Sunday, 9.23.07, 2:13 pm
Classical Performances
Iván Fischer, Richard Strauss, Josephs Legende
"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.
 R.Strauss, Josephs Legende, Fischer / Budapest..  |
In his introduction to his latest recording, Iván Fischer points out that the score of Richard Strauss’ Josephs Legende is frightfully difficult. I’ve no doubt that’s true – especially when no player in an orchestra is likely to have seen, much less played, a single note of it before. Fischer goes on to suggest that Josephs Legende, which he calls beautiful (yes!), rich (yes!), and especially lyrical (yes!), should be considered among Strauss’ best compositions.
No.
If “best” is supposed to denote anything meaningful at all, then Josephs Legende is not likely included. But that’s not to say that it isn’t a wonderful work. There are not that many clunkers in Strauss’ output to begin with, and Josephs Legende is certainly a (much) better work than Friedenstag, Die Schweigsame Frau, Die Göttin im Putzzimmer (“The Goddess in the Boudoir”), Festmusik for the 2600th Anniversary of Japan, or even the Sinfonia Domestica. Nor is it to say that it wouldn’t be enjoyed more than some “better” works. I.e. more than Elektra by those who like their Strauss lyrical. Or better than those who would love Die Frau ohne Schatten were it not for want of time.
Josephs Legende is a Sergei Diaghilev commission for his Ballets Russe, based on a libretto concocted by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the colorful Count Harry Kessler, that jack of all trades, diplomat, and friend of seemingly every important or famous personality of the early 20th century. Strauss accepted the idea – but the religious story didn’t sit right with him. More labor than love might have gone into Josephs Legende, even as Strauss made sure that the music displaced any all-too mystical or religious aspects of the story with earthy eroticism. The result is a work that, composed on Elektra and Salome’s heels, is less ambitious than either, shorter, less varied, but not much less enticing. If Elektra has curdled blood flowing in its veins, and Salome a sweet poison, Josephs Legende is fueled with Viennese Mélange .
You can hear ideas in it that foreshadow Die Frau ohne Schatten. An unkind, but hardly inaccurate, description of Josephs Legende would be that of a test-run for the latter opera. Set to a story of Hofmannsthal that was much more to the liking of Strauss.
The ballet, when it was finally finished and performed under Strauss’ own direction on May 14th, 1914 in Paris, was a success. Even if Vaslav Nijinsky, for whom this “least danceable music possible” was created, was no longer part of the production after he had hastily married Romola De Pulszky, which caused the outraged (and jealous) Diaghilev to fire him on the spot. Michail Fokine (choreography) and Léonide Massine (as Joseph) substituted. With over 130 performances since, the ballet was hardly a failure. But even though it was resuscitated after World War I, it seemed to symbolically draw the curtain on the 19th century (to paraphrase Michael Kennedy) and has spent most of its time since on the sidelines of Strauss’ musical output.
A shame for this lusty and lush hour of opera-meets-dance-meets-tone poem that sends Straussian climaxes through the over-sized orchestra by the minute. Even vigorous repeat listenings have not yet turned me off Josephs Legende. I’ve been enjoying, alternatingly, the Giuseppe Sinopoli / Dresden Staatskapelle recording (DG; available as an “Arkiv-CD” in the United States) and the new SACD recording of Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra (Channel Classics).
 Beethoven / Mendelssohn, Violin Concertos, Znaider / Mehta / Israel PO |
Either one of these – and the third available recording on EMI with Rudolf Kempe’s complete orchestral Strauss, also with the Staatskapelle – are excellent. The Staatskapelle has Strauss in its blood and Sinopoli sweeps through the score in broad grandeur, with sumptuous expanse and gravitas. Fischer, meanwhile, is a touch fleeter, lighter. More tone-poem with the former, more a hint of ballet with the latter. If Fischer could be pointed to as being more delicate it’s not to say that Sinopoli muddles anything. Both bring out all the voices wonderfully… in an orchestra among the biggest that Strauss ever summoned. (Which is saying something for both, the conductors and the size of the orchestra.)
