Sunday, 5.31.09, 12:00 pm
Haydn 2009 – The String Quartets (Part 1)
Writing for the string quartet forces the composer to focus on the essentials of what makes classical music: “Melody, Rhythm, Harmony, and Counterpoint”. (Georg Feder) There is no room to hide, no place to take cover behind the splendor of massive sounds, no opportunity to dazzle with effects. It’s the composer laid bare and therefore the string quartet is, rightly, considered the most noble of genres in classical music; the royal discipline of the art of composing.
Goethe agrees, and his eminently quotable judgment (in a letter to Friedrich Zelter from 1829) of the quartet is worth repeating, no matter how many times it’s been dug up before: “The string quartet is the most comprehensible genre of instrumental music. One hears four intelligent people conversing with one another, believes one might learn something from their discourse and recognize the special characteristics of their instruments.”
The idea of communication and dialog among the instruments is about as old as the genre itself (Haydn’s op.1 was already published as “Quatuors dialogues” in France). The notable aspect of conversation does not so much stem from the equal treatment of all four voices as it does from the flexibility in which each voice is endowed with more and less important material. A fugue, after all the musical form in which each voice is absolutely equal, does not remind us of a civilized conversation… it’s more a chorus that forges harmony out of structure and sameness. And four voices equally having something to say without regard to who says what, or when, sounds more like a Sunday morning political talk show than a civilized conversation.
It is precisely the skill of letting each voice take its turn, for them to respond to one another, to reply, and to have voices take a back seat when others have their turn, some being more vocal, others more likely to nod in agreement: all that makes for the appeal of a quartet. It’s like a throwback to times when the most lucid point won the argument, not he or she who could yell the loudest, most persistently. No one—pace Luigi Boccherini—has done more to establish this art form than Joseph Haydn, the 200th anniversary of whose death we remember today, Sunday, May 31st.
With 69 ½ string quartets* plus the Seven Last Words in their—by now most popular—version, Haydn left as an enormous body of work that traces the string quartet from its very inception to something near its perfection. Between op.1 and op.20, Haydn establishes the form; from then on he expands and refines it.
The string quartets start with the ten works grouped (by the publishers, not Haydn) as op.1 and op.2, which are still called “Quartet Divertimentos”**, where Haydn begins to take the trio sonata by the hand (with the cello largely doubling the viola) and leads it to a four-voiced style which, by the time he reaches op. 20, largely means an increased independence of (and melody-duties for) the cello. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore these early quasi-quartets quite as much as we do. So far they only ever get their due in “complete” recordings—of which there are now seven (!) completed or near completion. Indeed, they would do very nicely, loosely sprinkled through quartet recital programs. (Especially after another Brahms-quartet-attack just forcefully reasserted that classical music need not be fun to be great.)
It’s hard to find all of op.1 (nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 0, and 6) outside a complete set. The excellent Petersen Quartet (Capriccio) comes to mind, or else individual CD releases from sets of the Kodály- (Naxos) and Buchberger- (Brilliant) quartets, or—my choice (and most economical, when it will finally be distributed in the US)—the Auryn Quartet (Tacet) who are very promisingly working on their complete cycle, sorted and released by Haydn’s own groupings. Until then, op.1 is one of the discs where the Kodály Quartet is at its most competitive; especially in the slow movements which are wonderfully ‘carried’ by the more resonant, less intimate acoustic. Just listening to the opening Adagio of op.1, no.3 should convince anyone that these are five (six) ‘worthies’. 
* This counts the 10 early quartets (opp. 1 & 2), the six each of opp.9, 17, 20, 33, 50, 54 & 55, 64, 71 & 74, 76, the two from op.77 as well as the quartet usually called “op.1, no.0”, op.42, as well as the incomplete, two movements of op.103.
