Saturday, 10.27.07, 7:50 am
Classical Performances
Impressionism at La Maison Française
To satisfy that sudden craving for good, live music that you might experience after a long day of listening to Classical WETA, you should consider a trip to La Maison Française on Monday, October 29th. Awaiting you would be a performance of the Klaviertrio Amsterdam – just recently in town at the Corcoran. That was this May and Haydn, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky were on that program. Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Ravel were featured the last time at the Maison Française in May of 2006, and Fauré, Beethoven, and Brahms made for a a very enchanting concert at the Corcoran Gallery in January 2006.
On Monday they will present Franz Liszt’s Orphée (in the transcription by Camille Saint-Saens), Maurice Ravel’s Trio in A-minor and the C-minor Piano Quartet of Gabriel Fauré. Helping out by playing viola with the Klaviertrio Amsterdam in the Fauré will be Jonathan Vinocourt, principal violist of the Saint Louis Symphony and recommended by the revered Roger Tapping who was sadly not available. The concert will happen in conjunction (or rather “in honor of”) the Phillips Collection’s Impressionists by the Sea exhibit.
Having heard Klára Würtz a few times, I have found her a marvelous pianist who can get great beauty even from lesser pianos. Her recording of the complete Mozart piano sonatas stands up to the finest available sets (e.g. Uchida, De Larrocha) and the Klavier Trio Amsteram has recorded very pleasant readings of both Mendelssohn trios (all on Brilliant Classics). Their good humor and unpretentious joy in good music has a warm, casual feel to it that serves chamber music so well – at least if late Beethoven is not on the program.
La Maison Française will be the usual gracious host (that’s code for “good wine and cheese afterwards”); tickets are $30,- and reservations can be made at the this link.
Friday, 10.26.07, 5:00 am
Moreover Mahler
Mahler’s symphonies have come a long way from belittled provincial behemoths to popular stalwarts of every symphony orchestra’s program. These days, Mahler may be as present in concert halls as Beethoven and Brahms. That’s quite an achievement for a composer who, just 30 years ago, was scarcely worth an hour’s attention in conservatories. And, as might be pointed out in the same breath, it took the princess kiss of Bernstein to awaken the neglected Mahler-Frog and turn him to the princely star of international concert houses he is today. Or so the recent optimistic reception of Mahler’s (admittedly uncompromising) work would have it.
Overlooking the oddly mixed fairytale metaphor that’s by-and-large true, but not quite as simple. Leonard Bernstein, his personality seemingly suited to performance of the troubled composer with Jewish roots, contributed like no other to the broad popularization of Mahler, indeed. He appeared to embody Mahler, to re-compose his symphonies while conducting them, and he convinced audiences across the world—and more importantly, orchestra musicians from London to Vienna to Jerusalem—that Mahler was worthwhile. His enthusiasm was visible when conducting Mahler and still is visible today, thanks to the films made of his Mahler performances.
On the precious DVD collection of Bernstein’s Mahler (DG/Unitel), Bernstein admits he felt like he had to live through the emotions of the music to communicate them to the orchestra. Bernstein brought audiences into Mahler’s realm when the music alone might not have done it. It’s not unlike seeing, and consequently loving, a Bartók performance by the Takács Quartet, where the palpable joy in music making—the puckered lips, the madly waving fop of hair, the delightedly closed eyes—can bring the music, even to the neophyte, as an experience rather than a series of difficult to understand notes.
But when Bernstein started his 1960 centenary Mahler cycle with the New York Philharmonic, he wasn’t Mahler’s lonely prophet in the desert. He may have been his most successful recruiter or PR-man, but Bernstein was one amid plenty others (like Rafael Kubelik and Bernhard Haitink) at around the same time. None of them, though, could have influenced the modern reception of Mahler had they not built upon the work of earlier musicians, those who had never allowed the Mahler flame to be completely extinguished: Dimitri Mitropuolos, Sir John Barbirolli, Otto Klemperer and of course Mahler protégé Bruno Walter.
In Amsterdam the most fervent Mahler champion, Willem Mengelberg, conducted and recorded Mahler throughout his 50-year tenure (from 1895 until 1945) where, after befriending Mahler in 1902, he started that orchestra’s long and proud Mahler tradition. The Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam performed Mahler symphonies more than 150 times in the 1910s and over 160 times each in the 1920s and 1930s. The war years naturally brought a collapse, not just of Mahler but of performances in general (though Mahler strikes as particularly unsuitable in times of war). But in the 1950s, 89 Mahler performances were back on the program, and over one hundred in the 60s. Even the Mahler-sparse 70s saw each symphony performed at least once and over 70 performances altogether.
Mengelberg alone conducted the Concertgebouw in complete Mahler symphonies over 400 times. Eduard van Beinum, though better known as a Bruckner conductor, too, kept the flame alive before passing it on to conductors like Kubelik, Haitink, and Riccardo Chailly which has resulted in well over 1500 Mahler performances of the Concertgebouw to-date.
Elsewhere, conductors like Jasha Horenstein, Hermann Scherchen, Carl Schuricht, Maurice Abranavel and George Szell made sure that Mahler never fully receded from the public stage. And at about the same time Bernstein put the spotlight on Mahler, Rafael Kubelik recorded the first planned complete cycle of Mahler symphonies for Deutsche Grammophon. With that, Kubelik started a trend which there’s no stopping. To date, about two dozen conductors have completed—or are about to complete—Mahler Symphony cycles:
Claudio Abbado, who might yet finish a second CD cycle with Berlin and a third, on DVD, mostly with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra; Leonard Bernstein (Sony, DG, and DG/Unitel DVD); Gary Bertini (EMI); Pierre Boulez, who just capped his DG adventure with the Eighth with the Staatskapelle Berlin; Riccardo Chailly (Decca); Michael Gielen (Hänssler); Bernhard Haitink, who has one complete cycle and seven-ninths of another from his Christmas concert matinees with his Concertgebouw. (Both on Decca.)