Sadly, if expectedly, Fischer won’t bring this decadent and luxurious score to Washington. But he’ll bring the work of his second-to-last in a string of many very successful recordings to town: Mahler’s Second Symphony in concerts on April 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 2008. Before that, we’ll get an all-Beethoven concert from the NSO’s Principal Guest conductors in which he’ll team up with the magnificent violinist Nikolaj Znaider on the first three days of November. Everyone who heard Znaider the last time in town will likely be compelled to get tickets for this year’s performance, too. The Strauss meanwhile beckons to be enjoyed on disc – lest you happen to stop by in Hamburg where the Staatsoper will actually put on the ballet with John Neumeier’s choreography.
Thursday, 9.20.07, 11:09 am
New Releases: CDs
The Two Greatest Composers.
"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.
Recently I read the following paragraph in Robert R. Reilly’s music column in Crisis Magazine:
If you are surprised that I place Beethoven’s older contemporary, Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842), in this category, don’t be. In 1817, Beethoven named Cherubini the greatest living composer, next to himself. All of Cherubini’s Masses are inspired, as his Requiem in C minor, which Beethoven thought superior to Mozart’s Requiem.
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As it so happens, there has been a CD on my desk that I have thought of writing about for which this paragraph might be the perfect introduction. Instead of having come up with it on my own I am left quoting – but gladly. Martin Pearlman and his period performance group Boston Baroque are the United States’ finest “HIP” ensemble – to which their Telarc recordings of Vivaldi’s Gloria (with Bach’s Magnificat) and the superb issue of Bach’s Orchestral Suites as well as the Brandenburg Concertos testify.
One of their most recent CDs combines the greatest and the second greatest (now no longer living) composers: Beethoven and the Italo-Frenchman Cherubini. Cherubini is presented with the Requiem that Reilly mentions – as well as the short Marche funèbre. The Requiem, which was performed at Beethoven’s memorial service, did not just impress the composer from Bonn. Schubert thought it “without equal” and Martin Pearlman notes that Berlioz stated (perhaps as much in admiration as in complaint) that it had gained a virtual monopoly over memorial concerts in France.
 Boston Baroque – Brandenburg Concertos  Boston Baroque – Orchestral Suites |
Cherubini’s opera Lodoïska served as a model for Fidelio – and marked the highpoint of his career in the last decade of the 18th century. After a bout with depression, his operas out of favor with the public and his opera company disbanded, Cherubini disappeared from the musical scene – until commissions for sacred music rekindled his interest in composing. He caught a ’second wind’ and composed his famous masses, the two Requiems and other, more modestly scaled religious works. The commission for the Requiem in C minor was the erstwhile highpoint of this second career that he rode out as director of the Paris Conservatoire until 1842.
Amid the revolutionary and restorational business in France the bodies (and heads, presumably) of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were first found and brought to the crypt at St.Denis – and then, after Napoleon’s final exit from the world stage, Louis XVIII was able to plan a proper memorial service for his predecessor whose rule had been so considerably and violently shortened. It was that occasion that Cherubini had been commissioned to write his Requiem for.
Far removed from his career in opera, the Requiem is a genuinely sacred work; not a sacred opera (as Verdi’s Requiem is usually referred to). It features orchestra, organ, and a four part choir – but no soloists. It is an altogether more subtle work than Mozart’s Requiem, less catchy perhaps – but no less easy on the ears. Whereas the latter manages to elude the accusation of cheap (if terribly effective) gloom-and-doom effects only by virtue of Mozart’s sheer genius, Cherubini’s take on the Requiem is more celebratory. It is an elating and moving work, not one that strives eagerly to express infinite sadness in music. And it is up to the little touches to give view to Cherubini’s greatness – like the gentle rise of the uplifting last phrase in the Dies Irae: Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem. Amen. (Holy Lord Jesus, grant them rest. Amen.) It’s not thundered out in macabre or self-satisfied triumphalism but it lifts the mourning and dark grief of the preceding 18 strophes into the warm, hopeful and confident light that must be eternal rest.
The fine, detailed, impeccable but never sterile choir of the Boston Baroque does its part in making this moment – as any other moment on this recording – very special, indeed. They also help Beethoven’s short Elegiac Song op. 118 to such a felt performance as if bent on making those five, six minutes alone worth the purchase of the CD. They succeed, as it were: “Gently as thou has lived, have you brought (life) to an end – too holy for sorrow! May no eye shed tears for the heavenly spirit’s return home.”
