ArkivMusic

Nowowiejski: Piano & Cello Concertos / Kortus, Koziak, Borowicz, Poznań PO

DUX

Available as CD

~~$21.99~~ $16.99

Mar 15, 2024

The work of Feliks Nowowiejski constitutes one of the most interesting testimonies to the stylistic evolution of Polish composers born in the late-19th century. Five years older than Karol Szymanowski, and a year younger than Mieczysław Karłowicz, Nowowiejski chronologically belonged to the Młoda Polska (Young Poland) period. However, he never became a member of the movement; what is more, his artistic path was so individualistic that it is diff icult to talk about the composer’s aff iliation to any group or style. Nowowiejski’s entire long and artistically unusually active life was marked by a series of stylistic shift s, of permanent quests and changes which did not result from a spurious desire to chase the evolution of trends current in the world, but from authentic openness to varied impulses and sources of inspiration. This way, Nowowiejski joins the group of artists who were no strangers to radical stylistic change (e.g. Igor Stravinsky, who was five years his junior, revealed a similar stylistic flexibility). A composer of thorough education, Feliks Nowowiejski followed a path to obtain it that was typical of late-19th-century talents born away from the main centres. He hailed from Barczewo, and the first years of his musical education were associated with his native Warmia i Mazury region: first, at the school of music in Święta Lipka, and later in Olsztyn, where he was a musician of the East Prussia Grenadier Regiment Orchestra. The school in Święta Lipka prepared students for the profession of organist and teacher. It also taught playing various instruments, with particular emphasis put on vocal music. Nowowiejski’s education resembles this of another Slavic composer of the breakthrough era, Leoš Janáček. Like Janáček, Nowowiejski, whose education revealed a particularly conservative trait, in a later stage of his artistic career awoke in himself a modernist talent. What’s more, it was (very unique!) Slavic modernism, which never lost sight of the composer’s origin, and his love for music of greatly varied sources (folk and traditional melodies, church and patriotic songs). Naturally, these were the later years in Berlin, the prestigious Meyerbeer Prize (which he won twice), the extensive studies with Max Bruch that were most important from the point of view of Nowowiejski’s career and renown. As a relatively young composer, he took a place among the most popular composers of his day by storm, while no work by any other Polish composer of the early-20th century could match the worldwide success of Nowowiejski’s oratorio Quo vadis. World War One thoroughly changed the situation. Involvement in the revival of independent Poland and his political engagement (active role in the preparations for the plebiscite in Warmia i Mazury, which Poland eventually lost) made the composer famous at home, but held back his international career (following his association with the plebiscite, the previously successful Quo vadis was no longer performed in Germany).

Scottish Fantasies For Violin And Orchestra / Barton Pine

Cedille

Available as CD

$19.99

Jan 01, 2005

Like her previous album for Cedille, which paired concertos by Brahms and Joachim, everything about this release by violinist Rachel Barton Pine is exceptional, from the selection of couplings to the performances themselves. In the first place, it's wonderful to see a program built around concert pieces for violin and orchestra based on Scottish themes, since this permits a new view of an old chestnut and some welcome attention given to worthy but neglected repertoire. The chestnut in question is Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy, a marvelous work seldom played or recorded today, but one that is more substantial in length and in may ways more imaginative in content than the ever-popular Violin Concerto No. 1, with which it is sometimes mated on disc.

For this performance, Barton Pine has consulted Scottish fiddler and folk-music authority Alasdair Fraser for some stylistic pointers on an authentic inflection of the tunes that Bruch borrowed for his work. The result is a tastefully ornamented solo line, most obviously in the slower music (check out the opening of the third-movement Andante sostenuto). This is not, I hasten to add, a case of tarting up the music in a garish or unidiomatic fashion. On the contrary, Barton Pine is acutely sensitive to Bruch's actual text, paying particularly close attention to dynamics and articulation (her soft playing in both the opening adagio and the andante is exquisite). The addition of some melodic turns and grace notes simply enhances the natural expressiveness of the melodies themselves, a quality heightened by Barton Pine's smooth, singing tone.

In rapid passages, her technique is perfectly secure, with multiple stops and octaves always in tune, and her sensitivity to the what is happening in the orchestra is second to none. The charming duet between violin and flute in the scherzo, for example, seldom has sounded better balanced or more effortless. The violinist is helped considerably by the excellent accompaniments provided by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Alexander Platt, which are notably refined and transparent but also offer plenty of the necessary rhythmic energy where called for (and to be honest, Bruch doesn't ask for much--it's mostly a gentle, lyrical piece).

The proceedings take on a bit more earthy vigor in the couplings. Mackenzie's Pibroch Suite is a marvelous and very substantial work (23 minutes) that ought to be better known. It has been recorded before, most recently by Hyperion, in a fine performance that Barton Pine betters by a slim margin, finding a bit more poetry in the opening Rhapsody and digging in for some extra character in the marvelous concluding Dance. McEwen's Scottish Rhapsody "Prince Charlie" evidently is new to CD, and it's equally enjoyable. What a pity that some enterprising violinist doesn't make a live program of some of the excellent short works for violin and orchestra that seem to exist these days only on disc! Sarasate's Airs ecossais is another gem whose technical fireworks Barton Pine handles with aplomb.

Closing out the disc is a Medley of Scots Tunes, selected and arranged for dueling violinists by Barton Pine and Fraser and expertly scored for orchestra by Barton Pine alone. The melodies, as might be expected, are wholly delightful, and the performance absolutely brilliant, bringing the program to a rousing conclusion. All together, you get more than 80 minutes of music on two CDs for the price of one, including a video documentary on how the project came together. I did not watch it, as the quality of the music-making speaks for itself, but others may be more interested in the visual element than I am. In sum, this collaboration between Barton Pine, Fraser, Platt, and the SCO is a triumph on all counts, a model of what a themed release ought to be, and it's all captured in demonstration-quality sound by Cedille's engineers. Without a doubt, this is one of the smartest and most purely lovable releases of the year. [7/16/2005]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Rheinberger: Complete Organ Concertos / Stefan Johannes Bleicher

MDG

Available as SACD

$24.99

Nov 01, 2010

RHEINBERGER Organ Concertos: No. 1 in F; No. 2 in g. 3 Pieces for Cello and Organ • Stefan Johannes Bleicher (org); Douglas Boyd, cond; Musikkollegium Winterthur; Cäcilia Chmel (vc) • MDG 1643 (SACD: 57:58)

Josef Rheinberger (1839–1901) is frequently named alongside Max Bruch, Karl Goldmark, Robert Fuchs, and Carl Reinecke when mention is made of late 19th- to early 20th-century German Romantic composers who cultivated an essentially conservative style influenced by the Mendelssohn-Schumann-Brahms-Joachim axis. Budding composers from abroad, including America, flocked to Germany to study under these men and to have bestowed upon them the mantle of a proper German pedigree. In Leipzig, Reinecke could claim Grieg, Sinding, Svendsen, Janá?ek, and Weingartner among his students; while in Munich, Rheinberger could name Humperdinck, Parker, Chadwick, Wolf-Ferrari, Thuille, and Furtwängler among those he instructed.

Rheinberger’s instrument was the organ, a fact that’s hard to ignore based on his vast output in which the organ plays a dominant role. Yet, in his entire voluminous catalog—the solo organ pieces alone occupy 12 CDs—the two concertos on this disc are the only concerted works I’m aware of that he wrote for organ and orchestra. The mind leaps immediately to the similar compositions by Rheinberger’s French contemporaries Widor and Guilmant, but the reality is that Rheinberger’s concertos are in a more classical mold and of a thematic content somewhat similar to the chorale-like melodic and harmonic manner of Saint-Saëns. Oddly, as well, there are not a few passages that seem to anticipate the sort of ceremonial hubbub and pageantry one hears in Elgar’s soon-to-be pomp and circumstance mode. Rheinberger’s concertos, however, predate the earliest of Elgar’s coronation marches by 17 and seven years, respectively.

The Concerto No. 1, dated 1884, two years before Saint-Saëns’s brilliant “Organ” Symphony, is modestly orchestrated for three horns (or two horns and bassoon) and strings, with the organ filling in for the absent winds. Scoring in the Concerto No. 2 of 10 years later isn’t much augmented, but to the earlier ensemble Rheinberger adds two trumpets and timpani, so that the organ must still furnish the sonorities that would ordinarily be supplied by flutes, oboes, and clarinets. If the Second Concerto finds its voice somewhere between Saint-Saëns and Elgar, the First Concerto reaches a bit further back, perhaps to Mendelssohn and Schumann.

