Mozart: Klavierkonzerte No 22 & 23 / Barenboim, Kubelik, Bavarian Radio Symphony
BR Klassik
CD
$19.99Apr 27, 2010
A congenial coming together of kindred spirits.
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MOZART Piano Concertos: No. 22, K 482; No. 23, K 488 • Daniel Barenboim (pn); Rafael Kubelík, cond; Bavarian RSO • BR 900709 (58:48)
Twenty-eight year old Daniel Barenboim and the esteemed conductor Rafael Kubelík are heard here in two of Mozart’s most profound and appealing piano concertos. Twenty years later, in 1990, Barenboim recorded these concertos with the Berlin Philharmonic, this time as both pianist and conductor. Between these years, Murray Perahia in his early 30s, as both pianist and conductor, recorded these concertos (in the mid 1970s) with the English Chamber Orchestra, and elder statesman Rudolf Serkin recorded them (in the mid 1980s) with Claudio Abbado and the London Symphony Orchestra. Barenboim, while continuing a busy schedule as a pianist, eventually became principal conductor or music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and later of the Berlin Philharmonic. Perahia continues, on occasion, to conduct chamber orchestras from the keyboard. Serkin never, to my knowledge, served as conductor. These facts are a source for interesting performance comparisons of these concertos. I am wary of the practice of conducting from the keyboard when the orchestral demands are equal to those of the piano or of any other keyboard instrument, and these two concertos make such equal demands.
The first and third movements of the E? concerto (K 482) on this CD are played at rather fast tempos, producing an inappropriate tension and a consequent masking of detail, robbing the listener of the ability to savor the beauty of Mozart’s creation. The exception is the andantino cantabile middle section of the third movement, where the tempo is suitable. The second-movement variations, however, are exceptionally well played, but the thrilling effect of the right-hand C Minor against the left-hand C Major (starting at the legato at bar 13 from the end) in the final variation is not discernible. Barenboim’s 20-year-later effort as pianist-conductor is much more successful, principally because of his more relaxed tempos. The C Minor/C Major effect in the final variation, however, remains hidden. Perahia as pianist-conductor produces a more satisfying K 482 than either of Barenboim’s efforts by using not only relaxed tempos but more effective phrasing. The C Minor/C Major effect in the final variation is no longer hidden at Perahia’s command. Unfortunately, Perahia’s decision to use Hummel’s cadenzas in the first and third movements was not a wise one. The Serkin/Abbado K 482 is still my favorite because of its very many virtues. Serkin’s characteristically deliberate tempos benefit this concerto by allowing the listener to hear detail not easily discovered, even in Perahia’s fine account. Abbado’s ability to allow inner part-writing to be clearly heard matches Serkin’s attention to detail. The C Minor/C Major effect in the final variation is crystal clear, and as a result an ecstatic experience. Bars 181–182 (shortly before the andantino cantabile) in the final movement pass unremarkably from both Barenboim and Perahia, but Serkin plays them with an agogic that allows accenting of the first note of each of the four occurrences of four 16th-note groups. The result (at 4:00 in the Serkin recording) is magic.
The A-Major Concerto (K 488) fares better than its companion concerto under Barenboim/Kubelík and under Barenboim-“squared.” The more relaxed first-movement tempo of Barenboim-squared is initially preferable to that of Barenboim/Kubelík, but the latter has the distinct advantage of more discernible orchestral detail. But Barenboim’s more relaxed tempo in his dual role eventually becomes a bit sluggish. The plaintive F?-Minor Adagio has Barenboim at his best in both recordings, but Kubelík’s independence as conductor produces a more convincing emotional effect. The final movement is a Barenboim/Kubelík triumph in terms of the exuberance demanded by the music and the orchestral detail provided by the conductor. Especially noteworthy are the important bassoon passages, which are never masked, and the three appearances of the passage borrowed from the first movement of the B?-Concerto (K 456), which are gloriously bouncy. The final movement under Barenboim-squared is too subdued—too square, as it were. My preferences for the A-Major Concerto are Perahia-squared (but never square) and Serkin/Abbado. The former is the master of phrase shaping and the latter the master of attention to detail.
This is a disc worth having because Barenboim and Kubelík have something unique to say about these concertos. My preferences may lie elsewhere, but hidden details like bassoon passages and C Minor/C Major superposition are revealed enough by familiarity with the music to free them from complete hiding.
