SCHNITTKE Piano Concerto. 1 Improvisation and Fugue. Variations on a Chord • Victoria Lyubitskaya (pn); Mark Gorenstein, cond; 1 Russian St Academy O 1 • FUGA LIBERA 532 (44:11)


Alfred Schnittke (1943–1998) remains one of the seminal composers of the late 20th century, and any new recording of his music is welcome. His Piano Concerto was completed in 1979 and exemplifies his polystylism, bringing in echoes of Baroque and Classical music while undermining them with kaleidoscopic shifts of emphasis and cluster-filled interruptions. The composer himself described the result as musical “sleepwalking,” although the Concerto lacks the rambling quality of his austere late works.


Lyubitskaya’s playing is exceptionally clear, and she is ably supported by Gorenstein and the Russian State Academy Orchestra. The orchestra has a distinguished recording history, while Gorenstein was responsible for excellent Schnittke performances on the short-lived Popemusic label (albeit with a different band). As recorded here, the orchestral strings have that “glassy” sound we used to hear in early digital releases, despite this being a 2005 recording. The piano sound and balance are fine.


Lyubitskaya shines in the solo piano works, both written as student test pieces earlier in the composer’s career. She is more incisive than is Boris Berman on Chandos, underlining a stylistic link between early Schnittke and Shostakovich.


So this disc is recommended, but with the proviso that 44 minutes is unacceptably short timing for a full-priced CD, especially when other versions of the Piano Concerto are available. On the cheap Apex label you will find one by Viktoria Postnikova, conducted by her husband Gennady Rozhdestvensky (both close friends of the composer), which is the favorite in several online reviews. I find Postnikova heavy-handed and her approach unvaryingly monumental, preferring a more rounded performance by Ralf Gothoni on Ondine, if you can find it. The latter’s strings are better recorded, Gothoni’s pianism is subtler and at times genuinely dreamlike (cf. sleepwalking), while the couplings are substantial: the Third Violin Concerto and Third Violin Sonata with Mark Lubotsky.


However, if you don’t want much more than the concerto, Lyubitskaya will do you proud.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

Stravinsky’s much-loved work Petrushka receives a beautiful performance in this live recording by the Seattle Symphony. Alongside this titan of a work is the little-known children’s ballet by Debussy, La boite a joujoux (The Toy Box). Conductor Ludovic Morlot does a fantastic job of interpreting these works by two of the twentieth century’s finest conductors.

Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony return to the intoxicating orchestral music of Karol Szymanowski in their third disc devoted to the composer. Ben Johnson, a tenor whose star is rapidly rising, joins Gardner and the BBC SO here as a soloist in two works. Symphony no 1 (1907) belongs to his early period, heavily influenced by German late-Romanticism. The exquisite Love Songs of Hafiz (1911), marked by fascination with oriental themes, and the ‘Song of the Night’, scored for huge orchestra with choir and tenor soloist, both feature Persian poetry set to sensuous and emotionally-charged music.

Reviews:

The performances are particularly cosmopolitan. And why not? The works here reflect influences from many nationalities. Johnson, whose relatively lean voice (in contrast with the Eastern European sopranos sometimes heard in this piece) is very much responsive to the text's meaning.

– Gramophone

“The BBC Symphony Chorus sings with languid exaltation, yet it is the orchestral detail that impresses most here, right from the still, mystery-laden opening. Gardner conducts with such conviction that it is impossible not to find beauty in [Love Songs'] potentially dense Reger-meets-Scriabin soundworld.

– BBC Music Magazine

Szymanowski: Piano Works

In 1971, Richard Hickox founded the Richard Hickox Orchestra, which in 1979 became the City of London Sinfonia. Fifteen years later he made this highly praised recording of orchestral works by John Ireland, now made available at ‘classic Chandos’ price.