These are not hard works to like. They’re tuneful, spirited, and engaging enough that one doesn’t miss the fuller symphonic approach that Saint-Saëns took to the orchestra or the more variegated splashes of color Widor and Guilmant drew from their Cavaillé-Coll and French organs.

There are two or three more recordings of these works available than I find reviewed in the Fanfare Archive. In 23:6, John Bauman covered a Classico release featuring organist Ulrik Spang-Hansen with the Chamber Philharmonic of Bohemia led by Douglas Bostock; while in 28:5, James Reel readdressed a Capriccio recording that had originally been reviewed in 16:2 and was recycled in SACD format with the rear channels presumably artificially processed. That disc featured organist Andreas Juffinger with Harmut Haenchen conducting the Berlin RSO. Not reviewed, as far as I can tell, are recordings by Ulrich Meldau with Daniel Schweizer presiding over the Zurich Symphony Orchestra on the Motette label, and a more recent Naxos version by organist Paul Skevington with Timothy Rowe leading the Amadeus Chamber Ensemble. Of these several editions, the only one I have for comparison purposes is the Juffinger in its “enhanced” SACD incarnation.

The Capriccio booklet has nothing to say about the organ, though the recording was made in Berlin’s Jesus-Christus-Kirche, so I assume the instrument to be of German, Swiss, or Dutch pedigree, but for the concertos the new MDG recording is to be preferred. Newly recorded in February 2010, the disc is in true surround format. Full-page specifications are given on Winterthur’s historic Stadrkirche organ built by E. F. Walcker in 1887–88 and restored in 1980–84 by the Swiss firm currently doing business as Kuhn Organ Builders, Ltd. And MDG’s Bleiche and Boyd are considerably more animated than Capriccio’s Juffinger and Haenchen in every movement of both concertos, delivering performances that are crisply articulated and in which the organ and orchestra are beautifully integrated.

MDG’s bonus is three pieces— Abendlied, Pastorale, and Elegie —Rheinberger transcribed for cello and organ from a set of six pieces he’d originally written for violin and organ at the dual requests of church organist Johann Georg Herzog and the composer’s publisher, August Robert Froberg. Adagio meditation-type pieces for a solo string instrument accompanied by organ were rarities, if indeed they existed at all at the time. Rheinberger’s contributions are exactly what you would expect—the musical equivalent of votive candles flickering in the transepts. Cellist Cäcilia Chmel plays prayerfully enough, but the angels remain frozen in their friezes, unmoved by Rheinberger’s entreaties.

Definitely recommended for enjoyable, if not great, music, fine performances, and superb recording. I will not, however, be throwing away my Juffinger and Haenchen on Capriccio for the simple reason that it includes Rheinberger’s Suite for Violin and Organ, op. 166, a lovely neobaroquish affair that echoes with distant strains of Bach, Handel, and Corelli, and is a more substantial and preferable alternative to the three cello pieces on the current disc.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Herzogenberg: Quintet Op 43, Trio Op 61 / Oliver Trindl, Orsolino Quintett

CPO

Available as CD

$18.99

May 27, 2008

HERZOGENBERG Quintet in E?. Trio in D • Orsolino Qnt members; Oliver Triendl (pn) • cpo 777 081 (51:16)

Readers will already know from prior reviews, both mine and those of other contributors, that of Brahms’s many contemporaries and wannabes Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843–1900) was the closest of all of them to the elder composer, both professionally and personally. After all, they shared a romantic interest in the same woman, Elisabet von Stockhausen, who came close to marrying Brahms, and who then married Herzogenberg when Brahms dumped her. The relationship between the two men could not have been a comfortable one, and Herzogenberg didn’t help matters any with his toadying behavior towards Brahms, as if merely breathing the master’s exhaled air would somehow fill his own sails with the winds of inspiration. But not even modest talent, let alone genius, is transferable through osmosis.

Herzogenberg did in fact possess a modicum of talent of his own, most evident when he wasn’t trying so hard to imitate Brahms. And that comes through in these two delightful chamber works. The E?-Major Quintet, written in 1883, is scored for the unusual combination of oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, and piano. Few such works exist for this combination of instruments, Mozart’s K 452, Beethoven’s op. 16, and Friedrich Witt’s op. 5 being the best-known—possibly the only known—examples. All share the same key of E? as the most logical compromise and accommodation to the two transposing instruments, the clarinet and the horn. Though Herzogenberg’s quintet would not be as easily mistaken for Brahms as some of his other works, it does exude something of the relaxed, engaging character of Brahms’s much earlier A-Major Serenade. And its last movement, as well as the third movement of the oboe trio, with its running triplets, does call to mind Brahms’s op. 40 Trio for violin, horn, and piano.

The Trio in D for oboe, horn, and piano was written in 1889 during Herzogenberg’s stay in Nice, where he had gone, with Elisabet, to recover from a serious illness. Described by the composer himself as “jolly and so new,” the piece is obviously one of good spirits that reflects the warm Mediterranean clime and Herzogenberg’s improved state of health. In terms of its instrumentation, the trio has even fewer precedents than the quintet, an 1886 work by Carl Reinecke being the only known example, and one that apparently Herzogenberg was unaware of when he wrote his own trio.

The two works on this disc make two things about Herzogenberg abundantly clear. First, he had a life independent of Brahms, and a fairly rich one at that. A Bach scholar of no mean accomplishment, he took up residence in Leipzig where, with Philipp Spitta, he established the Leipzig Bach-Verein, which dedicated itself to the revival of Bach’s cantatas. During his 10-year directorship of the institute, he taught composition to a number of students, one of whom was Ethel Smyth. Relocating to Berlin, he then took up the post of professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik, where he advised Vaughan Williams to study with Max Bruch. Herzogenberg’s catalog of compositions is far larger than current listings of recordings would indicate. It includes major choral works, among which is a requiem, a mass, a number of large-scale oratorios, eight symphonies, a violin concerto, and a vast amount of chamber music.

The second thing we learn is that as a composer, Herzogenberg was not just a conservative—in itself not an indictment, as many composers of this time and milieu, which included Fuchs, Reinecke, and Bruch, among others—were also “old-school” traditionalists—but that he lacked their gift for lyrical melody and the grand Romantic gesture. As one listens to the quintet and trio on this disc, what emerges is a sunny, somewhat carefree disposition, one in which the rustic charm and blithe surfaces are never rippled by any momentous or memorable events. Despite their four-movement classically structured forms and their chamber-music category titles, in musical character these are serenades or divertimento-type works—likeable enough but unremarkable.

Remarkably good, however, are the performances by the Orsolino Quintet, a young German-Austrian ensemble founded in 1996. This is one of those groups from which individual members are drawn on an as-needed basis, depending on the scoring of the work at hand. The services of flutist Walter Auer, for example—one of the Orsolino’s permanent five—are not required in this instance. All players are also members of major orchestras: Jochen Tschabrun is principal clarinet in Frankfurt-am-Main’s RSO; Anne Angerer is principal oboe in Stuttgart’s Southwest RSO; Jan Wessely is deputy principal horn in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; and Marion Reinhard is double-bassoonist in the Berlin Philharmonic. Thus, it comes as no surprise that articulation, intonation, phrasing, and ensemble balance are at the highest professional levels. Joined by pianist Oliver Triendl, and given every advantage by cpo’s excellent recording, these performers make as good a case as any can for a composer who, despite the heroic efforts on his behalf, is not likely to rescind the “DNR” stamped on his medical chart.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Herzogenberg: Piano Quartets, String Trios, Etc / Frolich, Belcanto Strings

CPO

Available as CD

$19.99

Feb 24, 2009

HERZOGENBERG Piano Quartets: in e, op. 75; in B?, op. 95 . String Trios: in A, op. 27/1; in F, op. 27/2. Legends • Belcanto Strings; Andreas Frölich (pn) • cpo 777 438 (2 CDs: 125: 33)

This is a repackaging in a budget priced twofer of previously released singles, both of which have already been reviewed in these pages. Raymond Tuttle covered the first of these two discs containing the E-Minor Piano Quartet and the A-Major String Trio in 25:2. The second disc, containing the B?-Major Piano Quartet, the F-Major String Trio, and the Legends for cello and piano, received two reviews, one by William Zagorski and another by Martin Anderson, both in 24:4. I’ve little to add to their conclusions.

