5 works for chamber orchestra by Krenek were written between 1931 and 1979 – both before and long after Krenek abandoned Hitler’s Austria for California. The emotions embraced here range from translucent lyricism, via powerful dramatic utterance, to uneasy existentialist humour – and much of it is very beautiful.

REVIEW:

This disc is titled Music for Chamber Orchestra, but Krenek uses large forces; the orchestra personnel list includes a string complement of 6/5/5/4/2, plus multiple woodwinds, trumpet, trombones, four percussionists, harp, celesta, piano, and guitar. Warsaw’s Chamber Orchestra Leopoldinum will need neither recommendation nor resumé for those who hear this disc; the musicians, their instruments, and their ensemble are perfection. Ernst Kovacic is an Austrian violinist as well as conductor; he has been director of the Leopoldinum since 2007 and has a marvelous feel for Krenek’s idiom.

The Nightingale was written in 1931, when Krenek was 31; the other works came to fruition in his 8th decade, from 1971 to 1979. The 10-minute Von Vorn Herein is “a mixture of freely invented sections and those based on a twelve-tone row” (from the penetrating program notes by Krenek scholar Peter Tregear). Its opening measures have a distinct flavor of Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony, and it then pursues its own “old-fashioned expressionistic” (Krenek) path, closing with a loud yawp from the trombones—a far cry from what we think of as a chamber orchestra work. Im Tal der Zeit includes references to Krenek’s earlier, tonal works but comes across as a colorful, gentle gloss on Schoenberg’s Five Pieces, op. 16. Krenek had an unparalleled ability to make atonal music graceful and pleasing. Static and Ecstatic consists of 10 short movements, half of them serial and half freely composed. In his Ernst Kernek, The Man and His Music, John L. Stewart writes “The music is so sensual, so eloquent, and so immediately enticing that one is inclined to regret the years Krenek spent on the stark, obdurate serial works…” The Dissembler is an odd combination of the playful and the serious, a monologue (in English) about acting by an actor, touching on metaphysics (“But—what is truth?”), with quotes ranging from Euripides and Goethe to the Bible and Krenek’s own writings—each in its original language. The solo line varies from speech to Sprechstimme to song. The serial music suits the concept, as does a bass drum joining a chamber ensemble. Tregear again: “A dissembler is also someone who plays against convention and authority, a jester who resides inside the cloak of a sober classicist.” Krenek indeed!

Amid all this fascinating semi-serialism comes a magical orchestral song, a setting of Karl Kraus’s poem The Nightingale. The high-soprano vocal line has the luxurious golden ease of Richard Strauss’s writing for Sophie or Daphne, backed by a delicate, Mahlerian accompaniment. It is sung with stunning grace and lucidity by Agata Zubel, who is also a composer teaching at Warsaw’s Academy of Music. If Want Lists consisted of individual works, these eight minutes would be a sure bet. This Toccata Classics CD is a model of fine production values. Magisterial performances and honest, well-balanced sound aid Krenek’s eloquent music; the booklet includes complete texts and translations, plus artist bios and a list of orchestra personnel. It is an absolute must for Krenek fanciers, and everyone should hear The Nightingale.

-- Fanfare

SKORYK The High Pass: Melody. Violin Sonatas: No. 1; No. 2. Hutsulian Triptych: Allegretto and Dance. Caprice for Solo Violin. Carpathian Rhapsody. Poem. Spanish Dance • Solomia Soroka (vn); Arthur Greene (pn) • TOCCATA 0137 (65:42)


Violinist Solomia Soroka, who has collaborated with the composer in performances of his works, herself wrote the booklet notes for Toccata’s collection of Miroslav Skoryk’s music for violin and piano, in which she’s joined for recital by pianist Arthur Greene. The notes trace the composer’s early years in Siberia, to which his family had been exiled, through his attempts to study musical composition in Ukraine, to his final work with Dmitri Kabalevsky. They also trace his affection for Hutsulian modes and the kolomyika , a dance of the same ethnicity (familiar from one of the most intoxicating of Béla Bartók’s duos for two violins).