Not all of Beethoven’s lesser known works are neglected masterpieces – and to be a masterpiece, the Elegiac Song may simply not be substantial enough. But it’s a beautiful and calm work, it is thematically related, and it brings Beethoven wonderfully together with Cherubini – a connection all too easily overlooked, otherwise. The concluding orchestral Marche funèbre, just slighly shorter than the Beethoven work is a pleasant filler that actually reminds me a bit of the Mozart Requiem – if not exactly of what makes it great. It works like a theatrical and pleasant, if not moving, postlude to the rather more heavenly Requiem. And while Reilly is actually speaking of Cherubini’s Coronation Mass when he says that “it is hard to overstate the magnificence of this Mass”, the same applies to the Requiem, too.
Saturday, 9.15.07, 7:55 pm
Classical Performances
Korngold and Sock Monkeys
"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.
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“Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s three act opera Das Wunder der Heliane is arguably the composer’s greatest work.”This is the opening line of Brendan G. Carroll’s extensive and helpful liner notes to the only recording of this opera – just re-released on Decca/Philips’ budget “Classic Opera” series. (A series distinguished by the very laudable inclusion of such texts and the libretti!) The German translation of the text goes even further and declares it “without a doubt the composer’s greatest work”.
That’s saying quite a bit about a work that has never been much more than a side note in the history of German 20th century opera and on that – apart from the immediate aftermath of its hailed 1927 premiere – could probably be considered a failure.
And yet, hearing the work one is bound to agree with the Korngold Society President, his eager translator, and Korngold himself, too, who thought Heliane his finest work. Never before and never thereafter has the Zemlinsky-student Korngold (1897 – 1957) achieved the profundity he reaches in his fourth (of five) opera. There are many touches that remind of Richard Strauss’ Salome, Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919), and Die ägyptische Helena (1928).
The Wunderkind years produced marvelous (if slight) chamber and orchestral pieces which had him hailed as the next great composer, a titan on par with Mozart or Beethoven. Of course it didn’t quite turn out like that – and he ended up writing film music for Hollywood. Much regarded then and now famous-again scores such as “Captain Blood”, “The Sea Hawk”, and “The Adventures of Robin Hood”. Lovely stuff but, well… still film music when all is said, told, and listened to.
His well known, if not often performed, opera Die Tote Stadt (1920) is full of loveliness, of course, but not so much a better work than Heliane as it is an ‘easier’ one. The former has the catchier tunes, the greater hits (“Mariettas’ Lied” – the duet cum Soprano aria – most notably), and a longer successful run in opera houses around the world. But Heliane, more taxing and demanding with its polytonal harmony and more ambitious than sweet, strikes as a much more satisfying and deeper work.
When it came out, however, it was immediately embroiled in the culture war of the time in which young Korngold was pitched (not the least by his father, a prominent Viennese music critic) against more modern composers. And compared to Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová (1922), Schoenberg’s Erwartung (1924), Berg’s Wozzek (1925), Hindemith’s Cardillac (1926), Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (1927), and especially Ernst Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf (1927), Korngold’s opera does seem hopelessly (now: charmingly) outdated. Even if it is none the less wonderful for it, it is harmonically less daring even (or elegantly elusive) than Franz Schreker’s sublime Die Gezeichneten (available on DVD in a tremendous and disturbing production from Salzburg) or Debussy’s Pelléas et Melisande – notably operas from 1902 and 1911, respectively. More French, but also similar, is the 1907 opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue by Paul Dukas (more of which in another post). The similarity with the latter is not too surprising: Korngold, coy or blunt, said he’d copied from no other opera as much as Dukas’.
Das Wunder der Heliane is not only a victim of the musico-political (and then political – as it was considered Entartete Kunst and banned under the Nazis) fights of its day. It is also hampered by a modest libretto and odd story. Not speaking German is no disadvantage to the enjoyment of this opera! Heliane offers a rich score, thick with eroticism, busy and shrill at times, luscious and elegant elsewhere… and three hours of that.
You’ll get a more digestible portion of it today with the National Symphony Orchestra and Renée Fleming, when she will sing the “Ich geh’ zu Ihm” aria from the work, along with other rarities such as an aria from Korngold’s last, even less known opera, Die Kathrin. Add to that Mozart, Suppé, Waltz-Strauss, and music from Strauss’ second (justly unknown) opera, Die Feuersnot (“Fire Famine”).