By now it is well known that Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843–1900) practically worshipped Brahms. But it wasn’t enough for him to try to imitate the elder composer’s style; he ended up marrying the woman that Brahms had proposed marriage to and then reneged on. Modern psychology might call it a classic case of transference: in marrying Elisabet von Stockhausen, was Herzogenberg subconsciously marrying Brahms, or at least getting as emotionally close to him as possible? Out of deference to Elisabet, Brahms tolerated Herzogenberg’s fawning, remaining as cordial towards him as he could; but if one reads The Herzogenberg Correspondence , edited by Max Kalbeck, it’s telling that Brahms speaks to Herzogenberg in fairly formal and neutral, if not a bit distanced, language, and more often than not addresses his letters to both Herzogenberg and Elisabet as husband and wife rather than to Herzogenberg individually.

Despite the interpersonal dynamics at work in this somewhat odd three-way relationship, Herzogenberg did manage to sustain an independent career of his own. Moving to Leipzig in 1874, he teamed up with Bach scholar Philipp Spitta to establish the Leipzig Bach Verein; and during his 10-year stewardship of the institution he tutored a number of students, one of whom was Ethel Smyth. He declined, however, to tutor Vaughan Williams, advising him instead to study with Max Bruch. Herzogenberg’s own catalog of works is fairly impressive in numbers if not in consistent quality. He wrote eight symphonies, numerous choral works, including a requiem and an oratorio, The Birth of Christ , which has enjoyed some currency, and a great deal of chamber music, of which we have five examples on these discs.

There isn’t much to say beyond what Anderson, Tuttle, and Zagorski already said in their aforementioned reviews. After “a Brahmsian wave washed over him,” Tuttle called the E-Minor Piano Quartet, written in response to Elisabet’s premature death in 1892, “one of the best works Brahms never wrote.” Its dark, brooding, and passionate first movement does indeed echo some of Brahms’s earlier chamber works with piano, but a close listening reveals Herzogenberg’s lesser grasp of formal structure and the tightly knit motivic relationships that inform Brahms’s works.

Zagorski found the B?-Major Piano Quartet almost more Brahmsian than Brahms, opining that not only could Brahms have written it, but that “it would have to be Brahms on a particularly good day.” Anderson seems to have reached the same conclusion, calling the piece “scarcely less engaging than Brahms’s own essays in the genre.” In this I would agree. This was to be Herzogenberg’s last chamber work, and so he had plenty of time and practice to perfect his carbon copying.

In the two string trios, Herzogenberg was on his own turf. Apparently, the medium held no interest for Brahms, who, to the best of my knowledge, wrote nothing for this combination of instruments. The trios are not among Herzogenberg’s earliest works; he was 36 when he wrote them in 1879. As I listened to the first of them in F Major, I tried to relate it to something I’d heard before, something I was familiar with, but a point of reference kept eluding me until I re-read Tuttle’s review. He cited Grieg, pointing to “the third movement’s central fiddle tune.” Perhaps it was just the power of suggestion, but suddenly I did begin to hear certain resemblances to some of Grieg’s orchestral writing for strings.

Legends , alternately for viola or cello and piano, was written in 1888 following a lengthy illness during which Herzogenberg had been bedridden and then only able to venture out in a wheelchair. Dedicated to Joseph Joachim, the work is in three movements, and could easily be taken to be a viola or cello sonata. It’s of an absolutely exquisite beauty, especially its central Moderato movement, and it sounds nothing like Brahms. With its sweeping arpeggios in the piano, it’s more reminiscent of Schumann, and its singing melodiousness calls to mind Saint-Saëns.

Cpo and the Belcanto Strings (Wolfgang Schröder, violin; Daniel Raiskin, viola; and Ramon Jaffé, cello), joined by pianist Andreas Frölich in the piano quartets, currently seem to have a lock on this corner of Herzogenberg’s output. It therefore pleases me to be able to report that they make excellent advocates for Herzogenberg and his music. The playing is technically polished throughout, and performances are sensitive and responsive to these scores’ many felicities and admirable qualities.

For those of you who love Romantic chamber music and have not previously acquired these discs as singles, I would strongly encourage you to add this two-disc set to your collection.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Valen: Orchestral Music Vol 1 / Eggen, Båtnes, Stavanger SO

BIS

Available as CD

$21.99

Mar 01, 2008

VALEN Symphony No. 1. Violin Concerto. Sonetto di Michelangelo. Cantico di ringraziamento. Pastorale • Christian Eggen, cond; Elise Båtnes (vn); Stavanger SO • BIS 1522 (58:06)

One of the great pleasures of collecting recordings is the occasional discovery of an exciting, previously unknown, work. Well, here are five of them, by a composer that has been neglected for far too long. Norwegian composer Fartein Valen (1887–1952) may be, as one biography has it, “one of the few Norwegian composers with an international reputation,” but that doesn’t seem to be saying much. He was a modernist in a country much taken with its nationalist musical tradition and not particularly receptive to Valen’s innovations. His own apparent indifference to recognition and his withdrawal to the isolation of a rural farm for much of his creative life only added to his obscurity. One can hope this release, the first in a promised series of recordings of orchestral works from BIS will help to rectify this situation.

Valen studied with Max Bruch in Berlin and stayed to absorb the many other influences of that important musical capital in the second decade of the 20th century. He fell under the spell of Bach, Bruckner, and Brahms, but was also captivated by the progressives of that era, especially Arnold Schoenberg. When Schoenberg introduced his first works using serial techniques in the early 1920s, Valen was already home in Norway, developing his own type of serialism. It became the basis for all of his compositions written from 1925 on. Unlike Schoenberg, who developed a whole new theoretical system of music using tone rows of all 12 chromatic pitches, Valen worked intuitively and far less strictly. His point of departure was Bach’s rich polyphony, from which he developed comparably rich tone row-like chromatic melodies. Valen applied this technique of “dissonant counterpoint,” as he called it, in a variety of classic forms during the remainder of his career. The result is not the sometimes hard-edged dissonances of Schoenberg’s thornier scores. Rather, while there are no keys in Valen’s music, there is always a sense of vague tonality. The lines are incredibly long, but one never gets lost. There is a feeling of wandering, which is undoubtedly the desired effect. This is music of ambiguity and melancholy—a beautiful uncertainty which Valen packages in clear, familiar structures. It sounds vaguely like Berg, another important influence, but the overall effect is different.

Valen’s Symphony No. 1, op. 30 (1939), is, of course, classical in form. After a beginning of dark foreboding, the opening Allegro movement is tense and energetic, with moments of exaltation. El Greco’s painting Christ on the Mount of Olives is the inspiration for the second, Adagio, movement. The building of the line is ecstatic and the anguish palpable. The third movement provides contrast in the form of a playful scherzo and clouded trio before we are plunged back into the tensions of the rondo-form finale. It is an exhilarating journey.

The Violin Concerto, op. 37 (1940), is Valen’s most-played work and the one that finally brought him some recognition at its premiere in 1948. It was written as a memorial to his godson, Arne Valen, who had died of tuberculosis several years earlier. In it he expresses his profound sense of loss and his deep Christian faith, the latter especially in his use of the Bach chorale Jesu meine Zuversicht in the concluding section of the work. It bears a superficial similarity to the Berg Violin Concerto, of which Valen was aware, though he had not actually heard it. The work is intensely beautiful and deeply, often tenderly, moving.

The other works on the disc— Pastorale , op. 11 (1930), a meditation on his beloved rose garden, Sonetto di Michelangelo , op. 17/1 (1932), in which he contemplates the religious longing and pain in the great Italian artist’s poetry, and Cantico di ringraziamento , op. 17/2 (1932), in which Valen expresses Psalm-like thanksgiving in a beautifully constructed fugue—are equally rewarding experiences.

The Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, the excellent resident orchestra of Valen’s birthplace, has made a mission, on CD at least, of rescuing Norwegian composers from undeserved obscurity. Valen joins Geirr Tveitt and Harald Sæverud in their debt. Christian Eggen, who edited the often-faulty published scores to restore Valen’s intentions, is well known in Scandinavia for his performances of contemporary music. He conducts with admirable strength and sensitivity. Elise Båtnes, one of the foremost violinists of Norway, plays the difficult, soaring lines of the Concerto with silvery tone and great concentration. The recorded sound is very fine and the documentation excellent. This is not music of loud affirmation and major-key celebration. Look elsewhere for that. This is music of great emotional depth and asks a fair amount of the listener. It rewards in kind. Highly recommended with that caveat.

FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames

Right Through The Bone - Rontgen / Arc Ensemble

Sony Masterworks

Available as CD

$11.99

Nov 06, 2007

Wonderfully warm, committed and utterly convincing. A fascinating disc.

If you are puzzled, as I was, by the title of this CD then there is a logical explanation which is given at the beginning of the booklet notes. It was Julius’s cousin Conrad Röntgen (1845-1923) who discovered X-Rays, who won the Nobel Prize in 1901 and who ultimately transformed medical science. Knowledge of Conrad however led Grieg to say, after hearing a piece by Julius, that the music “went right to the bone”, hence the CD title. Although it seems to be just a clever remark it has more than a ray of truth!