The Melody (from 1981) recalls Skoryk’s work as a composer for movies, this being an adaptation from his first effort, The High Pass , which movie—and melody—Soroka relates, became “universally popular” in Ukraine. Firmly tonal and strongly evocative, it nevertheless sounds a bit edgy in Soroka’s performance, perhaps due to the strong but slightly abrasive quality of the tone she produces (still, her generally suave manner of performance hardly sounds unnuanced). The engineers have focused the spotlight on her, and she appears to dominate the piano in the recorded sound. The First Violin Sonata, from 1963, recalls the dark harmonic shimmer of Prokofiev’s work (Soroka relates that Skoryk wrote his doctoral dissertation on that composer’s modal practices). Passages crop up in the first movement (of three) that recall the earlier composer’s haunting Five Melodies , which Prokofiev himself arranged for violin and piano. In these moments, Soroka adopts a throaty manner that accentuates the music’s sultriness, a manner that continues, intensified, in the brief Largo. The finale thrusts and slashes in this performance, relieved by searingly intense expressivity.


If anything, the Allegretto and Dance from Hutsulian Triptych (1964) sound even more accessible; they come from another Ukrainian movie, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors , and Soroka and Greene extract all the poignant lyricism and stormy drama, and gaiety, respectively, that the music and its program suggest. The four-odd-minute Caprice for Solo Violin (1978), according to Soroka, harks back to Paganini’s 21st Caprice, but it also bears some connection, in its combination of a declamatory slow opening section and a brilliantly animated concluding one, with Kreisler’s Recitativo and Scherzo Caprice (with double-stopped tremolos and pizzicatos, although, of course, in a completely different style); Gustave Samazeuilh’s similar piece, Lamento et Moto perpetuo , also comes to mind.


The Carpathian Rhapsody (2004) and Poem (2006), the most recent items on the program, both began their lives, according to Soroka, as required repertoire for violin competitions. The first sounds forbidding, perhaps because Soroka makes it seem more difficult than ingratiating. Although the Poem opens more reflectively, and overall sounds less ethnic, it nevertheless contains its share of purely violinistic difficulties and probes further into the harmonic penumbra than any of the pieces that precede it on the program. The Second Violin Sonata (1990) explores differing styles, but Soroka points to the recurrence of material from Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata as a unifying element. The slow movement (the center one of three) makes a more consistent impression, centered on a single somber mood, captured by Soroka in a long-breathed melodic outpouring. The virtuosic finale recalls that of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto but also interweaves some lyrical jazzy elements. The Spanish Dance, from 1978, also began as incidental music, for The Stone Ruler . It’s heavier, darker, and more smoldering than Sarasate’s pieces, and could serve as a substitute for one of them on almost any program. According to Soroka, Bodhar Kotorovych, of the Kiev Conservatory, considered the original arrangement of this final movement from a suite for string orchestra to be technically too simple. Violinists should hear how Skoryk responded. In fact, violinists should hear the whole disc, as should those interested in relatively recent repertoire for the instrument. In fact, its workable performances, fascinating booklet, and clear recorded sound should appeal to almost anyone with the slightest interest in the violin.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

I reviewed the first volume in this comprehensive, pioneering series with great pleasure and feel the same way about the second release. As before, the fully idiomatic and nerveless duo of Sherban Lupu and Ian Hobson take the honours — for expressive variety, technical excellence and ensemble assurance.

Each work has some defining feature or features to compel interest, though maximum interest will, I think, be focused on violin fanciers whose range of experience will be richly enhanced by the three works that have never been previously recorded. The first of that trio is Souvenir du Pré aux Clercs, written with Charles Schunke (1801-39), who had been appointed pianist to the French queen. The two men fashioned something out of Ferdinand Hérold’s last work, an opera premiered in 1832. It’s been securely presented by Toccata which allocates a separate track to the introduction, theme, series of variations, cadenza, andante and finale. This is a work where the piano part proves to be every bit as formidable as that for the violin, if not more so. Technical difficulties begin to accumulate as the variations develop, and there is a droll quality to the writing too, and a joint cadenza in which ensemble pitfalls are manifold, and a finale full of élan, lightning fast left hand pizzicato and lashings of audacity.