** Haydn used that term up to and including op.20.
This is continued by “The String Quartets (Part 2)” and “The String Quartets (Part 3)”
See also:
Haydn 2009 – The Seven Last Words
Haydn 2009 – Fricsay’s Symphonies
Haydn 2009 – Minetti Quartet(t)
Haydn 2009 – Harmoniemesse
Saturday, 5.30.09, 11:00 am
Haydn 2009 – Fricsay’s Symphonies
Perhaps the coupling of Haydn’s 44th, 95th, and 98th symphonies strikes you as slightly random – a little Sturm & Drang (no. 44, the Trauersymphonie – “Mourning-Symphony”), a little London (nos. 95, 98). Perhaps a 1954 mono recording doesn’t obviously kindle your interest or tickle your fancy? And maybe you have not thought much of the short-lived (1914-1963) Ferenc Fricsay—apart perhaps from enjoying a wonderful Beethoven or Dvořák 9th or his Don Giovanni?
Well, this budget disc from Deutsche Grammophon’s Europe-centric “Musik…… Sprache der Welt” collection will make you reconsider on all counts. It’s an absolute gem and (especially for those who don’t already have a Haydn #44 in their collection) there is no reason not to indulge in this recording. The sound quality belies its age (better still than the remastered 58/60 Beecham EMI recordings), the playing of the RIAS Symphony Orchestra Berlin under Fricsay is positively infectious.
“Mourning” may be the featured symphony’s title, but it is actually an unadulterated joy to listen to; the kind of Angst- and tension-free music that allows you to smile, apprehending only skilled, honest beauty and goodness. It’s music with little wings. A delightful 70 minutes of it.
There is a similar disc among the Fricsay unearthing of Audite with Symphonies 44 and 98. Often their remasterings of old radio tapes best similar DG studio recordings (as is the case with Kubelik’s Mahler cycle), but sadly that’s not the case here with considerably limited monaural sound and the Cologne RSO not on the same level as the Berliners. Hopefully, as Audite’s tour of German radio vaults continues, they may unearth more Fricsay Haydn. Meanwhile, the DG disc—released a few years ago—remains a clear, happy first choice.
Available as a download from DG’s WebShop.
see also:
Haydn 2009 – Seven Last Words
Haydn 2009 – Minetti Quartet(t)
Haydn 2009 – Harmoniemesse
Haydn 2009 – The String Quartets (Part 1)
Haydn 2009 – The String Quartets (Part 2)
Haydn 2009 – The String Quartets (Part 3)
Friday, 5.29.09, 6:00 am
New Releases: CDs
Haydn 2009 – Minetti Quartet(t)
"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 first heard the Minetti Quartet in January 2006 at an Embassy Series recital that honored Mozart’s birthday. Afterwards I wrote: “Mozart’s Birthday, but a Minetti celebration” and I haven’t stopped thinking about them, since. A second recital in Washington assured that their excellence was not a fluke but repeatable, and alongside groups like the Quatuor Ebene, the Jerusalem and Jupiter Quartets, and perhaps soon the Acies Quartet, they are among the finest there are, which is saying much in a field that becomes ever more crowded with ensembles the average quality of which we could not have even imagined a decade or two ago.
Now the Minetti Quartet(t) has finally released a record, and it lives up to all the high expectations and more. Appropriate and timely (for his 200th death anniversary coming Sunday), it’s a compilation of Haydn. Intelligently put together—without just grazing over the ‘greatest hits’—they assembled opp.64/4, 74/3, and 76/5 for an hour of music-making of downright exalted levels. Not only is the general mood genial, minute details are thoughtfully, fortuitously applied, which always gives reason to take note with delight at a particular passage or phrasing in these 12 movements.
The chilly sul ponticello two little C minor passages of the Adagio Cantabile e sostenuto (64/4) reminds me of similar effects produced by Rinaldo Alessandrini’s Concerto Italiano. The opening of 74/3 jolts up, hurdling off and away as one might expect from its nickname “The Rider” (Reiterquartett). Truly special is the moment the Minetti players drop to a true pianissimo in the Largo, re-emerging with the slowly shuddering tremolo. Or take the elastic chugging of the eighth notes ine the Presto Finale of 76/5—hands-on and sophisticated in equal measure. Among the many quartet CDs released in 2009 that I’ve heard, this stands out as the most interesting and delightful effort.