Eliahu Inbal (Denon/Brillant); Neeme Järvi (out of print, Chandos); Lorin Maazel (Sony); Václav Neumann (Supraphon); Seiji Ozawa (oop, Philips); Simon Rattle, whose pronounced opposition to his Mahler recordings being understood as a “cycle” did not keep EMI from issuing them as such; Leif Segerstam (oop, Chandos); Giuseppe Sinopoli (DG); Sir Georg Solti (Decca); Emil Tabakov (Capriccio); Klaus Tennstedt (EMI); Michael Tilson-Thomas, who will soon finish his San Francisco cycle on the orchestra’s own SFMedia label; even Edo de Waart, chief conductor of the Santa Fe Opera, has a cycle with the Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (oop, RCA).
Yoel Levi and Benjamin Zander, both have recorded six Mahler symphonies on Telarc so far; and finally James Levine, also with six Mahler recordings—five more or less neglected ones on RCA and one interminable, yet strangely delightful, Ninth on Oehms with the Munich Philharmonic.
There is no stopping the “Mahleria” (Prokofiev’s disdainful but funny comment) that has gripped classical music lovers around the world – and in the run-up to Mahler performances in the region, I will review some new Mahler releases, including the first few installments of David Zinman’s new cycle with the Zürich Tonhalle Orchester that RCA is issuing on Super Audio CD hybrids and the Mahler that the NSO’s principal guest conductor Iván Fischer (listen to our interview here) has recorded for Channel Classics so far (also available on SACD).
All in time to get ready for Leonard Slatkin’s Sixth (and some Kindertotenlieder with Thomas Hampson!) from January 31st to February 2nd, then Mariss Jansons’ Mahler (No.5) with the Concertgebouw the next day, and finally Maestro Fischer’s performances of the “Resurrection Symphony” the first week of April which will undoubtedly be an ‘event’. If you want the NSO to remind you when tickets go on sale (February 9th), you can ask them to do so on their website. 
Wednesday, 10.24.07, 7:18 pm
New Releases: CDs
Goldberg Variations Variations
"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.
I have recently reviewed the ‘Femme Fatale’ Goldberg Variations of Simone Dinnerstein who broadly and beautifully dwells where every other pianist has dwelled before her, also. It’s a lovely recording but if I am actually waiting for any pianist’s Goldberg Variations, it’s Alexandre Tharaud’s. (If you have heard his Bach recital “Concertos italiens”, you will know why, and if you have not, you need to get it.)
But Bach-loving as I am, I will gladly lend my ear to whatever other Goldbergs come my way. And come they do, including, recently, an innocuously titled disc “Wilhelm Middelschulte, Organ Works 4”. Bach, by any other name, and even when transcribed for romantic organ, still sounds as sweet. Or nearly so.
Wilhelm Middelschulte (1863 – 1943), contemporary and friend of Ferruccio Busoni’s (1866-1925), was among the foremost organists of his time. He was born in Werven, some ten miles outside of Dortmund. Trained in Berlin, he fell in love with the American organ student Annette Musser and followed her to Chicago where they married five years later. It’s just the kind of romantic story that makes me all puppy-eyed – though it is somewhat sobering to read that Annette Musser died in 1928; to be replaced the following year by another American organist, Florence Knox Michael.
In Chicago he established his fame as an organist and met Busoni (1910) which sparked a creative and deep friendship between the two men. Their first topic of discussion was Bach and they helped and encouraged each other in their transcriptive work of the great master’s work.
There is no point entering the argument of whether transcriptions of the original are a sacrilege or spawn derivative, second rate music when the subject of the transcription is Bach. After all, no one more famously or more often transcribed works (his own and others’) than Bach himself: Vivaldi concertos for the organ; some Torelli concertos for harpsichord; the choir of BWV146 (Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal), first from a violin concerto (the work itself is lost), then into the second movement of the D-minor keyboard concerto BWV 1052. Even the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin were not safe from being recycled for organ passages in other works.
Since all of Middleschulte’s work seems to be transcribed from, inspired by, or based on Bach, his output might better fit into the “Transcription” section under Bach rather than filed in his own slot. (Then again, seeing that we have only one good classical record shop left in Washington, that point might be moot. Just having him filed anywhere at all would be a coup!) I have not heard volumes 1 through 3 of this cycle, conceived and played by the impressive organist Jürgen Sonnentheil, mostly because the name “Middelschulte” had not intrigued me until I also read “Goldberg Variations”.
But given the elaborate yet very faithful transcription that this CD reveals, I regret my decision, as I can only imagine how Middelschulte’s approach might work even better on other, previously recorded works. Sonnentheil, who takes all the repeats, beautifully rolls out this slightly lumbering behemoth (agility and drive are lost at the 100-plus minutes it takes to perform, but the base- and polyphonic lines gain) in many different voicings on the Gerald Woehl Organ of St. Petrus Canisius in Friedrichshafen.
When the largely subdued music does call for it, the dynamic range on this cpo-recording is great—literally and metaphorically—which I enjoyed tremendously (but my downstairs neighbor, interestingly, did not). Even if this will not be many people’s preferred way of hearing the Goldberg Variations, it will please transcription-, organ-, and Goldberg-aficionados. I, meanwhile, really want to hear volume 2, where Middelschulte’s transcription of the Passacaglia (my favorite Bach organ work) lurks.