It’s a curiously interesting program – looking a little like a hodge-podge of music, but an attractive one. The center of gravity of the concert meanwhile is Liszt’s First Piano Concerto. Soloist – I’m not making this up – “Peng Peng”. China’s latest-latest, 14-year old ivory smashing prodigy. Type “Peng Peng” into Google and you’ll find he’s already replaced “Peng Peng Bears & Sock Monkeys©” from the top position. (I’m not making that up, either.) I don’t know if you feel like you can’t miss our-all-favorite Renée (ever charming in concert, if you’ve seen her in either of the last two seasons) or Peng Peng Gong. But you definitely shouldn’t miss Korngold.
A small survey of Korngold recordings can be found here: The Sounds of Korngold.
Use of Sock Monkey picture kindly tolerated by Peng Peng, the Sock Monkey artist lady.
Friday, 9.7.07, 6:09 pm
It Ain’t Over Until the Fat Man Sings: Final Curtain for Luciano Pavarotti
As difficult as it is to find anything but praise for Luciano Pavarotti’s gift – his voice – so it is difficult to ignore how that son of a baker from Modena used it: often indiscriminately, to purposes rather unrelated to (high) art. Did he popularize opera – or trivialize it – with appearances that were as enthusiastically received by large crowds as they were picked apart by critics?
Last week Luciano Pavarotti succumbed to cancer, at 71, at his home in Modena. The reverence with which one of the greatest tenors’s death is being met should not silence more critical voices. And it does not… there is little that needs to be added to Bernard Holland’s excellent obituary in the New York Times. He thankfully notes the glaring difference between the lazily cared for gifts that were Pavarotti’s and the fierce intelligence and will with which Plácido Domingo, the embarrassed co-conspirator (and by far most talented, discriminating, and musical) of the Three Tenors adventure in tastelessness, crafted his unparalleled career.
Pavarotti’s career was unique and sometimes puzzling and it serves as an example that the lines between great art, ability, musicality, and taste are blurrier than proponents of opera, critics, and fans might feel comfortable. It seems that Luciano Pavarotti’s success came in part despite, rather than because, of at least the two latter qualities. And then, perhaps it is wrong to think that his fame and the devotion with which he was treated are surprising given his tendencies to embrace even the crudest aspects of his art, or his unwillingness or inability to work hard and learn his parts, or lend himself to mass-events with little artistic – but plenty monetary – merit.
 Rigoletto |
I resist the notion that his appearances at open air concerts, in stadiums, at sport events, or with the stars of popular muzak, turned the hitherto uninitiated into opera lovers. The cross-section of those who have a “The Three Tenor’s Greatest Hits” or “Pavarotti & Friends” CDs and a recording of Elektra or Götterdämmerung or La Damnation de Faust must be decidedly small.
But Pavarotti also and especially related to “actual” opera lovers. And he did this with his lust for life – its culinary aspects easily ascertainable from Pavarotti’s girth – and his unbridled enjoyment of tapping into his audience’s emotions. Importantly it was not a carefree ease that allowed audiences to relate but a well controlled display of weakness and even fear – combined with a lyric gift that cannot be learned – but comes from a place we all have different explanations for.
Opera as entertainment, sung with a lack of artistic pretension and a certain triviality from the midst of its most pretentious temples, be it in Milan, Vienna, London, or New York, fascinated audiences as much as did his glorious high “C’s” that were the modern continuation of the myths bestowed upon the opera world by singers like Enrico Caruso and Gilbert-Louis Duprez.
His voice and those high “C’s”, meanwhile, fit perfectly into the renaissance of Belcanto and they fit perfectly into the plans of conductor Richard Bonynge who needed just such a tenor – earthy yet glorious – for his singing wife, Joan Sutherland. The recording with these three artists that best captures this perfect fit is the 1967 “La Fille du régiment” (Decca). Not an opera I am prone to give much time to, unless sung as Pavarotti (Toni) does.
Between his 1961 debut in Reggio Emilia as Rodolfo (La Bohème – which, a curious aside, also marked the operatic debut of Vladimir Nabokov’s son, Dmitri) and his departure from opera at the Metropolitan Opera as Cavaradossi (Tosca), lay 40 years of astounding perseverance. Even as his voice was in audible decline – especially as he chose more dramatic roles for which his voice lacked the necessary baritonal heft – it never quite left. Rarely did his skills to enchant an audience fail him. Having limited his appearances early must have helped in that regard. And it made less obvious his very limited repertoire. His inability to act was kindly overlooked by directors and general managers – especially so at the MET where, in any case, acting-skills had long been optional.