The music of Julius Röntgen is just beginning to be noticed again after years of lying forgotten on dusty shelves. “Oh no,” you say, “Not another mediocre worthy dug out by musicians with nothing else to do.” Well if you think that then read on - indeed listen on - because I can tell you that this is very fine music indeed. The revival which is just beginning is worth every penny and every column inch spent on it. So let’s forget that this music was written when Bartók, Schoenberg and Ives were at their heights and take it with an innocent ear just as it comes. Indeed it may be more helpful to remember that Röntgen is almost an exact contemporary of Elgar.

A few words of biography first. In 1924 Röntgen retired from public life to concentrate on composing. Although already quite prolific, many more works started to flow from him. He had studied in Leipzig, meeting Liszt and Franz Lachner, Carl Reinecke and Heinrich von Herzogenberg, but he made the surprising decision to live and work in Amsterdam. There, amongst other activities, he was one of the founders of the Concertgebouw and even more significantly he was instrumental in establishing the Amsterdam Conservatoire. He worked there not as a Director but as an accompanist and so he had time to compose. He also had influence as Director of an organization with the snappy title ‘The Society for the Promotion of Musical Arts’ which meant at that time much new music.

You may fear that Brahms might have been a strong influence. Röntgen was the soloist in the first Dutch performance in 1884 of the master’s 2nd Piano Concerto under Brahms’s direction. After that Röntgen saw Brahms socially as it were for many years. Also Röntgen liked to work on quite large canvases, yet he is no clone of Brahms indeed there is much originality here. The ghostly and eerie second movement of the Viola Sonata’s outer section is like nothing else I can describe, and the finale has an occasional touch of Debussy about it. The initial impassioned Allegro has an opening idea which has remained with me for some days. The excellent booklet notes by Simon Wynberg mentions César Franck as an influence.

The CD begins with a fine and arresting work: the Quintet for piano and strings. In its opening movement there is a restless and memorable idea, sextuplets or quadruplets in the piano and cello with the violins above singing a lovely melody canonically in the minor key. The melting sequences also give the music an unforgettable character. The compound time second movement, marked Allegro, is rhythmically memorable with a wonderful passage towards the end over an ostinato pedal building to the final bars. The slow movement is questing and exploratory at first until a cello melody answered by violin takes over with a melody which Borodin would have been proud of. At the end of the contrapuntal and at times fugal Con moto finale Röntgen quotes briefly his first movement opening and ends the piece in a questing atmosphere.

The Clarinet Trio falls into three movements with an especially sunny initial movement. Brahms did come to my mind during this piece but none the worse for that. The main weight of the work rests on the finale with its memorable ‘Sostenuto’ opening suddenly transforming into a friendly Allegro commodo. It is the earliest work (1921) here and has the occasional Mendelssohnian touch in its lightness and sophistication.

The String Sextet really has little in common with the two by Brahms although it is in a late-Romantic style. The first movement may remind one more of Max Reger; the booklet writer mentions Max Bruch. With the grace and ease of the second movement Andante we step gently into the world of Dvo?ák, except that the middle section is unexpectedly storm-tossed before subsiding again. Curiously it’s followed by another Andante which is a set of variations and then an Allegro of great vigour, especially for the cellos.

The performances are wonderfully warm, committed and utterly convincing. These are young performers who, one assumes, have not come across Röntgen before. The booklet pictures them and gives some biographical details. I remember reading a sensational review of their debut in New York in 2003. This is, in my view, top quality musicianship and even if the music was not that interesting I would still be praising the music-making. The recording only serves to enhance all that they achieve.

This then is a fascinating disc and I urge you to look into it. From there you might join me in a search for more music by this, as yet, little known but true master of the early twentieth century.

-- Gary Higginson, MusicWeb International

Alexander Tcherepnin: Piano Music Vol 1 / Giorgio Koukl

Grand Piano

Available as CD

$19.99

May 29, 2012

This is one of those discs that makes me want to shout with delight... A wonderful disc altogether!

This is one of those discs that makes me want to shout with delight. Not only is it the piano music of a neglected but brilliant composer but the sub-title Complete Piano Music 1 means there will be more. In fact there will be as many as eight volumes altogether. Hooray!

By his late teens, the accompanying booklet explains, Tcherepnin had already composed several hundred pieces. His father, Nikolay was a conductor, pianist and composer and, indeed the genes were passed on to Alexander’s son Ivan who was also a composer. Being born in what, as Confucius would, no doubt, have described as “interesting times”, the family had a difficult life from 1917 when they left for Tbilisi, Georgia, to escape the upheavals of the Russian Revolution, cholera and famine. Then they had to flee Georgia, following its annexation by the Soviet Union in 1921, for Paris where Alexander remained throughout the second world war before finally settling in the USA in 1948.

His corpus of work embraces all manner of genres including opera, ballet, orchestral, chamber, solo works, choral, band, music for films and the theatre and even compositions for accordion and harmonica, among others. Though I’ve yet to hear much of it I’ve always been particularly struck by his piano music which I’ve found original and exciting ever since I first heard it on a old vinyl disc. He’s another of those pianist composers from the early twentieth century who became masters of the piano miniature.

The disc opens with his 10 Bagatelles, op.5 from 1918, distilled from a much larger number of pieces begun when he was a mere 13 year old, and one of his best known compositions. It comes as no surprise to learn that fact as they are highly inventive and hugely satisfying works possessing a crystalline brilliance accompanied by a propulsive momentum that drives the music forward in a way that becomes almost addictive. They are pieces that stay in the memory for, though I never heard that old disc often and not for many years, I recognised the first two bagatelles as plainly as if I’d only listened to them last week. Years after he had written them Tcherepnin was embarrassed by their success regarding them as juvenile, though he relented later accepting their spontaneity. Artists can sometimes be too self-critical, finding it difficult to accept flashes of genius at an early age. These are certainly examples of that and while you listen just remind yourself that these were composed almost one hundred years ago - unbelievable!

Self criticism takes various forms and often includes destruction of works considered unworthy of publication - thank God that didn’t happen with the bagatelles! - and with Tcherepnin that was the fate of the first twelve of his 13 piano sonatas, written in his early teens. The fourteenth, later renumbered as his piano sonata no.1, is the sole survivor and listening to it you can only imagine what has been lost, with regret. It’s a wonderful piece that is rhythmically inventive and exciting and which reveals a creative talent that is simply mind-boggling for someone so young. The booklet’s authors find some similarities with Prokofiev’s earlier Toccata and describe it as “This distinctly Russian-sounding piece ...” I agree with this but also see parallels in Tcherepnin’s compositions with Medtner and aspects of Scriabin, Weinberg and even Shostakovich. With piano compositions of that era from that part of the world there seems to have been an inherent and instinctive prism through which these composers naturally viewed things musical.

The 9 Inventions, op.13 (1921) that appear on this disc as a world première recording are further proof of Tcherepnin’s compositional abilities. They are, like the bagatelles, short, brilliantly scored little gems. The booklet’s authors write that “... it is hard for the listener to escape the self-consciousness of the new compositional technique”. I obviously missed out on that and it makes me realise that sometimes it’s better not to be an expert so that I can enjoy things more easily.

Tcherepnin’s Sonata no.2, op.94 (1961) has an autobiographical aspect. It gives expression to a frightening episode in which Tcherepnin experienced a strange ringing in his ears. This persisted over two years but eventually disappeared of its own accord. I was not able to discern this in the music but enjoyed it for its own sake as yet more marvellous writing for the piano. Again it serves to emphasise his youthful abilities as this mature work did not leave the early works ‘in the cold’ by any means.

The final work on the disc is 10 Études, op.18 (1920) and another world première recording. As I listened to the opening of the first I thought of Chopin. I was interested to read that the booklet noted similarities with Chopin too but also with Prokofiev while others brought Rachmaninov to mind and again Chopin and Prokofiev. Which composer doesn’t draw on influences from others however. Those who make every conscious effort to plough a unique furrow often produce sterile works. These etudes are absolutely fabulous little masterpieces (no.8 lasts a mere 35 seconds!) and they round off the disc in a truly emphatic way. When you realise that these works, while they bear the date of publication of 1920, were in fact written when Tcherepnin was a young teenager you just have to marvel. Music seems to be an art-form that very young people seem able to master at an earlier age than just about any other. It would be staggering to come upon a novel or a painting, sculpture or a play created by anyone as young. On the rare occasions when it does happen we find it just that. In music it happens much more often. I thought of this only yesterday when I heard the string sextet written by the 11 year old Max Bruch.