This brings me briefly to a record that may not be easy to find but will much please the fellow Passacaglia fan. The Signum label asked five artist teams to each record a version of the Passacaglia, and then put them together on one disc. Christian Rieger performs the ‘straight’ version on a J.A. Silbermann organ (St.Landolin) with just the unshakable rhythm that makes the Passacaglia so hypnotically irresistible for me. Then Ernst Breidenach takes on Eugen d’Albert’s piano/two-hands version. Johannes Matthias Michel tackles the work in its romantic reincarnation (a la Liszt/Töpfer) in sumptuous fashion before Oliver Kolb and Ernst Breidenbach get to work on the Max Reger piano/four-hands edition, a version I easily like as much as the orginal. (Kolb & Co. are very good – but the Trenkner-Speidel Duo on MDG performs the hell out of it!) The whole thing is capped (if not topped) by a Nikos Athinäos and the State Orchestra Frankfurt/Oder indulgence in the Stokowski’s orchestrated (per)version.
Back to the Goldberg Variations courtesy of Misha Maisky, Julian Rachlin, and Nobuko Imai. Among the transcriptions for accordion, saxophone, brass ensemble, octet, etc.—some of which are little more than novelties—the Dmitri Sitkovetsky string transcription, dedicated to Glenn Gould, is probably the finest and most serious. And Sitkovetsky’s own string-trio version of that is better, still, to these ears.
There must be five or six versions variably available, but the choice really comes down to Sitkovetsky’s 1995 recording on Orfeo with Gérard Caussé and Mischa Maisky, or the latter’s already mentioned new DG recording. Both are played with total dedication and technically without fault; but Sitkovetsky, skipping most repeats, takes less time (a bit under an hour) and sounds a little faster, too. Maisky and friends take all the repeats and clock in at just over 80 minutes, just in time to keep it from sprawling onto a second disc.
Though the performances are, by nature of the instruments’ possibilities, more leisurely paced than the early Glenn Gould, emotional if not definite connections to both of the Gould recordings can be heard. And as far as the transcription-rationalization No.1 (“it brings out new aspects of a well known work”) is concerned: Yes, it really does. The communicativeness of the contrapuntal lines is exquisitely followable. A very enjoyable adventure, this is—and not just for the Goldberg-obsessed fringe. This music is as mainstream-friendly as the three famous performers. Now all you need is Uri Caine’s truly whacky recording of his seventy (!) Goldberg Variation Variations and Jacques Loussier’s supremely charming, easy going Jazz-trio version and you are set.
That is until the version for Bagpipe-nonet is discovered to be irresistible.
Friday, 10.19.07, 5:28 pm
Classical Performances
Fischer’s Beethoven at the Kennedy Center, Kavakos’ Mozart on Sony
"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.
Julia Fischer will appear with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic under Yuri Temirkanov at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall this Tuesday, October 23rd. Since her area debut in WPAS’ Kreeger series three and a half years ago, she’s made a name for herself as one of the finest violinists of our time. Her recordings on the audiophile PentaTone label have consistently garnered the highest praise, leading to her receiving the 2007 Artist of the Year award from Gramophone. Her Beethoven concerto performances under Yuri Temirkanov – then with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra – were breathtakingly exalting. A performance of the quality you are lucky to hear every couple of years. Reviewing it back in May of 2006, I was, if anything guilty of understatement:
With her ability to place emotional peaks into refined playing, with her nicely developing tone – never shy, not too big – Ms. Fischer gave this concerto both: the nobility and excitement it needs without veering either into aloof coldness on one side or showy gypsy fiddling on the other. [...] Grace and purity abounded. [...] This was an example of 45 minutes of music-making as it should be…
Less than a year later, she was in Washington, playing with the NSO:
Neither showy nor ever-pushing emotional boundaries, Julia Fischer’s playing convinces by sheer quality and that air of irreproachability that lends, if anything, a cool touch to her tone. Her Khachaturian concerto was, especially in the Andante sostenuto, of such beauty that it had to be admired, even if not necessarily fallen in love with. [...] With performances like this one, or last year’s, she is well on her way to becoming one of the world’s foremost violinists. The chance to hear her should not be missed.
The same goes for Thursday’s concert where she will, again, present the Beethoven concerto. It is the most difficult (interpretively if not technically) among the great romantic violin concertos and right now there is not one violinist I’d rather hear it from than Fischer, and few I’d equally look forward to hearing in it.
Among the latter would be Thomas Zehetmair, Leonidas Kavakos and Vadim Repin. Kavakos, whose Ysaÿe (Sonatas – BIS), Stravinsky (Italian Suite etc. – ECM), and Sibelius (Concerto – BIS) I admire greatly, has recently added the Mozart Concertos to his discography (for Sony). Kavakos recorded them with the Camerata Salzburg, where he was Principal Guest Artist and took over as Artistic Director from Roger Norrington this October. Among the many fine complete recordings of these concertos Kavakos competes with Arthur Grumiaux (regal, distinguished – Philips), Shlomo Mintz (sweetly vigorous – Avie), and perhaps Anne-Sophie Mutter’s second set (electric, neurotic, virile – DG). And, of course, the two (soon to be three) PentaTone discs of Miss Fischer’s complete Mozart.
Her approach is clean but not skimpy, fleet but not hasty, beautiful and warm but not thickly put on. A modern take on a traditional way of playing Mozart with a nod, but not subscribing to, ‘historically informed performance practice’. Kavakos and the Salzburg Camerata are a little lighter and tauter than Fischer and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestral. His tone has with the usually steely-yet-light and floating qualities – though (appropriately) less ethereal than in other recordings of his. Where Fischer is distinctly a soloist, Kavakos is more a first violinist among his players. Both play their own cadenzas.
The (Sony) recording itself makes rather direct contact with the players which results in an immediacy that can be – but need not be – desirable. PentaTone’s sound quality has been unquestionably impeccable in all of Fischer’s recordings as the Polyhymnia recording team continuously satisfies even the most demanding Hi-Fi enthusiasts’ demands with their hybrid multi-channel SACDs.
Julia Fischer’s next recording – released on October 30th – will be the third installment of her Mozart – including the Sinfonia concertante, K 364, the Concertone for 2 Violins in C major, K 190, and the Rondo for Violin and Orchestra no 2 in C major, K 373. Her last is of Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto and the Double Concerto (with Daniel Müller-Schott). More of which later. Perhaps in November when the Capuçon brothers release their Double Concerto on Virgin.