The interview in the booklet, in which especially the first violinist comes across as a carefree, happily musical naïf á la Netrebko, doesn’t contribute much to our understanding of the particular quartets or the four musicians behind it… except bring home the point that superficial seriousness is not necessary for great music-making of lasting quality. Not an inappropriate conclusion for the Haydn year.
See also:
Haydn 2009 – Fricsay’s Symphonies
Haydn 2009 – Seven Last Words
Haydn 2009 – Harmoniemesse
Haydn 2009 – The String Quartets (Part 1)
Haydn 2009 – The String Quartets (Part 2)
Haydn 2009 – The String Quartets (Part 3)
Monday, 5.25.09, 6:00 am
New Releases: CDs
Bach with Edna Stern
"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.
Great music intelligently put together and terrifically played; the latest Bach recording on the ZigZag Territories label is all but assured a spot among my favorite recordings of this year. If Edna Stern, a Krystian Zimerman and Leon Fleisher student, only played a selection of Preludes and Fugues from the Well Tempered Clavier, and even if she played them as well as she does on “Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland”, the disc might have gotten a spin, very favorable notice, and slipped into the recesses of my Bach saturated mind.
But sending three Prelude & Fugue pairs into the race, preceded by a transcribed Bach chorale each (one of these four Chorale/Prelude packages comes with Brahms’ Bach-like op.122 no.5, instead), lifts it well above the pack of Bach-on-the-Piano releases and recitals. “Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland” starts with the eponymous chorale (BWV 659) in Busoni’s transcription. Stern’s idea is treating Bach as a vocal and orchestral composer which, apart from justification for playing harpsichord works on the piano (as if any was still—or again—necessary), frees her to explore all the advantages of the piano’s range of shades and colors, rather than treating it ‘harpsichordesque’. Might as well, when the result is Bach in such luxuriant sound, indulgent in beauty, yet never fussy.
Consciously working her way from C minor to E-flat major, she not only excels in “Schmuecke dich O liebe Seele” (Brahms), Ich ruf’zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (BWV 639 from Das Orgelbüchlein Part 3, trans. Busoni), and “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (BWV 645 from Cantata BWV 140, trans. Busoni), but several Fugues and especially Preludes, too. BWV 855 in E minor, 851 in D minor, and 866 B-flat Major are gorgeous renditions that would do any pianist proud. With such a very different concept and content than Alexandre Tharaud’s Concertos italiens—my Bach-on-Piano CD of choice above all others—it’s not surprising that Mlle. Stern’s performance appeals in dissimilar ways. More something for the mind and reflection rather than the happily emotional recital of the Frenchman, and doubtlessly a disc any Bach lover would find him- or herself marveling at.
Thursday, 5.21.09, 6:00 am
Remembering Nicholas Maw
From CDs and hearsay of his gargantuan orchestral opus “Odyssey” I had been vaguely familiar with the name Nicholas Maw. What I didn’t know when I went to the Terrace Theater in October of 2004 to review a Left Bank Concert Society concert was that Nicholas Maw was our neighbor. I only met Maw few times thereafter—usually at the Kennedy Center accompanied with his partner, the artist Maija Hay. The impression was always the same: Overt kindness—slightly reticent but warm, questioningly coy, and with generosity emitting from behind his white beard.
It is difficult to imagine abrasive, abstract, or cold music to have come from Maw’s pen. And while there were pieces of Maw’s that I didn’t particularly like, they were in fact never any of that. The most important, most recent Maw-memory in Washington is his grand—though not necessarily great—opera: Sophie’s Choice. Almost too ambitious for its own good and dotted with brilliant moments, I found it troubling for its relentlessness, shaky libretto, and length*. But Odyssey, recorded by Simon Rattle, is recommended to any fan of modern romantic orchestral music who isn’t afraid of spending over ninety minutes (Hello, Havergal Brian!) with a single work.