Gramophone featured this recording in its 2010 Classical Music Guide, stating in its original review that ’Chandos have been doing John Ireland proud over the last few years, and Richard Hickox’s new anthology is well up to the high standards of previous instalments in this valuable series. With rich, refined Chandos sound, this remains a most enjoyable collection... Hickox gives a sensitive account of the Downland Suite and extracts great expressive intensity from the glorious second movement “Elegy”. The Concertino Pastorale is another fine work, boasting a most eloquent opening “Eclogue” and tenderly poignant “Threnody”, towards the end of which Ireland seems to allow himself a momentary recollection of the haunting opening phrase of his earlier orchestral prelude, The Forgotten Rite.‘

The 4-album Richard Strauss set gathers together all of their early 1960s recordings of the famous tone poems along with Salome’s Dance, the Rosenkavalier and Bürger als Edelmann suites, the Burleske with soloist Rudolf Serkin and the First Horn Concerto, featuring Philadelphia principal Mason Jones. An early review in High Fidelity best summed up their powerful appeal in Strauss’s music: “There is no doubt that, for sheer gorgeousness, the Philadelphians have no peers.” More recent assessments in the Penguin Guide reaffirm that verdict: “Virtuoso orchestral playing … and many felicities of characterization” [Also sprach Zarathustra]; “Marvelous orchestral playing and the two soloists play splendidly with plenty of character” [Don Quixote]; “An extraordinarily voluptuous Philadelphia performance … Ormandy directs with licentious abandon, and the orchestra responds with tremendous virtuosity and ardor” [Salome’s Dance]; “Ormandy’s Ein Heldenleben is an engulfing performance, and the composite richness of tone and the fervor of the playing … bring the highest possible level of orchestral tension.”

Born into a musical Latvian family violinist Baiba Skride won First Prize at the 2010 Queen Elisabeth Competition, held annually in Belgium. Ms. Skride’s natural approach to her music making has endeared her to some of today’s most important conductors and orchestras. Following her debut at the BBC Proms with the Oslo Philharmonic and Vasily Petrenko playing the Szymanowski Concerto No. 1, The Times noted, ‘Latvian violinist Baiba Skride sailed over the orchestra with long lines of melody, silver and sweet.’ She was immediately re-invited, and at the 2014 Proms played the Stravinsky Concerto with the BBC Symphony and Ed Gardner. Baiba Skride debut recording with Orfeo of the Szymanowski Concertos and Myths was nominated for the 2015 BBC Music Magazine Awards in the Concerto section. For her Orfeo CD follow up she has recorded two Scandinavian violin concertos truly exciting, fresh and innovative – Jean Sibelius’s well-loved concerto and Carl Nielsen’s unjustly neglected companion work – with the Tampere Philharmonic and conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali.

Andris Nelsons, today simultaneously Principal Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, was discovered by Orfeo for the album. Christiane Delank, the long-standing artistic director of the label had taken him on to conduct the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in the recordings of the two violin concertos by Dmitri Shostakovich with Arabella Steinbacher and realized that in him one of the great conductors of his generation was maturing, a development that took place at breath-taking pace. When he was entrusted with conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, she won him over for the ambitious projects of a complete recording of the symphonies by Tchaikovsky (the first three symphonies were recorded, but no longer released following Nelsons’ departure to Boston) together with symphonic poems and other orchestral works by Richard Strauss and works by Stravinsky and Shostakovich. So, Orfeo had the privilege of documenting on album the Birmingham period, the first major international stage in Andris Nelsons’ career.

Excerpts of reviews from previously released volumes included in this set:

Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra; Don Juan; Till Eulenspiegel / Nelsons:

Don Juan has all the sparkle and the flood of testosterone that you might expect, dissolving into a string theme that is radiant with extrovert ambition. This is a reading full of passion and drive. Nelsons refuses to linger where some others do but keeps the adrenaline rushing throughout.

– MusicWeb International

Tchaikovsky: Francesca Da Rimini, Symphony No 4 / Nelsons:

In the last movement of the symphony Nelsons is just as blistering in tempo and febrile excitement as Svetlanov, and I never thought I would hear a living conductor equal that kind of intensity. These are great performances by a great conductor.