The other works Temirkanov will conduct – as if you needed any more reason to try to attend this concert – are Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony and Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro Overture.
Wednesday, 10.17.07, 12:01 am
Classical Performances
Surprised by Schoenberg (The Rest is Brahms)
It is a fine week for piano lovers in Washington – with Richard Goode’s recital last Sunday at the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences Beth-El Congregation, Emanuel Ax playing Brahms second concerto with the NSO Thursday through Saturday, and Yefim Bronfman playing with Orpheus at Strathmore this Thursday.
At that WPAS presented concert you’ll get the “other” Brahms concerto, the one in D-minor, op.15. That they throw in a few Hungarian Dances (Nos. 1, 3, and 10) is not surprising. It’s such pretty music and rightly popular. Most pleasing, though, is Orpheus’ inclusion of the Kammersymphonie No. 1, Op. 9 Schoenberg.
I know that Schoenberg is not exactly the selling point of most concerts – but there are reasons to listen to his music. The best of course is because the music is so beautiful, it’s silly. For the majority of music-loving ears, that should be true for op. 4, Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured night”), op. 5 Pelleas und Melisande, some early songs, and the (unpublished) Gurrelieder.
For any of these works, the only question you need to ask yourself is: Do I like late Richard Strauss? If yes, you’ll like very early Schoenberg.
The Schoenberg of notoriety (I could have put him in quotation marks, so symbolic is he of everything that so many classical music lovers find appalling about “modern” music) does not start until later. One might pin-point the Drei Klavierstücke op. 11 as the beginning of his pantonal (atonal, dodecaphonous) style. (For a wonderful short description of pan/a-tonality watch Anthony Tommasini’s charming video for the New York Times.)
Then again, even op.11 can be discovered as a gem, as Mitsuko Uchida relates with warmth and irresistible passion in an interview on her DVD of Mozart concertos. But it isn’t music that most ears take to at first listening. Just like most of Debussy’s (piano) music isn’t. Except that Debussy gets a lot more credit and benefit of doubt from audiences because his whimsy and the idea of a French Expressionist is a lot more sexy than that of a quirky and determined German Tonsetzer.
Between op.5 and op.11 Schoenberg slowly condenses his harmonic language to a point where he cannot go much further. He goes on attempting to overcome “tonality” as a German would: with a system! Whether he succeeded or failed will always be debated and I don’t expect agreement any time soon. If you are generally scared of much of 20th century classical music you might consider one or two books: “Surprised by Beauty – A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music” where your (conservative) guide is Robert R. Reilly telling you of ‘beautiful exceptions’. It’s a primer in atonality-avoidance, written with love. In “The Rest is Noise – Listening to the 20th Century” Alex Ross will take your hand – or ear – and guide you through all the many facets of classical music in the 20th century like one enthusiastic (and brainy) child would another through a giant aquarium, pointing out and delighting in all the surrounding fishes and strange watery creatures… in the process finding beauty and sense even in some of the more seemingly hideous beasts.
You could well find such beauty in Kammersymphonie No. 1 and its dense, moderately knotty chromaticism. And if you want a relation to the Brahms surrounding it, here it comes: In his last year on earth, Johannes Brahms – so Malcom MacDonald tells us – approved (!) of Schoenberg’s first, youthful string quartet.
The following string quartets (op.7 and op.10) lead us via Kammersymphonie No. 1 to Drei Klavierstücke. And quartets opp. 30 and 37 were commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. (Admittedly a Washington- not a Brahms- connection.) There is not much time left before Bronfman’s concert Thursday night at Strathmore – but you could already dip your ears into the Kammersymphonie No. 1 in open minded preparation. And wouldn’t you know it, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has a recording available for just that purpose. Coupled with with that silly-beautiful Verklärte Nacht. And Kammersymphonie No. 2, op. 38 – for another of those very open minded 20 minute music moments in your life.
Friday, 10.12.07, 4:32 pm
Classical Performances
Ax Brahms
"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.
On October the 18th, Emanuel Ax will perform the Brahms Second Concerto with the NSO under the baton of Leonard Slatkin. As if timed, Sony Classics has just re-released the two Brahms concertos of Ax, the second of which had been much acclaimed and then only spottily available.The two concertos now come surrounded by most of Ax’s recorded solo piano pieces of Brahms – which is rather more attractive than the Yo-Yo Ma cello transcription of Brahms first violin sonata that used to accompany with the second concerto. As often the case with long unavailable material, the performances had taken on near-mythical status. And almost invariably, that status is much diminished when the recordings are again easy to obtain. When Herbert Blomstedt’s Sibelius recordings on Decca, the two 2-CD sets of which went for well over $50 on eBay, were available again, the realization set in that these performances are good – but perhaps not ‘greatness manifest’ or necessarily better than much of the fine competition.
The feeling listening to this set is similar; perhaps more unflattering. The performances are good, but how the first concerto under Levine with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra won the 1984 Grammy Award is rather difficult to discern in retrospect. The sound, for one, is a muffled low rumble. The performance is fine, genteel, dawdles along pleasantly, and strikes as unremarkable.
It is difficult to say whether a good performance of that concerto is made (or broken) by the pianist (as it is usually the case in concertos) or the conductor, who seems to have a special responsibility in the Brahms D-minor. Part of it certainly goes to the composer himself. His creation is decidedly not a ‘great concerto’ – but a ‘concerto with great music’. A quilt of great ideas with Brahms-unusual incoherence. All the more difficult is it to pull it off – and the last time I heard it well done in concert was almost exactly three years ago at the Kennedy Center when Pletnev established a great flow under Blomstedt’s baton.
