Sunday, 3.29.09, 6:00 am
April in Music
It’s getting busy in April—and when during some months of the year it’s difficult to find any performance alluring enough to go, now it’s getting difficult to choose one concert over another as they begin to crowd around the same dates.
Wednesday, April 1st
Stupendous violist (and ARD Prize winner) Kim Kashkashian can be heard in a free concert at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (7:30PM). Together with Dimitri Murrath (2008 ARD Contemporary Music Prize winner and Primrose Competition winner) she will play a program including Vivaldi, Mansurian, Bartók.
Alas, the Washington National Opera will show a performance of Britten’s Peter Grimes (read Robert R. Reilly’s review) at 7:30PM that day, which might be the last chance to catch it since the other performance on April 4th at 7PM, is already sold out.
Friday, April 3rd
There is a surprising amount of baroque opera available in the Washington region, with Opera Lafayette’s production of Handel’s “L’Allegro ed il Pensieroso ed il Moderato” under Ryan Brown being the most promising. Not technically an opera but a Pastoral Ode based in two thirds on John Milton poetry, you can check for yourself out whether this lovely piece makes Handel the granddaddy of English”Cow Pat” music. Most conveniently, the performance takes place at the very suited Kennedy Center Terrace Theater at 7:30PM.
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra begins its series of performances of Mahler’s 9th under Marin Alsop. In case of doubt about her Mahler credentials, she will precede with Leonard Bernstein’s short “Opening Prayer” (which ended up part of the Concerto for Orchestra), lest anyone forget who she studied under. The performances on April 3rd and 5th are at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (8PM and 3PM, respectively), on April 4th the BSO comes to Strathmore (8PM).
Also on April 3rd, the Pacifica Quartet will perform at the Barns at Wolf Trap at 8PM, including two strong suits: Mendelssohn and Ligeti.
Saturday, April 4th
I must confess utter ignorance of the music of William Doppman, Jacob Druckman, Eric Moe (not the Swedish hockey player), and Marjorie Merryman, which is precisely why the 21st Century Consort performance at the Reynolds Center on Saturday at 5PM looks so very intriguing. At least it does, if you are at all interested in contemporary American music.
Saturday evening, there’ll be a screening of The General by the silent film actor whose work has aged the least, Buster Keaton, with the soundtrack performed live by organist Dennis James and the NSO. (Kennedy Center Concert Hall, 8PM.)
Sunday, April 5th
The Verdi Requiem performed by the Washington Chorus & Orchestra (KC Concert Hall, 3PM) would be worth considering, but that’s difficult to recommend when the Washington National Cathedral Choir & Baroque Orchestra perform Bach’s St. John Passion the same day at 4PM.
If you are based in Baltimore, though, the recital of Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake at Shriver Hall, 5.30PM might keep you there.
Monday, April 6th
A performance of the Simón Bolívar (Youth) Orchestra of Venezuela under Gustavo Dudamel, should be self-recommending, not the least because the undeniable excitement that this combination brings to concert audiences has proven impossible to capture on his recordings. WPAS presents the concert at the KC Concert Hall at 8PM.
Tuesday, April 7th
Tuesday it’s Noontime Cantata time (Nur jedem das Seine, BWV 163) with the Washington Bach Consort at the Church of the Epiphany.
Wednesday, April 8th
A Krystian Zimerman recital is always worth going to, even with the program (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Szymanowski) not yet announced in detail. Prepare for Grażina Bacewicz’ Second Piano Sonata as encore. Presented by WPAS at the Music Center at Strathmore (8PM).
Thursday, April 9th
It’s not easy to predict what a performance of Kurt Masur will bring, but hearing him and the NSO (with Heidi Grant Murphy and John Relyea) in the Brahms Requiem at the KC Concert Hall (7PM on Thursday, 8PM on Friday and Saturday) does hold some allure.
Thursday, April 16th
The concert a week later might be a safer bet: Leonidas Kavakos and Iván Fischer can scarcely be imagined to disappoint. Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony occupies the evergreen position in those three concerts, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto (of which Kavakos has just released a new recording) the highlight, and the world premiere of Daniel Kellogg’s “Western Skies” (commissioned by the NSO) a genuinely interesting item of classical “music with a pulse”. The Mendelssohn will be performed on Thursday (7PM) and Saturday (8PM), while Friday (8PM) offers the all Tchaikovsky package with the latter’s Violin Concerto being played instead of Mendelssohn’s.
Friday, April 17th
WETA broadcast the Vocal Arts Society’s last Felicity Lott / Graham Johnson recital some time last October. The two impeccably musical artists will be back for another one on April 17th at the Austrian Embassy (7.30PM) with a program of “French song with an occasional English accent”.
At the Kreeger Museum that day, the St. Lawrence String Quartet will play Haydn (The Eb Quartet from op.9), Mendelssohn (op.80), and Hindemith (7:30PM), which is one of the two options for highest quality chamber music that day.
The other recital takes place at Strathmore, where WPAS presents the Tokyo String Quartet in Haydn (op.76/1), Beethoven (op. 18/4) and Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major with Lynn Harrell taking the additional cello part. (8PM)
April 17th is also when the Catholic University Opera performances of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea start. (At 7:30PM on Friday and Saturday, at 2PM on Sunday.)
