Friday, 2.29.08, 6:00 am
Chamber Music You Didn’t Know You Love ( 3 )
Franz Mittler’s 1909 String Quartet No.1 sounds like an old acquaintance from the first notes on. It is this a happy, not derivative, familiarity.
Anyone interested in very good late romantic, Viennese quartet writing will hear the same, warm familiarity. Mittler is another composer from that period that has brought us so many – largely underrated or forgotten – composers like Marx, Schreker, Wellesz, Zeisl, and Zemlinsky. The most famous exponent of this musical style may be –ironically– Arnold Schönberg.
I am tempted to speculate that the prominence of Arnold Schoenberg’s romantic works is related to this (finally passing?) attitude: Playing early Schoenberg is considered the noble, laudable attempt to ease the ‘Philistines’ toward the later, ‘difficult’ Schoenberg. (Of course most people who admit to surprised admiration for Gurrelieder will never actually go on to being enchanted by Aron und Moses, but that’s s different story. Actually, wait… that is precisely my point…)
But playing Zemlinsky or Joseph Marx is considered – rightly – as doing nothing of that sort. It won’t further the ignorant masses to the enlightenment of atonal music. Therefore exposing audiences to it would seem motivated merely by the desire to please them. What a lowly, unworthy goal indeed. What would the world come to if art were allowed to be influenced by the audience’s taste and preferences.
I am not being facetious because I do not appreciate or like modern music. I do – including most everything of Schoenberg. (Just not Moses und Aron quite yet.) But the attitudes that go along with this music have for too long been too damning of everything that did not accord to the spirit of modernism. I am not too concerned with how this may have hampered modern composers to write tonal and conventionally beautiful music – but it has had the effect of effectively suppressing the music of the time of Schoenberg to the point where such glorious composers as Alexander Zemlinsky or Franz Schreker need ardent champions to get any playtime, at all. And that’s our everyone’s loss.
Interesting topic though this is, such speculation is not for now: Franz Mittler and his delectable music is. Mittler was born in 1893 into a family with Jewish roots. He sensed the threat looming over Europe and by 1938 he had emigrated to New York, though not before having made his debut as a violinist in a recital with Clara Haskil (he was eleven years old, she, nine), performed with the Rosé Quartet, and become Karl Kraus’ favorite accompanist. When Mittler married a fellow Viennese in his New York exile, none other than Eric(h) Zeisl was his best man.
Like E.W.Korngold – and to a lesser degree Zeisl – Mittler made a fine career in Hollywood where he apparently adapted to the idea of music-as-entertainment without great internal conflict or difficultly. He worked with a piano quartet (literally: four pianos!) in transcribing and presenting the great orchestra canon of classical music. Another (Hollywood) case of the highbrow / lowbrow distinction blurring and even disappearing for a while.
Mittler, another analogy to Korngold, must have been endowed with particularly sunny nature and good sense of humor. He would not likely have composed Groucho Marx’ “One Finger Polka”, otherwise. When Wolfgang Holzmair gave a Washington recital of early 20th century Austrian fare I wrote that Zeisl and Mittler might perhaps best be described as “the François Poulencs of Entartete Musik… sharing his delight in the whimsical as they do.”
Even in his string quartets, composed when he was still in Vienna, you can hear a nature that does not have too much time for those very serious and stern quartets with their furrowed brows. No sour, thin-lipped academicism here. That’s doubly astonishing: The string quartet has been – at least since Beethoven was finished with them – considered the most serious, severe compositional form. And then 1915-18, when Mittler wrote his Third Quartet, were not exactly happy years for the continent.
But Mittler, a lieutenant in the Imperial and Royal Army, seems to have taken the wistful beauty of a disintegrating multi-ethnic empire as his inspiration, not the carnage. Each movement of his Third Quartet depicts the region of the empire he was at the time stationed in. A “Wolhynian” first movement, a “Serbian Scherzo”, and the slow movement titled “Styria” lead to the wild and vividly descriptive “Rhapsodia Ungherese”. It’s all absolutely beautiful.
As the work of a 16-year old, the first string quartet stands up to other teenage masterworks in the chamber category: Think Bridge’s Sextett, Mendelssohn’s Octet. Perhaps this is a “first love” moment – but so far I respond even to this early quartet with greater enthusiasm than to those of the child-prodigy Korngold, to which they might easily be compared. And the Third is an absolute treasure, anyway.
Mittler really represents a generation lost and hopefully now regained. One that continued to exist parallel to the second Viennese school, but subcutaneously. There is no point in turning this into an unnecessary dichotomy of atonal vs. romantic. But acknowledging that this music has hitherto received too little attention and that it needs and so highly deserves more is in order. The Mittler quartets, played with so much conviction, heart, and skill by the Hugo Wolf Quartet, are a great step toward this end and should be – alongside recently reviewed discs of Eric Zeisl and Joseph Marx – on your music shelf if you have any interest in this style and period.