The B-flat Major concerto op.83, about 20 years the D-minor’s junior, is much more of one piece. Ax recorded this in 1997 with Bernard Haitink and the Boston Symphony Orchestra – and I find it the much happier performance of the two on this budget friendly release. The sound, for one, is clear; not surprisingly, perhaps, given that Symphony Hall is a notably superior recording venue to Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. Haitink choses to stay in the background with his forces and lets Ax plow through the massive first two movements with the latter’s usual agility and unusual boldness. The gentler, toned down, and near-intimate beauty of the slow movement is delicately done, without anyone succumbing to undue sentimentality.
On record there are – for both concertos – the classic recordings of Fleisher/Szell (CBS/Sony) and Gilels/Jochum (DG), recently joined by Freire/Chailly (DG). Not to be scoffed at are Arrau/Haitink (Philips) with the latter at his most engaging – or Buchbinder/Harnoncourt (Warner) which sounds ever so fresh to these ears. All of which are likely preferred over Ax. In the first concerto alone the old Rubinstein/Reiner is a joy (RCA), as is the magnificent Clifford Curzon under George Szell (Decca) whereas the second concerto finds some of its great interpretations in Richter/Leinsdorf (RCA), Serkin/Szell (CBS/Sony) – and, well, maybe Ax/Hatink (Sony).
Promising enough, certainly, to expect something wonderful from the concerts on the 18th, 19th, or 20th. Not the least because Leonard Slatkin throws in a specialty of his in the form of Vaughan-Williams’ Sixth Symphony.
Tuesday, 10.9.07, 6:00 am
New Releases: CDs
There is Something Wonderful in the State of Denmark
"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.
Hans Abrahamsen. Jørgen and Niels Viggo Bentzon. Håkon Børresen. August Enna. Niels Wilhelm Gade. Louis Glass. Bo Holten. Paul von Klenau. Herman D. Koppel & Sons. Ludolf Nielsen. Per Nørgård. Knudåge Riisager. Poul Ruders. Some of the many Danish composers that are anywhere between largely and completely unknown. When we think of Scandinavian music, the Finn Jean Sibelius and the Norwegian Edvard Grieg (whose death’s 100th anniversary we celebrate this year) come to mind. Swedish composers are also largely unknown. Too few are familiar with the delightful works of Hugo Alfvén, Kurt Atterberg, Joseph Martin Kraus, Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Allan Pettersson, Ture Rangström, Wilhelm Stenhammar, or Eduard Tubin.
The first Danish composer that comes to mind – completing the Scandinavian Triumvirate with Sibelius and Grieg – is Carl Nielsen. Follwing Nielsen you’ll find – eventually – Vagn Holmboe and Rued Langgaard. You’ll be hard pressed to ever find Leif Kayser – but if and when you do, you might like to thank the Danish record label DACAPO that you did.
There’s a richness and variety to Danish music that belies the obscurity of its composers or the size of the country with a population of just over 5 million. A quick stop at Carl Nielsen (1865 – 1931) who is famous enough not to need an introduction. If you like Sibelius – and the symphonic form as such – Nielsen is mandatory. Osmo Vänskä’s BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra recordings on BIS are fine, but Herbert Blomstedt’s LA recordings on Decca are still the likely first choice. (If you have Neeme Järvi’s cycle on DG, or Berglund’s on RCA, or Schonwandt’s on DACAPO, you are not off badly, either.) No matter how many Nielsen Symphonies you have, you must listen to what Morton Gould and Jean Martinon do with the 2nd and 4th Symphony, respectively. And if you have no Nielsen at all, do start with this, finally re-issued, budget RCA disc.
All the concertos can be had conveniently on Blomstedt’s Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra EMI two disc set. But the most important of them, the aggressive clarinet concerto, you might want to sample with Martin Fröst and Osmo Vänskä on BIS, while the Violin Concerto is well coupled with Sibelius and executed by the very the able hands of Cho-Liang Lin and Esa-Pekka Salonen (Sony).
What brought Carl Nielsen to my ears most recently was a hybrid SACD by DACAPO with Thomas Dausgaard conducting Nielsen’s orchestral music. For now this sounds like the definitive contribution to the Snefried Suite, the overtures (to Maskarade, “Saul og David”, and the “Rhapsodisk” and Helios Overtures) as well as some smaller, lesser known works. Terrific in sound and playing, this is what the Nielsen-lover wants in his stockings this year.
Someone who turned away from the style of composition that was ‘demanded’ in the 20th century was Rued Langgaard (1893 – 1952), an oddball of a composer I helplessly adore. Terribly backwards for his time, exploring sounds worlds that his predecessor Nielsen had already left behind in his later works, Langgaard goes looking for Wagnerian sounds, coupled with some of the colorful strangeness of Scriabin, and occasional lushness of Richard Strauss. But he is never quite so obviously old-fashioned. If you imagine a straight line between Sibelius and Einojuhani Rautavaara and put down your fist (not your finger) in the middle, you’ll have more or less arrived slightly north of Langgaard’s idiom. At least now you should know whether you might like him, or not. (Read Steve Smith’s piece about Langgaard in the New York Times.)
He composed 16 symphonies that discover brevity as the strongest form of statement. Glorious and odd beauty punctuate these works, some shorter than 10 minutes. A highly anti-romantic length for a symphony in the 1940s, when numbers 12 through 14 were written. Individual though Langgaard is, I hear touches of Rheinberger in Symphonies No.13 Undertro (“Belief in Wonders”) and Morgenen (“The Morning”), which is a lascivious suite for chorus and orchestra masquerading as Symphony No.14, with an opening that reminds me of Mendelssohn. That both were organists and happily made room for the Queen of instruments in their composition might go some way to explain that.
You’ll find the latter on a recent DACAPO disc, part of their renewed effort to record all of Langgaard’s symphonies, replacing the spottily available (and less than perfect) Danacord recordings with Ilya Stupel. It’s really as good a point to start with Langgaard symphonies as any – curiously strong compositions and excellent performances from Thomas Dausgaard and the Danish National Symphony. If you are new to Langgaard it’s better still to check out Volume 2 of his Violin Sonatas.
