Wednesday, 8.29.07, 4:57 pm
New Releases: CDs
Chamber Music You Didn’t Know You Love ( 2 )
"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.
 J. Marx, String Quartets |
Loving Marx is a wonderfully unpolitical thing to do, at least if it is the composer and influential teacher Joseph Marx (1882 – 1964) that is the object of our admiration. And if you like romantic music that runs the gamut from chromatically twisted to old-fashioned to unabashedly melodic (including some close encounters with the saccharine end of ’sweet’), then Marx is likely a composer you’d want to hear. If his three string quartets (”in modo antico” (1937/38), “in modo classico” (1940/41), and “chromatico” (1948)) don’t wallow in the same solidly tonal, melody embracing, almost orgiastic spheres as his luscious orchestral works or delicious songs, they are not the worse off for it. The Quartetto in modo antico, a hymnus to the old masters of vocal polyphony (Palestrina and Lassus) is written in the ancient modes: The Myxolydian for the opening and closing movements, Allegro poco moderato and Vivace, respectively. The Dorian mode serves as the basis for the Presto; and the third movement, Adagio molto is written in the Phrygian mode. The result is a quartet that, for all its ancient modes, lack of chromatic steps and irregular dissonances sounds strangely modern, with unexpected and unexpectedly pretty harmonic turns.
More Marxian and perhaps more easily appreciated upon first hearing might be the “Quartetto in modo classico”, a busy work the most classical characteristic of which is its sonata form. It has that in common with the other two quartets – but speaks in a romantic idiom that isn’t trying particularly hard to be anything else. The title notwithstanding, one can’t expect a Haydn quartet heaved into the mid-twentieth century. As any of these three quartets, the name Max Reger is more likely to come to mind.
Early Schoenberg, or Debussy, Medtner, Szymanowski, Respighi (the latter three were friends of Marx) are composers that may not sound like Marx, per se, but are likely those whose works you will appreciate if you like the Marx quartets – and vice versa. And if exploring the last nook and cranny of tonality and where chromatic twists can lead it are your thing (add Zemlinsky to the list, now that I think of it), then you will find the Quartetto chromatico particularly pleasing. True to its name in a way the others are not, this is at turns a melancholic, a wild, a restless, and reflecting work – elegiac and dissonant at once. In a few moments of the energetic Scherzo Marx takes this works so far that an appreciation of Bartók might be more helpful than a love for Tod und Verklärung. But even if the string quartets are the works with the ‘least calories’ that Marx’s wrote, they are never so far away from his more overtly pleasing and melodic side that those who may already know his delicious “Alt-Wiener Serenaden” should hesitate getting to know these works.
Previously and since in Chamber Music You Didn’t Know You Love:
( 1 ) – Ludwig Thuille, Piano Quintets
( 2 ) – Joseph Marx, String Quartets
( 3 ) – Franz Mittler, String Quartets
( 4 ) – Felix Weingartner, String Quartets
( 5 ) – Wilhelm Bernhard Molique, String Quartets
Previously and since in Orchestral Music You Didn’t Know You Love:
( 1 ) – Friedrich Ernst Fesca, Symphonies
( 2 ) – Max Bruch, Swedish & Russian Dances
( 3 ) – Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, Orchestral Songs, Symphony
Saturday, 8.25.07, 10:22 am
New Releases: CDs
Chamber Music You Didn’t Know You Love ( 1 )
"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.
 Ludwig Thuille, Piano Quintets |
Two names in classical music that you either won’t have heard of – or else must allow yourself to be called a classical music geek – are Ludwig Thuille (1861 – 1907) and Joseph Marx. The first seems completely unpronounceable, which means writing about him is much easier than talking about him. Ludwig Wilhelm Andrä Maria Thuille was born in Bolzano when everyone still called it Bozen; a Tirolean. He became a student of Joseph Rheinberger in Munich and from age 16 on he was a good friend of the then 13-year-old Richard Strauss. If the mutual enthusiasm for music, exchanges (and disagreements) about Wagner, and musical comparisons they shared were actually beneficial for Ludwig Thuille can be doubted. Promising though he began his career, the ascendance of a musical genius (Strauss) so close to him, and his junior at that, might well have contributed to the lack of confidence with which Thuille continued his composer’s career.