Previously and since in Chamber Music You Didn’t Know You Love:
( 1 ) – Ludwig Thuille, Piano Quintets
( 2 ) – Joseph Marx, String Quartets
( 3 ) – Franz Mittler, String Quartets
( 4 ) – Felix Weingartner, String Quartets
( 5 ) – Wilhelm Bernhard Molique, String Quartets
Previously and since in Orchestral Music You Didn’t Know You Love:
( 1 ) – Friedrich Ernst Fesca, Symphonies
( 2 ) – Max Bruch, Swedish & Russian Dances
( 3 ) – Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, Orchestral Songs, Symphony
In unrelated news: Today in 1792 Gioachino Rossini was born. Happy 52nd Birthday, Rossini
Tuesday, 2.26.08, 2:18 pm
Classical Performances
Life After Takács – Roger Tapping’s Washington Recital
Roger Tapping is a known quantity among chamber music aficionados in Washington – especially those who have followed the Takács Quartet’s performances when he was on violist-duty for that formidable group. Since leaving the Takács Quartet in 2005 to spend more time with his family, Roger Tapping has continuously shown up in performances with (often very young) quartets at the Corcoran Gallery and Bethesda Music Society where he performed all of Mozart’s String Quintets with the Jupiter, Parker, Daedalus, and Auryn Quartets. Last January he joined the Klavier Trio Amsterdam for the Fauré Piano Quartet.
Retiring from playing in a professional chamber group must be tantamount to enjoying a new life. Instead of being on tour four, five weeks at a time, Tapping – who had previously served in the Raphael Ensemble and the Allegri Quartet – is now away from home for only a few days at a time. This not only means that Tapping can enjoy family life and focus more on teaching at the New England Conservatory but also that he can observe other string quartets he performs with from a detached point of view. Being one step removed, the intricacies of quartet–life become “sociologically interesting”: to see how four young players approach musical problems or react to new music; to observe how veteran groups resolve their differences in as many different – and the same – ways as, for example, married couples might approach theirs.
Though the occasional, wistful pangs of nostalgia for the Takács days still occur, Tapping – who recently spoke to me about his current activities and plans – seems to quite enjoy his newfound peace and the ability to moonlight with great chamber groups, both young and established. For example the Pražák Quartet which Tapping attested to feeling immediately comfortable with – perhaps because their wonderful balance of vigor and warmth is, at least to my ears, related to the playing of the Takács.
For the future we can expect lots of Mozart, Brahms, and Beethoven Quintets with Tapping and a host of fine string quartets but also the Beethoven String Trios, the type of chamber music formation that Tapping generally considers the ‘scariest’ to play because they offer no place to hide. Beethoven’s op.9, specifically, he described as particularly honest, unsentimental exponents thereof – in short: “The real thing”. (In so elucidating these works – works that I have hitherto not responded to with much enthusiasm – Tapping makes me want to seek out the Leopold Trio’s recordings that he recommends.)
Roger Tapping also plans on doing more viola recitals – such as will take place this Friday, the 29th at La Maison Française (7.30PM) where Tapping and pianist Judith Gordon will present a diverse program of Bach (a Gamba Sonata) , Fauré (Après un rêve), Hindemith (Sonata for solo iola), Schumann (Adagio & Allegro op.70), and Shostakovich (Sonata op.147). These recitals (and concerts) are an aspect of a non-chamber violist’s life he finds most pleasing, not the least because getting to play the melody for more than just two bars at a time is a completely new experience.
After talking about his present and future plans, I could not help harking back once more on his time in previous chamber groups. With the Raphael Ensemble from 1983 until 1990 he played alongside composer/performer Sally Beamish and participated in highly regarded recordings on Hyperion, including the Brahms, Dvořák, and Korngold Sextets. With the Allegri Quartet he got to play next to the Pablo Casals student Bruno Schrecker who Tapping recalls fondly as the best bass line player he’d met. With this longest continually performing of British string quartets he played from 1990 until 1995 when, seeking a clean break in his private life, he auditioned for the Takács Quartet who needed to fill the violist’s seat after Gábor Omai had passed away.
He joined Károly Schranz, András Fejér, and Edward Dusinberre (who had himself just become a Takácsi 18 months before Tapping’s arrival), and contributed what was doubtlessly a golden age for the quartet, culminating in CD surveys of the complete Bartók and Beethoven quartets. They are widely considered first choices among modern digital recordings of either. Tapping mentions both when asked about his favorite recordings from that time. When he recently put on the Beethoven (which he had not listened to for a while, in part to avoid overt nostalgia) to see how his group had solved certain problems back then, he found himself “pleasantly surprised” how, despite the continuous development and evolution of how the Quartet approached these works, very nicely the Beethoven still held up. When pressed to chose between them, though, he points to the Bartók as their proudest achievement. (I’m not surprised: I fell in love with that recording nearly four years ago and that love has never ceased.)
The finest way to enjoy Mr. Tapping’s art, short of attending his recitals and concerts in the region, is through his recordings with the Takács Quartet and Raphael Ensemble. On the right I have listed some of my favorites in which he participates – none of which I would want to be without.
-
The recital at La Maison Française will be recorded by WETA and broadcast later in the year.
Sunday, 2.24.08, 4:57 am
Classical Performances
Discover the Königskinder
Engelbert Humperdinck is known for his Hänsel & Gretel (Chandos’ English language recording of which just won the Grammy). It’s a wonderful opera that deserves its attention – on the account of the music as well as the relative accessibility for kids. But it would be a shame if that fame were to come at the expense of another Humperdinck opera, Königskinder – which I believe it does.
It is the only opera of Humperdinck’s that is performed besides Hänsel & Gretel (1893) at all. His other works, suffering from complete obscurity, include: Die Sieben Geislein (“The Big Bad Wolf”, 1985), Dornröschen (“Sleeping Beauty”, 1902), Heirat wider Willen (“The Involuntary Marriage”, 1902-05), Gaudeamus (1915-19), and semi-operatic works like Lysistrata (based on Aristophane’s work, 1908) and Der Blaue Vogel (“The Blue Bird”, 1910-12).