Especially the shorter pieces on this disc (Écrasez l’infâme, Aubade for Violin and Piano, Andante religioso for Violin and Organ) are marvelous examples of just how beautiful music can be. To know that you will enjoy this particular disc, all you need to know is that you like classical music. Sonatas Nos. 3 & 4, too, are worthwhile, though I would have wished the conciseness and brevity of some of his symphonies upon them.
Langgaard’s most wicked composition though is, by far, “Antikrist”. It’s like an inverse Parsifal, condensed into one and a half hours. Mystical, incense-laden, absurd, brief, stunningly beautiful, and a touch perverse: Whether the slick and perfect recording of Dausgaard on the DACAPO hybrid SACD (also available on DVD) or the surprisingly fine live Danacord recording with the Innsbruck Symphony Orchestra (of all things) under Niels Muus, chances are you’ll have a blast.
Utterly different from quirky Langgaard, though plenty pleasing, is Leif Kayser: a more or less self-described “young lark [singing] trills that sound like the ones the old larks have sung before”. With two well regarded symphonies under his belt at age 20, the then great hope of Danish music let his musical ambitions and activities rest to become a priest. Fortunately for us, Kayser did pick the quill back up and produced more works. Works that are enchanting on second hearing. Not many would argue that Kayser’s is “great music”, but it is pleasing and interesting, which is more than can be said about most (and therefore unknown to us) classical music. His music is primarily old-fashioned and backwards looking, but just when you think you have him figured out along those lines, the late student of Nadia Boulanger and interpreter of Messiaen will surprise with an idiom that is daring in its own way. The influences of Gregorian chant alone don’t explain why there is a certain faceless, anonymous quality about Kayser’s music… but perhaps Kayser’s attitude to composing does.
Mikael Garnæs’ liner notes in DACAPO’s first volume of Kayser’s symphonies quotes the composer’s motto: “Before the musician becomes an artist, he is a human being, and his human qualities will always show in his art, be they good or bad. The first, greatest and most important requirement of the composer – as of any artist – must therefore be that he cultivates his spirituality, the best he possesses as a human being, so he will be able to give others something valuable, as a human being and artist.” If it isn’t too redundant, I’d characterize Kayser – in his symphonies – as a pocket sized, Scandinavian countryside-Bruckner. (Only in his later works for organ, accordion, or woodwinds, Kayser becomes more audibly wedded to the 20th century.)
After the Second Symphony’s premiere an unkind critic wrote that the scherzo “will pass into Danish musical history as the most boring ever written”. A harsh judgment about this unmemorably pleasant, harmlessly playful movement. Even if it is much overshadowed by the wordless choir of the following two movements. Self effacing, modest, tame… there is an altogether calmer joy to be had in this Kayser symphony. While also true for his Third Symphony, the latter is somewhat more daring and more tense… almost strident in the mechanical presto-section. It’s finely crafted music certainly worth the ears of anyone with an interest in 20th century romantic or Scandinavian composers.
Friday, 10.5.07, 10:03 am
New Releases: CDs
Recent Releases
"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.
 Mozart / Schumann, Piano Concertos, Kissin / Davis / LSO |
Evgeny Kissin recorded his first album for EMI, and he seems to be inching away from the splashy romantic repertoire and reputation for Chopin and Brahms, Rachmaninov and Schumann.
Not that he hasn’t recorded Mozart concertos before. Or, for that matter, the Schumann concerto, which is also included on this disc.
But Kissin and Sir Colin Davis’ London Symphony Orchestra sound calm and content on this recording; not in need, nor willing, to prove anything to the listener – but instead enjoy the music. For themselves first, and for others who wish to eavesdrop. The result is a disc that is less “outstanding” in the literal sense of the word, but utterly pleasant. Something that no one ‘needs’, but anyone would like listening to. It sounds like a confident step into a wholly musical direction that Kissin is taking.
Sure, the Schumann can be had as a wilder ride and a faster machine (any one of Argerich’s recordings, preferably the third, also on EMI). And Mozart can be had more… well, Mozartian, more orchestrally confident, livelier. With 117 recordings available on ArkivMusic alone, that’s probably not surprising. Muray Perahia (Sony), Richard Goode (Nonesuch), Alfred Brendel’s latest (Philips), Rudolf Buchbinder (Profil) and especially Clifford Curzon (with István Kertész on Decca or Rafael Kubelik on Audite !) come to mind, on that front. And that’s still not having mentioned Mitsuko Uchida (Philips), András Schiff (Decca), Clara Haskil (Philips et al.), Edwin Fischer (Andante et al.), Robert Casadesus (Sony, Orfeo, Andante et al.), Piotr Anderszewski (Virgin), or the unknown/underrated Fou Ts’ong (Meridian). (Except, there, I did it.)
So if you are hunting for the perfect Mozart, you might not end up with Kissin. If you are hunting for Kissin playing Mozart – or, if you are one of his many fans, him playing anything at all – you’ll find yourself delighted. Easier still than getting Kissin’s recording from ArkivMusic (where it is currently on sale), or from Dupont Circle’s Melody Records (despite appearances an excellent source for classical music!), you can wait until WETA’s inevitably upcoming pledge drive where you’ll hear it plenty on the air and can get it as one of the pledge drive premiums. (October 12th – 19th.)
