum is an impressive building, surprisingly aesthetic for its bulky size and rigorous modernist concrete look. It contains a good sounding concert hall (Solitaire) with a spectacular view over the Mirabell Gardens over to the Mönchsberg. Waiting for violinist Carolin Widmann, I hear sounds coming from the Solitaire upstairs that evoke a group of musicians testing the exact breaking point of a piano, cello, and violin. It turns out to have been Widmann and company practicing Matthias Pintscher’s work Svelto. From the piano rooms in the back, faint sounds of a student practicing the same Schumann phrase over and over round out the delicate cacophony.
Finished with the rehearsal, Widmann looks exhausted and the sniffles indicate a cold on its way. I ask if she might not have something better to do than this interview now and whether she might like to reschedule. She perks and insists on the interview with surprisingly believable enthusiasm. Her zest does not wane for the next 50 minutes we spend in a clattery little café. The immediate, candid, and unpretentious charm of this rusty-red-haired artist with happy freckles is, if anything, enhanced by her appearance: Sweatpants, no makeup, and perfectly gorgeous.
We chose to speak in English since she splits her time between London (“life, pleasure”) and Germany (“work”), where she has a professorship at the Leipzig Conservatory that Mendelssohn founded in 1843. With an apologetic aside to her enlarged carbon-footprint, she extols the pleasures of being able to jet back and forth between European countries so easily. After shifting around the oversized Pintscher score, which is too large to fit on the table, and musing over the three dozen different variants of coffee being served in Austria (including the contemptuous looks one incurs when caught hesitating too long faced with the overwhelming amount of choices), we talk about Salzburg audiences. At her performance that opened the 2008 Salzburg Festival, 20 percent of the audience left during the first movement of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, disapproving of the music. The rest stayed, screamed, and gave standing ovations.
How difficult is it to get people to listen—much less like—real modern music if so many have problems even with the “classical” Messiaen? But Widmann doesn’t find that to be a problem at all, having experienced precisely the opposite. Obviously her audiences, knowing that Widmann stands for heavy doses of the contemporary amid her more traditional repertoire, expect some adventurous music and don’t represent the average concertgoers. But how does one convince the middle-ground listener—who is curious but unexposed and possibly still struggling with Bartók, much less Morton Feldman?
So far that’s not been too much of an issue for Widmann. Even the reaction of conservative audiences—presumably not those who run away mid-movement—surprise her positively with encouraging feedback, as they had a few weeks back when she played a mixture of Bach and Boulez to an audience at Schloss Elmau near Garmisch. The presenters were afraid of her programming choice, fearing spectacular failure. “In the end, I got nine curtain calls—and that was a hardcore Boulez program.” (Is there a non-hardcore Boulez program? “No, probably not.”) “You just have to present it right and not put it in a little apologetic corner; as a contemporary-music fig leaf.” She mocks a music festival that advertises contemporary-music recitals, tucked away at 11 at night, with the slogan “Only for the Curious.”
“Sure you have to be curious” she moans, “but to say only for the curious—I mean, that really sounds like ‘please don’t come’.”
“Perhaps I’m just ignorant of the people who hate modern music, but I receive so many e-mails of support.” She kept one e-mail in her Blackberry, though, that opened expressing general interest in attending one of her recitals but then changed its mind mid-sentence, ending with an unkind assessment of her repertoire, abrading her for all that “shitty contemporary music.”
“Maybe” she suggests, “that’s the ‘middle ground’ that you talk about. The people who suffer through Messiaen in 2008, who can’t take it anymore.” And if 95 percent of all listeners draw the line at or just after Bartók, she is sorry for that, but “I can’t help it.
“I can empathize with anybody who knows nothing about something else. I know nothing about a hundred-thousand things. But what I cannot empathize with is ignorance. And I am sorry to say that so many of those people are completely ignorant and they don’t listen with the openness that they would need and with the openness that they would claim to have for a Mozart symphony. And I believe that they are not even open to the Mozart symphony; they just shut off.