FANFARE: Burton Rothleder
Barenboim first collaborated with Kubelík when the pianist was sixteen. That encounter was in Australia. And K488 was the first concerto he played in public, back when he was eight. The conjunction of that concerto and the Czech conductor comes in this release from BR Klassik, which presents a collaboration made in June 1970 in Munich where Kubelík was music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
This was a compatible meeting of minds. Barenboim is on record as having admired the older man for his seriousness and vitality, and it certainly sounds to have been a congenial coming together of kindred spirits. Kubelík ensures that the string weight in K488 is not too saturated but remains clarified, if not exactly spruce. Meanwhile Barenboim is characteristically attentive in his exchanges with the wind principals – the warmly supple dialogue with the first flute is a case in point. The first movement cadenza is conspicuously well played but contains melancholic introspections that are fully realised in the central movement – the veiled anticipations lead with inexorable logic to the deepening expression that follows. What remains laudable is that this expression comes at no cost to the architectural continuity of the music making. Instead the clarinets offer reprieve in their flowing episodes and the grandeur of the melancholy is adroitly realised by a confluence of soloists, alert orchestral colours and detailed etching of rhythms and contours from the conductor. Released from this spirit, the finale explores more bucolic emotions – bubbling lower winds, clarity and rounded ebullience from Barenboim and if the recording somewhat favours, as so often, the soloist - meaning that some winds writing can be swamped - this deficiency doesn’t materially limit one’s appreciation of a fine traversal, a unanimous one moreover, expressively and intellectually.
These features apply equally to the companion concerto performed here, the Concerto in E, K482. The Military-Janissary quality is welcomingly celebrated by Kubelík, the crisp chording having more than a touch of imperial majesty about them. Barenboim evokes something of his hero Edwin Fischer’s simplicity of expression. His excellently conceived cadenza playing impresses and so too does the austerity and interior expression of the slow movement. The reminiscent reverie cultivated in the central panel of the finale attests to the probing introspection of these collaborations.
Naturally Barenboim’s concerto cycle with the ECO will be the first port of call for collectors of the commercial discography from around this time. But these almost contemporaneous live traversals are of lasting value given the assured and sensitive direction of Kubelík.
Mozart: Arias / Breslik, Lange, Munich Radio Orchestra
Orfeo
CD
$20.99Sep 09, 2016
Born in Slovakia in 1979, Pavol Breslik made his professional singing debut at the age of twenty-one. Since his debut, he has progressively added more and more to his repertoire however he continually finds himself returning to Mozart. Warmly praised by critics, he has no qualms with his decision to return to Mozart: "When I go back to Mozart after excursions into other repertoire - like Lensky or bel canto - and feel at home with Tamino, I know I have done the right thing."
Mozart: Mass in C Minor, KV 427 / Arman, Bavarian Radio Choir, Berlin Akademie fur Alte Musik
BR Klassik
CD
$29.99Nov 02, 2018
Written in 1782, Mozart's Mass in C minor - although incomplete – ranks as one of the outstanding Mass settings in European music history. The very recent reconstruction/completion of the Mass by Clemens Kemme in the spring of 2018 confines itself to the original sources, avoiding any arbitrary additions. The work was recorded in this critically acclaimed version for the Bayerischer Rundfunk during the summer of 2018, and conducted by Howard Arman. This album is thus the first recording of the definitive version of this new and intelligently edited reconstruction of Mozart's Mass in C minor. An introduction to the work is also included, enabling this masterpiece to be approached from new perspectives. In Vienna in the summer of 1782, Mozart started writing a new Mass despite having apparently received no commission to do so. On August 4, 1782 he married Constanze Mozart, and from his correspondence it appears that he had made himself a promise to “have a newly-composed mass performed in Salzburg if he brought her there as his wife.” The work may have been performed on October 26, 1783 in St. Peter's Church in Salzburg, with Constanze as the soprano soloist; concrete evidence of such a performance is however lacking. Nevertheless, the Mass can probably be seen as a kind of votive offering for Constanze. The fact that the work was not completed may be due to the church music reforms implemented by the Emperor Joseph II, who preferred sacred music to be performed on a smaller scale. In 1785, Mozart eventually reworked the “Kyrie" and "Gloria" from the mass for his cantata Davide penitente.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Die Zauberflote (Glyndebourne, 1960)
Walhall Eternity Series
CD
$10.99Sep 11, 2015
Its style falls a good distance from the historical niceties of our modern era’s historically informed performance standards, but yet it still lands squarely in the most enjoyable listen category. Sir Colin Davis is near the beginning of his brilliant career to come when this Glyndebourne Festival live 1960 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte was staged. He leads a cast including Richard Lewis, Pilar Lorengar, Heather Harper, Geraint Evans and Hungarian bass Mihaly Szekely as Sarastro, whose formidable presence on opera house stages had been overwhelming audiences since the 1920s.