“The King’s Children” or “Royal Children” has its hundredth anniversary some time between early last year (in 1907 the Singspiel version premiered in Munich) and 2010 – when the MET premiered the fully operatic edition. At the MET Die Königskinder trounced Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West which had had its world premiere just a few weeks prior to Humperdinck’s opera. The words of the New York Times Richard Albrich in previewing the event were as true 100 years ago as they are now:
The centenary would be a good reason to bring the opera back on stage, because it is, as I have found out when I caught a performance at the Bavarian State Opera late last year, full of superb music and the drama is, well… acceptable. The story is slightly convoluted but deliciously dark – a fairy tale with a sad end. The witch’s step-granddaughter (“Goose Girl”) tends to her Geese before she is called in to bake some poisoned bread. (”Whoever eats half, dies full death”.) When she meets the Prince who lost his way in the forest she cannot join him because a spell keeps her in the realm of the hut. Then the minstrel, the lumber jack, and the broom-maker arrive to ask the witch (apparently not a completely ostracized witch, this one!) for a prophesy about the next King, since the old one has just died. The witch-cum-oracle predicts the first person to enter town through the gate after the stroke of noon to be king. The minstrel, who recognizes in the Goose Girl one of the Royal Children, tells her about her true heritage. With a prayer to her dead parents the latter then breaks the spell that binds her to the witch and is off to town.
In Act II the Prince, undercover as a swine-herd, is part of the crowd that gathers before noon at the gate. Under the gaze of all it is the Goose Girl – replete her flock of trusty Anatidae – who innocently steps into town. She and the prince embrace but are mocked and driven out of town by the unappreciative burghers who can only see a Swine-herder and a poor Goose-girl in them. The minstrel’s protestations are ignored and only the broom-makers’ daughter recognizes them for who they truly are.
Act III is set in winter, years later. Poor and broken, the Royal Children are now old and weak. They arrive, without recognizing it, at the dilapidated witch’s hut where the broom-maker and lumberjack live. The prince asks for bread – but the lumberjack, grabbing the old loaf baked by the Goose-girl many summers before, won’t give it to him until he has been paid with the prince’s crown. Poisoned, the couple dies – but in a trance of happy hallucinations. A true Liebestod… and not unlike Wagner’s original. The towns-children, led by the minstrel, are searching for the couple, only find them dead. (In my mind, Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten isn’t too far away from this.)
Richard Albrich also points out that this only describes the story superficially while it is choc-full of symbolism. More helpfully, he stresses that, allegorical or not, the opera would succeed or fail on account of its music. That the “beauty, poignancy, and power” of the score, not the decipherable hidden meanings in the libretto, would with the day with audiences. How true. And Königskinder did succeed, too…being regularly performed until World War II, after which it was rarely revived.
Well, the music is such that it deserves a revival – and a performance like the one at the Staatsoper is likely to do its part to convince audiences thereof. Humperdinck, in Königskinder more than anywhere else, sounds like he had reserved the second use rights of Wagner’s music. The Josef Rheinberger student had served as Wagner’s assistant in the first production of Parsifal and as tutor to his son Siegfried. You can hear it. Königskinder has been likened to a children’s Parsifal, but the obviously Wagnerian moments are rather from Die Meistersinger or Die Walküre (Act I, Prince’s entry) while the Prince himself has a whiff of Siegfried about him – rambunctious, naïve, crude, but pure at heart. The character of the Minstrel – and his resigned, gray self in Act III – has Wotan written gently over it.
A lot of the music, even at first hearing, strikes as familiar, stereotypical, and incredibly good. If Hänsel & Gretel is an opera for children, this is a Wagner-opera for children. Crowd scenes remind a little of the Flying Dutchman, while Humperdinck’s parlando composing – swept into melody every so often – would not seem out of place in the Strauss we know from Die Ägyptische Helene or Die Liebe der Danae. And, I might as well say it, it is more moving and touching than most music in these Strauss operas. Yet, for all the similarities with other composers – and Wagner in particular -, Humperdinck’s music in Königskinder is not derivative of other greats, it just rhymes with them. It is solid music, earthy, well crafted, and with a bit of honest self-satisfaction.
The Staatsoper production added its part with a terrific conception, direction, and set (Andreas Homoki, Wolfgang Gussmann) that played up the interesection between fairy tale and psychological allegory. The witch’s hut is a large white wardrobe (hello C.S.Lewis!), the backdrops are faux-naïve children’s paintings of trees and birds. The geese are adorable wood-figures. The whole spiel is a delight, even if the costumes for the crowd scenes – townspeople in shallow pink vs. the natural rural class in green – are of dubious merit.
Goose-girl Juliane Banse baffled and delighted with her huge, almost out-of-body voice – a larger, more mature instrument than you’d ever suspect just seeing her on stage. (Especially as she was barefoot, wearing dainty flowers.) Only toward the end did the voice recede a little. Robert Gambill’s Prince got the boorish, Siegfried-like part of his character just right – and then performed genuinely movingly, touchingly in the death scene. All in absolutely perfect, audible German. Roman Trekel as the minstrel and Catherine Wyn-Rogers, too, showed many strengths and no weaknesses. The orchestra under Thomas Rösner swept the music before it in ways that must have made instant Humperdinck converts.