Saturday, April 18th
Handel’s Xerxes, meanwhile, will be put on the Maryland Opera Studio’s stage at the Ina and Jack Kay Theatre. Starting on the 18th, subsequent performances take place on the 22nd, 24th (all at 7:30PM) and Sunday April 26th (3PM).
The 18th also brings one of my favorite string quartets to town, the Quatuor Mosïques—unparalleled in Haydn (at least on record) and working on a Beethoven cycle (op.18 is now finished) that promises to stand out amid the many fine extant Beethoven cycles. At the Library of Congress (8PM), assuming you get in, you could hear for yourself.
Sunday, April 19th
Violinist David Grimal and the pianist Georges Pludermacher recorded a well received CD of Bartók, Debussy, and Ravel a few years back (Ambroisie 104) and they are leaving a musical mark in Washington with four recitals in as many days and three different locations.
On April 19th and 20th they will be at Dumbarton Oaks (7PM and 8PM), on Tuesday, April 21st at La Maison Française (7:30PM), and on April 22nd at the Residence of the French Ambassador, courtesy of the Embassy Series.
Thursday, April 23rd
From Thursday until Saturday David Zinman will lead the NSO in the most quintessentially romantic program of the season. Not the sappy Valentines-romantic vein that a Tchaikovsky overdose capped with Carl Maria von Weber might constitute, but ‘romantic’ as illustrative of what music from the late romantic period is all about. Don’t let the names Webern and Schoenberg get in the way: Webern’s Langsamer Satz is one of the most magnificent late-late romantic string quartet statements and although the string orchestra version is a little more difficult to pull off, it should not fail to be gorgeous. Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night, too, is from the later dodecaphonist’s tonal, romantic period. The program is capped with Brahms’ Fourth Symphony. (Thursday at 7PM, Friday and Saturday at 8PM.)
Friday, April 24th
April 24th holds in stow the Guarneri Quartet in one of their last performances in the region ( playing Beethoven, Kodaly (!), and being joined by the Left Bank Quartet for Mendelssohn’s Octet. Clarice Smith Center, 8PM.
Also: More of Haydn Baryton Trios from the Geringas Baryton Trio at the Library of Congress (8PM). They’ll play again on Sunday, April 26th, at the National Gallery of Art.
And although it’s often that “Twist” I don’t like about the achingly hip BSO “Symphony with a Twist” concerts aimed at a younger crowd, Ravel’s Piano Concerto for Left Hand with Christopher O’Riley, perhaps topped with a Radiohead-transcription encore, should be worth considering a trip up to Strathmore (8PM).
Sunday, April 26th
The inscape chamber orchestra has a very interesting program in store: George Antheil’s “Jazz Symphony” followed by Ives’ Third Symphony and a Conlon Nancarrow work which they will perform at 5PM at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Bethesda.
A little further north, at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville, another of my favorite string quartets, the Jerusalem Quartet, will perform. I don’t know the program, but it’s a quartet I don’t need to know the program to know that I’ll want to hear it. (7:30PM)
Thursday, April 30th
The Vocal Arts Society presents the “Theresienstadt” recital. Consisting of music created by the inmates of the ghetto-cum-concentration camp Terezin, it is a program that had its inception at the International Forum on the Holocaust in Stockholm in 2000 where Anne Sofie von Otter was asked to perform. Last year Deutsche Grammophon issued a CD of that music where von Otter is joined by several famous colleagues including Daniel Hope and her regular pianist Bengt Forsberg who are also at the Music Center at Strathmore (8PM).
Tuesday, 3.24.09, 6:00 am
Vienna to Vienna via London: The Philharmonia’s “City of Dreams” Tour
Vienna, that city of bygone imperial allure, more louche than glamorous, hosted London’s Philharmonia Orchestra under their new music director Esa-Pekka Salonen in two concerts of Ur-Viennese repertoire. Part of a series entitled “Vienna, City of Dreams”, the orchestra has embarked on exploring and explaining repertoire that is quintessential for Vienna around the turn of the last century, the Vienna of the Secession, the Vienna that the Second Viennese School was borne out of, the Vienna of Freud and Jung (hence “Dreams”), Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Karl Kraus, Mahler and Schoenberg.
Only Gustav Mahler’s works are unambiguously popular among this repertoire, while Schoenberg’s name alone (never mind Berg and Webern) still puts the fear of dissonance into the traditional, bonhomous concert-goer, and the late romantic likes of Zemlinsky, Schreker, or Schmidt are—fitful and short lived revivals aside—ignored.
With patience and passion, Salonen takes potential audiences to this music via concerts and talks, which are featured as podcasts and videos on the Philharmonia’s expansive website, where a whole section laden with specially produced films is dedicated just to this project. The goal is to reach an audience well beyond the regular or even potential concert attendees—but even the most abundant collection of interviews, musical excerpts, and videos can only go so far in communicating the magnetism of this music. Concert performances remain the touchstone for the success of this repertoire.