Maw was born in 1935 in Lincolnshire where his father combined the musical with the practical: selling pianos, rather than playing them. Counter to the usual composer’s life-stories Maw’s father actually wanted to see his son become a pianist. Maw went to the Royal Academy of Music, studied under Lennox Berkeley and later, briefly, with Nadia Boulanger.
He soon found his stubborn streak when he refused to surrender beauty to ideology and academicism. That brought him the customary accusation of being old-fashioned and musically backwards. Any critic worth his avant-garde salt snubbed—or worse: ignored—him. That he managed to stay busy and become as well known as he is now was and remains a sure sign of the quality of his work and the sense he had for what the ears wanted to hear, even if the brain told them otherwise. After the 1987 success of Odyssey and the slow softening in the ideological music wars (the Polish spiritual 20th century romantics started becoming popular and—grudgingly—‘accepted’ listening), Maw had an easier time reaching his audience. In 1993 Joshua Bell, purveyor of all matters popular in classical music, premiered—then recorded—Maw’s Violin Concerto. To sample Maw’s chamber music, his Piano Trio, recorded by the Monticello Trio on ASV, is a good place to start.
If beauty is anathema to serious modern classical music, Nicholas Maw’s composing life was a failure. Those who love beauty remember him warmly. This Tuesday, May 19th, he died of heart failure at his home in Takoma Park.
*WETA will broadcast the WNO production of Sophie’s Choice as part of the Classical WETA Opera House program on June 6th at 1PM (an NPR World of Opera presentation).
Other appreciations: New York Times, Clef Notes (Tim Smith), BBC News, Times Online
, Washington Post
Sunday, 5.17.09, 6:00 am
Snapshot Tour of London Orchestras
Instead of a Bach/Wagner Easter pilgrimage, I decided to give all the important London orchestras a good listen this spring. For scheduling reasons, I caught the Philharmonia (invigorated by Esa-Pekka Salonen’s assumption of principle conductor duties) in Vienna, but the London Philharmonic Orchestra (similarly energized by Vladimir Jurowski having taken the helm) and the London Symphony Orchestra (in their second full season with Valery Gergiev, but here under Daniel Harding) offered interesting programs during my time in London. Obvious omissions are the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Gatti) and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Bělohlávek), but a BBC SO Wagner/Bruckner concert at the Barbican sadly didn’t fit my schedule and the RPO’s one-hour “Opus 60” concert(s), although intriguing in principle, didn’t look appealing enough when Pierre-Laurent Aimard played three Beethoven concertos with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe just south of the river.
There are too many major ‘minor’ orchestras to fit them into a good week’s worth of concert-going—St. Martin in the Fields, the English Chamber Orchestra, and the Academy of Ancient Music are all bustling for deserved attention—but at least I caught the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Heiner Goebbels’ Songs of Wars I have seen.
The succinct summary would be: Disappointment at a high level. The LSO trumpets blared as if actively oblivious to any Brucknerian spirit (and the rest of the orchestra didn’t seem to care much about Harding’s genuine efforts, either), and Lang Lang gave a vacuous performance of Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto in the same concert at the Barbican. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Aimard—playing and ‘conducting’—were audibly exhausted at the Royal Festival Hall and while the quality of the music making was high, the lack of spiritedness turned Beethoven’s Piano Concertos One through Three into amiable background music. The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain managed for capably executed excitement with enormous forces under Paul Daniels in an intelligent program of Thomas Adès, Rachmaninov, Ravel, and—best—George Benjamin, whose nine-partite “Dance Figures” was an instant hit with the enthusiastic crowd at the Southbank Centre.
Geraldine McGreevy replacing Christine Schäfer at a Wigmore Hall recital wasn’t going to be an improvement, but it could have been better than the piercing wobble masquerading as vibrato that had a tendency towards the shrill and over-accentuation. Apart from the impeccable pronunciation, there was little this recital of Shakespeare-themed Schubert really offered, and the strained, semi-operatic way of delivering art song had nothing of the naturalness that Schäfer is capable of—and was in any case unnecessary for intimate little Wigmore Hall where the singer needs little force or artifice. Replacement pianist Christopher Gould’s pianism was a tonic.