-
There is only one recording currently available that is worth considering – a performance conducted by Fabio Luisi that includes Dietrich Henschel, Dagmar Schellenberger, and Thomas Moser in the cast. That makes for an automatic recommendation with only one quibble: PROFIL Edition Hänssler really should have included a libretto to make this an even better value.
-
Pictures from the production © Wilfried Hösl, published with kind permission of the Staatsoper München.
Picture of Humperdinck (Berlin, 1911) courtesy Wolfram Humperdinck.
-
P.S. Rumors that Anthony Hopkins will play the lead in “Engelbert Humperdinck: The Movie” are unconfirmed.
Friday, 2.22.08, 11:33 am
Classical Performances
The Cello Suites, Bach
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
I count nearly 70 available recordings of the Bach Cello Suites and I’ve probably missed a few and wasn’t counting transcriptions. I have about a quarter of those recordings, which goes to show that I can show restraint, even when it comes to Bach.
With the Sonatas and Partitas for Violin, the Cello Suites really are – in an abstract sense – among the most perfect creations of Bach’s. It is this perfection (and the occasional challenges to the performer, not likely possible to have been met by any instrumentalist at the time) that make artists and musicologists suggest that they were composed as ‘ideal music’, not necessarily for the practical purpose of being played or performed.
This is the realm of Bachian mysticism where the composer, Plato, and even God seem to rub shoulders. One can dismiss this kind of attitude as absurd or anti-rational, of course. But the way Bach’s music touches those who perform (and listen to) it will always invite this sort of thinking.
I think it was András Schiff talking about Beethoven when he confessed to occasionally feeling guilty about how much he enjoyed playing these works in front of an audience that could only listen to it. This certainly is a statement to would equally well describe Bach and much of his music.
And it must be very enjoyable playing those Cello Suites, because just last year alone, three very notable new recordings were released – and Anne Gastinel’s following on February 26th.
That’s also the date that WPAS will host Jian Wang in a recital of the first, third, and fifth Bach Suites at Sidney Harman Hall. WPAS also hosted Yo-Yo Ma in a recital of Suites one, five, and six at the Kennedy Center two years ago and the National Gallery of Art brought us Mischa Maisky in the same Suites that Wang will be playing. Both were wonderful events in their own way – and Jian Wang’s recital is very promising, too. I enjoyed the Chinese cellist’s recording of the Suites on Deutsche Grammophon when it came out in November of 2005 – although I admit that his beautiful and uncontroversial rendition (despite some attempted links struck between Bach and Chinese musical tradition via Wang) was more pleasing than astounding.
There are astounding recordings that have come out lately and they include Jean-Guihen Queyras (much loved by me for his Ligeti, Dvořák, and Haydn), Steven Isserlis, the hitherto-unknown-to-me Gavriel Lipkind, and re-issues of Fournier (mentioned previously) and the earlier recording of Mischa Maisky’s on DVD.
All are distinguished by a first and foremost musical, not historical approach. Of course the finest Historically Informed Performance Practice (HIP) accounts of any music prove beyond doubt that the musical and historical are not incompatible. But likewise it is not necessary to hear music as its composer might have, in order to enjoy it. If you definitively prefer gut strings, minimal vibrato, and a violincello piccolo in the Sixth Suite, I recommend the stupendous Peter Wispelwey (Channel Classics) or the remarkable Bruno Cocset (Alpha, using not just two but four different instruments for the suites). If you are, like me, a HIP-agnostic, you will find great rewards in any good rendition.
There is no question that all these new recordings are extraordinarily well played. At the time of the Maisky recording (1986) there might still have been a sense of wonder about the facilities of a cellist who could command the Fifth Cello Suite with ease. Nowadays we consider that just about standard fare for anyone who plays the instrument. Sure enough, none of the above cellists gives any sense of struggle in their performances.
Let’s start with Maisky and the Unitel/Deutsche Grammophon DVD: This is his first recording of the Suites, less wild or “romantic” than his later version – though still with occasionally pointed accelerandos, rallentandos, and constant vibrato – and it has suffered from the damning anecdote that Mischa Maisky candidly volunteered, namely that he once walked into a record store where he heard an indistinctive version of the Suites played over the speakers, only to find out that it was his own. When I acquired Deutsche Grammophon’s complete, convenient, and budget priced set of the solo works, where Maisky No.1 is included, I got it for Shlomo Mintz’ mellifluous, silken Sonatas & Partitas and Göran Söllscher’s Lute Suites, but more or less ignored the Cello Suites.
The DVD contains the same recording and watching it now, eight years after his free-wheeling second recording appeared, it reveals surprising strengths. Yes, it is not particularly Maisky-centered, it hasn’t his personality stamped all over it. But this is not necessarily bad. It is more or less a typical 20th century approach of getting the music to sound its possible best on a modern instrument. (Or better: modern strings and bow, for his instrument is hardly modern but instead an incredibly round and warm sounding Domenico Montagnana cello from the first half of the 18th century.)
In comparison to his later account, this is an almost refreshingly straight forward approach benefiting greatly from the superb acoustic in the different rooms of the 16th century Villa Caldogno Nordera (in Vicenza), recorded and filmed one suite at a time. Watching Maisky – not yet decked out in Issey Miyake – sit on his wooden pedestal is more compelling than I would have thought. I am normally bored very quickly by orchestral or purely musical performances on DVD; I get impatient and sometimes even annoyed. Not here, despite very subtle camera changes with focus changing between Maisky’s head, or hands, or the bow. (Humphrey Burton and Horant Hohlfeld directed.)