Pensées Fugitives Part 1, written with Stephen Heller (1839-42), is another premier recording. The Hungarian pianist Heller based himself in Paris, and shunned virtuosic music after an early breakdown. Ernst’s philanthropy — he wanted to help Heller financially — was laudable and the joint work reflects the sense of lyricism and romanticism that Heller sought in composition. The six charmers are character pieces, somewhat reminiscent of Mendelssohn — though Mendelssohn equally knew of Heller and Ernst, so it’s by no means one way traffic. Songful and charming they are performed with impeccable attention to detail.

The last of the previously unrecorded works is Variations brillantes sur un thème de Rossini which was probably Ernst’s first published work. This is a real Paganinian blockbuster with coruscating technical demands; the second variation is an especially arduous test of intonation, which Ernst himself must have passed heroically; and there’s bravura aplenty in the fourth variation as well. After the Last Rose of Summer variations the Fantaisie brillante sur la Marche et la Romance d’Otello de Rossini must be Ernst’s most recorded work. David Oistrakh and Ruggiero Ricci recorded it. Lupu loses little in comparison, keeping things alive timbrally and expressively throughout — his sense of colour shading is exemplary, and Hobson’s pianism outstanding. This feast of articulation, finger position changes, mastery of colour, and subtlety of vibrato usage exemplifies all that is best in Ernst’s writing and indeed in these performances. Note how Lupu’s vibrato widens and intensifies for the ‘pathetic’ sensibility summoned up in the Romance section. As if this were not enough, we have the luxury of the Boléro with its amiable warmth and the two Romances, where cantabile warmth and lilting lyricism are the names of the game.

Top notch recording quality and an outstanding booklet note complete this exemplary offering.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

[Nikolai Tcherepnin]...student of Rimsky-Korsakov and teacher of Prokofiev, is revealed in all his pianistic glory in these fascinating first recordings, from the lushly romantic early "Three Pieces", with their tinges of Chopin and Rachmaninov, to a charmingly original set of tone poems based on children's alphabet sketches, which display just why his friends teasingly called him "Debussy Ravelovich".

- Stephen Pritchard, The Observer, [15 May 2011]

Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873–1945) – a student of Rimsky-Korsakov and teacher of Prokofiev – was a Russian-born composer and conductor, and the first of his family’s musical dynasty. His piano music reveals a diversity of influences: the Three Pieces (c. 1890) have echoes of Chopin and Rachmaninov; the Fourteen Sketches on Pictures from the Russian Alphabet (1908) are miniature tone-poems inspired by Alexander Benois’ beautifully illustrated alphabet book for children; [reproduced in the CD booklet] and The Fisherman and the Fish (c. 1914) is a vivid musical depiction of this Pushkin poem, complete with watery splashes!

- Toccata Classics

Pianist David Witten's international career has included numerous concert tours in Ireland, Finland, Russia, Ukraine, Europe, Mexico, and South America. As the recipient of a 1990 Fulbright Scholar award, Witten spent five months teaching and concertizing throughout Brazil, and he is frequently invited back to give concerts and masterclasses.

Will be one of my discs of the year without doubt.

I have to admit to this being the disc I have most eagerly awaited hearing for some months. That being the case I am delighted to be able to report that it has fulfilled all my expectations if not exceeded them – let us all hope that the titling of this as ‘Volume 1’ really does augur well for an extended series of discs by this unique composer.
 
In recent years there has been a steady trickle of Brian’s orchestral works appearing on CD but when you dig a little deeper it becomes clear that these are in effect re-releases of performances where the originals date back some years. So in fact it is nearly ten years since the last ‘new’ recording – Psalm 23 on ClassicO [recorded 2002], then back into the 1990s for the abortive Marco Polo/Naxos ‘Brian Cycle’, the 1980s for EMI’s brief flurry of interest using the RLPO, and the 1970s for the Leicestershire and Hull Schools Symphony Orchestra’s brave traversal of several discs with Unicorn-Kanchana and CBS. This is by no means a complete survey but it gives you a sense of the piece-meal attempts to commit Brian to disc.  