The Goebbels Songs of Wars I have seen—almost performance art with the string players of the combined orchestras reciting from the Gertrude Stein memoire “Wars I have seen” with the skill, gusto, and “studied artlessness” (James Oestreich) of professional actors—was a first highlight. The young and lithe Estonian conductor Anu Tali led the split orchestra—Men and the brutal sounds of war (timpani, brass) at the back, all women on strings up front (representing those left to the mundanities of life during war); modern instruments stage left, historic instruments (including theorbo) stage right—and the result was immediately compelling, with the music switching amiably between Matthew Locke’s “Tempest” and the electronica enriched music of Echt-Goebbels. The result was much more impressive than the repetitive orchestral excerpts from his “Surrogate Cities” that occupied the first half of this wholly entertaining evening.
The Royal Academy of Music and London Sinfonietta presenting eight post-graduate students’ compositions at a workshop themed “Sounds of the City” was an intriguing little lunch bonus that day, with brevity—that most underrated of virtues in classical music—plenty present as were genuinely fine ideas. One of the students should take all eight pieces for flute, clarinet, cello, and harp, orchestrate them with strings and timpani, add transitions in the form of a warped waltz from movement to movement, and publish the whole thing (with due credit, of course) as a CitySoundSymphony. Given the surprising homogeneity and the quality of the presented compositions, it could only do Alison Barber,
Ivor Bonnici, Laura Bowler, Richard Bullen, Elo Masing, Sebastian Rapacki, and Sam Quartermaine Smith proud.
London was done proud by the performances of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, though. Perhaps less obviously so in the program of 20th Century eastern European music of Giya Kancheli, Benjamin Yusupov, and Valentin Silvestrov, where Kancheli’s “Another Step”, with its martial blows played out against metallic pizzicato and soothing strings—succumbing to calm and rearing its collective head again stood out as a post-Mahlerian smorgasbord of styles, while Yusuopov’s Cello Concerto with Mischa Maisky, a latter-day Gandalf of the cello, was more blatant with its “innocent soul of the cello” musically pitted against the onslaught of evil elements from the orchestra. A bit like Schnittke, but without the extremes in stylistic contrast and surprise. The Silvestrov Symphony No.5, a mix of Mahler’s 5th and 10th, Prokofiev’s 5th, Tippett’s 4th symphonies and Scriabin’s “Mysterium”, reaffirmed the genre rather than overcoming it, despite the cutesiness of its “Post Symphony” tag.
A world-class performance, finally (literally, as it was my last night in town) came at the hands of the same performers—with Jurowski conducting a cracking, tight Mahler First Symphony preceded by Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto where Martin Helmchen married Mozartean lightness to Chopin-romanticism. Even the Mahler would have been worth recording (except the LPO live label already has two “Titans” among its relatively small amount of releases), but fortunately the Shostakovich was taped with an eye to publication; a patching session followed immediately after the concert. Much to look forward to.
More on the London orchestra scene soon.
Friday, 5.15.09, 5:00 am
Hanns Eisler–Music as a Weapon
Hanns Eisler is a more interesting man than a composer—at least that’s the impression made by the exhibit “Eisler – Individualist / Collectivist” with is the fifth in the “Music in Transition” series at the Jewish Museum in Vienna. Perhaps that’s not intentional, but it is understandable with a character like Eisler who experienced the greatest ideological struggles of the 20th century first hand, managed to get thrown out of three countries (Austria, Germany, and the United States), was a self-proclaimed Bolshevik, friend of Charlie Chaplin and Arnold Schoenberg, brother to the German Communist Party’s leader, husband of three fascinating wives, and Oscar nominated film composer (for “Hangmen Also Die” and “None but the Lonely Heart”). But the only composition he is known for to a wider circle other than music specialists is the national anthem of the German Democratic Republic, his country of residence—and substitute home—for the last 13 years of his turbulent life.