This disc is a simply brilliant introduction to anyone who hasn’t come across Tcherepnin before and who loves 20 ^th century piano music. The works are played superbly by Giorgio Koukl who has already recorded all of Martin?’s piano works to great acclaim. A wonderful disc altogether!

-- Steve Arloff, MusicWeb International

Gouvy: Oedipe a Colone

CPO

Available as CD

$36.99

May 28, 2013

GOUVY Oedipe à Colone • Joachim Fontaine, cond; Christa Ratzenböck ( Antigone ); Joseph Cornwell ( Polynice ); Stephen Roberts ( Thésée ); Vinzenz Haab ( Oedipe ); Kantorei Saarlouis; La Grande Société PO • CPO 7778252 (2 CDs: 93:05 Text and Translation)

Back in 34:3 I reviewed a premiere recording of Louis Théodore Gouvy’s secular oratorio Iphigénie en Tauride , conducted by Joachim Fontaine. While admiring the composer’s “usual fastidious craftsmanship and superior technical command of orchestration and of vocal and instrumental part-writing,” I expressed reservations about “a lack of dramatic contrast and real passion” and added: “The music is too cultivated for its often harrowing subject....Instead, one elegant and decorous set piece follows another, all inhabiting a temperate emotional climate zone that fails either to inflame or chill. There is also a certain stasis and lack of flow from one number to the next.” Having had a similar reaction to another one of the composer’s oratorios, Électre , I speculated that “Gouvy may deliberately have been cultivating a degree of emotional restraint in these works in order to convey a stylized sense of classical antiquity that would have fit 19th-century sensibilities.”

Fontaine now leads the same choral and instrumental forces, though with mostly different vocal soloists, in the premiere recording of yet another oratorio by Gouvy on a mythic Greek subject, Oedipe à Colone . What a difference from Iphigénie ! Here there is no such emotional restraint or stasis; the beautiful and inventive music positively surges with genuine dramatic contrast and intense passion. While still remaining mostly within the melodic and harmonic bounds cultivated by Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Max Bruch, the richness of orchestration reflects Gouvy’s expressed admiration for the masterful orchestration (though not the vocal writing) of Wagner. This is by far the finest oratorio I have heard (and I’ve listened to a fair number) from the half-century interval between Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius . At its premiere in Leipzig on December 6, 1881, it enjoyed a tremendous success—indeed, to such a degree that Gouvy told his sister that it was the happiest day of his entire life. While it received further performances during his lifetime, upon his death it immediately fell into the same neglect that all his works have, until recently, so unjustly suffered.

The libretto of Oedipe has a somewhat complex lineage. As with Iphigénie , Gouvy once again did not write or commission an original libretto, but instead borrowed and adapted an existing one penned by the 18th-century librettist Nicolas-François Guillard (1752–1814). In this case, the original tragedy of Sophocles was first adapted by the great 17th-century tragedian Pierre Corneille (1606–1684). Guillard then turned it into a libretto for a tragédie lyrique by the composer Antonio Sacchini (1730–1786), premiered in 1785 at the royal court in Versailles.

The action of the plot, divided in the oratorio into three parts, is subsequent to that of the better-known Oedipus Rex . Oedipe (the French name for Oedipus), having blinded himself after learning that he had unwittingly fulfilled the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, was exiled from Thebes with the consent of his sons Etéocle (Eteokles) and Polynice (Polyneikis), to wander as an exile with his daughter Antigone as his guide. In Part 1, the citizens of Colonus offer sacrifices to Poseidon in thanksgiving for the safe return of their king, Thésée (Theseus), who brings with him Polynice. The latter, having lost out in a power struggle with Etéocle for the throne of Thebes and being now also an exile, is filled with shame and remorse for having spurned his father. He has gathered a band of armed supporters and hopes to launch an attack to regain the Theban throne. The two men kneel before the altar to discern the will of the gods and implore their favor, but are answered first by ominous silence and then by a thunderstorm that extinguishes the altar’s sacred flame and terrifies the people.

In Part 2, Oedipe and Antigone approach Colonus, which the gods have prophesied is where the blind refugee shall at last find rest. Oedipe longs for death, while Antigone pleads for him to live. The exiled king experiences a terrifying vision of being pursued by the Eumenides, and curses Polynice for betraying him, before Antigone brings him back to his senses. The two of them unknowingly trespass on the sacred precincts of the temple; Thésée confronts and denounces them for sacrilege. Antigone begs for mercy and reveals the identities of herself and her father. The people react with horror and demand that the accursed pair be driven away, but Thésée angrily opposes the mob and, taking pity on the duo instead, offers them refuge.

In Part 3, Antigone and Polynice are reunited. Antigone brings her brother to their father so that Polynice can confess his guilt to Oedipe, beg forgiveness, and seek support for his scheme to dethrone Etéocle, offering to restore his father to the throne instead by way of atonement. Oedipe, however, rejects him and curses both of his sons, whereupon Polynice flees in horror. Oedipe then declares to all that the hour of his death has come, as he will descend to a secret burial place at the banks of the river Acheron. Antigone begs to be allowed to join him, but is commanded to live instead. Thésée leads Oedipe away as the people implore the mercy of the gods for the exile’s final moments.

In reviewing Iphigénie , while I was a bit cool toward the work itself, I thought it received a fine performance from a very good, though not great, quartet of soloists. Here, to my considerable frustration, the situation is reversed: I am unabashedly enthusiastic for the music, but have reservations about the solo quartet. Easily its best member is the one holdover from the recording of Iphigénie , Vinzenz Haab, whose soft-grained, mellow bass-baritone makes a most sympathetic figure of Oedipe, even if it lacks the granitic timbre needed to make the most of the passages of imprecation. While all of the other singers are sensitive interpreters who capture all the varied dimensions of their roles, they all have problems with control of vocal production. Baritone Stephen Roberts as Thésée has a persistent unevenness to his vibrato that verges on a full-scale wobble; tenor Joseph Cornwall as Polynice has an attractive voice that repeatedly becomes unsteady when he attempts to push and swell a note for intensified expression; soprano Christa Ratzenböck lacks vocal sheen and turns both harsh and squally to some degree in her upper register. None of them is so defective as to be unlistenable, but compared to their predecessors in the recording of Iphigénie they are collectively a disappointing step downward. By way of compensation conductor Joachim Fontaine, who I previously said “has a conscientious command of the score, though I can imagine podium maestros who would give the work considerably more punch,” here delivers a first-rate interpretation that combines and balances elegant lyricism and dramatic urgency in equal measure. As before the orchestra and chorus are excellent, and CPO once again provides its trademark excellent recorded sound, detailed booklet notes, and a trilingual French-English-German libretto. Despite my reservations about some of the soloists, this recording is enthusiastically recommended, especially as another version is unlikely to appear any time soon.

FANFARE: James A. Altena

Vaughan Williams, Mathias / Bebbington, Ulster Orchestra

SOMM Recordings

Available as CD

$20.99

Mar 01, 2011

These three very different works have been dealt with admirably. A huge sympathy and understanding is evident.

3612260.az_MATHIAS_Piano_Concertos_1.html

MATHIAS Piano Concertos: No. 1; No. 2. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Fantasy • Mark Bebbington (pn); George Vass, cond; Ulster O • SOMM SOMMCD 246 (70:42)

An English online reviewer wrote that it is always interesting to hear early works by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Interesting yes, because of what came later, but this Fantasy—begun in 1896 and finally completed in 1904—does not hold a great deal of interest for its own sake. Vaughan Williams did not find his true voice as a composer until he incorporated the modality of British folk song into his music. Here we have second-hand Brahms. Additionally, the piano was not Vaughan Williams’s instrument, and the keyboard writing in the Fantasy speaks of application rather than fluency. Even in the highly individual and much more successful Piano Concerto of 1931, the soloist is given full chords and double-octave passages that sound heavy and cumbersome. Much of this Fantasy strives for grandeur, a quality Vaughan Williams achieved in spades in works like the Sea Symphony and Job , but in this case the result seems empty, partly due to an absence of memorable thematic material and the lack of a personal voice. The composer suppressed this piece, along with a good deal of his other early work, and it remained unknown until after his death.

By contrast, the Welsh composer William Mathias (1934–92) seemed to find his voice early: a Celtic lyricism sitting alongside a hard-edged rhythmic vitality that is clearly Stravinskian. Mathias also had an identifiable sound as an orchestrator, often pointing rhythmic passages and climaxes with tuned percussion. His Piano Concerto No. 1 was written in 1955 when the composer was a 20-year-old student. The work greatly impressed Edmund Rubbra, among others. It is a three-movement concerto with buoyant outer movements but a rather stern (perhaps self-consciously modern) central Largo. After several performances Mathias withdrew the concerto, but was reconsidering editing it for publication when he died.