Maisky, who writes out the repeats because he likes to visualize the continuity and linearity of the music and not think of it in terms of repetition, really only gets animated in the d-minor Prélude. The Courante from that Suite – on the fast side – deviates from his generally measured approach while the Sarabande right after it is very expansive. After everything is bowed and done, Maisky’s first traversal of these suites is nothing less than generous and uncommonly beautiful.
On DVD, this is terrific competition to the available versions from Miklós Perényi, Yo-Yo Ma, Rostropovich (not appreciated by me in any version) and Wen-Sinn Yang. On CD the competition is stronger – and I’ll get back to this little survey of the finest and most recent recordings after I have heard the Anne Gastinel account on naïve.
Continue with Part II
Skip to Part III
Sunday, 2.17.08, 11:40 am
Classical Performances
It’s “String Quartet February”
February is particularly kind to those Washingtonians who love chamber music in general – and string quartets in particular. Three of the finest and most famous quartets are presenting their programs in the District’s three most prestigious chamber concert series.
After the Guarneri String Quartet had provided the upbeat to this string of high caliber performances with their recital at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater in January, it is now the Juilliard Quartet – this most venerable of American chamber groups – who will present a program of Ludwig van Beethoven and Dmitry Shostakovich at the National Gallery of Art. They will also delight with the rarely played Verdi String Quartet.
There’s no telling how long this group – which has of course (slowly, gently) metamorphosed over its 60 years – will be around: Another reason why it would well merit standing in line at the NGA’s West Garden Court to get a seat at this free concert.
We do know for how much longer the Alban Berg Quartet will be around. Not long! This is their retirement tour which really brings to an end a whole age of chamber music which the “ABQ” and the Beaux Arts Trio (last DC performance on April 1st at the Library of Congress!) and Guarneri Quartet (to retire after next season) played such a large part in.
The ABQ’s recordings set a new standard to which many listeners still refer. The group brought perfection of technique and intonation to their performances and recordings long before that was standard or even expected. This precision paved the way for later quartets seeking to ever more ‘perfect’ their renditions. In that sense, the ABQ blazed a trail for groups like the Emerson Quartet. (The cynically inclined might describe the ABQ as “like the Emerson, except with a soul”.)
The Berg’s Library of Congress recital (February 22nd) of Haydn (op.77/1), Beethoven (op.132 in a-minor) and of course a work of their namesake (op.3) should not be missed.
Indeed, there is only one excuse to miss it, and that would be the Takács Quartet which plays their benefit recital at the Corcoran Gallery on, unfortunately, the same day. They bring Haydn’s op.74/2, the Brahms a-minor quartet (of which I have reviewed their and other two other groups’ recordings here and here), and their nothing-short-of-sublime Bartók (Quartet No.5). The Corcoran Gallery is truly the best place to experience string quartets in DC, and the program is excellent. But the Takács Quartet will be back again, the ABQ not. A music lover’s conundrum.
For those who will miss the Takács, there is of course the option to hear the fabulous Roger “Ex-Takács” Tapping in a viola recital at La Maison Française on February 29th where he and pianist Judith Gordon will present a program of Bach, Hindemith, Fauré, Schumann, and Shostakovich. I’ll have more on that in an interview with Mr. Tapping next week.
March, in case you prefer to plan further ahead, will bring more chamber music dates worth circling on your calendar.
March 28th: The next generation of string quartets is so good already that they will likely better all that has come before them. One exponent of that generation is the Jupiter Quartet – and you can hear them at the Corcoran in the Mendelssohn f-minor Quartet, Britten’s Third Quartet, and the Brahms Sextet where Roger Tapping will pop up again, together with Peabody Trio cellist Natasha Brofsky (who is also Mrs. Tapping).
On March 7th the Florestan Trio will play at the Library of Congress. There might be better Piano Trios out there, but if so, I’ve not heard them. Their stunning recordings on the Hyperion label alone crowns these three artists (Susan Tomes, Anthony Marwood, and Richard Lester) – and their excellent programming – Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio, the wonderful Arensky d-minor trio, and Ives (!) makes this a self recommending event.
If I wanted to hear the above mentioned string quartets at their absolute best and were restricted to only one recording of each, my choices would be the Guarneri in Janáček (a revelation when it came out and holding up very well!), the Juilliard’s famed Debussy/Ravel/Dutilleux coupling, Brahms with the Alban Berg Quartet (although their late Beethoven is difficult to pass over), and the stunning Bartók of the Takács Quartet.
Thursday, 2.14.08, 2:24 pm
Repin’s Beethoven
It isn’t the flashiest, nor the technically most demanding, and not likely the most popular – yet quite probably the greatest Violin Concerto: Beethoven’s op.61 from 1806.
The work has an austerity about it that makes it less accessible than the immediately inviting and pleasant Mendelssohn and Bruch concertos (1845, 1867), the robustly charming Brahms concerto (1878), the sugary razzle-dazzle of Tchaikovsky’s barnstormer (1878). Among the six “great violin concertos” it has, if anything, more in common with the 100 year younger Sibelius than its slightly more contemporary brethren.
To display its true qualities it needs – much more so than the other four concertos (Sibelius once again excepted) – to be played not just immaculately but incandescently, resplendently. Truth be told: Such performance come by rarely. Readers may remember Julia Fischer’s performance with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under Yuri Temirkanov in May of 2006. That was one such occasion. Now a recording has come out that promises to be such an occasion, too – at least on paper.