Toccata Classics are proving to be valiant disciples of the Brian cause both on disc and in print. Recently I had the pleasure of reviewing the superb Havergal Brian on Music: Volume Two which Toccata have published. Both that project and this have been instigated under the watchful eye and guiding hand of the Havergal Brian Society and Brian expert Malcolm MacDonald. As part of the book review I commented - has ever a composer been so fortunate in their biographer / promoter as Brian with MacDonald? His knowledge, insight and understanding of this shamelessly idiosyncratic composer is little short of stupendous. That sense of dedication suffuses every element of this recording from the fascinating choice of repertoire on this well programmed CD to the fine engineering supporting excellent playing from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.  

I have to admit that I have not heard any of this music before so I have no frame of reference with which to compare the current performances. Suffice to say there is an air of ‘rightness’ and conviction that is vital to bringing off this often quirky music. Having read the two volumes of Brian’s critical writings has only increased my appreciation of him as a composer. I have a suspicion that even among his more famous composer contemporaries he was the most knowledgeable about the latest developments in the musical scene. His journalistic writing shows him as an enthusiastic supporter of an extraordinarily wide and diverse range of then contemporary music. This, to my mind, adds significantly to his stature as a composer in his own right for instead of producing a mish-mash of musical influences his own work remains strikingly independent. It is well-known that he was largely self-taught as a composer but the choices he makes; structurally, harmonically or melodically are never made through ignorance instead they are guided by a quirky individualism. And therein lies the rub for the listener new to his sound-world; it can often seem that musical material is juxtaposed in a random and almost obtuse manner. Here is where Malcolm MacDonald proves to be such a valuable guide. Whether in this liner or in his definitive 3 volume study of the Brian Symphonies he makes it clear that in what might initially seem ramshackle and even chaotic there is actually a very sophisticated control of form and structure. Brian is dancing to a different tune and it can take the listener some time to ‘hear’ his message. Conductor Garry Walker has become fully attuned to the Brian idiom. As mentioned before these are strikingly confident and convincing performances – orchestras are phenomenally skilled these days but to project such security and conviction as is heard throughout this disc requires those exact same qualities to be projected from the conductor’s podium. It is rare indeed that such complex and demanding music is first heard played as here and it adds considerably to the positive impact of the disc. On the evidence of this disc Walker proves himself to be an interpreter of distinction.

Another remarkable thought is the fact that the works performed here span an astonishing 65 years. The earliest work is the 1903 Burlesque Variations on an Original Theme. Never performed in Brian’s lifetime this is its first professional performance. But why? Some Brian can be tough to digest on first sitting but not this work – it has instant appeal. Written when Brian was 27 it represents his first effort at large-scale orchestral composition. He scored the work for a large romantic orchestra with triple wind, standard brass – but including four trumpets – extended percussion, two harps and organ. Lasting some twenty-five minutes and consisting of a theme and seven variations this is a well balanced and fascinatingly wide-ranging piece. Yes there are moments where the orchestration feels opaque and indeed clumsy but these are repeatedly offset by passages of remarkable power, mystery and beauty. Why Burlesque Variations? – MacDonald offers a fascinating opinion; variation form recurs often in Brian’s works and usually he chose to take a banal/simple tune and then expand the seemingly limited potential of that melody beyond all expectation. Hence the Fantastic Variations of 1907 – based on ‘Three Blind Mice’ or The Symphonic Variations of 1916 – based on ‘Has anybody here seen Kelly?’ are just two examples. It is as if Brian is trying a kind of alchemy transforming the base material of a simple song into musical gold. Yes, the influences are often clearer here than in later Brian and clearly Elgar provided a model but I am pushed to think of any other work by a twenty-seven year old British composer from around the turn of that century of such confident quality. Although I know others will disagree I find Josef Holbrooke’s music to have an empty bombast and reliance on musical effect to which Brian never resorts while York Bowen is interesting and appealing but never challenging in the way Brian is. The closing pages of these variations do try to lift the simple tune onto a grandiose level which is beyond both the melody and the composer (at this stage in his career) but elsewhere there are brilliantly achieved musico-dramatic effects. Try Variation 2 – Tempesto and the simply gorgeously poignant Variation 3 – Elegy that follows. The latter is the emotional heart of the work and opens as a gently regretful valse triste very much in the style of the Nedbal or Sibelius works of that name before building to a powerful strenuous climax way outside the remit of those pieces. The return to the reflective opening is typical Brian in the rapid change of emotional direction before he builds it back to a climax of cinematic splendour. Subtle it is not but hard the heart not to be moved on some level – I love it. Curiously the London publisher Bosworth published the suite which contains Nedbal’s work in 1903 and it became the composer’s biggest hit. But the similarity is one of form nothing more. But it does point up another fact worth considering here; Brian’s music never sounds “English” in the pastoral sense of the word. More ‘stout and steaky’ than ‘cowpat’.