The standout on this disc is Mathias’s Second Piano Concerto of 1961. Clearly influenced by Tippett’s Piano Concerto, but none the worse for that, it combines strength with fluidity. The work is in four movements: a lyrical prelude, a tough allegro molto vivace , a brief lento leading into a multifaceted finale marked allegro alla danza . Tippett is recalled in the glittering high figuration of the piano part, and stentorian brass fanfares making use of the interval of the major second to harden their harmonies—but these are also fingerprints we associate with the mature Mathias. For the record, both these concertos precede other recorded concertos by the composer: those for harp, clarinet, and the third for piano (Lyrita), and the Oboe Concerto (Nimbus).

Mark Bebbington has made several fine discs of little-known English music and this is one of the best. He is sensitive to all the technical and interpretive demands of these highly contrasting composers. George Vass and the Ulster Orchestra provide immaculate support, and the recording is clear and well balanced. Highly recommended.

FANFARE: Phillip Scott

---------

I first came across Ralph Vaughan Williams ‘Fantasia’ for piano and orchestra whilst carefully studying the 1996 imprint of Michael Kennedy’s invaluable ‘A Catalogue of the Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams’. It was one of many pieces that were hidden from view and were likely to remain so due to an embargo on works that the composer had withdrawn or laid aside around the end of the Great War. These included The Garden of Prosperine, the Heroic Elegy, the Bucolic Suite and the present Fantasia (Fantasy). They were works that I imagined I would never hear. Fortunately Ursula Vaughan Williams lifted the embargo and in recent years a number of these compositions have been recorded. Each time I have listened to one of these re-discovered pieces I have felt that the musical world has been cheated of a great piece of music for such a long time. This is the case with the present Fantasy. It may not be one of the composer’s masterpieces, but it is certainly a work with which the listener can do business.

This twenty-one minute score was originally begun in October 1896 and was finally completed on 9 February 1902. It was subsequently revised in 1904. Since then it has lain in the British Library. This Fantasy (Kennedy refers to Fantasia) is regarded as a ‘student’ piece by critics, however it must be realised that RVW continued studying until relatively late in life. His sojourn with Ravel was during 1907/08 when the composer was thirty-five years old! The present work was begun when he was 24 years old and finished when he was 32. So it is hardly a neophyte’s ’prentice piece.

For many listeners RVW is not normally associated with the pianoforte. To be true he made use of it in his Double Piano Concerto and in Fantasia on the Old 104 ^th Psalm Tune. Both of these works have their enthusiasts and have been reappraised in recent years. However, there are only a handful of solo piano works, not a few of which are arrangements of other works or are teaching pieces.

The form of the Fantasy is in one movement of six sections with an overall structure of slow-fast-slow. Without perusing the score it is hard to say how idiomatic the solo part is: how well it fits under the pianist’s hands. However the impression is that it has all the hallmarks of a ‘romantic concerto’.

Many listeners will play ‘spot the influence’. And it is not hard to hear all sorts of things going on in this work. Certainly Brahms and Grieg are never too far from the second section. Rob Barnett at MusicWeb International has identified a mood of orthodox chant: I felt that Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition was recalled. Liszt is amongst the exemplars. However, this is no stitching together of other composer’s music. Vaughan Williams has created a valid work that reflects the times in which it was written and possibly the fact that he had studied with Stanford and latterly Max Bruch. Finally, there are moments when the ‘real’ RVW stands revealed and we hear intimations of Job (is it my imagination?) and the later symphonies. It is this, more than anything that makes the Fantasy such an important work to have on disc.

William Mathias has been reasonably well-served with recordings. Just a quick glance at the Arkiv catalogue reveals some 77 discs dedicated to, or featuring music by, the composer. However there are a number of critical works missing from these listings. For example I believe that there is no recording of the Concerto for Orchestra, Litanies and the Holiday Overture. The present CD fills in an important gap with the early Piano Concerto No.1 which dates from 1955 and the Second Concerto from some five years later. Lyrita have already presented the Third Concerto on SRCD325.
Dr Rhiannon Mathias has noted that her father ‘always held a fascination’ for the concerto form. Apart from the piano concertos, there are ‘one each for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, horn, organ, harp and harpsichord’ in the composer’s catalogue as well as a couple of early concertos written when in his teens.

The Piano Concerto No.1 seems to me a very confident and well-wrought work for a nineteen year old student at Aberystwyth University, although it is in no way precocious. Apparently, the work seriously impressed Edmund Rubbra, who was the external examiner. The work was premiered in London on 19 May 1957. After a few more performances it was withdrawn.

The concerto is written three well-balanced movements. The Guardian critic of this present CD rightly points out that this work is ‘angular’ in its effect. However this is not the whole story: the slow movement contains ‘nocturnal’ music that is particularly reflective and beautiful. However, much of the concerto does nod to Bartók and Prokofiev although this is presented with many of the fingerprints that were to dominate much of Mathias music over the next thirty-five years. For example, we hear sharp harmonies and syncopated rhythmic figures and the playing of the main themes together rather than separately. The piano part has been described as ‘exhilarating’ and this mood is well reflected in Mark Bebbington’s interpretation of the work. The score for this recording was prepared and edited by Dr Rhiannon Mathias.

From the ‘cool’ opening bars of the Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 13 we are in a different world to the earlier piece. This is a lyrical work that is suffused with poetry. Much of the opening movement is reflective and perhaps even tentative in its exploration of the two main themes. However there are moments of tension and even angst in these pages.

Mathias has added a ‘scherzo’ in all but name. In fact, it is presented as a ‘danse infernale’ which promotes music of ‘ferocious energy’ that utilises ‘brittle and rhythmically alert’ themes and harmonies. This is in complete contrast to the typically gentle first movement.

The ‘lento’ is the heart of the work and has an improvisatory feel to much of the proceedings. That said there is a structure to this movement that references a theme from the first movement, and gradually leads the music to a ‘nobilmente’ climax before a brief link passage leads to the concluding ‘rondo.’ This is Mathias dance-music at its best: from the initial solo piano statement of the main theme to the concluding riot of sound this music impresses. The composer makes use of themes from earlier movements and this gives the ‘rondo’ a sense of unity and purpose.

This is a work that is difficult to tie down for influences: I have detected Malcolm Arnold and Michael Tippett, but the truth is that this is William Mathias’s own unique sound-world at its best. It is hard to see why this concerto is not so much more popular and regularly played.

The work was commissioned by the Welsh Committee of the Arts Council of Great Britain, and was duly given its first performance at the 1961 Llandaff Festival.

It almost goes without saying that Mark Bebbington’s playing is superb throughout the entire disc. Bebbington has done so much for British music in recent years, with his cycles of music by John Ireland and Frank Bridge, the Dale and Hurlstone Sonatas and the Ferguson and Bax piano concertos. In the present disc the playing of these three very different works call for a wide range of interpretation and technical styles. These have been dealt with admirably and suggest a huge sympathy towards, and understanding of, these works.

As usual with SOMM recordings, everything is ‘done decently and in order’: the sound reproduction is first, the cover painting by James Hamilton Hay (1874-1916), the sleeve-notes, the background preparation of the scores by Dr Graham Parlett and Dr Rhiannon Mathias. It all adds up to an excellent production.

It seems redundant to say that I recommend this CD! Every RVW enthusiast will demand a copy for the World Premiere Recording of the Fantasy. I guess that fewer listeners will be Mathias fans - however, they ought to be! - but these two works, again premiere recordings, are important additions to the catalogue of British (Welsh) piano concertos. For fans of William Mathias they are essential: for newcomers to his music they are a fine introduction to a great composer who has a style that is largely all his own.