When Vadim Repin was signed up by Universal Music’s Deutsche Grammophon in 2006, it once more showed that DG is really the last traditional ‘major’ classical record company (together with its “UNI” sister labels Decca/London and Philips) that very seriously and smartly operates its business. They know how to pander to local markets for sales (Lang Lang, Daniel Hope, Hilary Hahn), how to use and market an artist’s mass- and sex-appeal (Hélène Grimaud, Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazon), or how to spot trendiness (Yundi Li, Gustavo Dudamel, Measha Brueggergosman). Without these qualities, no major label could survive in the current market and there is little that can be said against this form of marketing. Most especially not since all of these artists are very fine; some even superb.
But DG also takes on artists of sheer talent when they are not the most readily marketable. This is where DG shows its true color and artistic ambitions. The recent addition of Pierre-Laurent Aimard to their roster is a case in point. Most serious music lovers will know and cherish Aimard’s work in modern and standard repertoire, his fierce musical intelligence and expressive skills. But the 50 year old Frenchman is hardly a classical music superstar.
The same goes – to some extend – for the quiet, somber Vadim Repin. He is not as flashy and gypsy-esque exciting as Maxim Vengerov. He has not the same size tone that Nikolaj Znaider, or the sweetly romancing ways and “ideal-son-in-law” appeal of Joshua Bell. But for variety of color and beauty of tone alone Repin’s inclusion in the Violinist’s pantheon would be more easily justified than any of the above.
For Repin’s first soloist-album with DG, he chose to finally tackle recording Beethoven. And to that end he teamed up with the venerable Vienna Philharmonic (where Beethoven has home-field advantage like nowhere else) and one of the few unarguably great conductors: Riccardo Muti.
Elegance, feeling, and perfection are a given with Vadim Repin’s performances – and his rendition of the Beethoven Violin Concerto is no different from that. Repin plays his Beethoven with brio, confidence, and great dignity. He does not give in to the work or surrender to its mysteries, he subdues it with sheer skill and the forcefulness of his musicality.
This is not to be mistaken with forcefulness of tone. The opposite rather is the case: Repin does not — neither live nor through a recording engineer’s tricks — aim for a particularly big tone. There’s in-built humility in his playing, a self-effacing quality – even to a fault. His approach is not as infinitely pure as was Julia Fischer’s, nor does it have the same stern delicacy. But he offers an abundance of moods and hues (if less shades than he is capable of). There is little that is hushed, ethereal (Fischer), or – on the other end of the interpretive spectrum – bold, aggressively lean, with premeditated freshness (Zehetmair).
Vadim Repin’s is a middle of the road romantic approach – and among the very best in that spectrum. His tone, like a needle through leather – round, steady, deliberate – reminds more of Nathan Milstein, even though Repin professes to “always think about Menuhin in terms of this work”.
Apparently Repin had briefly considered the Beethoven/Schneiderhan cadenza from op.61a – the Piano version of the concerto – but in the end opted for the traditional Kreisler-cadenza for this recording. He did so, too, in his performance with the West German Radio Orchestra under Seymon Bychkov that I was able to catch not too long ago. The cadenza-choice is a missed opportunity to my ears, because the almost-Beethoven version is much, much more than merely “different”. It’s a fresh air for a concerto we know well – and the timpani-shadow that links to the work’s opening a pleasant dramatic touch. In any case, this is hardly a serious quibble. In concert the WDR SO matched his excellence step by step with finely honed, well controlled playing.
Of course the Vienna Philharmonic under Ricardo Muti manages to do the same. Stately, not red-blooded, they lay out the first movement with noblesse and grandeur. It’s an altogether measured performance that – with less prominent participants – would probably be castigated as languid. The sound is warm, not to say hazy.
Repin reckons that after the Beethoven he couldn’t simply slap another concerto onto the CD. The result of his deliberations was to throw in Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata op.47. Partner in crime is none other than Martha Argerich – and what a partner she is. With her on board there is no danger of the sonata becoming an undue showcase for the violinist with the keyboard the mainstay. This truly is a “Sonata for Piano and Violin”. Not because Argerich dominates – she is far too distinguished a chamber musician to even be tempted to do that – but because both Repin and she play with the complete confidence in each other’s ability to make the right decisions.
Unlike the understated concerto performance, this is red-blooded music making. Bold and gentle in turn, vigorous one moment and touching another, and ever well balanced and well recorded this matches in quality of collaboration the superb Augustin Dumay and Maria-João Pires (with Argerich and Repin retaining more of the characteristic of two individuals rather than a whole made of two). Working of memory, rather than direct comparison, I like this better, too, than the much cherished Kremer/Argerich recording. Both, the Kremer and the Dumay performances are part of wonderful complete sets and not really in competition with this one-off sonata. But if Repin and Argerich should decide to throw in a Beethoven sonata with each of Repin’s and Argerich’s upcoming releases, I would not mind at all.
DG, meanwhile, should be lauded for not ‘encouraging’ the artists to skip a repeat or hurry up – even though the total playing time of this double CD is just shy of two minutes above what could be squeezed onto one disc. Wisely DG doesn’t turn generosity into greed by offering the CDs priced as one.