After a 1992 Don Carlo, the Milan audience did not feel like overlooking shortcomings of their hero anymore – and their jeering may have contributed to Pavarotti’s ever greater focus on ‘banausic’ activities that included less effort, easier earned enthusiasm, and – not the least – more money.
In a way it is difficult not to find something deviously sympathetic in the fact that the sophisticated, dusty, supercilious, hifalutin, and portentous world of opera so adored a man who was well removed from any of that. Someone who, for all his quirks, felt like a throwback to an earlier world in which opera was entertainment without feeling guilty for it. With Pavarotti in its midsts as the kid that ‘just wanted to sing’.
If you have above mentioned La Fille…, his Rodolfo on the Karajan recording of La Bohème (with Mirella Freni; Decca), his ‘Ducca’ in Rigoletto (with Sutherland; Decca), the Zubin Mehta Turandot, and his “Singer” in Solti’s Rosenkavalier (Decca), you own five of the finest accounts that show how he just wanted to sing – and why so many just wanted to hear him sing.
Thursday, 9.6.07, 9:55 am
Classical Performances
Goldberg Variations, Pregnant with Meaning
"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.
 Bach, Goldberg Variations, Simone Dinnerstein |
Simone Dinnerstein is in the newspapers for her just released recording of the Goldberg Variations. Anne Midgette writes in the New York Times (”How Do You Move a Career Into High Gear? By Breaking the Rules”) about Mrs. Dinnerstein’s unusual path to pianistic glory and fame – from which she was so far removed until the then 32-year old rented out Weill Hall and gave an audacious debut with the Goldberg Variations. The sold-out recital was a great success, not the least because several critics attended and found themselves impressed. A recording of the Goldberg Variations she had produced and raised the money for now found its way to Telarc who have just released it to (and with) much fanfare. Mrs. Dinnerstein is now an IMG artist and her concert calender solidly booked. The times of frustrating and dispiriting ‘giglets’ playing at nursing homes and retirement communities (now very benevolently billed as her “commit[ment] to broadening the reach of classical music”) is over.
Alas, it might not be quite as unique as it is made out to be: Martin Stadtfeld, a young German pianist who styles himself a bit too much as a European Glenn Gould (or is that Sony’s doing?), also chose to record the Goldberg Variations on his own, sent the result off to different labels and was picked up by Sony. He, too, launched his career that way. Stadtfeld and his positively wacky approach differs, wilfully, from all others and makes Gould’s recording seem bourgeois. It is naturally tempting to compare the two vers
ions – in a later post, perhaps.
Firstly: Ignore Dinnerstein’s picture-heavy liner notes – Simone Dinnerstein’s three paragraphs about the Goldberg Variations are astonishing only for their concentration of cliché per square inch. I summarize: The Goldberg Variations are an astoundingly inventive and tremendously expressive, profoundly structured and diversely distinctive, uniquely powerful and remarkably varied set of Variations. Ghost writing credits go to Jack Handey from Saturday Night Live.
Thankfully she plays nothing like she writes.
Though Mrs. Dinnerstein immersed herself in Glenn Gould’s 1955 recording and of the GV, she does not end up sounding like him at all. Compare her Aria at 5′39” to Gould’s blazing, repeat-free 1′52”. She should have taken on one little touch that hardly anyone but Gould employs, though: a minor stroke of genius in the Aria where the arpeggiated chord in bar 11 is not played, as standard, from bottom to top but top to bottom. That little downward trickle is brilliant and most ears that have heard it like that will want it no other way. She stretches the chord out further and very softly plays it conventionally from bottom to top – almost a ‘third’, still different way to do it.
Patient and gently moving in the Aria, she (ever duly repeat-observing) takes all the time she needs to indulge in every note. If she were taking a walk in the neighborhood instead, she’d be seen smelling every last rose on the way. And then when she gets to that arpeggiated chord a second time, lest the repeat be a carbon copy of what had come before, she takes it, just as softly, from top to bottom. Lovely.