Eckhart van den Hoogen’s splendidly witty and informative liner notes that come with CPO’s recording of the two Piano Quintets remark dryly: “A heart attack put an early end to his life: Scarcely two months after his 45th birthday on November 30th 1906 Ludwig Thuille is no more.” It is easy to lament the premature death and theorize what might have been… but given how Thuille’s creative output had stalled not long after he had finished his second Piano Quintet op.20 in 1901 the answer is: probably nothing much. That, too, is sad – and sadder still when listening to these two works. When they were composed, they might have uncomfortably straddled conservatism and modernism. Rheinberger’s influence and restraint can be heard in the first work (1880, WoO in G-minor) – Alexander Ritter’s modern influence of the “Munich School” (R.Strauss, von Schillings) appears in the E-flat major work that Thuille started nearly 20 years later.
Our modern ears can easily dispense with the rivaling musical philosophies at the time and let the Quintets impress upon us without prejudice. And impress they do. And the more I listen to them, the more I find them indispensable to my chamber music collection. Indeed, Thuille’s works – especially the earlier Quintet with its natural flow, the beauty of innocence, perhaps naïvete – sound like quintessential chamber music. Romantically infused in its irrepressible energy in the first movement, romantically wallowing in its moving Larghetto it stands, hitherto undiscovered by these ears, as music that seems as though it had always been around. Perhaps that is what others find to be Thuille’s “timeless” quality? I listen to it and I feel as though it were as natural and inimically a part of chamber music as any great work of Brahms or the Trios of Schumann. Except with that gentle idiomatic tinge that betrays its later date of composition.
Trying harder, but not less successfully so, the second Quintet is harmonically a significant (if ultimately hesitant) step toward the sound-world of Richard Strauss. But craftsmanship combined with a talent for melody and fine phrases make this, too, a work that strikes all the more as a marvel as it greets us so confidently out of relative or even complete obscurity. If the chamber-musical output from Rheinberger to Reger and from Brahms to Richard Strauss is your cup of tea, there is little sense in even trying to resist these works that are so splendidly performed by pianist Oliver Triendl and the Vogler Quartett who put plenty of wit, wistfulness, and warmth into these highly recommendable recordings.
Previously and since in Chamber Music You Didn’t Know You Love:
( 1 ) – Ludwig Thuille, Piano Quintets
( 2 ) – Joseph Marx, String Quartets
( 3 ) – Franz Mittler, String Quartets
( 4 ) – Felix Weingartner, String Quartets
( 5 ) – Wilhelm Bernhard Molique, String Quartets
Previously and since in Orchestral Music You Didn’t Know You Love:
( 1 ) – Friedrich Ernst Fesca, Symphonies
( 2 ) – Max Bruch, Swedish & Russian Dances
( 3 ) – Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, Orchestral Songs, Symphony
Friday, 8.17.07, 6:43 pm
New Releases: CDs
Not Having Enough of 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.
 Müller-Brachmann, BWV 56, 82, 158 (Naxos, 2006)  Quasthoff, BWV 56, 82, 158 (DG, 2004) |
There are so many Bach Cantatas (about – and at least – 250, though counting is difficult since many are lost, others incomplete, yet others apocrypha, or variations of existing cantatas) that even among devoted Bach-lovers there are not all that many who own all or feel that they need to. Admittedly an understandable attitude. Not that I should have adhered to it.Should the urge to delve even into every last corner of Bach’s cantata output strike anyway, the most economical way to come into their all possession would probably be to buy Brilliant Classics’ complete Bach Box of which the fine set of cantatas by Pieter Jan Leusink with the Holland Boys Choir and the Netherlands Bach Collegium make up the lion share. The most luxurious way of acquiring these divine works is undoubtedly achieved by collecting Sir John Elliot Gardiner’s gorgeous (in performance and presentation) set on his own, Soli Deo Gloria, label. (Harnoncourt/Leonhardt (Teldec), Helmuth Rilling (Haenssler), Ton Koopman (Challenge Classics), and Masaaki Suzuki (BIS) are other options.) Somewhere in between lies the more reasonable decision to opt for a few recordings of one’s favorite cantatas. Or, for lack of knowing them all: the most popular.
Famous recordings of Bach cantatas are plenty. And three particularly notable ones – Hotter/EMI, Dieskau/DG, Hunt-Lieberson/Nonesuch – have in common the extraordinarily beautiful solo cantata (originally for bass, but also available in an alternate version for mezzo or counter-tenor) “Ich habe genug” in common.
Now Bach-specialist Helmut Müller-Brühl, who has made many acclaimed (though decidedly not famous) Bach (and Haydn and Telemann) recordings for Naxos, has issued a CD with three Bach cantatas that, for selection and performance, well merits inclusion among the core of Bach cantatas anyone may want to have on their shelves. (If the name rings a bell, Müller-Brühl’s Bach on Nonesuch was on popular (and inexpensive) LP’s in the 70’s.)