 Bach, Cantatas BWV 12, 18, 61, 161, Purcell Quartet / Kirkby, Harvey, C.Daniels, Chance |
On Chaconne, Chandos’ early music label, the Purcell Quartet released their second disc of Bach cantatas – the second volume of Cantatas from Bach’s Weimar cycle which includes “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” BWV 12, “Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt” BWV 18, “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland” BWV 61, and “Komm, du süße Todesstunde” BWV 161. The Purcell Quartet is comprised of Catherin Mackintosh and Catherin Weiss (violins/violas), Richard Boothby (cello), and Robert Wolley (organ). With a little help from recorder, bassoon, trumpet, oboe, and three more string players, that’s plenty for “HIP” Bach. That they play on original instruments (or copies thereof) goes without saying. And the temperament of their instruments is taken from Bradley Lehman’s (Goldberg Variation tested) theory that Bach coded his preferred tuning into a ornamental squiggle on the score of the Well Tempered Clavier.
Assuming an appreciation for the ’slim’ approach to Bach in these cantatas, the disc is richly rewarding. “Weinen, Klagen…”, one of the first cantatas Bach wrote, faces the competition of the just-about-perfect Herreweghe bravely. I still prefer the choral passages with the Collegium Vocale Ghent and counter-tenor Daniel Taylor over Michael Chance. And while the Recitativo is fiercely swift on the Chandos disc, “Weinen, Klagen…” itself drags compared to the quicker and generally slightly rounder, slightly more sonorous Herreweghe. But then the latter is a disc for the ages – among the best cantata recordings I’ve come across. And Kirkby and the Purcell Quartet really hit their stride in the other cantatas where their light tone, balance, and clarity are combined with almost chipper musicality. To the extent ‘chipper’ is possible, given the death-heavy subject of their singing and playing.
 Smetana, Orchestral Works Vol.1, Noseda / BBC Phil |
I love Bedřich Smetana’s “Rybář” (Der Fischer/ The Fisherman), one of three tableaux vivants that Smetana wrote for a benefit concert for the completion of Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral. It’s just long enough to recite the Goethe poem of the same name to it (which is how it was originally performed) and scored for string orchestra, harp, and harmonium. The harmonium was a brand new instrument in 1869, and it sounds like a romantic Fisherman’s accordion here. Lush, bonny, and picturesque, but not yet tacky. It’s part of an altogether most pleasing Smetana disc released later this month: Volume One of the complete orchestral works with the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda and, as far as I know, the only available recording of “The Fisherman”.
Wednesday, 10.3.07, 5:57 pm
Classical Performances
What’s in a Liederabend, Anyway – About Magdalena Kožená, Thomas Quasthoff, and Christian Gerhaher’s Washington Recital.
"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.
 Schubert, Abendbilder, Gerhaher, Huber |
Liederabend: Literally “SongEvening”. It’s almost more beautiful thus translated. Rather than automatically bringing up the connotations of the known-as-such compound word, it focuses on its parts and puts them together in a simplicity that allows re-discovery. It’s familiar, still, but novel. And those two words together have a distinct charm, a hint of nostalgia. An evening of songs. It does not remind so much of the high-brow and utterly refined art of a song recital in an often less-than-convivial setting where audience and performer take themselves terribly seriously. It reminds of a time where people might still have sung themselves. Or at least it imparts the idea of a Schubertiade, the casual but artistically no less ambitious settings so named after the gatherings of the Lied’s most important exponent and his friends.
The ease and carefree element in a song recital is all but gone, the genre has become known as the classical music aficionado’s prerogative, the occasions to hear one ever more rare. Except for recitals with the best known names, tickets are difficult to sell. And even then, singers usually have to pander to the expected in their choice of repertoire. Schubert and Schumann – and preferably the ‘happy songs’. A little Beethoven. Not Liszt, not too much Brahms. Wolf, in small dosages. A few French composers of Melodies can be used to fill a whole evening, but not all. Others should be sprinkled into a program very cautiously. For flavor only. Modern songs are all but verboten.
It is sad that it should be this way when song recitals can be so utterly enjoyable. One gets to live through the music in a more intimate way than most other forms of classical music presentation. Interpretation and choice of repertoire carries a more easily detectable personal flavor than in other recitals. There’s a shorter line from the listener’s ears to the performer’s heart via diaphragm and throat than through a soloist’s fiddle and bow.
This summer I was fortunate to hear two song recitals hosted by Bavarian State Opera that exemplified, in different ways, what can be so wonderful about an evening of songs and what should be reason enough to actively help protect what otherwise looks to be a dying species in the concert calendars. In a few days Washington’s Vocal Arts Society will host another, by Christian Gerhaher, that promises the same.
Magdalena Kožená presented Robert Schumann’s Liederkreis op.39 in the first half of her recital at the Prinzregententheater, which took care of the mandatory composer starting with “Schu…”. It did so in amiable, if not stunning fashion. Dark hues, heavy vibrato, distinctly enunciated but not with great diction were the marks she left on “In der Fremde”. Teeming with emotions, but emotions kept under tight control – as if communicated through tightly clenched teeth, was the “Intermezzo”. Parallels between the singing and her slightly harsh but beautiful face kept coming up: Acute precision, austere, extraordinary control and beauty… but not an emotional appeal nor, generally warm. It was uncompromising Schumann (explaining why even Schumann, popular though he is, can be found taxing by audiences) that impressed more than it touched.
The second half of the recital showed a desirable variety in its musical travels from Ravel (Histoires Naturelles) to Rachmaninov (Six Songs op.38) to Bartók (Village Scenes – Slovakian Folk Songs. Expressive, open, and coy – with excellent pronunciation and plenty feeling – the Histoires Naturelles were the unmitigated delight one dare expected in what is,especially in the final “Le Pintade”, a bit like Ravel’s version of “Old MacDonald had a Farm”. Agony and depression are not exclusive to Schumann and in Rachmaninov’s version thereof Kožená excelled. In Son (“The Dream”) and later on in the rhythmically demanding Bartók, her musical partner for the evening, Yefim Bronfman, distinguished himself. After the excellently, folksy Village Scenes she came back to Schumann, once more: The encores Der Nußbaum and Mein Schöner Stern were as sensitive and felt as one imagines the most likable and pleasing Schumann.