Originally released in 1998 to good notices, the 'Sinfonia Amabile' Choir and Orchestra conducted by Piotr Wajrak along with the best of the cadre of up and coming singers in Poland with Mozart's canonical Requiem in D Minor. The recording was sponsored by the Straszny Dwór Foundation whose mission is to promote Polish artists, primarily composers, conductors, instrumentalists, singers and dancers, in Poland and around the world.
Arias / Hei-kyung Hong, John Fiore, Orchestra Of St. Luke's
RCA
CD
$17.99Aug 22, 2007
Hei-Kyung Hong, the formidable Korean soprano, sings a selection of arias perfectly suited for her rich soprano voice. A soprano in the league of Schwarzkopf, te Kanawa, and Fleming, Hong is one of those artists who can easily change hats. She is equally comfortable as The Countess singing "Dove sono" as she is portraying Violetta in 'La Traviata.' Her interpretation of "Caro nome" from 'Rigoletto' is enchanting and touching, while her flair for lighter repertoire comes alive in "Quel guaro il cavaliere" from 'Don Pasquale.' Hong's singing of "Ach, ich fühl's" rings of the frustration of lost hope and love that Pamina feels, and Micaela's aria from 'Carmen,' "Je dis que rien ne m'epouvante," is deeply heartfelt. Conductor John Fiore, a fixture at the Metropolitan Opera House, adeptly leads the Orchestra of St. Luke's in this thoroughly satisfying disc.
Mozart: Piano Concertos No 19 And 27 / De Larrocha, Davis
RCA
CD
$17.99Feb 14, 2008
Sir Colin Davis’ sensitivity is effortlessly mirrored by Larrocha with her enviable ease, her avoidance of all artifice or attention-seeking dalliance. Few other pianists are more attuned to Mozart’s mix of pain and radiance.
Alicia de Larrocha’s and Sir Colin Davis’s Mozart concerto cycle, while rarely less than distinguished, grows in stature with each new issue. Indeed, so musicianly and distilled are both these performances that the casual listener is in danger of taking them for granted, mistaking their classic sobriety for monotony and their devotion for a monochrome quality.
Sir Colin’s unforced way with the opening tutti of K595, his awareness of “all passion spent” is haunting but unobtrusive. Such sensitivity is effortlessly mirrored by Larrocha with her enviable ease, her avoidance of all artifice or attention-seeking dalliance. Few other pianists are more attuned to Mozart’s mix of pain and radiance, of the subtle major-minor shifts commencing at 6'34'' and, throughout, her economy ensures that every passing mood is unmistakably yet unobtrusively registered. Again, tempos are ideal whether in K595’s gently paced final Allegro (less idiosyncratically slow or autumnal than from Kempff on DG) or in the central Allegretto of K459. Even in the finale’s opera buffa high-jinks she captures the music’s undertow, a poise and equanimity like “the still point of the turning world”.
Balance and sound (grainy but apt) are exemplary, and this issue is graced with a fine portrait of the pianist by Christian Steiner.'
Dorothy Warenskjold - A Treasury Of Operatic Heroines
Cambria
CD
$18.99Jan 01, 1999
"A soprano star with one of the loveliest voices this reporter has ever heard," Henry Humphries, the late Cincinnati music critic once wrote of one of Dorothy Warenskjold's opera performances, declaring further, "she is a singer of finely grained musicianship, personality and temperament - one the Golden Age of Song would have been proud to call its own." Dorothy Warenskjold is a third generation Californian. She was born in Piedmont and received all her education and musical training in and around San Francisco. As James Schwabacher, tenor and founder of San Francisco Opera's Merola Program, recently remarked, "I have been constantly amazed at the consistency over the years of Dorothy's vocal technique which produces the pristine lyric quality uniquely hers." And nowhere is this more obviously shown than in the present choice of arias which span a period of nineteen years. These arias date from the young and budding prima donna's first major radio broadcast, through mid-career opera performances, up to the latest recorded arias. This consistency is a tribute not only to her training, but to her intelligent dedication to her art.
The String Quartet offers countless possibilities of interplay between the different instruments. If you add a fifth person to the mix, in this case the viola player, Nobuko Imai, with the Auryn Quartet, then it not only gives the whole sound a comparatively orchestral quality but also considerably increases the methods at the composer's disposal. These are just two reasons why Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's combination of 2 violins, 2 violas and a cello have become so well-loved. The opulent and tragic KV 406 in C minor together with the pure, idealistic KV 515 in C major forms the first standalone album, the famous, sorrowful KV 516 in G minor with the early, exuberant and dramatic KV 174 the second album and the chirruping, mischievous KV 614 in E flat major with the mature and worldly-wise KV 593 in D major the third. In as far as these characterisations say anything at all about the music, it is only about the opening of each piece. Each movement is distinct and different. Every quintet tells its own great story.