One reason for the relative obscurity of Eisler as a composer is the political expediency of his compositions. The catalog, which basically covers the entire exhibition except for the hours worth of highly interesting interview and audio samples that are on offer in the sparse and limited exhibition space, nonchalantly points out the difference between Korngold (the topic of the last exhibit) and Eisler thus: “Eisler didn’t write any Operas, Korngold, on the other hand, no war-rallying songs.” Agitprop and music to excite and educate the masses were principle fields on which Eisler used his talent honed to perfection under the eyes of his teachers Karl Weigl, Schoenberg, and Anton Webern.
Schoenberg, politically level headed and pragmatic, considered Eisler’s political convictions perpetually juvenile posturing that he should have remedied with just one good spanking. At least the accusation of posturing may not be so far off the mark: The way Eisler referred to his “proletarian” mother smacks of straining to curry favor with the working-class, considering that the closest his university trained, musically educated, and published author of a mother ever came to being proletarian was her father having been a butcher. Nor was Eisler—wisely—so convinced of the wholesome goodness of the GDR that he would have given up his Austrian citizenship and passport, despite considerable pressure. As for Berthold Brecht, who did the same, Austria remained the privileged escape hatch to which Eisler, notoriously a non-Party member, could escape.
The exhibition at the Jewish Museum tells his story chronologically with several highlighted stops, the most interesting being his Hollywood escapades, his collaboration with Brecht, his work on film music (including a fascinating alternative soundtrack to “Grapes of Wrath”), and the House of Un-American Activities Committee chapter (where his sister, convinced Hanns had a hand in the murder of her Trotskyite husband, led the effort to denounce him). The “Johann Faustus Scandal”, just another of Eisler’s run-ins with the darker sides of socialist totalitarianism (perhaps considered minor, compared to his former lover spending 18 years in the Gulag and his brother in law being murdered), is presented at some length but ineffectually.
And perhaps ineffectual is a good word to describe the impression this exhibition ultimately leaves, despite the instances of excellence that are plentifully on offer. Whatever could the point be of placing the “Isotype” (International System of Typographic Picture Education) cardboard cutout characters, perhaps familiar from school books where they were used to give allow immediate comparison of numerical data, around the room, when they merely serve as surfaces for anecdotal quotes, turning the exhibit into an obstacle course in the process? Is the idea of nearly having to crawl on the floor to see the HUAC files that one thus experiences an infinitesimal part of the discomfort that Eisler must have suffered through?
Whereas the Korngold exhibition, twice as large and extensive and the very model of what an exhibition about a neglected composer (and his father) could and should be, was worth traveling to Vienna for, the Eisler exhibition is worth going to the Jewish Museum for, when already in Vienna. Perhaps it’s an educational irony that after experiencing Korngold in museum-form, the expectations are raised too high for Eisler still to impress—when the same could be said about their music.
Photo of B.Brecht, H.Eisler, S.Dudow
courtesy Jewish Museum, Vienna
Monday, 5.11.09, 6:00 am
Iván Fischer in Concert
This is the prelude to an interview with Iván Fischer—in which he talks about the NSO and the essence of a successful relationship between conductor and orchestra—to be published later this month.
Iván Fischer took “his” orchestra on a European tour—not the NSO, of which he will be Principle Conductor until 2010, but the Budapest Festival Orchestra he founded 25 years ago and which has been ranked among the world’s 10 best in the hollow yet surprisingly quotable Gramophone ranking. I caught up with them on their fourth (out of five) foreign stops in Munich’s Philharmonic Hall at the Gasteig.
Precision, gayety and a hearty helping of orchestral oomph in Rossini’s Thieving Magpie Overture brought back childhood memories of listening to this utterly entertaining music with a credulous sense of wonder.
In Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto, Hillary Hahn joined the BFO. Elegance without glamour is her trademark and it’s probably a good part of the reason why she is equally liked and embraced by the wider public and discriminating connoisseurs. Her rock solid technique, the kind more popular fiddlers (Bell, Mae, Garrett come to mind) must envy, certainly helps. Much like there is something more fulfilling going 110 mph in a car that could go twice as fast than 130 in one that could scarcely manage five more, it is more thoroughly pleasing to hear Hahn perform Mozart than many another starlet virtuoso Paganini.