She displays fine speeds in the faster Variations, though still nothing compared to Gould’s “Speed Demon” approach (his words). Every note has its accentuation, there is a purpose and flow in her playing, the sound of her touch on the restored 1902 Steinway D is warm and round, not unlike Murray Perahia’s – if not always as nuanced and even in the upper register. And in in the slow Variations she really slows it down so that every note of every flourish stands individually and discernibly in the air for a little while. There is a reverential quality to much of it; a caressing somewhere between radiant (Variation 9) and lugubrious (Variation 27), church (Variations 6 and 29) and, well…, retirement community (Variation 22).
A (dis)advantageous quality of Bach’s music – and the Goldberg Variations in particular – is that you can pull it apart about as much as you want and it will still sound good, the lines will still be there. There are moments where Simone Dinnerstein plays in the style an amateur Goldberg enthusiast might want to, if only he or she had her abilities: The result is probably all-too-indulgent for some and just perfect for others… at any rate bound to be a very personal choice. The ever present revelry has me miss the incredible forward momentum that a tighter approach – for example Yevgeny Koroliov’s – can achieve in the Variations. (Although if I want that, maybe I should just put his – a ‘dark-horse’ favorite – disc in the player.)
Variations Nos. 5 and 26 impressively put beyond doubt that Mrs. Dinnerstein might play the way she does for lack of nimble enough fingers. She presents an immaculate technique, speeds that nearly rival Gould; and with time to spare to give the different lines character and color.
The raves that can be read (Slate.com, New York Times et al.) might go a little far in their comparisons to Glenn Gould, Wanda Landowska, and Dame Myra Hess; noting Schumanesque touches in one Variation, Debussy or Ravel in another. Claims more dubious still than insisting on the presence of wild raspberry, essence of sun-dried leather, and hints of nutmeg in a young merlot. But anyone who will give this release more than a cynical rolling of the eyes (tempting, admittedly) will find out that it is holding the #1 classical spot on iTunes and #3 overall music spot on Amazon.com for a much better reason than just being an all-American feel-good dream story. There are tons of flavors in that wine. If any comparison were necessary, I’d liken her Variations to Daniel Barenboim’s broad rendition. (He incidentally takes that above mentioned arpeggiated chord both ways, too – first from the top, then the bottom in the repeat.)
Simone Dinnerstein will perform the Goldberg Variations in Baltimore this Sunday at An Die Musik.
Monday, 9.3.07, 2:38 pm
Classical Performances
Landscape with Beethoven
"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.
33 Variations, a new play by Tectonic Theater Project’s Moisés Kaufman (director of the Pulitzer and Tony-winning I am My Own Wife) has begun its run at Arena Stage’s Kreeger Theater. It intriguingly brings theater and classical music together by making the focus of the play Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations”, his obsession with Diabelli’s waltz, and a musicologist’s obsession with Beethoven’s obsession with it. Theme and Variations might lend themselves to unifying, at least thematically (pun intended), the art forms of theater/film and music, because the treatment of a subject is similar, even if the artistic means are different. (Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould – a film on Gould anchored by that other famous set of Variations, the Goldberg Variations – comes to mind.) On WETA’s Out & About, Deb Lamberton speaks with playwright Moisés Kaufman and concert pianist Diane Walsh (who performs the Diabelli Variations throughout the production) where you will hear plenty about how Beethoven came to compose this grand, and perhaps even intimidating work, his last for solo piano. (Listen to it on the website.)
Moisés Kaufman mentions that the beginning of his fascination with the Diabelli Variations started with a trip to Tower Records in New York where he innocently asked a clerk what the best recording of it might be and got the complete historical background of how the work came into being. He doesn’t reveal what was ultimately recommended to him – I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been Maurizio Pollini’s towering performance.
It would be my recommendation, at any rate… or perhaps would have been. A re-issue from Decca that brings together all the Beethoven recordings of the great American pianist Julius Katchen, who tragically died at 42, includes the Diabelli Variations (op. 120) and it is, for all its sonic limitations, an interpretation I have immediately taken to. It’s not at all natural to “immediately take to” the Diabelli Variations, no matter who plays it, because they are neither easy to play nor easy to listen to. Even the enormous Hammerklavier Sonata (op.106) strikes as more accessible. And the finest recordings of the Variations (above mentioned Pollini, DG, or Stephen Kovacevich, Philips) happen to be so precise and controlled as to underscore that intimidating, elusive quality of the work. (Is it coincidence that another magnum opus of Beethoven’s, composed at the same time and with as much of the composer’s zeal, the Missa Solemnis, strikes many as similarly difficult to access?)