P.S. Another recent release of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, well regarded by critics but not sampled by myself yet, is that of Isabelle Faust with Jiri Belohlávek. She does play original cadenzas (based on Beethoven’s but not, at least that’s my understanding, identical to the Schneiderhan’s) is less expansive than Muti/Repin and she also throws in the Kreutzer Sonata – with the young and very talented Alexander Melnikov.
Saturday, 2.9.08, 1:16 pm
Exposition. Repeat!?
Preparing a review of several recordings of Brahms’ First Symphony I inevitably came across the matter of the “exposition repeat”. Depending on whom you ask, the exposition repeat is either a complete non-issue or one of the most crucial elements in performing classical music. Perhaps it merits a very basic introduction and comment.
In the classical sonata form (it applies not just to sonatas but just about any compositional form of the “Classical Style”) that composers from Haydn to Brahms and beyond used extensively, the exposition is the ‘opening statement’ where the main themes of a movement are presented. The formal exposition repeat does not modify the musical material and just repeats it. Conductors in the past have taken to considering these repeats as mere formality – a convention – and hence optional. Most, if not every, great conductor of the past skipped at least some repeats in their recordings and performances. This practice continues to-day, but has come under attack from critics and a few performers who claim that no repeat is optional (not in Bach, not in Mozart, and especially not from Beethoven onward) and that not observing them is tantamount to a crime.
Particularly excited (even vituperative) reviewers might dismiss a modern performance out of hand for not including every repeat. (And yet, strangely, continue to hold dear their old favorites that blithely flaunt them.) I must confess that with very few exceptions, I could not care less. Better a repeat skipped than dutifully repeated. And most listeners might not even notice their absence unless looking at the timing of a movement or following a score. The soul listens along, of course, and it needs no score to instinctively find something missing… but if it does, it’s not likely the repeat of the exposition that it misses, but spirited playing.
One key reason composers included repeats was to familiarize their audience a little more with what was likely music they heard for the first time. Today, with the canon of classical music well –if passively– known to listeners, that isn’t necessary anymore. That’s certainly Alfred Brendel’s attitude who, writing about Schubert’s last piano sonatas in the New York Review of Books, considers “these repeats… vestigial manifestations of an archaic mentality and therefore merely pro forma.”
András Schiff is, like Brendel, one of the great interpreters of the classical central European canon: Schubert and Mozart (but also Bach) and now Beethoven, too. He has just completed a cycle of Beethoven Piano Sonatas — performed and recorded in chronological order in Zürich and released by ECM. (I reviewed the first CD, Sonatas opp.2 and op.7 when it came out.) And this cycle really is ‘complete-complete’. He not only faithfully observes every exposition repeat but repeats development and recapitulation sections, too – even if the score does not explicitly ask for it. Arguing that since Beethoven broke with convention so often, his sticking to convention should be considered an equally conscious decision on his part. ‘Repeats in Beethoven are not a question of choice, they are a must’ he firmly and categorically states, expressing puzzlement at all colleagues who take liberties with repeats. (Hear András Schiff talk about the F-major sonata op.10 as part of a truly fascinating lecture series exploring all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas [Guardian Unlimited].)
One good point about observing repeats is of course that we should get used to them. In the Brahms Fourth Symphony, there come a few bars after the exposition that suggest the repeat – only to go elsewhere with the work. This toying with expectations and the witty departure from what’s conventional depends on conventions existing in the first place. Still – it seems a small price to pay for being flexible about the matter. If nothing else, being agnostic about exposition repeats will put one in the good and very musical company of Günter Wand, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Bruno Walter, von Karajan, Weingartner, Erich Kleiber and Otto Klemperer. Wilhelm Furtwängler eschewed them more often than not, and so did Toscanini. Indeed, I don’t know of a conductor before Carlos Kleiber and Leonard Bernstein – the first repeat-fetishists, if you will – who didn’t habitually skip ‘less important’ repeats. (Judging from recordings alone does have its pitfalls though, because conductors might only have given up on the repeat to fit a movement onto one side of a record or a work into the allocated airtime.)
Certainly for Brahms’ First Symphony, which I will be discussing later this week, I do not see any compelling, inherent reason why the repeat should (or should not) be taken – I only care whether or not a conductor ‘argues’ his choice compellingly in purely musical terms.
Tuesday, 2.5.08, 11:38 am
Korngold Sr. & Jr. – Cliché, Critic and Composer
The music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold has enjoyed a little renaissance over the last decade or two. He is no longer the neglected, unknown master; the hidden Wunderkind of 20th century classical music. The point is proven by the pleasant fact that his entire œvre is available on commercial recordings – from eighth different versions of the Violin Concerto (Heifetz, Perlman, Shaham, Mutter, to name only the most prominent accounts – Kavakos and Hahn offer it on DVD) to a proud rendition of “The Goose-liver at the Durschnitz-residency” (a song for baritone taken on by Dietrich Henschel).
“Korngold 101” is easily encapsulated in: Precocious teen and Wunderkind who composed too-beautiful music to be taken seriously at a time when modernism swept the cultural stage. Composer of highly successful film music in his years in Hollywood – and consequently snubbed by the “real classical music” ‘elite’.
That’s good enough for the start – but just how much more complicated, conflicted, twisted, and interesting Korngold’s story is can be experienced at an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Vienna that will run through May 18th.
The first point is made by the exhibition’s title: “The Korngolds”. This is not about Erich Wolfgang Korngold alone, but in almost equal measure about his father, Julius Leopold, too. (Little Erich was given his middle name in honor of Mozart – considering his father’s middle name and the path that Erich should take a touching bit of irony.)