A friend and classical music specialist at Tower Records (RIP – Tower, that is… not the friend who is doing well back in his native Trinidad) had always professed his love for HMB’s Bach… and, his untenable predilection for Solti’s perverse St.Matthew Passion not withstanding, I must say very much to his ears’ credit. The Cologne Chamber Orchestra, founded by Hermann Abendroth in 1923 and led by HMB since 1964, and the Collegium Vocale Siegen compare well even to the most famous Bach-playing ensembles. Since 1987 the Cologne Chamber Orchestra is a historical performance practice/modern instrument hybrid. Not the only reason that group and leader remind a good deal of the excellent Helmuth Rilling and his Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart.
BWV 82 – “Ich habe genug” (”I have enough”), BWV 56 – “Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen” (”I shall gladly carry the yoke of the cross”) and most likely the undated BWV 158 “Der Friede sei mit dir” (”Peace be with thee”), are from the late 1720s; mature, “Leipzig” Bach. They are all thematically related by the renunciation of a life in suffering – or rather: embracing the mercy of God (and life eternal) in death. “Ich habe genug” was famously staged by Robert Wilson with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in a hospital gown and IV’s in her arms; a tragically prophetic setting, as it turned out… but moving just as much at the time, when the Mme. Lieberson had not yet – all-too-soon – been called from us.
Scored for prominent strings and Continuo, soloist and solo oboe, it has attracted some of the greatest singers. (There are almost twice as many recordings of this cantata than the next popular, BWV 56.) Lorraine Hunter-Lieberson’s is a particularly gorgeous rendition, but the work is just as powerful in the Bass-Baritone original. And Hanno Müller-Brachman, the other “HMB” on this recording (who also works on Bach with Herreweghe and Rilling), more than holds up against the staggering competition of Hans Hotter, Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, Thomas Quasthoff, Ian Bostridge, and Matthias Goerne. It’s a gorgeous, calm, and felt delivery marked by HMB-2’s round, deep, never booming, voice. It’s rather straight-forward singing and though the sound reminded me more than once of Fischer-Dieskau (among HMB-2’s teachers), it’s not as laden with meaning, nor inflecting as delicately. A quality not necessarily to be considered a detriment. Perhaps the finest compliment that can be paid to this disc is that, standing in direct competition (i.e. containing the same Cantatas, also sung by a baritone) to Deutsche Grammophon’s recording with Quasthoff and the Berlin Baroque Soloists under Rainer Kussmaul (a tremendous Bach CD by all means – and in itself highly recommeded), I’d not want to have to chose between the two. (Of course, I haven’t – but that’s not quite the point.)
BWV 56 conveys the intense feeling of long-suffering and, later, exultation of relief before ending in the calm, mildly gloomy “Komm, O Tod, du Schlafes Bruder” (”Come, O Death, Sleep’s Brother”) – one of my favorite choruses in all of Bach. Less than two minutes long and yet encompassing a universe of sadness that only music (and perhaps the dark eyes of a dying horse) can convey.
Perhaps composed for Easter, BWV 158 relates to the others with its central Aria (with Chorale) “Welt, ade…” – “Farewell, world, I am weary of thee”. Cheery stuff this is not, but often music is best when it is at its gloomiest. “Gruftmusik [Crypt-music] really is what it is all about”, Heinz Holliger recently told Christian Gerhaher, one of Germany’s finest Lied-baritones, in full and joking agreement with Gerhaher’s predilections toward the dark sides of music. As if to underscore their point, this CD is a heart-wrenchingly beautiful example of just how eminently enjoyable suffering can be.
And of course, never do dark and somber moods sound more uplifting as in Bach, master of the musical prayer.
Saturday, 8.11.07, 6:00 am
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons
"Library Building" posts are reviews of recordings I find to be essential to every good collection of classical music - recordings of interpretations that are the touchstone for their repertoire.