Chronologically, the next work on the disc dates from exactly fifty years later. How typically perverse of Brian in austerity Britain to produce a work that by title alone would seem to belong to the light music world of Edward German or Percy Fletcher. For sure this is lighter music than much of Brian’s output but it has far more substance and muscle than the bulk of the light music repertoire. Not that it is at all in tune with the prevailing trends in 1950s contemporary music either. Again, one has the abiding sense of Brian writing music that suited himself when it suited him. This proves to be another piece of instant appeal with the heart of the work being the second movement Reverie. Throughout the whole work and the orchestral writing – angularly expressive but with awkward parts for solo instruments and some thrilling brass scoring – there is a scale and sweep that is very impressive. Clearly this is not meant to be a work uttering the profoundest thoughts and feelings of the composer but it does show the confidence and expertise with which Brian handled his resources. I would suggest ignoring the titles – I couldn’t help wondering if Brian has used such deliberately twee and diminutive headings in a provocative and ironic manner. Here is another curious parallel – the central pair of movements are scored first for strings alone – the aforementioned Reverie, and then wind and horns - Restless Stream. Vaughan Williams did much the same in his almost exactly contemporaneous Symphony No.8 – although the wind scherzo comes first before the string Cavatina. Not that we can accuse Vaughan Williams of any kind of plagiarism – Brian’s Suite was not to be heard for twenty years (neither can the accusation be reversed – the Vaughan Williams was not premiered until 1956). The closing Village Revels is also the final music on the disc – again ignore the title, this is quite unlike any revel I can imagine but it provides an exciting conclusion to all the works here.

MacDonald explains Brian’s recurring use of the term Elegy to describe movements or individual works. This was the title ultimately given to a 1954 composition originally called A song of sorrow. Brian renamed it some sixteen years later when reassessing his back catalogue with a view to publication. The rationale being that the original title implied a kind of emotional one-dimension that does not encompass the full range of this very impressive work. MacDonald points towards a definition that encompasses both the classical laments of Ovid and the romantic poetic works of Goethe and others. As a critic Brian wrote enthusiastically about Busoni and MacDonald sees a link with such works as that composer’s Nocturne Symphonique or the Sarabande and Cortege. But influence or inspiration is all this link should be seen as. Again Brian has produced a work as striking in its individuality as its expressive power. Jagged and rugged energy courses through this work. There are more of the typical Brian Symphonic fingerprints here, a sense of a restless quest the music searching and unstable. Yet at the same time there is an underlying feel of something grand and ceremonial. MacDonald sees it as a long slow struggle from C minor to the light of C major. Elsewhere on the disc I am a little uneasy about Brian’s penchant for almost hyper-active percussion writing. By my reckoning the percussion should point a moment in the score – dynamic alone need not be a factor – for Brian there seems to be a percussive ‘happening’ in nearly every bar. But here, massed side-drums set against tip-toeing xylophone creates some rather special effects. Again I have nothing but praise for the bravura confidence of the playing of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. There is some truly thrilling brass writing here dispatched with total aplomb. Much as I enjoy the discovery of the Variations on this disc if I had to choose one work to represent Brian it would be this Elegy. As this represents its first recording I would suggest that that alone is enough to merit buying this disc.