In order to understand Erich Korngold’s situation as a composer in Vienna, it is essential to have a grasp of just how dominant a figure his father was. Chief music critic for the Neue Freie Presse as successor to Eduard Hanslick, he commanded not just the most important music criticism position in Vienna, he was the arbiter of what is good and bad: in essence he was the pope of musical taste. Not quite able to speak ex cathedra, perhaps, but his word carried weight. So much weight, indeed, that his word could make artistic life in Vienna impossible for all those who aroused his fervent ire. In that sense, Julius Korngold not only shaped the musical life of Vienna but also of Berlin – whereto all those fled that could not get a leg on the ground in hostile Vienna.
It is one of the most beautiful ironies in music criticism that there were never before nor ever thereafter classical music critics who prepared themselves more diligently for their reviews than Hanslick and Korngold, who were more knowledgeable about music, music theory, and the work they were going to review. Whenever possible, every new work played through – several times – on the piano and painstakingly analyzed before being reviewed. Yet, despite this profundity and seriousness in preparation and self-perception, not Hanslick or Korngold nor most of their erudite contemporaries were – amid much very perceptive criticism – able to overcome polemical and ideologically tainted attacks on what they thought “should not be”. Those of Hanslick’s judgments that now seem ill-considered (Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, Wagner, etc.) are more famous than his ample insight. Korngold loved everything that was in any way related to Gustav Mahler and otherwise more or less hated everything that Hanslick would not have liked, either.
That it was to the main music critic of the most important city for classical music that a son was born who should turn out one of the greatest composing prodigies in music history is another cute twist of fate. Korngold Sr. didn’t trust his potential bias at first and sought the opinion of 40 leading critics everywhere but in Vienna to judge his 11-year old son’s ballet piano score to “The Snowman”. The response ranged from baffled enthusiasm to bewilderment. One critic in Budapest was so enthused that he went public with his ‘finding’ – and before long (against the will of Papa Korngold), the “Snowman” was given a big premiere in a gala performance honoring the Emperor’s name day (October 4th, 1910).
The Korngold exhibit, based on a concept of Michael Haas (known to classical music aficionados who read the small print in liner notes as the producer of Decca’s “Entartete Musik” series), shows us the life of Korngold and his father from the earliest days until Korngold’s death in 1957, dividing it more or less into seven stages and eight rooms. The influence and power of Julius is illustrated with facsimiles of the “Neue Freie Presse” (where Korngold had the lower third of the first three pages (!) to write about whatever he wanted to) and loud interjections of some of Korngold’s pointedly phrased, strong opinions via speaker that interrupt everything you might try to do. Even three rooms further you can still hear his cantankerous howling about atonal music. That you can’t escape his opinions and ideas – not in Vienna of the time, at any rate – is the deliberate, unsubtle, well-made point.
Korngold’s (greatest, at least biggest) opera “Das Wunder der Heliane” (Decca’s re-issue of which I recently reviewed) gets its own room – which might seem much to us, if we don’t know the work or how important it was at its time. It was given 45 performances between the two opera houses in Hamburg and Vienna. Posterity has obscured our view a little by the contemporary and greater success of Krenek’s “Jonny spielt auf”, but the two operas were pitched against each other as equals. The monopolist manufacturer Austrian Tabacco issued two cigarette brands: An unfiltered brand named “Jonny” – and nicely packaged, filtered and perfumed cigarettes called “Heliane”. (With the economics of smoking mimicking art, “Jonny” is still available, “Heliane”, not.)
Not the least to – temporarily – escape his unbearably overbearing father, Korngold ‘fled’ to Hollywood for one season where Max Reinhardt, his collaborator on many Strauss-Operetta projects, persuaded Korngold to work with him on Warner Brother’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Once Hollywood had noticed Korngold, at his arrival easily the most talented musician to work in film, his future options looked bright when he had to leave Vienna not to escape his father’s influence (Julius joined Korngold and his wife, Luzi at the last possible moment), but Hitler. His career for film is well known and well documented in the exhibit. Sea Hawk, Captain Blood, Robin Hood are all there – as is Kings Row which was of course the break-through hit for the 40th President of the United States.
A myriad of interesting information can be found in this lovingly presented exhibit as well as the thorough 200 page catalog that comes with a CD of important or personal excerpts of Korngold’s music and playing. Curious factoids emerge: Korngold’s Cello Concerto, for example, was premiered by the Hollywood String Quartet’s Eleanor Slatkin – while she was pregnant with Leonard Slatkin’s little brother Fred (Zlotkin).
When Korngold died on November 29th in 1957 the program of the memorial concert at Schoenberg Hall, University of California (one of several items lent by the Library of Congress’ Music Division) lists Louis Kaufman as the participating violinist. Kaufman played violin in many of Korngold’s movies, but his claim to fame is having been the first violinist to record the Four Seasons.
The exhibition and catalogue are presented in German and English throughout and runs through May 18th. A discussion of recordings of Korngold’s music will follow soon.
Picture Credits:
1.) Erich Wolfgang Korngold age 12
2.) Julius Korngold in Los Angeles 1942
3.) Korngold at the piano, approx. 1940
4.) Erich Wolfgang Korngold conducting, Hollywood 1944
All pictures © Korngold Family Estate
A small survey of Korngold recordings can be found here: The Sounds of Korngold.