Gathering enthusiasm about the Four Seasons can be difficult for me. I have heard the work a few too many times to still enjoy it the same way I once did – and I expect I am not alone in this. Being overplayed and ripped out of context (Anti-Foot-odor spray commercials, the Weather Channel, and limitless other variations executed in generally dubious taste) doesn’t help this work. But it is undoubtedly an essential building block of any classical music library; nor the worst way to start someone off with classical music.There are at least 150 complete recordings available (”complete” being relative: The “Four Seasons” is simply the first and famous quarter of the 12 concerto op.8 cycle “Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione”) – and choosing from them is either easy (’How can you do the Four Seasons wrong – it will always sound good, any will do’) or extraordinarily difficult. (Who has ever heard – and survived to tell the tale – all these versions on a quest to find “the best”?). I have not heard more than three dozen and doubt that I could have, barring permanent damage to my sanity. Still, I notice with an odd mix of pride, shame, and surprise, that I can count over a dozen versions on my shelf alone.
Concerto Nr. 1 “La Primavera” (”Spring”) in E Major, RV 269, op.8/1
I. Allegro – #1
II. Largo – #2
III. Allegro – #3Concerto Nr. 2 “L’Estate” (”Summer”) in G minor, RV 315, op.8/2
I. Allegro non molto – #4
II. Adagio – Presto – #5
III. Presto – #6Concerto Nr. 3 “L’Autunno” (”Fall”) in F Major, RV 293, op.8/3
I. Allegro – #7
II. Adagio molto – #8
III. Allegro – #9Concerto Nr. 4 “L’Inverno” (”Winter”) in F minor, RV 297, op.8/4
I. Allegro non molto – #10
II. Largo – #11
III. Allegro – #12
 Concerto Italiano – R. Alessandrini |
There really are only two copies that have not gathered dust. Conveniently they are of the two categories into which I would very roughly arrange the different interpretations: “Lush/Romantic/Beautiful” and “Lean/Historically Informed/Exciting”. I am trying not to let bias creep into these descriptions, although I am solidly in the camp that prefers the latter approach. But that isn’t for everyone, and someone who wishes to delve into thick and comforting wafts of string sound would be ill advised following my recommendation if it were (as it is) a ‘period performance’.
This is still a little too crude – because some of the period approaches are still fairly traditional, others seem to break the boundaries of our perception. Of the ‘romantic’ versions, some are guilty-pleasure lush (Bernstein/Corgiliano/NY Phil, Stern/Philadelphia), others a little leaner (Janine Jansen & Friends), or faster (Kennedy/Berlin), or more conventional (Mintz, Perlman, Stern, Zukerman/Israel PO.).
In the more ‘old fashioned’ or ‘modern instrument’ category – where soloist and string section strive for absolute and maximum beauty – Gil Shaham and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra come out on top. (Ironically, that is the interpretation that the Weather Channel used, back in the days.) Neither too thick in texture nor romantically saturated, this is a swift account full of beauty and delicacy, attention to detail, with plenty spontaneity, virtuosity and, for better or worse, no surprises.
Thicker and ‘more traditional’, still, is Anne Sofie Mutter’s first (1984) recording on EMI with Herbert von Karajan and 23 string and two continuo players from the Berlin Philharmonic. Better upon re-listening than I had expected (or my bias-colored memory seemed to remember it) but not quite enough to bear sitting through the entire recording. It’s Vivaldi from a different time, with big-band vigor and vibrato, but not so far removed as to be a mere historical curiosity. (Such as the “first ever” recording of the Four Seasons with Louis Kaufman and the Winterthur Symphony Orchestra [1947, re-issued on Naxos] is.) As with Sir Neville Marinner’s famed recording with Alan Loveday (Decca), what is present is beauty and craftsmanship, but imagination beyond the notes and a vivid display of the descriptive sonnets that Vivaldi wrote to these concertos is missing. It all sounds like one’s expectation of the Four Seasons. Stereotype to some – comforting to others. For my taste, the predictability can border the pedantic.
With the advent of period performance groups our view and expectations of baroque pieces changed drammatically. Groundbreaking work was done in the 70s, when Nikolaus de la Fontaine und d’Harnoncourt-Unverzagt (a.k.a. Nikolaus Harnoncourt) and Gustav Leonhard started their Bach Cantata Cycle for Teldec. Austro-German and Dutch pioneering (Harnoncourt, who founded his Concentus Musicus in 1957!, the Kuijken family, Ton Koopman, Philip Herreweghe, Frans Brüggen et al.) was soon answered with a British wave that sought greater refinement. John Elliot Gardiner, Trevor Pinnock, Roger Norrington, Christopher Hogwood etc. took and take part. It was not until recently that Italian groups entered this fray with success – but since they have, period performance has once again changed significantly and all for the better.