– Fanfare

Stravinsky: The Firebird, Symphony Of Psalms / Nelsons

Nelsons' interpretation of The Firebird has much in common with Boulez's New York recording for Sony--hyper-detailed (those three harps really tell), yet never at the expense of excitement. Emphasis on clarity also flatters the Symphony of Psalms, particularly in the central fugue. His fleet tempos come close to Stravinsky's own and project the quick outer movements with plenty of punch. This is a very good performance by any standard, and the sonics are impressively natural. If the coupling suits, then don't hesitate.

– ClassicsToday

The Morgenstern Trio's second release for Azica Records highlights their passion for music with works by Frank Bridge, a new work composed for the trio by Pierre Jalbert, Ernest Bloch, and Ilham Baran. To name a piano trio after the popular nineteenth century German poet Christian Morgenstern was the inspiration of Catherine Klipfel, piano, Stefan Hempel, violin, and Emanuel Wehse, cellist, who met during their studies at the Folkwang Conservatory in Essen, Germany. After only two short years of working together, the Morgenstern Trio emerged on the German Music Scene by being awarded top prizes and awards, such as the prestigious US Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio Award in 2010. The Washington Post wrote: "the group displayed a unanimity, polished technique and musical imagination that I thought had vanished from the scene with the demise of the Beaux Arts Trio".

PROKOFIEV On Guard for Peace. 1 The Queen of Spades: Suite (elab. Berkeley) • Neeme Järvi, cond; Irina Tchistjakova (mez, nar); 1 Niall Docherty (boy sop); 1 Royal Scottish Natl O, Junior Ch, 1 Ch 1 • CHANDOS 10519 (66:05 Text and Translation)


Neeme Järvi has made a considerable reputation by conducting and recording music that is peripheral to the mainstream repertoire. In so doing, he does not have to compete with A-list conductors and makes listeners interested in this seldom performed music happy at the same time. When he ventures into the standard repertoire, the results are frequently mediocre at best (his Chandos Brahms symphonies are a case in point). Järvi can legitimately be called a Prokofiev specialist. His Chandos cycle of the complete Prokofiev symphonies was generally well received despite some pretty fierce high frequency harshness from a sonic standpoint. In keeping with his reputation, Järvi also recorded many obscure Prokofiev works as fillers, in addition to important albums featuring orchestral suites from The Stone Flower and War and Peace , among others. So, a CD containing The Queen of Spades Suite and the oratorio, On Guard for Peace , is hardly surprising.


The Queen of Spades is described on the album cover as a symphonic suite containing rediscovered music from an unrealized film score arranged and elaborated by Michael Berkeley. Clearly, from that description, this is not all pure Prokofiev. The lengthy but somewhat nebulous program notes confirm that Berkeley actually composed some of the music, and a portion of Prokofiev’s original material actually appeared elsewhere (for example, the second section is built on a melody also heard in the third movement of the composer’s Fifth Symphony). Not to worry. There is more than enough here to satisfy Prokofiev lovers, even if it is a bit of a pastiche that does not contain much of his most personally individual music. Berkeley succeeds in arranging all of it into a dramatically effective orchestral suite. This happens to be very appropriate because of the fact that Prokofiev is probably first and foremost a suite writer (as opposed to a natural symphonist like Shostakovich).


In the context of the political propaganda emerging from Russia at the time, the title On Guard for Peace does not sound promising. The orchestral contribution is fine and has Prokofiev’s unmistakable sound, but the fairly extensive narration (in Russian) is not very listener friendly. The vocal soloists aren’t much better, including a wobbly mezzo-soprano (who doubles as the narrator) and a boy soprano desperately searching for the correct pitch. The text is blatant propaganda (there is nothing like a children’s chorus to proclaim the party line joyfully). Some of it does sound a little bit like Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible , but the level of inspiration is infinitely lower. Järvi is quite ideal as a conductor of obscure Prokofiev, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra seems to have those typical sonorities in their blood. The sound is typical for Chandos with a little haziness and high frequency harshness. Anyone who values Järvi’s Prokofiev series should enjoy this release.