Thomas Quasthoff, in the large round of the Opera House, presented a more mono-cultural Art Song recital: All-Schumann. Dichterliebe, op.48, Der Arme Peter, op.53, Belsazar, op.57, and the op.24 Liederkreis. There was not a minute during which one would have wished for more variety or, at the least, less Schumann. Two months removed, the recital still impresses – and perhaps even more so than at the time. Individual scribbles in my program notes like “very natural”, “not declamatory”, “as though he casually read the text and happened to pronounce it in melodic form”, “…perfect pronunciation and diction – everything is audible, intelligible, nuanced; nothing unnatural”, “treated like a conversation”, “with heart and without exaggeration”, “rather unsentimental and syrup-free” come together as a performance that was so clear and unmannered, so simply sung, that it cleansed the listener’s musical palate of all the hyper-dramatic renditions that these songs have received.
It speaks of courage, ability, confidence and perhaps a tad of an uncaring attitude to sing Schumann like that. The result was the by far most pleasing live performance I have heard from Quasthoff or of Schumann. That he didn’t forget to give “Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome” the necessary grave tones, that he managed with ease the taxing range of “Ich grolle nicht”, that he found the grim humor in “Der arme Peter”, and that he gave each stanza in “Belsazar” its own (and more so: appropriate) character gave lie to the notion that an artist that is hyped by the media must necessarily be overrated. Justus Zeyen did what he is best at: He disappeared behind the music in his superbly supportive and almost self-effacing way; showing his colors only when the music specifically asks for it, and then always with excellence.
This all by – perhaps convoluted – way of pointing to a Liederabend held by Vocal Arts Society on October 11th at the Austrian Embassy that has the promise of being every bit as fine as either of the above. And in a more congenial atmosphere, at that.
Christian Gerhaher, one of the finest German baritones of his generation – particularly in Songs – will grace Washington (as well as the University of Virginia’s Cabell Hall in Charlottesville on October 9th) with his long time collaborator, Gerold Huber.
Every record company of note seems to have their Lieder-singer designate. Decca’s is Matthias Goerne, EMI’s is Ian Bostridge, Harmonia Mundi’s Werner Güra, DG’s, Quasthoff. RCA/Sony’s singer of choice is baritone Christian Gerhaher who ‘graduated’ from the company’s smaller, more Europe-focused budget label Arte Nova to the company’s proud Red Seal label. His discography is already significant: The three Schubert Song-cycles, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, a disc with Schubert, Brahms, and Frank Martin (all Arte Nova), Schumann’s Dichterliebe for RCA, and participation in Weber’s Der Freischütz (Bruno Weil, DHM), Haydn’s Creation and Orlando Palladino (Harnoncourt, DHM), Mendelssohn’s Elias (Blomstedt, RCA), and an (ad hoc) recording of Carmina Burana with Simon Rattle (EMI) that also includes Washington-regular Lawrence Brownlee. The recital discs are all excellent, and Gerold Huber particularly shines with his often delicate, always appropriate and delightful contribution.
The latest addition is a collection of Schubert songs worthy falling in love with – Abendbilder (“Evensongs” or, clunkyly if more accurately: “Evening Images”). There is a rarefied quality about Gerhaher’s Lied-interpretations; an aching beauty, sincerity, and correctness that permeates every song. His tone is finer, more sensitive than most – but never stylized. Natural, but not in the nonchalant way Quasthoff offered at his recital. What you hear on record goes well with the impression he makes in person. Friendly but somewhat impenetrable, courteous but distant, very humble but with the slightly intimidating aura of confident authority. In an interview he granted me this summer, Christian Gerhaher was generous with his time, engaged, and interested. He didn’t need to point out that he has little time for superfluous questions, chatter, or trivialities. The interview, which was decidedly not a conversation nor in any sense casual, was pervaded with (his) utterly correct (and possibly disappointed) expectation of purpose.
But his stern impression comes with charming earnestness and refreshing candor. The question of whether he thought himself a “musician or singer” was modestly answered with “Singer — unfortunately” before I had even quite decided whether asking it was impertinent or not. Gerhaher is by own admission not a musical Wunderkind but someone who used his musical gifts and arrived at excellence through craftsmanship and hard work. He hasn’t a perfect pitch (which makes learning modern repertory harder), and the works he does have in (or is adding to) his repertoire take enough effort so that there is little time to delve into music in general and music theory in particular as he might wish to do.
He has pointed (and very sympathetic) views on music: “For Italian opera alone I certainly wouldn’t have given up medicine; I’d have better things to do with my time” says the MD (who also studied Philosophy before solely focusing in music) dryly. In thorough inner agreement and delight I chuckle fraternizingly – before I realize that Gerhaher said that sentence with such a straight face that it’s almost irritating. Banter is evidently not the purpose, nor part of this interview.
Bach, Schubert, and especially Schumann are the real reasons for him to devote his life to singing. Especially late Schumann. The darker, the better. “Gruftmusik (Crypt-music) is what it’s really at, ain’t it” was Heinz Holliger’s comment in coy approval to his friend’s, Gerhaher’s, predilection for the torn, near-demented, struggling, and often morbid songs that came from periods in Schumann’s life that must have known harrowing darkness. It’s not all audience-friendly material, he admits, and he won’t likely be able to throw together a program only of favorite songs if tickets are to be sold. (Except perhaps for an All Hallow’s Eve themed recital.)
At VAS’ non-Halloween recital, meanwhile, expect not to be frightened or disturbed but charmed – at arm’s length – by Gerhaher. Expect the finest display of the art of the Lied, and expect painstaking care to be taken with every nuance of meaning and expression. In short: An example of how songs should be sung, and irresistibly beautiful, at that. Not grand gestures, but deeply intelligent renditions. With an unmissable nod to the ‘art’ in art-song, but still instinctive and not too brainy. Not that his is the only way songs can or need to be sung (and Gerhaher would be the first one to point that out) – but surely among the most rewarding.