On March 14th and 15th, the Philharmonia took this music ‘home’, presenting two programs of Schoenberg, Zemlinksy, and Mahler at the Vienna Konzerthaus—the 1800 seat art nouveau concert hall (also including first two, now three, chamber music halls) built in that just that period, inaugurated in 1913 with Richard Strauss’ Festive Prelude for Orchestra & Organ op.61 (composed for the occasion) and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
The first night opened with Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night op.4, which was more loud than luxuriant: a display of power and force, supported with sonorous sound and hampered by unlovely strings. For all their Viennese romanticism immersion, there was little of the local lilt that would have given the desired Viennese-wistful touch of yearning. Nor was Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony shown at its possible best. Greater precision and more, well, lyricism, would surely have helped make a better impression. Juka Uusitalo’s impeccable diction, though, made following the printed text unnecessary—even during the mercilessly loud passages by an orchestra operating under the dictum “Fortissimo is the new Mezzo Forte”. Solveig Kringelborn’s contribution was equally dramatic if less captivating.
The unquestionably spoiled Viennese concert mavens were out in force on Sunday—and now they were rewarded with something special. No one can better charm an audience into benevolently considering the difficulties of Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto as the romantic statements they are than Mitsuko Uchida. With softness and a reputation as the high priestess of well considered beauty, even an audience in Vienna (a city often progressive in production, never consumption) could appreciate her touching argument for the work. Uchida was supported in that effort by the efficient and well organized reading that Salonen drew from the Philharmonia. The work could sound more compelling, still, if every note were made to evolve from the previous one. But shy of this rather ideal than realistic state (Boulez and Uchida with the Vienna Philharmonic come close, Karajan unfortunately never recorded it, my hopes for the future rest on Daniele Gatti, Salonen’s recording with the Philharmonia and Ax I don’t know yet), the Philharmonia’s accuracy and commitment were as good as it likely gets.
The main ingredient in the Philharmonia’s stint in Vienna, and the work most suited for Salonen to show his orchestra off, was Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. The orchestra’s loudness factor (that band obviously “goes to 11”), was put to good use right away in the early climaxes of the first movement. The brass didn’t growl and creak here as on their recording with Sinopoli, but was near-flawless and bold. Rhythmic shifts were not very fierce nor returns to delicacy pronounced, but that was made up for with raw energy by an orchestra that tore into the music every opportunity it had. Appropriately raw and gutsy in the Ländler and with an approximation of schmaltzy Weltschmerz in the Allegro assai, the second violins repeatedly outclassed the first violin section. The third and fourth movement, except for a coarse harpist, were world class. The brass section, surely the pride of the Philharmonia, knocked the listeners back into their seats, the cellos (solely among the strings) proved capable of beautiful pianissimos, and Salonen pulled the music through the long arch of the Adagio like a strudel-dough that never tore even in the least energetic moments. Viennese music had at last arrived in Vienna.
Monday, 3.23.09, 6:00 am
New Releases: CDs
Horn Concertos by Antonio Rosetti
"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.
When checking ArkivMusic to see how many other recordings of (Francesco) Antonio Rosetti’s horn concertos there are, I was very surprised to find scarcely anything. CPO has covered the clarinet-, oboe-, bassoon-, and two-horns concerto trail in a boxed set. But apart from a 12 year old EBS release with soloist Ifor James that offers two horn concerts, I see no dedicated Rosetti disc of these works.
That’s a shame, as it turns out, because Bohemia-born Antonio Rosetti a.k.a. Anton Rös(s)ler (1750-92) wrote terrific music that is very much worth hearing. If you check the on-line archive of Fanfare Magazine, you will find that every Fanfare reviewer that’s come across Rosetti seems to agree: their reactions could be summarized by Michael Carter’s conclusion (reviewing violin concertos and symphonies on CPO) that “[i]f you like Mozart and Haydn, there’s no doubt you’ll quickly warm to [Rosetti].”
Perhaps that description seems so very apt because I am listening to this disc, as I write these lines, in the congenial surrounding of a Viennese coffee house on a Sunday morning where even the banal can appear in Mozartean sugarcoating. Apart from Rosetti’s music decidedly not being kitsch or derivative, though, this music would put smiles on any inclined faces from Boise to Bangalore.
Constant comparison—usually kind but patronizing—to Mozart doesn’t do justice to Rosetti because listening to good music isn’t a competition unless someone had space and time for no more than four horn concertos from the classical period. If you have room for at least four more, you might make them these. This is truly enjoyable music that can withstand focused listening but also serve well as—dare I say it—background music… it’s as if he had had morning drive-time in mind.
Johannes Moesus who conducts the exceptionally well playing Bavarian Chamber Philharmonic on this disc recorded by Bavarian Radio 2001 and re-issued by Arte Nova, is something of a specialist with three Rosetti discs on CPO and two on MDG already to his name. Radek Baborak, 1994 1st prize winner at the ARD Competition, has been first hornist of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, solo hornist of the Munich Philharmonic, and is now the solo hornist of the Berlin Philharmonic. His performance is, not surprisingly, superb.
Everything—music, performances, sound—about this Rosetti disc is compelling, giving cause for temperate enthusiasm… something that can’t be said about every Arte Nova release. The numbering is taken from Stephen E. Murray’s 1996 catalog of Rosetti’s works. C47 is apocryphal. There are ten more extant horn concertos of Rosetti out there: Bring them on.
Rosetti is featured on WETA’s CD Pick of the week, too: On a Naxos disc of German Flute Concertos Rosetti gets to shine with his concerto in E-flat next to those of a Peter von Winter and Franz Lachner.