“Funny enough, I find that people who have nothing to do with music are much more tolerant and much more excited than people who go to classical concerts. Those are the worst. For example: when my CD came out, I played in a techno club in Berlin. I played Schumann for them, explaining that this guy is really amazing and that we have a lot in common with the emotions he expresses. They listened like the best audience. Drinks in their hands, smoking, sure, but they were absolutely amazing. I don’t care about the ritual of the concert atmosphere, either. Who cares if they hold beer bottles as long as they listen? So much music was written to be had with coffee and cake—it’s entertainment. We shouldn’t be afraid of entertaining, even if what we entertain with is ‘difficult.’
“And no, I don’t just do what I do because ‘enough’ people like what I do. Even if everybody hated it, I’d still do it, because I love it. Because I find that so many pieces are so ingenious—take the Six Caprices of Sciarrino or the Berio Sequenzas: absolutely on one level with Bartók or Ysaÿe. So for me, it’s essential to do it and I can’t care whether people like it or not. Early in life I was really tested with failure about where I wanted to go. And through this failure I learned that you cannot depend in your conviction and opinion on other people’s opinions. In not being recognized you have to define very carefully what it is that you believe in and what you do. And there were times when people didn’t like it—it was ungrateful at times. But now they seem to like it.”
When I suggest that people don’t listen to Mozart for the same reasons they listen to Pintscher—“Why not?”—she points out that’s perhaps the starting point: listening habits. “Whenever I get the choice of a recital program, I like to mix works. When you do a Debussy next to a Schoenberg, people go ‘Whoa! It really is the same.’” I point out that early Schoenberg, or Berg, or even Berio are not in the same difficulty league as, say, Brian Ferneyhough. At the mention of Ferneyhough’s name, Widmann wrinkles her nose and admits that she has plenty of difficulty with some contemporary music, too. “It might surprise you, but I have trouble with a lot of it and I think ‘why am I here—and do I have to spend any of my life’s time to play it?’ And very often I think ‘No, life is too short, I shouldn’t waste my time on it.’”
But being at the frontier of modern music also means holding back in judgment until one really knows a piece and can reasonably decide whether it is worth further exploration or not. The filtering job that history has done for us with classical music from past times still needs to be done for contemporary music, which makes judging and choosing more difficult. “I know that there are many pieces out there that might not survive for posterity, but I am playing them. Because I have to, because I don’t know until afterwards whether it is worth keeping.”
Wednesday, 6.3.09, 6:00 am
New Releases: CDs
Viktoria Mullova’s Bach
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
Of Bach’s Cello Suites, there has been such a plethora of recent recordings lately that greatness (Queyras) and extroverted excellence (Lipkind) relegated the merely superb (Klinger ) and the very good (Gastinel) (nevermind the dishwater variety—Isserlis) to shadowy spots they didn’t necessarily reserve and wouldn’t have received had the timing been better. Timing is excellent, however, for Viktoria Mullova’s Sonatas & Partitas because there hasn’t been an important recording issued since Julia Fischer’s (Pentatone) and Gidon Kremer’s on ECM in 2005, and Christian Tetzlaff’s on Hänssler in 2007.
Her recording is big news, then, and better yet: it’s good news. In brief and thoughtful liner notes that peel right through to the essence of why she added hers to the long list of violinists’ names on the Sonata & Partita roll call, she outlines her musical transformation as it relates to Bach. She has come from a decidedly old-school approach (she describes it as a sort of Russian robotic approach with continuous vibrato, sans liberties, and little articulation) to what is for all theoretical purposes a Historically Informed Performance account. She even plays with gut strings and a baroque bow, one or the other or both of which she has been doing for years in all repertoire where appropriate. (Her recordings of the Beethoven and Mendelssohn Concertos are on gut string and she uses the baroque setup for her recent Bach and Vivaldi recordings.) As with her latest Bach release and the Vivaldi concertos on Archiv, she is playing a 1750 Guadagnini (and a Walter Barbiero baroque bow) tuned to A=415, not her 1723 “Julius Falk” Stradivari.