-- John France, MusicWeb International

Sibelius, Sinding: Violin Concertos, Etc / Kraggerud, Et Al

Naxos

Available as CD

$19.99

Sep 21, 2004

Naxos’s program of Scandinavian violin concertos represents both night and day in the works of former violinists and composers Jean Sibelius and Christian Sinding. Sibelius’s rhapsodic concerto bears the impress of the young man who improvised on the violin in the craggy fastnesses of his native country; Sinding’s (the first, from 1898, of three) pays tribute to the late Romantic virtuoso tradition, with the soloist’s opening gesture curiously suggestive of a finale theme from Bruch’s First Concerto. If Sibelius’s dimly lit Serenade and Sinding’s expansively cinematic Romance (there’s a touch of the cinematic in the concerto as well, although both works antedated the era) don’t suggest night and day, they make almost as strong a contrast. Henning Kraggerud plays with great virtuosity in Sibelius’s violinistic magnum opus, and the recorded sound, though balanced, captures even the snap of his bow in the inky vortex of the first movement’s swirling passagework. His tone on the 1744 Ole Bull Guarneri del Gesù, lent to him for this recording, sounds as runically eldritch as Sibelius’s music itself. Kraggerud makes the most of this sinuousness, playing the second movement’s sinking double stops moodily rather than ecstatically. He affects the same mysterioso in the recitative-like sections of Sibelius’s Serenade. Sinding’s concerto, on the other hand, turns out, as its opening foreshadows, to be an extroverted romp (although the slow movement provides its share of somber, resonant musing); and as the music’s tension relaxes, so does the edge on Kraggerud’s virtuosity (he seems more at home in the danse macabre than in the tantoli). But he’s ardently songful in Sinding’s Romance from 1910, of which this recording’s proclaimed by its label to be the first. Bjarte Engeset and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra provide a sonorous and allusive (and appropriately abrupt, where necessary) backdrop to Kraggerud’s dark divagations in Sibelius’s works and a lush romantic one for his more extroverted gambols in Sinding’s.

Kraggerud faces Olympian competition in Sibelius’s concerto, but his dark-hued yet brilliant reading compares favorably on its own terms with Heifetz’s cold light or Vengerov’s highly personalized meanderings. He has Sinding’s works pretty much to himself. The release can therefore be recommended all round: a strongly competitive, eerie Sibelius concerto, a Serenade that, while it may not match Mutter’s languid yearning (Deutsche Grammophon 447-895-2), provides the requisite subdued colors in its less histrionic way, and two unfamiliar works by Sinding.

Robert Maxham, FANFARE

Great Violin Concertos

Naxos

Available as CD

~~$74.99~~ $52.99

Apr 24, 2012

GREAT VIOLIN CONCERTOS (10-CD Box Set)

The essence of a concerto is the contrast and combination of a solo instrument with a larger instrumental ensemble. Having developed out of the Baroque concept of concerto grosso, the concerto genre was fully established in the eighteenth century, and many works dating from this period are still a key part of the repertoire today. The opportunity for virtuosic display from the soloist has resulted in the concerto becoming a vital musical force on the concert platform.

The violin concerto owes a great deal of its development to the technical achievement of performers, and to this day many works are renowned for their fierce technical demands. Indeed, many composers who have written for the instrument were superlative players themselves—Wieniawski and Paganini among them. The fascinating history and capabilities of the instrument can be traced through the compositions contained herein; from the gossamer threads of Vivaldi to the exhilarating fireworks of Prokofiev, via the lilting swagger of Lalo and Saint-Saëns and nationalistic panache of Sibelius and Glazunov.

Reviews of some of the original recordings that make up this set:

Spohr: Concerto no 8
"Louis Spohr, once considered to hold a place among the greatest composers of his era, subsequently fell into a gray oblivion, only to be resurrected several times during the 20th century. Although his compositional output might have been more encompassing than those of many of his fellow violinist-composers, he may for practical purposes remain in contention principally for the honor of being one of the greatest of them rather than one of the greatest of composers in general.

The Eighth Concerto, written for Italian audiences, depends more heavily on Italianate forms and procedures. It’s soaring aria-like slow movement, its showy finale, and, most of all, its extended first movement recitative—all three encrusted with breathtaking ornamentation—provide a violinist with an ideal showcase. Heifetz, like Ethel Merman, could belt a tune in a way that defied audiences not to listen, and he played this Concerto, cutting down the tuttis, as he often did, with irresistible authority. Spohr denigrated Paganini’s manner of producing staccato off the string, and though Heifetz’s flying staccato, which he claimed to have had difficulty mastering, became one of his trademarks, he could electrify audiences with Spohr’s more solid staccatos on the string, so many passages of which adorn this Concerto. Albert Spalding’s recording of the work appealed to many who may have considered Heifetz’s a bit over the top, but it’s hardly as visceral; and, more recently, neither Uto Ughi (Dynamic 522, 31:1) nor Hilary Hahn (Deutsche Grammophon 000718802, 30:3) could recreate that magic. Though not nearly as confident as Heifetz, Lamsma still generates high voltage in, for example, the slow movement’s fast episode, and she plays with congenial sensitivity in the Adagio’s main sections. And unlike Heifetz, who succumbed to the temptation to add thirds to the last movement’s passages (as his teacher, Auer, did in Tchaikovsky’s cadenza to his Violin Concerto), she makes a case for it even while playing it straight. The Sixth Concerto’s misterioso returns enhanced in the 11th, which begins with an Adagio introduction that, if it’s not the Wolf’s Glen scene, may be the closest thing violinists have, and that introduces a main theme that postures squarely but stylishly as do some of Schumann’s melodic ideas. Warsop suggests that this Concerto might profitably be revived; it’s lucky that a sympathetic violinist like Lamsma has done so. Here’s a worthy counterpart to Bruch’s concertos (listeners might notice a similarity between the style of writing for the violin in Spohr’s concertos and in the first movement of Bruch’s Third) and a worthy champion. Listeners and would-be aficionados of Spohr may still find it a sort of stumbling block to full admiration that so many of Spohr’s harmonic turns and violinistic passages sound all too familiar—the 11th Concerto’s finale, for example, suggests, however obliquely, the Duo, op. 67/2. Violinist-composers have a notoriously hard time not following their fingers’ lead. Naxos’s program of Spohr concertos deserves a hearing for the young soloist’s’ bravado tempered with sensibility as well as for the orchestra’s generally sympathetic and competent accompaniment. But above all, it stands out for its version of the once famous Gesangszene, as it’s often called, perhaps the best after Heifetz’s—and, with Lamsma’s personal approach, a creditable alternative. Many violinists don’t have a sufficiently strong personality to project Spohr’s; Lamsma already does."

Paganini: Concerto no 1
"lya Kaler is a Russian virtuoso (born in Moscow in 1963), a pupil of Leonid Kogan and a very good player, too. Paganini's once fiendish pyrotechnics hold no terrors for him, not even the whistling harmonics, and how nicely he can turn an Italianate lyrical phrase, as in the secondary theme of the first movement of the First Concerto. Then he can set off with panache into a flying staccato, bouncing his bow neatly on the strings when articulating the delicious spiccato finales of both works. Stephen Gunzenhauser launches into the opening movements with plenty of energy and aplomb and is a sympathetic accompanist throughout—he is never heavy in orchestral writing that can easily sound vapid or stodgy...Kaler's intonation is above suspicion and he is naturally balanced: there is none of the scratchiness that can ruin one's pleasure in Paganinian pyrotechnics."

-- I.M., Gramophone

Dvorak and Glazunov Concertos
"Kaler’s playing of these Romantic, sweetly-tuned works is excellent. His technique copes more than adequately with the technical demands of the Glazunov, a composer considered bourgeois in post-1917 Russia and dealt an uncharitable blow here by a critic who said he led Russian music in a comfortable decline into ignominious mediocrity. Not so, his work deserves as high a profile as Dvorák’s whose concerto is sympathetically presented."

-- Christopher Fifield , BBC Music Magazine

Vieuxtemps: Concerto no 5
"Keylin...plays the concerto as a grand dramatic statement, with a largeness of conception that may not be altogether fashionable—but then, neither is the concerto, and there’s really no better way to play it if you’re going to play it at all. He takes advantage, as he does in all the concertos, of Vieuxtemps’s singing passages on all four strings, finding the appropriate individuality for each on the 1715 Baron Knoop Stradivari, lent to him for the performances. If his passagework lacks Heifetz’s or Kogan’s effortlessness, his sense of the pieces’ perfect adaptation to their medium, together with his big sound and serious approach to works all too often dismissed as trivial, make adequate amends."

-- Robert Maxham, Fanfare

Joachim: Violin Concerto, Op. 11, Etc / Suyoen Kim, Et Al

Naxos

Available as CD

$19.99

Oct 27, 2009

JOACHIM Violin Concertos: in G, op. 3; in d, op. 11, “in the Hungarian Style” • Suyoen Kim (vn); Michael Halász, cond; Staatskapelle Weimar • NAXOS 8.570991 (65:57)

From a position of near-obscurity in the early 1960s (at least in so far as recordings went), Joseph Joachim’s Hungarian Concerto received a lift-off from Charles Treger’s early complete recording with the Louisville Orchestra (Louisville LS 705) and from Aaron’s Rosand’s more brilliant but cut-down version on a Vox LP, reissued many times; while Takako Nishizaki recorded Joachim’s Third Concerto for Marco Polo (now available on Naxos 8.554733).