Thursday, 3.19.09, 6:00 am
New Releases: CDs
Louis Spohr, Radio-Friendly
"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.
Louis Spohr has always had a place in “The Art of the Clarinet” type of compilations and as a pleasant chamber music filler coupled with Brahms, Beethoven, or Schubert. Marco Polo then started a terrific series dedicated to his String Quartets and Quintets that continues to this day. Orfeo and CPO discovered the appeal of Spohr soon thereafter and as of late we have the good people at Hyperion turning their attention to his symphonies.
Spohr can’t, therefore, be said to be a particularly neglected composer, but despite the increasing discography he somehow still manages to stand in the shadow of, among others, Mendelssohn. Every time I hear his music, I want to cry out—lest someone think otherwise—that the reason for that is not to be found in the quality of his work. There is nothing I’ve heard of Spohr yet that was just ‘serviceable’ or ‘competent’, to use two adjectives routinely employed to kill a composer’s output with kindness.
If there are WETA listeners who do not yet know Spohr from his clarinet concertos or various chamber works, they might do well imagining a continuous line of musical development from Mozart via Spohr to Mendelssohn as if Mozart—Beethoven—Brahms had never happened. (Note in particular his exceptional opera “Faust”.) There is nothing of the brooding and belabored romanticism of the latter two composers in Spohr’s works which, instead, teem with joyful spirit, luminous but not fluffy; delicate but not flimsy. The skeleton is classical, the meat romantic.
Camerata Freden, the chamber ensemble of the Freden International Music Festival with roving membership, here presents the early Nonet in F (written in 1813, the first to use flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass; predating Onslow’s by over 40 years and Rheinberger’s by 70) and the String Sextet in C, written during and dedicated to the German revolution 1848.
Both works are very easy on the ears— the Sextet a double barreled string trio (like Boccherini’s Sextets) that smoothly skates its classical-romantic course; wind-heavy and bubbly the Nonet. As Colin Anderson rightly said of the Nonet in Fanfare Magazine when reviewing the Ensemble 360’s recording: “witty, elegant, and expressive: every bit as good, I suggest, as Beethoven’s Septet and Schubert’s Octet.” (Although I’d caution against too much comparison of Spohr to Beethoven which might lead to misleading expectations that could be one of the causes of the relative short shrift Spohr has been getting.)
Given how much I like Spohr’s chamber works, I have surprisingly few of the available versions for comparison. For the Nonet, Anderson places the Ensemble 360 slightly ahead of the Gaudier Ensemble on Hyperion. Having heard neither of those, I hold the Consortium Classicum on Orfeo in the highest regards, as I cherish the Villa Musica Ensemble on MDG. Together with the Camerata Freden they form a classy triptych of which this release has the most precise, transparent sound. The Villa Musica Ensemble (on a different disc) is the main competition in the Sextet, while the New Haydn Quartet (reissued on Naxos) can’t quite match the precision and liveliness of the Camerata Freden players.
It’s almost impossible to miss Spohr when listening to WETA: The Nonet was last played in February, earlier this morning the Sonata for Harp & Violin E-flat got a spin, and tonight, at 9:23PM there’ll be yet more Spohr again. Enjoy.
Thursday, 3.12.09, 6:00 am
New Releases: CDs
“American Classics” – Chamber Works of Leland Smith
"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.
If “listenable” and “interesting” didn’t indicate condescension and damning with faint praise, I’d make them the two first adjectives to describe the chamber music of Leland Smith (b. 1925) on this Naxos “American Classics” disc, because Smith’s music is both interesting and listenable, but not in the least worthy of condescension. In fact, this is modern music, frequently spiky and abrupt, that continuously holds your attention or regains it when you get distracted. It offers a string of pleasant surprises to the listener who is willing and eager to give contemporary classical music the benefit of the doubt, but is let down all too often. Brian Ferneyhough lovers will find it kitsch; those who think Bartók is modern, random noise.
That is, in short, the basis from which you might want to judge my most subjective term “listenable”: not embarrassed by the Romantic strain that creeps into American modernist works, nor afraid of modernism itself. You probably know who you are, and you know whether you might be at least interested in a disc from this series. If you are not already intrigued by the idea of an American student of Olivier Messiaen’s, Roger Session’s, and Darius Milhaud’s, chances are that asking you to consider Smith’s Sonatina for violin and piano from 1953 or his Piano Sonata from 1954—at almost 15 minutes the longest work on this disc—will not yield a new convert.
The rest take note: Smith is a charming Kleinmeister whose pieces offer anything from the pithy to bold, whimsical to aggressive, flighty changes of mood that make these chamber works varied without coming across as unmotivated, indecisive, or erratic. His Sonata for Viola and Piano contains some very dynamic piano writing that sounds fun to perform, its nervous quality thrown into sharp contrast with lyrical interludes.
I tend to be a little skeptical when a composition’s movements has titles like “Quarter Note = c. 80–82”—why bother with the (pretense of) old fashioned sonata form when the title screams “but nothing like the old fashioned stuff”—but then Smith’s Piano Sonata, the first movement title of which I just quoted, has an appeal that might be likened to “Piano Tone Poem for a Butterfly with ADD.” It’s light and jumpy, with irregular sparkle equidistant to Debussy’s impressionism and Boulez’s abstractions.