My only relative musical disappointment on this disc was with the Legend: Ave atque vale which opens it. In its own right it is remarkable because it is the work of a ninety two year old man. The title which means ‘hail and farewell’ is taken from Catallus’ poetic elegy to his drowned brother written in about 56 BC. MacDonald describes it as being ‘crammed to bursting point with disparate ideas’ which is a sympathetic way of saying perhaps it has not been edited or structured with as much discipline as earlier works. To my ear – given that this is NOT a judgment borne of extended familiarity – it sounds too rambling and disparate in its elements. Here the percussion has an absolute field day throughout without really justifying their continuous presence in musical terms. Possibly this is the kind of work that Brian’s detractors might single out as showing his weaknesses. However, it has the great good sense not to outstay its welcome and by representing just seven minutes of over an hour of vintage Brian no collector need hesitate on this piece’s account. On a positive note it does act as an extraordinary tribute to the undying vitality and individuality of Brian to very end of his long life.

Hopefully, it will be clear by now that I consider this a very special disc – exactly the kind of high quality combination of rare repertoire, performance and technical presentation that collectors hope for. For those as yet unfamiliar with the Havergal Brian I think this could act as an excellent introduction. On the recent Testament release of the famous Boult/BBC performance of Brian’s legendary Gothic Symphony the disc concludes with an interview with the composer where he underlines the fact that he wrote music with little or no expectation of hearing it performed. Instead he was responding a personal creative imperative that could not be denied. How gratified he would be to know that finally his music is beginning to receive the attention is deserves. A Volume 2 from this same team is essential and this current disc will be one of my discs of the year without doubt.

  -- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

Lively and touching Beethoven voiced for the piano and viola.

This CD is the first in one of Toccata’s many series – almost as many as Naxos. This one is Beethoven by Arrangement.
 
As far as we know Beethoven, himself a violist, completed no works for the viola as principal instrument. The absence of a local viola virtuoso or at least a viola commissioner might well have been the reason. Others stepped into the breach.
 
This disc documents their arrangements. Before doing so it documents the 27 second torso of a Viola Sonata he began but never completed. It’s typically assertive and lively. Paul Silverthorne who is the guiding mind and hand behind this project arranged the compact three-movement Horn Sonata. It was written originally for the celebrated horn-player Giovanni Punto. It works rather fluently with its pulsingly dynamic and tenderly noble outer movements framing a mournfully captivating little Poco Adagio. Karl Kleinheinz was a contemporary of Beethoven and turned his musical skills to bear on two works for string trio: the opp. 8 and 25 – the latter arranged for flute. The seven movement Serenade for String Trio op. 8 became the Notturno for viola and piano. It’s in the mood and manner of Mozart’s cassations and serenades with witty movements alternating with more pensive and serious ones. The Allegretto alla Polacca is especially attractive. Friedrich Hermann, a pupil of Mendelssohn at Leipzig, did the same service for the much arranged Septet op. 20 – here appositely dubbed the Grand Duo. It’s an even more extended work at forty minutes than the Notturno this time across six movements. The music is from the high watermark of Beethoven’s early period and rewards close attention as well as casual overhearing. After much profundity the finale’s Marcia and Presto end proceedings with gleaming-eyed cheer and urbane confidence. Intakes of breath can be distracting but I only really noticed them from Silverthorne in the Andante segment of the Grand Duo’s finale. Silverthorne’s playing on the Amati viola is impassioned and completely in-style. David Owen Norris is always not merely reliable but ready with apt and lucid playing; so it proves here.
 
The liner-notes are by Paul Silverthorne who is Principal Viola of the London Symphony Orchestra. I recall him as the violist who premiered the Thea Musgrave concerto in 1991. He was also the violist for the very late Rozsa Viola Concerto recorded by Koch International circa 1998. Toccata Press have Silverthorne’s Beethoven Edition comprising the Grand Duo and the op. 17 Sonata in preparation. Violists will be pleased and so should their audiences.
 
The recording was made on a Viennese Blümel piano (1865) and a Brothers Amati viola (1620).
 
Lively and touching Beethoven voiced for the piano and viola. Viola players and the world’s curious Beethovenians will need to have this.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

A formidable start to Toccata’s Ernst series.