Following that trend, modern instrument performers responded to their period instrument colleagues and their “radically” new interpretations with greater imagination. Even the slides, out shortly after the time that Louis Kaufman’s recording was made, creep back in. Mutter re-recorded the concertos for DG with the Trondheim Soloists, Nigel Kennedy twice for EMI. First with the English Chamber Orchestra , later with the Berlin Philharmonic. Kennedy is eccentric and wilful, rather than original, in both – though far more so (i.e. worse) in the earlier recording. This is a self-conscious and hard-trying reaction to a new trend that had emerged… impulsive in a thoughtless and not always musical way. Mutter II (DG) is no improvement over her first version – it sounds like strange self-glorification in terms not quite befitting Vivaldi. Extremes are explored without delivering the explanation as to why they are sought out in the first place.
Janine Jansen’s small-scale Four Seasons – played with a hand full of friends and relatives (it’s the “most downloaded Classical CD”) has its fans. There is some very fine playing from the soloist and the small group can spotlight details better than many bigger groups, but I find the ensemble playing weak and the interpretation not particularly novel. There is, as of yet, nothing in that category that doesn’t sound contrived or like compromise and seriously challenges either the romantic or the period approaches which offer plenty variety amid their own ranks for everyone to find something suitable.
I Musici has recorded the Four Seasons a whopping six (!) times for Philips Classics – each time with their respective leaders. But whether with Felix Ayo (1955, 1959), Roberto Michelucci (1969), Pina Carmirelli (1982), Federico Agostini (1988), or Mariana Sirbu (1995), they all suffer from that expectedly pleasant predictability (even if Carmirelli less so than the others.) Not better in that regard is Salvatore Accardo’s recording, also on Philips, which proclaims proudly that all players play Stradivarius instruments which, to these ears is about the only special thing about it. Again: just “nice” of the sort that, with the Four Seasons, becomes unbearable all too quickly.
Gidon Kremer has thrown his hat into into the ring, too – and twice. First with Claudio Abbado and the London Philharmonic (DG) which is a fine, standard account; played a bit speedier than others. Big-boned and un-fancy it is refreshing but compared to the Zehetmair recording (which takes speed to the next level) it offers little that would have me chose the former over the latter. His second account on Nonesuch with the Kremerata Baltica is by far the more interesting recording, if mainly for the coupling (or rather: interpolation) with the corresponding movements from Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons Suite (attractively transcribed for the group’s purposes.) The contrast alone makes it stand out among the competition, and the playing is attractive enough to make this a contender for inclusion in a more adventurous Four Seasons collection.
 Biondi (naïve)  Biondi (Virgin)  Il Giardino Armonico  English Concert – Pinnock |
Lovely though the results of Shaham and his colleagues can be, the period performances are clearly stealing the show in Vivaldi – especially since that influx of Italian groups. Somehow Gramophone’s recommended version, perhaps not updated in a while, is still the Dutch/British collaboration of Ton Koopman with Andrew Manze (Erato – now on Warner’s Elatus label). It might be a bit more flexible and with more heart than what is probably the most famous original-instrument version: Trevor Pinnock with Simon Standage’s (Archiv), a recording that could be credited with starting the outpouring of new and exciting Four Seasons. But compared with performances that take this approach further, both are fairly tame, not to say boring, performances.
Koopman/Manze lag in the Allegro of Spring (#1) and offer a conventional orchestral part around their very fine soloist. Manze is delicate in the Allegro non molto of Summer (#4), but can’t rescue what, in its attempted ‘wildness’, sounds more like a ‘cute effort’ from today’s perspective. Though hardly setting a speed record they can sound swift and explosive (#5) and in Summer’s last movement, the Presto (#6), Koopman has some fun on the harpsichord. There is little that is special in the Fall concerto (a little heaviness in the Allegro (#9) perhaps), while the opening movement of Winter (#10) shows off Manze’s fabulous fiddling only to take the following Largo (#11) at a pace that denies all sense of speed and drive.
Pinnock/Standage meanwhile make for a fine and gentle Largo in Spring (#2) – like carefully folded, delicate and long “artists’ fingers”. The third movement is earth-bound, not jubilant, which befits this pastoral dance. In Summer are many fine moments – but it’s never quite gripping (#5), or exciting (#6)… although it surely must have been in 1982 when the recording came out. Pale and robust in #9, a uniquely pointed sound in #10, fast but indulgent at the important Largo of Winter (#11) this is a fine version to keep in one’s collection, but not necessarily one to acquire, even in its newly released DG Originals edition.