 Beethoven, Concertos, Diabelli Variations, et al, Katchen |
 Diabelli Variations, Pollini  Diabelli Variations, Kovacevich |
In many ways the Katchen recording opens the way to greater appreciation precisely because of its superficial imperfections and infidelities. Starting with the limited sound – limits that here I find endearing, rather than disturbing… perhaps in the way that no one has ever been bothered by the sound quality of Glenn Gould’s 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations. The piano sound is a bit flattened and metallic in the upper register, background hiss is audible. It’s no better than one might expect from a 1953 recording, but not much worse, either.
Before you even focus on Katchen’s playing, all sense of the clinical is thus avoided. And Katchen brings to the Diabelli Variations a ‘lust for life’ that is immediately engaging – from the first variation on that trite Diabelli waltz to the 33rd, some 50 minutes later. It’s no coincidence that some variations strongly hint at Beethoven’s second-to-last solo piano work, sonata no.32, op.111. “Opus One-Eleven” inspired a complete chapter in Thomas Mann’s Dr.Faustus, a record label named itself after it, and those who are obsessed with it proclaim it the alpha and omega of the piano sonata as such. Katchen’s recording of it is happily coupled with the Diabelli Variations which makes it even more obvious how variation no.8 or variation no.20 have a musical kinship with op.111’s variation movement. In variation no.24 (Fughetta: Andante), Bach gets his due in a fashion that might have you forget you are listening to Beethoven. Variation 31 (Largo, molto espressivo) is fingered unto the keyboard with gentle, almost fortepiano-like delicacy by Katchen before he throws himself into the penultimate variation, the towering Fugue that serves as grand contrast to the sweetly little minuet that Diabelli’s waltz has become after this traversal.
If I find Katchen’s Diabelli Variations the most appealing inclusion on this budget 4-CD set, he nonetheless goes on proving that he’s more than just the man for supreme Brahms. The five Piano Concertos with the London Symphony are well worth listening to. (The CD also includes the ‘Ninth Symphony-predecessor’, the Choral Fantasy op.80, the rarely heard B-flat major Rondo for piano and orchestra WoO 6, and the C major Polonaise, op.89.) And his fearless and intense performance of op.111, although it doesn’t match other favorites (the low notes rumble more darkly than ideal and the recording has audible ‘ghosts’ (pre-shadows) of the music in the quiet moments before the octave runs in the first movement), is painstakingly pretty in the variation movement. First soft and gentle; on the slow side but steady – then with athletic vigor and joyful bursts of energy and tension just beneath the surface.
 Beethoven, Sonatas, Richter |
The young Katchen (he was 29 when he made these recordings in 1953) makes for telling comparison with the late Sviatoslav Richter’s recording of the same work. The latter has also just been re-released on Decca’s “Richter – The Master” series that so far has brought together Richter’s late live recordings of Mozart, Russian composers, Schubert, Haydn (with Weber), and Beethoven. The last three sonatas as well as sonatas 19 – 23 (”Appassionata”) showcase Beethoven played in a masterly mature, distilled way that no longer struggles in any way with the material (neither pianists ever had to struggle with any technical aspects of them, anyway). Richter’s rather horizontal storm in his earlier recordings has made way for a calm and inward looking quality where exclamation points are replaced with faint question marks. Richter is rarely anything less than impressive; in the subtle ways with which he strips the sonatas of all extraneous effects, his relaxed performances from 1991 at the Ludwigsburg castle are possibly even more so – at least upon second or third hearing.
 Beethoven, Sonatas, Freire |
Just as Richter is a pianist no musician and music lover can avoid being touched by, so is Nelson Freire. A pianist who has been more an insider’s tip than keyboard superstar, he embodies the aesthetic of what is generally called a “Pianist’s pianist”. Musical from head to toe (or fingertips, as it were), he has long been admired fervently by an, albeit limited, following. His Liszt piano concertos (with Michel Plasson, available in a super-budget Brilliant box) are rightly considered among the, if not the, finest accounts. (As far as I am concerned only Krystian Zimerman’s DG recording challenges his). Lately he has come more and more into the mainstream’s limelight, not the least because Decca (again) records and distributes the native Brazilian to a world-wide audience. His Chopin Sonatas and Études have found the expected praise, his Schumann Carnaval and Kinderszenen touch deeply, his recording of the Brahms concertos with Riccardo Chailly has taken a place among what is now a triumvirate of great recordings – right next to Emil Gilels / Eugen Jochum (DG) and Leon Fleisher / George Szell (Sony).