Unlike Paganini, the Moravian violinist Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst – their careers overlapped, indeed Ernst was something of a musical son – has not garnered a large discography. It’s not surprising. Violinists seem to operate on the principle that if you’re going to essay the works of one wrist-crunching, finger-stretching nineteenth century composer-executant of genius, let it be Paganini. This leaves Ernst in the recorded wilderness, and other than the Last Rose of Summer variations and one or two other pieces – especially those that appeal to the intrepid solo violinist – the bulk of his other works, especially those for violin and piano, have lain relatively discarded.
 
He wasn’t always neglected; and there have been pockets of interest over the years. Indeed, if you go back far enough you’ll find two very early recordings of two pieces in this recital; Jan Rudenyi recorded an abridgement of the Carnaval de Venise variations back in 1905, and Hugo Heermann, an important German violinist, recorded the Second of the Op.8 Nocturnes at around the same time, albeit in an arrangement for violin and orchestra.
 
But of far more significance is that Sherban Lupu himself has already recorded some Ernst with Peter Pettinger for Continuum [CCD1017] – back in 1990 they set down the Adagio sentimentale op.13, Airs hongrois variés Op.22, the Op.17 Polonaise, and the Rondo Papageno, the last of which he reprises here for Toccata Classics. The others will follow in subsequent volumes, of which there are to be six in total, along with new editions of the works in question, edited by Lupu and published by Toccata.
 
Lupu proves a lordly exponent. Ernst was quick off the mark with his Fantasie brillante sur le Prophète – Meyerbeer’s opera had been written the previous year – and Lupu demonstrates a splendid command of both its more static legato moments and its increasingly virtuosic demands. One really needs wrists of velvet steel to encompass the demands placed on them, not least in the broken chord passage – but Lupu keeps the line intact despite all this, even though there is some rough bowing around the three minute mark of the Andantino pastorale section. That is part of Lupu’s fearless approach to these works, and he’s not afraid of a resinous or crunching attack when the occasion calls for it. He’s notably nuanced in the Nocturnes, spinning a noble operatic legato in the E major, the more famous one, and dispatches the cadential passage with sang froid. I admire him and Toccata all the more for not splicing an accidental string touch.
 
The Carnaval de Venise variations is one of his best known pieces, at least to the string fraternity. With left hand pizzicatos, octave leaps, fearsome harmonics and the like, this calls for some superhuman bowing and left hand feats, feats indeed of digital gymnastics. What with this, it’s necessary also to convey something of the sheer wit, gall and theatrical outrageousness of the writing, something Lupu does in spades. Each variation is separately tracked here – in fact Toccata is scrupulous about separate banding, so that these nine pieces generate a total of 43 separate tracks.
 
The Op.13 Morceaux make for a contrasting pair; the first is a scena and there’s the gentle lyricism of the second. For all the fire and brimstone, one must not forget Ernst the charmer. The Thème Allemand Varié is a first recording, and so is the Rondo Allemand – it was co-written with pianist Charles Schunke (1801-1839) - whilst the Carnaval de Venise is heard fully, intact, for the first time here. That’s a particularly notable feature of a series like this, something one could also note of, say, Hungaroton’s Hubay series. We end with a piece Lupu played on that Continuum disc, the Rondo Papageno, another devilish finger-buster, and something of an experimental number, which plays with The Magic Flute figure and displays the violinist’s technique with dramatic flourish.
 
The excellent notes are by Mark Rowe, who has written a biography of the composer, and production values are high. The recorded balance rather favours Lupu over Hobson. Other than that, this is a formidable start to the Ernst series.
 
-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

WEINBERG Solo Violin Sonata No. 1. Violin Sonatas: No. 1; No. 4. Sonatina • Yuri Kalnits (vn); Michael Csányi-Wills (pn) • TOCCATA 0007 (78:08)

Violinist Yuri Kalnits and Michael Csányi-Wills recorded their program of violin music by the Russian composer Mieczys?aw Weinberg in two sessions: August 26–30, 2008, at Champs Hill, Coldwaltham (Sonata No. 1, Sonata No. 4, and the Sonatina), and July 13–18, 2009, at Moviefonics Studio in West London (the solo sonata). This constitutes the first volume in what will apparently be a complete set of the composer’s violin sonatas. Toccata bills the recordings of the First Sonata and the solo sonata as recording premieres.