Il Giardano Armonico under Giovanni Antonini with Enrico Onofri taking the solo violin part issued their recording in 1994 (Teldec) and made waves with their then unheard of aggression. (On an older cover, a bullet is shown ripping through a violin. Not subtle, but apt.) The sound of the ensemble is still beautiful, but they accentuate and color the music in ways that preceding groups and players (and many that followed), who relied mainly on more extreme tempi to mark a difference, did not. Erratic twitters and agitation are some of the elements in the solo part that mark the main difference to earlier accounts. But even if compared to the Rinaldo Alessandrini / Concerto Italiano performance the orchestral part remains in the realm of the ‘typical’, this is terrific stuff. The ‘bite’ they give the coldness of “Winter” alone would merit listening to this recording. The theorbo in Summer’s Presto is among the very loveliest of basso continuo contributions, and the brilliance of the recording is not just the result of the relatively high pitch of a=460 Hz. (That was, at the time, the standard orchestral pitch – “mezzo punto” – in Venice. Modern standard is a=440, whereas ’standard historical pitch’ is a=415.)
Fabio Biondi in his 1991 recording for op111 has Rinaldo Alessandrini on the harpsichord – and the latter turns in a particularly strong performance from the Allegro of “Spring” until the last note of “Winter”; especially so in Autumn where Alessandrini makes himself heard through the well balanced sound (#7) and assures that slow speeds don’t become dull (#8). Altogether the performance sounds fairly conventional by now, but never boring. There is much less painting than with Concerto Italiano’s recording or Il Giardino Armonico (#5), but bursts of energy (#6). Biondi, in this, his first of two recordings, manages slower speeds with much more success than others. The music is beautifully spread out (#7, #10), a genial touch of crescendo here and there, a sublime spiccato (#10). The finale Largo is twice as slow as for example Zehetmair’s (2:25 to 1:14) but it not only manages sweetness but also that all-important momentum. The pizzicato tic-tac-tic-toc is particularly fine.
Nine years later, Biondi was at it again, also with Europa Galante – and this time for Virgin Records. Splendid balance between extraordinary vigor and offering an ‘expected’ sound (#1), ripping into the music (perhaps even too much for coherence, #2), dynamically daring (#3), deliberately short breathed with lively accelerandi (#4), wilful but exciting (#5), all-out (if not offering as broad a color palette as Alessandrini, #6), with a nice harshness when necessary (#7), a silvery harpsichord part and calculated ferociousness (#10) and a Largo (which I find contributes more to the last(ing) impression of the work than the actually concluding Allegro) that reminds a bit of Standage’s.
A recording that I would have completely ignored, had it not specifically been pointed out to me, is Guliano Carmignola’s from 1994 on DIVOX antiqua with the Sonatori de la gioiosa marca – overshadowed by his later recording for Sony. (The DIVOX recording has recently been re-issued in the SACD format.) It may not have impressed me as much as others over all, but the best moments in it were tempting me to add this, too, to my collection. The way that Carmignola’s bow dances is stunning (#6), the dozing drunkards (”L’ubriaco che dorme”, #8) are given wonderfully plucked support from the arciliuto (arch lute), the solo work for the “bitter-cold frost amid the snow”, “cruel wind”, “the stamping of feet”, and the “chattering of teeth” offers some of the loveliest moments of any of the recordings I know. And that last Largo contains some extraordinary ‘raindrops’.
Thomas Zehetmair and Camerata Bern don’t spell ‘period performance’ to the casual eye (and technically, they aren’t). Nor did the Berlin Classics release (originally recorded in 1995 for edel classics) exude much appeal on me, despite my general admiration for Zehetmair. But listening to these blisteringly fast performances won me over, entirely. So much, indeed, that as soon as I heard the Largo from Winter I broke my steadfast decision not to purchase another Four Seasons, ever again. Generally I find an overt focus on soloist in the Four Seasons more a detriment than bonus, but Zehetmair goes through the four concertos at such a happy clip that there isn’t time to be bored nor time to second guess what he and the Swiss string orchestra are doing. While they lack the depth and the variety of fantastic colors that Concerto Italiano and, to an extent, Giardino Armonico deliver, they have all the spunk and bite to entertain ruthlessly. The slow movements (I am tempted to put “slow” in quotes) particularly breeze by most refreshingly. Above it all sears Zehetmair in a way that should make all those who question his technical abilities come to believe otherwise. And there’s that Largo that makes and breaks performances of Winter for me: The group and soloist are a ‘clockwork on speed’, rock-solid rhythmically and, despite shaving up to half the time of many other performances, it remains of (or rather: newly attains) a wonderfully moving quality. Few other Four Seasons put as many a smile on my face as Zehetmair’s, even if it’s a smile that thinks to itself: “You guys are crazy…”.