Sarah Darling and Jeffrey Grossman perform ably and with dedication; and the sound is good. Not least because all the pieces are world premiere recordings, it’s very good that we have this kind of music on CD, although I don’t think that it is best heard on recordings. It belongs out there in auditoriums where it should be listened to live. Occasionally.
Saturday, 3.7.09, 6:00 am
Egarr’s Brandenburg Concertos
Available February 10th.
Recordings of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos are ample; deducting for duplications and compilations, ArkivMusic lists about 50 available complete versions. Most of them could be lumped into two categories: Historically Informed Performances (HIP), and ‘old fashioned performances’. Of course that’s a gross simplification, especially when the latter category is supposed to contain, much less describe, interpretations by performers as different as the Busch Chamber Players (just re-issued on EMI Great Recordings of the Century), Cortot/Orchestre de l’École Normale de Musique, Karajan/BPO, Benjamin Britten/ECO, Karl Richter/Munich Bach Orchestra, and Marinner/Academy of St.Martin in the Fields. But then man is a categorizing animal and likes those kinds of classifications and won’t be deterred, even when some performances, like Helmut Rilling/Oregon Bach Festival Chamber Orchestra and Helmut Müller-Brühl/Cologne Chamber Orchestra, peskily straddle the fence.
Conveniently, this latest addition to the catalog on Harmonia Mundi with the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) under its new Music Director Richard Egarr fits the much more confined former category of “HIP”, though that hardly means less competition. On a twofer of the same label, we can find the Academy for Ancient Music Berlin. Egarr’s predecessor Christopher Hogwood recorded the Brandenburg Concertos with the AAM, not even 20 years ago (still available on L’oiseau-Lyre/London). Nicolaus Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus (Teldec) vie for our attention, as do Il Giardino Armonico (also Teldec), Ton Koopman/ABO (Erato, oop), Martin Perlman/Boston Baroque (Telarc), Jan Willem de Vriend/Combattimento Consort Amsterdam (Challenge), Reinhard Goebel/Musica Antiqua Köln, and Pinnock/English Concert (both Archiv). And that’s just of the top of my head (or CD shelf, as it were).
Unfortunately I didn’t have the old AAM disc handy for comparison, but the two most recent major period instrument releases—Alessandrini/Concerto Italiano on Naïve and Pinnock/Brandenburg Ensemble on Avie (reviewed in concert and on CD)—served nicely to elucidate contrast and similarities. Egarr and Alessandrini use one player per part; Pinnock mostly uses a small ensemble, switching to one-to-a-part only for the Fifth Concerto.
Egarr presents the concertos in order, and the First Concerto starts boldly with a dark and round, slightly stuffed horn sound, perfectly executed by the natural horn players Andrew Clark and David Bentley. When these (natural) horns barge in with the excitement of an ensuing hunt, it’s never without hearing the difficulties involved, but here less so than on many other recordings. The darkness has a reason: Egarr chose the ‘French’ Baroque pitch for this recording, which, at A = 392 Hz, is another semitone lower than the standard baroque pitch of A415. Even Pinnock, who records at the latter pitch, mentions the temptation of exploring these works at A390, which was the ‘Cammerton’ in Köthen during Bach’s time.
Egarr’s swift Adagio (compare his 3:09 to Alessandrini’s 4:02 or Pinnock’s 3:39), doesn’t indulge his oboists and the violino piccolo very much, but establishes a pleasantly fresh pulse. The ritardando in the third movement (Allegro) of the First Concerto, just before the music jolts back out of this brief contemplative point, is massive. Although Alessandrini beats him in extensiveness by stretching it to 25, not just 20, seconds and coming to a complete halt, Egarr makes it sound even more audacious by starting it a few notes earlier, keeping the music going throughout, and then bolts on even more explosively than Concerto Italiano does. Compared to that, Pinnock just about ignores the ritardando, being through and done with it in 10 seconds and never letting it interrupt the flow of the music.
The Menuet is a nervously, yet steadily chugging little thing in Alessandrini’s hands, a bright and graceful dancing movement with Pinnock. With Egarr it has a contemplative, incredibly sensuous flow. Or, to put a less positive spin on it: it’s a case of muffled lurching. It’s quite beautiful, actually, but direct comparison (fortunately not a common way of listening to this music) treats Egarr’s 9:51 less kindly than does enjoyment in splendid isolation. Pinnock takes 7:32 and Alessandrini just over 7 minutes if you deduct all the Menuet-repeats, including the “Grand Reprise” for the last Menuet, he takes.
Egarr has no time for any cadenza-improvising or movement-substituting between the two Adagio-chords of the Third Concerto, stating in the accompanying notes that “Bach’s ‘Bar’ [the one containing these two chords] is perfect’” and citing (initially) compelling mathematical context in his support.
The Presto from the Fourth Concerto just purls along with gentle ease, Egarr’s finely spun harpsichord interjections make Pinnock sound comparatively earthbound. The flute vibrato in the opening Allegro of the Fifth Concerto is tasteful enough, not as overt as with Alessandrini and not as borderline out-of-tune as with Pinnock. The vibrancy of the violin and flute part in the Affetuoso has its charm, but isn’t as elegant as the longer lines Alessandrini affords. The concluding Allegro could stand in for much of the general differences between these recordings: Egarr buoyant, unintrusive, with a soft flexibility to the ensemble’s tone, Alessandrini explosive with a bit more edge, and Pinnock in-between, rawer, occasionally just a little heavier, and the harpsichord more up-front.