KV 219 is not a concerto that will necessarily thrill the listener, but it can cast a most sunny smile into our presumably musical hearts by sheer beauty alone. At least it can when played with the nonchalant geniality as it was in the Fischer/Hahn combination which was a (cadenza-enriched) performance distinguished from blandness through its quality, not character: Civilized musicianship at its finest with timeless Mozart neither chasing HIPerformance practice nor being romanticized. Hilary Hahn’s tone, even with a liberal vibrato, is too lean for schmaltz; her sound is muscular not in the sense of brawn but in a toned, sinewy way. That she plays such a distinctive and gorgeous instrument as her Vuillaume is as refreshing amid the violinist-circuit as I find seeing a chic Volvo station wagon amid a horde of little Italian sports cars in a fancy resort town. The encored Sarabande of Bach’s D minor Partita was even better, less reticent and with a story-telling lyricism that allowed it to shine in a wholly new light.
Fischer proved a creative hand in arranging his orchestra on stage—two straight, tiered lines of cellos and double bases behind the high strings, woodwinds, and horns—and it seemed to work for Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony, at least to the extent that the usually awful acoustic in block F of the Philharmonic Hall was reasonably good and appreciably clear. Unfazed by a few early, individual glitches, Dvořák’s darkly Brahmsian masterpiece was delivered in a wonderfully bright-eyed manner, and the alert joy that the musicians visibly took in the task eventually translated into coy humor. Hearty humor outright for the rarity of an encore: Ernö Dohányi’s wedding waltz from “The Vail of Pierrette”.
Monday, 5.4.09, 6:00 am
Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis — Tuesday’s Noontime Cantata
Tomorrow, the Washington Bach Consort will present Cantata BWV 21, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis at their (free) Noontime Cantata concert at the Church of the Epiphany. BWV 21 is one of the great Bach cantatas—literally at the very least, because it is his longest: eleven movements, two parts, and about 40 minutes of music. (The Noontime Cantatas don’t (can’t) follow the liturgical calendar. If they did, one of the five extant cantatas for the third or fourth Sunday after Easter (“Jubilate” or “Cantate”, respectively) would be given. BWV 21, along with BWV 135, is associated with the third Sunday after Trinity which would be June 28th this year.)
It is among Bach’s very early cantatas, perhaps composed to apply for an organist position in Halle in 1713 and it has everything a cantata needs: intimacy, a touch of grandeur, arias, choruses, and one of the most beautiful oboe solos in the sinfonia. The first verifiable performance took place on June 17th, 1714 in Weimar. That Bach was aware of the cantata’s quality is shown by revisions he continued to make, presenting the work (most likely) in 1720 in Cöthen and again that year to attain an organist job in Hamburg, and yet again as part of his Leipzig cantata series in 1723.
The result is that there are several different versions available, at least three of them reconstructable. The differences are mostly in details; the enjoyment of the work is not in the least determined by whether BWV 21 is listened to in C-minor (1714 Weimar & 1723 Leipzig versions) or in D-minor (1720 Cöthen/Hamburg) nor whether the solo arias and high voice parts of the duets with bass are sung by a tenor (Weimar), a soprano (Hamburg), or alternatingly among them (Leipzig). Additionally, in the (three-soloist demanding) ‘luxury’-Leipzig version, the choruses alternate between the soloists and the whole group of ripienists and trombones are added to the penultimate chorus (“Sei nun wieder zufrieden…”). The last aria (“Erfreue dich, Seele…”) can be alternatively taken by either of the high voices, soprano or tenor.
Usually, it is the Leipzig version that finds its way onto recordings; among others Richter (Archiv, 1969), Rilling II (Hänsler, 1976), Kuijken (Virgin, 1988), Herreweghe (Harmonia Mundi, 1990), and Suzuki (BIS, 1999). In 1994, Ton Koopman included BWV 21 in Volume 1 of his Cantata cycle (then still on Erato, now Challenge Classics and just reissued on a single disc), but chose to record the Hamburg version, using alternating soloists and tutti in the choruses, Leipzig-style and adding the alternatively scored chorus in an appendix. In his first recording (volume 9 of the BIS series, 1997), Suzuki also keeps to the Hamburg version, except still more strictly and he offers some of the soprano parts (the opening aria “Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not…” and the duet including recitativo) in alternative movements.