Still, whether it be smile-count, or excitement, or making the work sound like a new discovery of sublime music, or the multitude of colors, or musical storytelling: Rinaldo Alessandrini with Concerto Italiano bags them all. The recording stands apart, awe- and fun inspiring, inventive and lively. It’s a gem that allows all the Vivaldi-jaded who have long suffered loveless or conventional renditions to the point of giving up on the composer, entirely to regain an appreciation for the red priest. Hearing it even once could turn many such a music lover into a born-again Vivaldian. And those who never ceased to like the Four Seasons would not be disappointed, either – except, perhaps, when they return to what had hitherto been their favorite version which might now seem bland, thoughtlessly pretty, or dull. No other group conjures the pictures that the sonnets spell out so vividly; no one dares so much nor so successfully. The group’s playing doesn’t serve beauty, but the music. There are frightful moments, moments that may, at first, not even sound particularly pretty. But it’s all part of a well thought-out whole and its effect on the listener is undeniable. There really isn’t any way to experience it but to listen to it yourself. If I were the record company, I’d offer a be-completely-amazed-or-get-your-money-back guarantee. I’m not, but I can urge you to treat yourself to something that makes even the most overplayed composer be special again.
Sunday, 8.5.07, 4:00 pm
Classical Performances
A Wonderland of Possibilities: Unsuk Chin’s First Opera Premiered in Munich
“If there’s no meaning in it, that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we need not try to find any.”
This quote from the King in Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” might well describe the general listener’s absolution from the trouble of actively engaging with modern music.
Any music that is so dense, academic, or inaccessible that the listener cannot find to it without first reading a small book about the work becomes a remote and abstract art. Ultimately, that creates a sense of distance from the broader public and the art-form that leads to the ivory-tower syndrome: A certain music becomes the prerogative of musicologists and composers, a rarefied elitist pursuit, perhaps an intellectual feather in the cultural hat of a country, but not part of the substance that forms or defines its culture. Horrifying as it may seem to those who cherish and defend the “fine arts”, (even) the fine arts need to be popular to a significant degree, if they are to remain meaningful in the cultural life of a society.
Korean born composer Unsuk Chin from Berlin, to where she moved 1988 after studies with György Ligeti in Hamburg, says that she does not want music that needs to be explained. At least not for her first opera “Alice in Wonderland” that received its world premiere in Munich under Kent Nagano on Saturday, June 30th after more than a year of preparations. For a composer who had started out as a Darmstadt-school serialist, thoroughly influenced by Stockhausen & Co., that’s a bold statement and comes in part due to Ligeti’s thorough re-poling of her compositional outlook.
U. Chin, Akrostichon-Wortspiel, Ensemble InterContemporain et al. |
And sure enough, there are moments in Ms. Chin’s music that need little explanation and are enjoyable to the broadest selection of ears. For one, Ms. Chin is fond of quoting, half mockingly, traditional opera in Alice, or, during the caterpillar’s bass clarinet solo, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, or baroque elements during the tea ceremony.
These moments of recognizability and comfort (even plain C-major makes an appearance in this opera, well possibly a novelty in 21st century opera) are kept together by Chin’s sound world that placed near-impossible demands on the Staatsoper’s pit. Large enough to hold any Meistersinger and Elektra orchestra, for Alice the seating plan had to be arranged anew and re-arranged again to squeeze in every player. And still the percussion batteries overflowed into the director’s boxes to both sides of the stage. It is not the least of achievements that Chin’s music, despite the quantity of exotic instruments used, never calls attention to these instrumental ’special affects’ like the rather more crass works of Ramírez, Sierra, Goljiov, and even Higdon or Schwantner. Harmonica and harpsichord, celesta and glockenspiel, Jew’s harp and little toy-pipes make their appearances, but to fine, never gratuitous effect; always appropriately in context to the extent that can be said at all about such an absurdist piece of work as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.
Chin’s music, a tapestry of influences and ideas, is difficult to describe – not the least because it is difficult to remember much of it in precise ways. There were, however, a few moments where I thought: “This sure is better than Nicholas Maw’s Sophie’s Choice“. It reminded of Sophie, which had its US premiere in Washington last season, while proving far less monotonous and same-ish, not pushing on ever so hard, and less tiring. Maybe the libretto lends itself to greater frivolousness or variety when you compose for words like “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, how I wonder what you’re at…” than Holocaust, barbed wire, and “massive intakes of iron”.