In Egarr’s recording I particularly love the silken airiness of the Second Concerto’s Allegro and the—musicologically incorrect—use of theorbo basso continuo throughout and,—most imaginatively—instead (!) of the harpsichord in the Adagio ma non tanto of the Sixth Concerto. To quote Egarr, who readily admits there being no historical context for either theorbo or guitar (employed in the Fifth Concerto), the added continuo color was “a delicious luxury which [he] couldn’t forgo.”
From his previous recordings, I’ve never found Richard Egarr to be a man of extremes, and he performs these works with a well-judged moderation, too. His Allegros are not quite so fast, his Adagios not overly slow, his accents lively but not spiked. His touch on the harpsichord is soft and ever-deft. He doesn’t set out to shock (not even peripherally), or primarily excite, but to delight. This warm touch reminds of Jordi Savall’s version with Le Concert des Nations more than any other HIP account I know.
The sound is excellent: rich and with lots of room to bloom—although on the soft side, further emphasizing the character of the interpretation. Voices are not as easily separable as in the Alessandrini recording, which offers more clarity. The presentation of the SACD Surround capable recording is up to Harmonia Mundi’s usual high standards, the liner notes by Richard Egarr (in English, French, German) eminently worth reading, and information on all the musicians and the instruments they use is given in well chosen and readable fonts.
The continued improvements in the skill of playing original instruments are still notable. I used to think that Pinnock’s English Concert recording was about as good as it gets – a notion I was disabused of by many subsequent groups bettering that laudable effort. Egarr won’t be the last word in this progression, either, but the increments are getting smaller and smaller. No doubt related to the general mellowness of this version, I find it a small but decided improvement even over Pinnock/Avie. Favorite HIP versions are the Academy for Ancient Music Berlin (HMU) and Savall (Naïve); Egarr joins them. Is this a must-have for anyone who already enjoys one or two HIP Brandenburgs in their collection? Of course not. Will you want to add it, anyway? You bet.
Richard Egarr and the AAM will perform the Brandenburg Concertos in Fairfax at the George Mason Center for the Arts on Sunday, March 22nd and at Carnegie Hall on March 23rd.
Thursday, 3.5.09, 6:00 am
Mariss Jansons in New York
When the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra was founded 60 years ago, life was barely getting back to normal for the citizens of Munich. The Deutsch-Mark had just been introduced, the time of food ration stamps, the black market, and barter only just ended. The budding Bavarian Radio’s intendant decided that a professional symphony orchestra and a professional choir would suite the broadcasting service nicely. To a cacophonous chorus of naysayers—typical for the Bavarian capital whenever something new is proposed—the BRSO was founded and Eugen Jochum picked as its first music director.
Richard Strauss conducted his last concert with the brand new orchestra on his 85th birthday (a broadcast of music from Capriccio), a year later the BRSO gave its first public concerts, another year later a first small European tour. Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s contemporary music series “Musica Viva” came under the auspices of the BR and its orchestra became acquainted and familiar with the musical avant-garde. Conductors like Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Hermann Scherchen, and Ernest Ansermet performed modern and French works that few, if any, other German orchestras had in the repertoire at the time.
After eleven years of the Germanic Jochum, the BRSO was taken over by the lyrical, sanguineous Czech conductor Rafael Kubelik. Early on in his 18 year tenure, the orchestra delivered the first recorded Mahler cycle. Guest conductors like Erich Kleiber, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Karl Böhm, and Otto Klemperer, and Leonard Bernstein furthered and certified the extraordinary quality of the orchestra that programmed music that few other German orchestras touched—Britten, Busoni, Pfitzner, Nono, Janáček , Honegger—and often played the standards better than the traditional philharmonic ensembles. In later years just about every renowned conductor would add his name to the list: Abbado, Boulez, Barbirolli, Fricsay, Ormandy, and Solti, to name just a few.
As a radio orchestra, it was natural that the BRSO soon started amassing an impressive discography and is among the ten most recorded orchestras in the world—which excludes a treasure trove of unpublished radio tapes that still lie in the vaults of the Bavarian Radio.
After Kubelik had to give up conducting for health reasons and his designated successor Kyrill Kondrashin died before he could take on the position, the BRSO’s new music director became Colin Davis who stayed for nine years (1983-92) before Lorin Maazel guided it through the next decade. In 2002 it was announced that the Estonian conductor Mariss Jansons would become the fifth music director of the BRSO, a year before he took over another of Europe’s top orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. When Gramophone Magazine recently published a poll among music critics of the best orchestras in the world, both his orchestras were in the Top Six, which meant that the real winner wasn’t so much an orchestra (the Concertgebouw took top honors), but Jansons.