 Liszt Concertos, Freire  Brahms Concertos, Freire |
He is one of the few pianists whom I’d never think of as particularly suited or less suited for a particular composer or period. I’d have equally high expectations of his Scriabin as Brahms, Schoenberg as Bartók, Satie as Bach. When he takes on Beethoven (Moonlight, op.14/2, Waldstein, op.53, Les Adieux, op.26, and No.31, op.110) as in his latest release, ears perk. With his round and voluminous sound (helped by Decca’s generously warm recording) the Waldstein Sonata sounds less tight and ripped in the fast first movement (not my preference), develops an inner radiance in the Adagio (worth falling in love with), before spreading the Rondo out with deliberation and broad-shouldered determination. The all-too-famous opening movement of the Moonlight sonata can be had less sentimental (Brendel) or more indulgent (Gulda) and the stormy closing Presto agitato fiercer (Kempf), but if the short middle movement (Allegretto) has ever received as sunny, witty (never flippant), and gorgeously accentuated a treatment I can’t say.
In op.110 Richter, although playing astoundingly slow, never sounds ponderous or dragging; in comparison Freire’s second movement clocking in at a fairly standard 2′00″ appears almost rushed and is certainly heavier: Comparative listening is not necessarily flattering for Freire until the Adagio of the finale where the Brazilian hits his bold muscular groove which is an earthier alternative to Richter’s solitary mediation about Beethoven.
 Beethoven, Concertos 1 & 4, Lang Lang |
Taking Katchen’s Beethoven concertos included on Decca’s set as a cue, we arrive at a very different kind of pianist than the above mentioned: The omnipresent Lang Lang, romantic virtuoso par excellance and Asia-conqueror for the order of Deutsche Grammophon. His many champions include pianist/conductors Christoph Eschenbach and Daniel Barenboim who praise specifically his feeling and musicality, the two fronts on which assault is, if anywhere, possible. Despite their claims, it’s all too easy for the classical music snob to participate in Lang Lang bashing. He is too popular, too flashy, too gratuitously virtuosic to be taken seriously for many. And despite his promise and skill, he’s shown a penchant for senseless and insensitive banging (concertos, usually) or curiously uninspired and bland play (solo repertoire). But just when you think you have him conveniently categorized as a PR stunt and little more, he surprises with a magisterial concert, a superb and thoughtful performance.
He’s done just that with his latest, far and away finest, recording for DG. Beethoven concertos, of all things, might be the fearful skeptic’s shrug – and it was mine, too. The same Beethoven for which a Financial Times critic went out of his way to distinguish between rating the orchestra (four stars) and the soloist (zero stars) in a review not too long ago? Yep. With Christoph Eschenbach and his Orchestre de Paris. Concertos No.1 and 4. Both are very fine, and No.1 borders on excellent. The orchestra is a sensitive partner to his personal but never wily ways, the rubatos are tasteful and appreciated next to the straighter (but no less fascinating) interpretations that can easily be had.
Katchen and the more rough-than-refined LSO under Piero Gamba go about it more straight-laced. Surprisingly it is the orchestra that provides the first smiles in Concerto No.1. The vigorously old fashioned and enthusiastic support sounds fresh again after so many ‘historically correct’ performances. Imperfections become part of the interpretation’s attitude, accepted without demur by the benevolently inclined listener. The concertos on their own might not merit purchase of the set for those otherwise disinterested in Katchen’s great art – but with the Diabelli Variations and op.111 this is a wonderful musical exploration of perhaps the most promising of the (North-) American handful of great pianists of his time who were all debilitated by a cruel fate. (Katchen died, Byron Janis and Van Cliburn found themselves inexplicably bereft of their abilities, Leon Fleisher of the use of his right hand, and Glenn Gould became plain weird.)
Lang Lang will perform a recital in Washington on March 11th, 2008. (WPAS)
33 Variations runs through September 30th at Arena Stage.