Saturday, 7.18.09, 6:00 am
New Releases: CDs
Discovering “Polyptyque” — Championing Frank Martin
"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.
Frank Martin (1890-1974) is an unfamiliar composer to the vast majority of concert goers; just unknown enough to be considered one of the hidden and neglected gems among 20th century composers. When Ernest Ansermet foisted the role of traditional modernist—in contrast, indeed opposition, to Schoenberg—onto Martin, his fate among the opinion czars of 20th century classical music was sealed. Martin was declared a reactionary; his music not worth our time. Because the passive discrimination of non-avant-garde music was surprisingly effective, Martin’s music languished for years after his death.
The last ten, fifteen years have seen a considerable lessening of ideological elements in judging the quality of music. The very terms “serial” or “post-modern neo-tonal” have become less and less meaningful, and the quality of the works—of whichever type—is rightly becoming the determinant of what we enjoy. That’s Frank Martin’s chance. His time still hasn’t come yet, and it may never. But it should. If so, works like “Polyptyque” will either be the cause, or beneficiary, of that change in perception.
Polyptyque, “Six Images de la Passion du Christ” for violin and two string orchestras was requested by Yehudi Menuhin and, save for the Bartók concerto, he considered it the most important work written for him. (Menuhin’s recording with the dedicatees and performers of the premiere can be found on EMI’s 50-CD Menuhin box that came out earlier this year, as well as a gEMIni twofer.)
Martin refused to compose a traditional violin concerto, admitting that in light of the masterpieces written by Bach, he could not comply adequately. He ended up writing a series of six ‘pictures’ on a theme instead—and the inspiration were the scenes of the Passion of the Christ on the backside of Maestà del Duomo die Siena Polyptych.
It would be his last major work before he died in 1974. In it, Martin tried to express his religious feelings through music, “even if rationally I did not believe or thought I didn’t. In the end, it was the music that led me back to religion which is something I could not express rationally in a way that would have truly, wholly expressed my innermost feelings.”
The exceptionally tender second movement “Image de la Chambre haute. Andante tranquillo”, the short and urgent third movement “Image de Gethsémané”, and the extensive, lyrical solo for violin of the final “Image de la Glorification. Andante – Allegro moderato” find Martin’s language at his most romantic, without Bach ever receding too far into the background: when Martin composed Polyptyque, he lived in the fortress town of Naarden that has been at the heart of the Dutch Bach tradition since 1921.
Earlier this year I heard Thomas Hengelbrock alternate the six movements of Martin’s concerto with several Bach chorales. Forty-five voices of the Bavarian Radio Chorus—in perfect unison and with the transparency of a chamber choir—combined with the delicately performing orchestra to form a foundation from which the six concerto movements rose, setting them in a context that the audience could appreciate.
There is no point in taking offense to this mix of a baroque and modern work. The latter doesn’t sully the classic; the former not disturb the ‘purity’ of the modern music. Mix-and-(mis)match programs, at their best, can enhance the experience of both, old and new. Or, more likely, one will be called upon in the service of the other: a cigar might be thought of as ruining a fine whisky, but a whisky can certainly enhance a fine cigar. Mixing Bach with Martin was somewhere between. The chorales—themselves of indestructible beauty—did not suffer from being set amid the violin concerto, and the concerto was greatly enhanced by the Bach interjections. The BRSO’s concertmaster Andreas Röhn’s performance, worthy of his teachers Gingold and Szeryng, had a big part in that.
But Muriel Cantoreggi (concert master of the Munich Chamber Orchestra) is equally up to the challenge, as are Christoph Poppen and the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra for a wonderful new recording on ECM. Even their passionate championing of Martin won’t make his music easy listening, but which alert or curious set of ears could resist the budding glory (in unalloyed F-shap major) of the optimistic concluding “Image du la Glorification”?
From around the same time as Polyptyque comes the Maria-Tryptychon for soprano, violin, and orchestra dedicated to Irmgard Seefried and Wolfgang Schneiderhahn. ECM’s is the first important recording of this work on a widely distributed label—and thanks to Juliane Banse it makes a terrific case for it. Tartly lyrical and searing, it goes from Ave Maria to the center piece Magnificat to the urgent, bristly Stabat Mater where the sorrows of Maria vividly rendered as stabbing string figures. Its sincere beauty can be overwhelming.
Not since (or before?) Matthias Bamert, whose service to Frank Martin through several Chandos recordings about 15 years ago was invaluable, has Martin’s heavy, thunderingly-Bachian full orchestra version of “Passacaille” (1944, orchestrated in 1952) been recorded. Capping his ECM disc with it, Poppe brings it to our attention again, and makes this one of the most important Martin releases in years.
Equally welcome and important is MDG’s series of Martin’s concertos. Volume Two was released just a few months after the ECM disc and also includes the Polyptique and the Passacaigle, albeit the latter in its 1952 string orchestra version. The third work here is the (almost necessarily) neo-classical Concerto for Clavecin, one of the important, indeed: great, 20th century works for that instrument. (The others are Martinů and Poulenc especially, unknown but lovely the one by Viktor Kalabis, but also de Falla, Górecki and now even Philip Glass.) The last is the most important addition to the catalog, since there hasn’t been, to my knowledge, a recording of that work since Christine Jaccottet’s for Jecklin in the 70s.
If I was more familiar with the Swiss orchestral scene, it probably wouldn’t have been such a surprise… alas, it is: the Musikkollegium Winterthur Orchestra plays astonishingly well under their conductor Jac van Steen. Everything about the ECM recording—soloist, orchestra, and sound—is a little bigger in sound, and more assertive. Everything on the MDG disc is a little more detailed and urbane. Arguably for better in some movements (“Image de la Chambre haute”), possibly for worse in others (“Image de Gethsémané”). It almost doesn’t matter, though, since anyone with an interest in Martin will want to get both discs, anyway. Two versions of a top-notch 20th century violin concerto is no profusion, the alternate Passacailles complement each other nicely–color with the fully orchestrated one; chamber-like restraint in the string orchestra version–and the respective third work essential Martin and outstandingly played. 