The music of Alice remains a fairly difficult music, but it’s also imaginative, witty, well crafted, and – beyond the quotations – with moments of unsuspected beauty, never tiring, rarely taxing. And it certainly scores on every account against a recent Western-Asian Operatic premiere, namely The First Emperor, Tan Dun’s unbearable kitschy mix of second-rate Puccini with (in-and-of-itself interesting) Chinese percussion and string sounds.
But if the music was not as memorable as expected or desired, it was in some part the fault – or rather: achievement – of the staging. Brecht-student, painter, set-, costume designer, and stage director Achim Freyer, who staged the first performance of the Philip Glass trilogy Satyagraha in Stuttgart (1981) and Salvatore Sciarrino’s Macbeth in New York, concocted a bizarre, fantastical set that dominated the performance to a degree that may have made Unsuk Chin feel uncomfortable. (Her support for the staging was – mildly put – shy of enthusiastic in several interviews given prior to the premiere.)
In front of steep stage, raked at 51 degrees (!) and nearly reaching the top of the visible part of the 90 feet high stage of the Staatsoper, stood lined up the eight singers (only their heads visible) who, in addition to Alice and the Queen, made up the cast’s different figures. All in the same makeup and wigs, operating detached white hands from behind a little barrier in front of them, they sang the parts that were then acted out by performance artists on the stage – floating (suspended from above), jumping, and gesticulating about in their oversized and colorful costumes. The croquet game (with rules resembling Calvinball), for example, was like a vast underwater ping-pong game with a likeness of Alice’s head serving as the ball. Frog and Dormouse (”You might just as well say that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”), March Hare and White Rabbit, and of course the ever-present, ever metamorphizing Cheshire Cat pop up and do their wily things on stage.
Colorful strings divide the stage into sections that are at times filled out with color (depicting the house in which Alice grows to enormous size) or sheer light, as in the final dream sequence that, like the sequence that serves as the prelude to the opera, are not actually from Lewis Carrol’s book but represent reoccurring dreams of Unsuk Chin about fatalism and faith. When Alice grows after eating the cake and cries herself a lake of tears, the 20-some feet tall Alice’s tears (one performer lifted into the air with the upper part, another at the bottom for the feet) are blue strips of fabric that endlessly gush from her eyes and fill the lower stage along with superimposed splatter of rain.
Regular Alice runs around in an oversized mask that has her appear childlike and surreal at once – to take that mask off only at the very end when she has put an end to the hokus-pokus of Wonderland by calling the shenanigans of the Queen of Hearts by their name. The Mock Turtle (”It’s the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from”) appears in a big Campell’s Soup can, except it’s “Caroll’s [false] Turtle Soup” and plays the harmonica hauntingly – in between weeping helplessly. When Dame Gwyneth Jones appears as the Queen of Hearts, she is piercingly perfect, shrill and deliciously wacky, wobble-free – and, of course, a much beloved favorite of the Munich audience, many of which still remember her legendary Marschallin.
Alice in Wonderland had originally been planned for the LA opera (where Kent Nagano has turned down Plácido Domingo’s offer for the role as Music Directorship but did agree to become Principal Conductor), but financial concerns scuppered the plans. Financial concerns are not much of a problem for Munich (one of the most generously subsidized opera houses in the world) where Nagano succeeded Zubin Mehta as Music Director in 2006. Alice became a Munich project and more ambitious in scope still.
The audience, conservative but open minded, seemed to be plenty excited about the world premiere of Alice. Well over 100 audience members of all ages stood in line to secure a seat for an introductory talk, an hour before the second performance. But if Alice, sung in English and shown with German subtitles, was more than just a curiously interesting example of high art – gladly suffered in the name of being an audience that appreciates high art – remains questionable. The German audience, for one, has little experience with the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And to the extent the story is known, it’s through Walt Disney’s film, not the original book – a book that could easily be seen in a line with James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, or Luis Buñuel films like La Voie lactée and Le fantôme de la liberté. The translation shown as sub- and supertitles tried its best, but was invariably cut and left to choose between a literal translation and finding its own plays on words that didn’t always relate to the scene. Even an innocent pun like the Doormouse’s “Long tale, indeed”, while proudly wiggling around its long tail, remained obscure to most. That (lack of) perception presumably allowed for the staging to overpower music and story in the way it did… though whether that was good or bad can’t quite be said with a staging so imaginative and wonder-full as Achim Freyer.