Listening to it at first, my first response to it was rather cool. Her playing is not always beautiful. Short bow strokes in the D minor Sarabande certainly don’t aim for prettiness. The sound is close, but with lots of room around her, direct but spacious, allowing the sound to bloom, and hiding nothing—for better and worse. I found it occasionally too close, leaving me with the feeling of standing a little too close to a painting that I admire. Her former rigor in Bach—perhaps even stiffness—is gone, although that approach I actually find myself appreciating.
It wasn’t until direct comparison that the scales fell off my ears, revealing not only relative excellence but greatness. If upon the first few listens she didn’t seem to be delivering something truly out of the ordinary, now she shines. I matched her against Tetzlaff’s new recording and—difference of pitch apart—the dissimilarities are vast and instructive. The relative lack of ambience gives a yet more immediate, more contained impression of Tetzlaff’s instrument (presumably his modern Guarneri del Gesu copy by Peter Greiner). When listened to on its own, Tetzlaff’s Hänssler recording is striking to a degree, but the allure is lost: the violin sound comes across as squeaky, the playing constrained and lacking spontaneity.
Mullova works hard to get momentum by way of her rather aggressive rhythmic dotting and double stopping, enjoying the hard edges that Bach offers. Although it doesn’t quite sound like it, it feels more like Nathan Milstein than anyone else. The touches of gentleness amid that overt vigor betray the amount of thought put into making the recording, making Tetzlaff’s approach seem rather academic and deliberate (check the Siciliana) in comparison. Mullova really does play with guts—not just gut strings—which gives the Sonatas & Partitas a feel of being lived rather than just read. When Mullova is faster (throughout most of the First Sonata) she strikes as more pointed and lively. When she is slower (most extreme—4:04 to 2:21—in the first Double), less trying to master a technical challenge than communicating the spirit of the music. In the second Double, taken fast by both but faster still by Tetzlaff, the latter comes perilously close to sounding like a sewing machine.
With first impressions manifesting themselves as hardened opinions, the differences between her and Tetzlaff, which I originally thought would be small despite Mullova’s quasi-HIP approach, became ever more obvious. Painfully so, after a while. After a while, the audio quality of the Hänssler recording gives you the impression of being thrown back 25 years. And the interpretation becomes more and more uninteresting. Not skipping ahead whenever it was Tetzlaff‘s turn grew ever more difficult. When Mullova came back on (say, with the A minor Fuga after Tetzlaff’s Grave), it felt like relief.
That the differences are—or become—so striking, is all the more surprising since I cherish Tetzlaff in general and cherished his Bach in particular. This drop in appreciation (despite some terrific instances on his part—the A minor Allegro, D minor Giga, and his Ciaconna among them) isn’t just a matter of appreciating a particular interpretive style, either. Spot-light comparisons with other favorite recordings (Milstein on DG, my eternal touchstone; Podger, my HIP-standard bearer; Fischer, my favorite among modern, honeyed versions) did not yield the same discrepancies despite being very different from Mullova. Especially Julia Fischer offers drastic contrast (only Shlomo Mintz’ mellifluous account might be further from Mullova than Fischer) and yet she delights equally.
Mullova, for all her HIP-training and gear, will not replace Rachel Podger as the favorite of that particular approach: there is modern spirit to it all that makes it stand too tall and too proud as to be a vehicle for the authenticists’ ideology. Nor will she end all arguments on style with this HIP-means/modern spirit approach. That’s incidentally not what a recording is intended or supposed to do. What Mullova will achieve, however, is as much a splash in the world of Sonata & Partita connoisseurs as Fischer created, and that by wonderfully different means. The time it took to get to appreciate, like, and finally love this recording was well invested.