That leaves the First Concerto, a one-movement affair lasting about 20 minutes from the early 1850s, when Joachim had hardly reached or passed the age of 20. Already the work displays a certain individuality: Joachim integrated the violin’s first entry into the opening tutti, after which initial statement the orchestra continues on its own. The solo part offered its youthful composer a great number of opportunities for virtuoso display, but the Concerto’s high symphonic seriousness sets it apart from more display-oriented vehicles written for their own use by his contemporaries Ernst and Wieniawski. In its harmonic and melodic style, so heavily tinged with nostalgia, the work resembles the first (or only) movements of Bruch’s later works (such as his Allegro appassionato and, especially, his Third Concerto). Suyoen Kim, producing a slender but pure tone in all registers (but with a steelier core on the G-string) from a 1742 Camillus Camilli, nevertheless projects the mix of pyrotechnical excitement and poignant lyricism the score demands. Joachim exerted a strong influence on the history of violin playing through his students, who included personalities as diverse as Jenö Hubay, Bronislaw Huberman, and Leopold Auer (who, having studied with him for two years, claimed that Joachim had opened his eyes). If the Concerto seems to wander, that’s neither Kim’s fault nor Halász’s.

The Second Concerto, “in the Hungarian style” has been described as the most difficult of concerted works for the violin (although certainly not for the listener); it requires strength and stamina as well as sustained brilliance, demanding a very occasional sacrifice of tonal beauty to achieve the requisite tonal strength. Kim demonstrates a rock-solid technique and the same compound of brilliance and warmth she displayed in the composer’s First Concerto, while the Halász and the Orchestra find both imposing rhetoric and human warmth in the orchestral part (as in the First Concerto, the engineers have balanced the solo and orchestra parts, creating a striking profile for the former against the highly detailed backdrop of the latter). Both soloist and orchestra emphasize the Concerto’s overt ethnicity (an element perhaps most obviously missing from alternative recordings by Treger, Rosand, Elmar Oliveira (Masters 27, 15:3), Rachel Barton Pine (Cedille 90000 068, 26:6), and Christian Tetzlaff (Virgin 502109, 31:6), all of whose readings nevertheless realized a great deal of the Concerto’s potential—except for Treger’s, which fell somewhat short of the work’s technical demands, and, in any case, isn’t any longer available. But Kim’s brilliant while offering a structurally synoptic view of this prolix Concerto (just over 45 minutes in this performance), brings an occasional poignancy that relieves the dramatic tension in the first movement—compared to Tetzlaff and Dausgaard’s thrustingly craggy symphonic reading of that movement, she and Halász take by comparison a more relaxed, expansive view (skirting the danger in such a long-winded movement, that offers no extra time to pause and smell the flowers). And after a long respite in the slow movement, a passage hardly bereft of difficulties and violinistic posturing, she opens the finale with an energetic flash that rivals Rosand’s and surpasses it in Hungarian verve.

For an imposing reading of the Hungarian Concerto, Kim’s and Halász’s could hardly be beat, and the program offers the relative novelty of the First Concerto, both in stunning performances. Strongly recommended to all kinds of listeners.

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Reinecke: Complete Violoncello Sonatas / Manuel Fischer-dieskau, Connie Shih

MDG

Available as CD

$23.99

Sep 01, 2011

For British listeners, the name of Reinecke is likely to evoke Stanford’s recollection - after an uninspiring period of study with him - that “of all the dry musicians I have ever known, he was the most desiccated”. Scandinavians will remember that Grieg thought no better of the man and that for Svendsen, “not only is he envious and bloodless … he is also in the highest degree villainous”. Yet many musicians sought him out during his long reign at the Leipzig Gewandhaus (1860-1895), including Sullivan, Bruch, Delius and the three just mentioned, while Elgar travelled to Leipzig in 1882 to hear him conduct.

If this all suggests a plodding academic, the “Undine” Sonata for flute and piano, the one work by Reinecke that remains at least on the fringe of the repertoire, is neither academic nor lacking in fantasy. A disc containing the First Symphony, the Violin Concerto and some smaller pieces suggested to me that further examination of Reinecke would be never less than pleasant, if hardly thrilling. Maybe thrilling would be too strong a word for these cello sonatas too, but they do suggest he was more inspired in chamber music than in larger orchestral pieces.

In some ways the first sonata is the most attractive of all. Its ballad-like opening theme immediately catches the attention and the second theme is not only well contrasted, it is introduced in a very remote tonality indeed. What is striking about this movement is the mastery with which it combines free-flowing, rhapsodic feeling with tight formal control. Though Reinecke is said to have looked back to Mendelssohn and Schumann for his models, and certainly rejected Liszt and Wagner, his music combines romantic spirit with an intuitive sense of form. Here, at least, he was able to make his own personal fusion of classical ideals and romantic freedom. The second movement also contains a number of quite contrasting ideas and the finale has much surging passion.

The claims of the second sonata are not to be underestimated, either. After a short but brooding introduction the first movement leads off with a pithy, expressive idea that revolved in my head for some days afterwards. Again, Reinecke’s formal control is tight even while the effect is of free rhapsody. The themes tend not to appear and reappear in the expected places and tonalities, and are inclined to undergo transformations just where an exact recapitulation might seem in sight. The second movement is marked “Quasi fantasia” and has much soaring romantic melody. The finale starts with a catchy tune but is inclined to chase its own tail a bit too much for its own good. This, admittedly, is a common failing among 19^th century finales when not written by Brahms.

Altogether, it may be said that, if Reinecke did not revolutionize sonata forms, he nevertheless evolved an intuitively inventive way of reinterpreting received formal wisdom. The interesting thing is that exactly the same thing could be said about his grudging pupil Stanford’s chamber music, even down to a tendency to write finales that chase their own tail. One is bound to wonder if Reinecke’s music did not have a greater influence on Stanford than he later cared to admit, having been so disappointed by the man himself. Also common to both composers is a complete equality between the two partners, with plenty of challenging material for both players and a continual melodic interplay that must make Reinecke’s chamber music rewarding to perform. Ultimately, I suppose this music inhabits smiling valleys and pleasant domestic surroundings rather than soar above the mountain peaks, but we can surely find a place for music that does this so attractively.

The third sonata arouses more ambivalent reactions. Dedicated “to the shade of Brahms”, who had just died, its formal mastery will not be questioned. Furthermore, while in one sense it occupies harmonic ground solidly rooted in Schumann, its restless modulations look ahead to the world of Reger. It is a bitter, even vehement work by a composer whose art was by then left high and dry by musical progress. The only problem is that Reinecke’s easy flow of melodic inspiration seems to have dried up. The themes are clear-cut and functional, but neither the composer’s masterly development of them, nor these performers’ imagination and conviction, can hide the fact that the cupboard is a little bare. Only the second theme of the finale recalls the warmth of earlier years. Nevertheless, as often with late works by composers clinging to the style of their youth in the teeth of what they perceive as ugly modernism, the sense of isolation and disillusionment can be moving in themselves. Here, too, the case of Stanford is an obvious parallel.

Manuel Fischer-Dieskau, just in case you’ve been wondering, is the great baritone’s son. It would seem that interventionism, as an interpretative creed, runs in the family. But, like his father at his best, MF-D knows how to intervene in a way that brings the music to life, and he extracts the maximum range of expression from these scores. The Canadian pianist Connie Shih has an easy technical command and a well-rounded tone in the heavier moments. She and the cellist seem in full agreement over how to play this music. They leave me wondering why the first two sonatas, at least, never made it into the not very large repertoire of romantic cello sonatas.

Cellists reading these words may be wondering where they can get the scores. They will be delighted to find that the IMSLP-Petrucci Library, a great Internet resource, apparently offers all three for free download. They will be a bit less delighted when they find that the file of no.1 is missing pages 4-15, jumping from the first page of the first movement to the last page of the second, so you get only the finale complete. Also, there’s not a cello part, instead there’s an alternative violin part. The second sonata is complete but the piano part of no.3 lacks the last page, or maybe the last two. In compensation you get pages 10 and 11 twice. I used to think that people who do things for love not money do them properly, but on this showing even some who work for love are as slap-happy as any half-hearted employee anxious for the next coffee break. Granted, one shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth, but we may reasonably check that it has all four legs.

None of this little grumble, obviously, affects the value of this finely recorded and excellently annotated disc of three cello sonatas well worth investigating. The name of Reinecke is beginning to come alive for me.

-- Christopher Howell, MusicWeb International

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