The program opens with the three-movement First Sonata, which, according to David Fanning’s notes, Weinberg composed in 1943 after settling in Moscow. The sonata’s opening passages combine firmly tonal lyricism with sardonic punctuation, and although the harmonies eventually cloud over and grow less securely centered, they remain within a tonal orbit; and although its lyricism gives way to both slashing and motoric passages, in the manner of Dmitri Shostakovich, who inspired Weinberg, its melodic patterns hardly seem to cultivate unbroken ground. Kalnits sounds ardent—almost romantic—in his tone production (though he strops a keen edge on the angular passages), not only in the opening Allegro but especially at the outset of the Adagietto second movement. The engineers have captured his tonal glow, especially in the lower registers (they seem to have placed Csányi-Wills’s piano a slight distance behind Kalnits’s violin). The duo move alertly back and forth between the finale’s alternate cheerfulness and vigor and bring the sonata to an imposing conclusion.

The five-movement Solo Violin Sonata, 24-odd minutes in duration (in this performance), from 1964, inhabits an entirely different universe, less centered tonally, more dissonant, and less flowing both rhythmically and melodically. Thrusting in its first movement in a manner similar to that of Béla Bartók’s Solo Violin Sonata, it takes no prisoners—and neither does Kalnits, who enters into its more dour spirit, cavorting among its thorns. In the second movement, which begins after what sounds like an inconclusive final passage in the first, he shrieks his way through the predominantly double-stopped textures and effectively contrasts the aggressive pizzicatos with the more playful and lyrical sections to which they give way. Kalnits forcefully hammers the dissonant double-stops and chords of the ensuing Lento until quieter passages bring the movement to a close. The Presto, which begins almost immediately, recalls the finale of Bartók’s Solo Violin Sonata thematically, but without its ethnic outbursts. In fact, the entire sonata sounds like an internationalized version of Bartók’s, carrying its harmonic implications even further and stretching the violinist’s technique even less mercifully. Kalnits possesses ample resources to follow wherever Weinberg leads.

The Fourth Violin Sonata, from 1947, returns listeners to fringes of the First Sonata’s tonal world, although this sonata sounds much darker in the duo’s searing reading of its first movement. They dispel this atmosphere in an irresistible burst of energy in the second movement’s first section, and follow its biting premise through the cadenza that leads to the solemn conclusion. The duo’s expressive intensity makes this sonata a spellbinding emotional journey of discovery for listeners, as it must have been for the performers. Violinist Stefan Kirpal and pianist Andreas Kirpal also took this journey, on cpo 777 456 (David Fanning wrote the booklet notes for both releases), exploring the first movement’s more reflective side—as, for example, in the dark, complex opening contrapuntal piano solo—but no more ardent in the eloquent violin solo, and just about as incisive and visceral in the Allegro sections of the second movement. The Kirpal duo takes 19:58 for the journey, while Kalnits and Csányi-Wills completes it in 13:44. But how much of the atmosphere Andreas Kirpal creates in the opening piano solo would you trade for any added excitement in what follows?

The Sonatina, which Fanning assigns to 1949 and describes as an attempt to respond to the Soviet criticism that engulfed Soviet composers at the time, sounds more straightforward in its first movement, in which Kalnits alternately soars and engages in muted, plaintive conversation with Csányi-Wills, especially at the end. Violinist and pianist continue to explore this haunted ambiance through the second movement’s opening section, while he and Csányi-Wills wax extroverted in the middle section, which begins almost with the abrupt discontinuity of a separate movement. In their reading of the finale they mix ferocity with vigorous burlesque.

The release should provide a most auspicious introduction to Weinberg’s violin music, offering a chameleon-like variety that extends from the feral onslaught of the Solo Sonata to the profundities of the Fourth Sonata and to the outright melodiousness of the First. Strongly recommended for repertoire, performances, and recorded sound.

FANFARE: Robert Maxham