The latest addition to the BWV 21 discography comes from The Purcell Quartet (Chandos, 2007, 38:55) whose third release of the “Early Cantatas” builds on the success of their previous work. They regale us with the version that would have been heard in Weimar of 1714. The Purcell Quartet (so much is in the name) adheres strictly to the OVPP (one voice per part) approach, so even in the chorus sections there is only the quartet of soloists employed. That particular element, admittedly, is very unlikely to be historically correct—even in Weimar, Bach will have surely found at least four or eight more singers to give him a little oomph for the festive, often grandiose sounding choral parts.
Their chamber-style sinfonia is tremendously moving with the intimacy of lament; the latter generally being more a solitary than communal activity. But—perhaps not surprisingly—when the cantata turns celebratory in the second part and it is upon the chorus to assure us that we have “not been abandoned by God” and then extol the “glory and power [of] him that sitteth upon the throne”, the rigid OVPP approach does miss out on something that even the slimmed down choruses of all the other HIP conductors deliver.
There are earlier recordings that may even be further from the Purcell’s approach than Richter, but it is usually Richter (and Rilling) whose ‘grander’ stance is so thoroughly musical and still transparent that even ears reared on Harnoncourt or used to Herreweghe & Co. can find much to enjoy. So they do. Broad and orchestral, and in the later choruses with a glorious Christmas Oratorio-like ring to it, Richter (43:47) sends his superb soloists Edith Mathis, Ernst Haefliger, and Dietrich-Fischer Dieskau victoriously through the cantata. Oboist Manfred Clement turns the sinfonia (all conductors come in at about three minutes) into a generous mini oboe concerto. The collective chest of the choir is very broad, but there is so much to admire in the spirit and skill of Richter’s Munich Bach Choir, you’d not want it any other way when listening.
At 43:45, Sigiswald Kuijken and La Petite Bande (just saved from severe subsidy cuts) are just as expansive—although with very different, HIP, means. Kuijken’s soloists, especially soprano Greta de Reyghere and tenor Christoph Prégardien are the finest of all the modern recordings. Only when René Jacobs’ alto peeks through (in the fugue of the chorus concluding part one, “Was betrübst du dich, meine Seele”), could the casting be said to be slightly less than ideal. All in all, the calm pulse and grace of Kuijken and his soloists make this my current reference recording.
I had not listened to Ton Koopman’s BWV 21, one of the discs with which I started my own exploration of Bach’s cantatas, in ages. I’ve since read some unfavorable reviews Barbara Schlick has gotten for both, her Herreweghe and Koopman, recordings. But re-approaching these interpretations with some caution, I wasn’t turned off by her voice—even if I do prefer de Reyghere (Kuijken), Arleen Augér (Rilling II), and Yukari Nonoshita (Suzuki II). Perhaps it does get a bit much with Koopman, since his version is essentially a solo-soprano cantata, whereas Herreweghe mixes it up with Howard Crook (particularly beautiful in the aria “Bäche von gesalznen Zähren”).
With all but two of my favorite versions (Rilling II and Suzuki II, where my memory must serve me) in direct comparison, Kuijken is a winner ahead of Herreweghe who serves my desire for a fleet (37:06) HIP version better than Suzuki I (37:15) and Koopman (41:03). For exploring textural extremes, the Purcell Quartet would be worth considering—but the reason to add their disc to one’s Bach collection is really the two other cantatas (BWV 172 and 182) it comes with. With Rilling II, Kuijken, and Herreweghe all available on individual budget-price discs, the splurge & compare approach is a realistic and tempting possibility. For those interested in Bach’s musical cross references and parodies, the Organ Prelude & Fugue BWV 541 contains the fugue of the opening chorus, except in (G) major.