In light of the BRSO’s upcoming trip to New York I spoke with Mariss Jansons, who I reached at his home in St. Petersburg. Having heard the impressive and surprisingly accessible world premieres of the last two works the BRSO commissioned, I was interested in how heavily he is involved in the commissioning of new pieces for the orchestra and whether there’s a particular philosophy behind the commissions. Jansons, one of the most unassuming and pretension-free maestros out there, answers in his soft-spoken, accented voice: “I am very much involved, of course, when we commission works for my orchestra. But there is no particular “philosophy” I follow—except that I try to assure that the work is first rate. But once we choose the composer, I don’t tell them how to do it, or what. They are completely free to write what they want and how they want to.
Sunday, 3.1.09, 12:01 am
March in Music
Piano Recitals
March is upon us, and the cultural offerings that spring brings are rich, indeed. It starts with a, err… bang this afternoon, when Evgeny Kissin will display his immense skill in a program of small Chopin pieces and Prokofiev’s 8th Sonata. WPAS will present the recital that starts at 4PM at the Kennedy Concert Hall.
Wednesday, March 4th, the Austrian Brendel-protégé Till Fellner will begin his American tour of all of Beethoven’s Sonatas at the Embassy of Austria, courtesy of the Embassy Series. (7.30PM) Fellner might not be capable of the extreme emotional highs (or even quite the same technical feats) that Kissin sometimes conjures, but he’s a consistently wonderful player who succeeds at making understatement exciting.
Something along the same lines could be said about Richard Goode, also presented by WPAS when he will play Chopin and Bach works at the Music Center at Strathmore on the last Sunday in March (the 29th, 4PM). I can’t think of an American pianist I’d rather hear in concert or recital, pretty much regardless of what he plays. Certainly the last time I heard him at Strathmore was a most pleasing affair.
Wild at heart, Olga Kern (at the Kennedy Center two years ago) warms up with Haydn and will surely be up to temperature when finishing with Liszt’s Spanish Rhapsody in her Strathmore recital on March 22nd the Sunday before Goode. Although—or because—Kern can be unpredictable, I know a few piano connoisseurs that would rather hear her play than any of the above. (4PM)
Chamber Music
If you think today is the day for a drive, the Mandelring Quartet’s performance at the Châteauville Foundation (4PM) in Castleton Farms, VA, could be the lure. Haydn (op. 71/2), Shostakovich (String Quartet No. 9), and Mendelssohn’s op.44/2 bring together two anniversary composers of this year and their especially fine Shostakovich, the penultimate volume of their integral recording for Audite I’ve just sampled and found to be as diligently superb as the preceding three issues.
A few days later, the Library of Congress hosts the young Belcea Quartet (March 5th, Thursday, 8PM, Haydn, Prokofiev, Schubert), which belongs to the finest ensembles of its generation.
On Wednesday the 11th, the concert at the Freer Gallery of Art is free, too (in either case that’s assuming you can still get tickets the night of the concert and in both cases that’s suggesting that it’s more than worth trying), and it features the Leipzig String Quartet in a program that couldn’t be more different from the other quartets in town this month: Takemitsu’s In a Landscape, Hosokawa’s Silent Flowers, John Cage’s Music for Four, and Tan Dun’s Eight Colors for String Quartet are on the Asian-flavored menu and should intrigue everyone interested in the string quartet world beyond Haydn and Beethoven.
Friday, March 13th is my predicted highlight of the chamber music year when the Quatuor Ébène will perform at the Library of Congress at 8PM. They are bringing the all-French program that’s also on their latest CD which was one of my CD choices of 2008.
In a concert titled “Joseph Haydn: Trios for the Esterházys”, the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society will bring you the best Haydn works you’ve never heard at the Renwick Gallery: his Baryton Trios. Haydn wrote about fifteen dozen (!) works for the baryton, most of them string trios and all of them to please his boss, Prince Esterházy, who played the instrument. (And he must have been very pleased, indeed.) The concert takes place on Sunday, March 15th, at 7.30PM.
Largely interesting for their program of unknown works from the early 20th century by Achron, Zhitomirski, Michelet, Zeitlin—anchored by Shostakovich’s Fourth String Quartet—is the Biava Quartet’ recital at the Terrace Theater. The concert on Thursday, March 19th, is presented by presented by Pro Musica Hebraica and begins at 7.30PM.
March 20th through 22nd the Auryn Quartet will perform at Gaston Hall at Georgetown University where they play Schubert, Mozart, Haydn, Schumann, Dvořák (but especially Schubert). The first concert on Friday (all begin at 8PM) will feature Menahem Pressler (who plays and plays and plays—evidently because it keeps him alive and smiling) in Schubert’s “Trout” and Mozart’s Piano Quartet K493.
March 22nd the Ariel Quartet will play with Washington’s favorite viola, Roger Tapping, in Brahms’ String Quintet in F, op. 88/1. Also on the program: Beethoven’s op. 95 and Schubert’s “Rosamunde” quartet.
It’d be easy to underestimate the Monument Piano Trio because they’re local (Baltimore), but that would be missing what might be the hottest chamber music ticket in—or rather: from— town. They’ll play Shostakovich and Schoenfeld at the Mansion at Strathmore on March 23rd at 7.30PM.
Bach / Baroque
Noontime Cantata Bach with the Washington Bach Consort at the Church of the Epiphany (13th & G St. NW) on Tuesday March 3rd. As if Bach for Lunch wasn’t great enough, they’ll perform a particularly wonderful cantata in BWV 12, “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” (one of my favorites, at any rate).
Early music ensemble Harmonious Blacksmith will be busy in March, playing twice at Baltimore’s An Die Musik, at George Washington University, and a program of Jacob van Eyck and other 17th century Dutch and German composers at the National Gallery of Art going along with the NGA’s Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age exhibit on Sunday March 15th, at 6.30PM.
Handel’s only German Passion setting (as far as I know), the Brockes Passion, will be performed by the Cantate Chamber Singers at St.John’s Norwood Parish in Chevy Chase, MD. (Friday, March 20th, 8PM).
The Washington Bach Consort (the links to their website are annoying thanks to the .swf files but are no cause for alarm in case your browser warns of you of potential danger: No viruses lurk, only bad design) will perform Bach’s “Great Organ Mass” at the National Presbyterian Church. I’ve been making my way through the Bach Organ sets of Marie-Claire Alain (her second of three, on Erato) and Lionel Rogg (his second of two, on Harmonia Mundi), and the “Great Organ Mass”, a.k.a. “German Mass for Organ”, a.k.a. “Catechism Preludes”, a.k.a Part Three of Klavierübung contains some of my favorite Organ pieces by Bach. The WBC website is vague about it, but the concert presumably features the “great” chorale preludes (Bach wrote one expansive and one condensed version of each prelude following the Kyrie, Christe, Kyrie) and choral elements to lighten the mood. Vague or not, it’s a superb opportunity to experience some of Bach’s greatest and least often heard music in an acoustic that can never even remotely be replicated at home. That makes this one of March’s unmissable events for me, even at the expense of missing Olga Kern. (Sunday, March 22nd, 3PM)
There’s one problem, though: The Bach concert in the region takes place on the same Sunday. Richard Egarr brings his Academy of Ancient Music to the George Mason University Center for the Arts, performing the Brandenburg Concertos. I love their new recording of these works on Harmonia Mundi (review forthcoming here on March 7th) and unless you are at Carnegie Hall Monday, March 23rd, this might be the Sunday concert of choice, after all. (March 22nd, 4PM)
Opera & Choral
On March 6th, 8th, 12th, and 14th Opera Vivente will perform Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea at the Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Baltimore. Not under ideal circumstances, perhaps, but better than no opera at all and a work that might never have been performed at the little opera company that couldn’t.
“The words were written to commemorate Lincoln’s death, the music to mark FDR’s. Walt Whitman, the great American poet, and Paul Hindemith, a self-exiled German composer, collaborated posthumously to create an American masterpiece with the freshness of a European perspective. It is Hindemith’s tribute not only to two presidents he admired but to the whole democratic ideal.” Even without PR hyperbole, Hindemith’s “Requiem for those we love” a.k.a. When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom’d is a terrific work, underrated, and rarely performed. (Robert Shaw’s recording on the now virtually defunct Telarc label still sets the performance standard.) The Cathedral Choral Society will perform it as part of their Bicentennial Tribute to Abraham Lincoln at the Washington National Cathedral on Sunday March 8th, 4PM.
If the Washington National Opera makes nearly as much out of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes as it did out of his Billy Budd, then the performances on the 21st, 23rd, 26th, and 29th could well be the operatic highlight of the year.
Orchestral
Of course Jonathan Biss’ B-flat major Mozart Concerto (K595) could be the highlight of the NSO concertos from the 19th through the 21st, but with Herbert Blomstedt conducting Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, it’s highly doubtful that even this grand concerto will be more than a delicious appetizer. Blomstedt’s Bruckner Eighth that I heard last year was bested only by Christian Thielemann, which, in that repertoire, isn’t fair comparison. Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Thursday at 7PM, Friday and Saturday at 8PM.
The University of Maryland Symphony plays Mahler’s Fifth Symphony at the Clarice Smith Center, and their (surprisingly?) high standards should put this on the list of every Mahlerian in town. (27th at 8PM.)
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, finally, has its most likely brightest moment this month when conductor laureate Yuri Temirkanov steps up to deliver Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony and support Vadim Repin in the Brahms Violin Concerto. Repin, one of the finest violinists out there, is always worth seeing—one of those few artists who are still excellent even at their worst. The concert at the Music Center at Strathmore takes place on Thursday the 26th at 8PM, the consequent performances at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall Friday through Sunday.
[Please note that Yuri Temirkanov has canceled that series of performances. Performing the same program--still with Repin--will be Yan Pascal Tortelier, instead.]
If you feel like it, you can compare assiduous Temirkanov’s Prokofiev to volatile Valery Gergiev’s who will deliver the First and Sixth Symphonies at the Kennedy Center with his London Symphony Orchestra. Listening to Gergiev is a little like playing the lottery… the gains could be tremendous and that’s why we always/still do it. He brings with him Alexei Volodin to give the young pianist the opportunity to shine in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. WPAS presents this concert on Saturday the 28th at 4PM. (Kennedy Center Concert Hall)
Other
If you like the harp, Emmanuel Ceysson is a must because there really isn’t anyone who plays that instrument better than he does. He performs at the Barns at Wolf Trap on Friday the 6th at 8PM.
Medieval Song from Spain and Cyprus comes courtesy of the Folger Consort at the Folger Shakespeare Library on Saturday, March 14th, at 5 and 8PM.