FANFARE: Arthur Lintgen

Haenssler CLASSIC's Ballets Russes series is unrivaled for completeness and will include many works never before recorded. Each booklet includes historic details of the works performance and artwork from the original productions. World-renowned choreographer John Neumeier has overseen the production of the entire series. For 20 years from 1909 to 1929, the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev and his Russian ballet became one of the 20th century's most incredible artistic adventures, redefining theater, music and dance in every performance.

Five years after Shostakovich premiered his quintet to turbulent success in 1940, his new 24-years young friend Weinberg premiered one of his own. For the premiere on March 18th, the 27-year old Weinberg got the String Quartet of the Bolshoi and a 30-year old pianist, already famous then, by the name of Emil Gilels. The Quintet op.18 is one of the unequivocally great chamber pieces of that time and it is a superb entry-point into the world of Weinberg. As with any truly great masterpiece, a work like the Piano Quintet benefits and indeed demands many and diverging interpretations. This also includes different versions, such as this arrangement of the quintet for chamber ensemble. The idea is hardly far-fetched: Weinberg arranged several of his own works for chamber orchestra; his friend Shostakovich’s string quartets have popularly lent themselves to such arrangements. It suits the treatment naturally – and the orchestral version, therefore, gives us just one more way to discover and enjoy one of Weinberg’s ingenious gifts to his belated but finally eager public.

Music Director Emmanuel Krivine and the Luxembourg Philharmonic devote this CD to two emblematic, major works from late in Béla Bartók’s life: the Second Violin Concerto (1939) and the Concerto for Orchestra (1944). + For the Violin Concerto, both Zig-Zag Territoires and the Orchestra invited the Albanian-born Tedi Papavrami, an international soloist of high repute, artistic and intellectual standards to record this 20th c. masterpiece + Mr. Papavrami’s recent recording of Eugène Ysaÿe’s complete violin sonatas for ZZT received tremendous press notice, astonishing the critics.

When the Siberian-born ‘Arctic Circle Pianist’ Ekaterina Litvintseva heard “Blumenleben” (‘Life of Flowers’) for the first time, she immediately resolved to find out more about the life and music of Dora Pejačević (1885-1923). This resolution prompted her to investigate an extraordinary corpus of music, remarkable not least for its sheer diversity, which she has attempted to convey in this selection of Pejačević’s piano output. Among 57 extant works, 24 are scored for solo piano; there would surely have been many more in both categories had she not died of kidney failure on 5 March 1923, aged 37, having suffered complications in giving birth to her first child. This newly recorded recital marks Ekaterina Litvinseva’s debut on Piano Classics, and should attract the attention of pianophiles everywhere.

REVIEW:

The 30-something Ekaterina Litvintseva has been amassing a distinguished discography—and this, apparently her first recorded sojourn beyond canonical composers, is a fine addition, exhibiting the combination of sensitivity and self-assurance that have marked her playing up until now. Her tempos are flexible, but her rubato never threatens the music’s line (note, as but one example, the way she navigates the tempo shifts in the slightly off-kilter Caprice-Waltz No. 2); her balances are lucid; and her technique easily meets the needs of the music. Veljkovic, fine though she is, is relatively stolid in the bigger moments. Either way, though, unless you’re allergic to piano music of the period, you owe it to yourself to make the acquaintance of Dora Pejačević if you haven’t done so already. Piano Classics, as usual, has clean sound and solid notes. 

-- Fanfare

Cellist Wilhelmina Smith’s second album release on Ondine continues exploring contemporary Nordic repertoire for solo cello. In her new album Smith has focus on Danish contemporary composers, Per Nørgård (b. 1932) and Poul Ruders (b. 1949). Both Nørgård and Ruders are known for their large-scale orchestral works. Nørgård, in particular, is known for his eight symphonies and has been hailed by many as one of the greatest living symphonists. It is therefore intriguing to look closer to his two very early lyrical solo cello sonatas, early masterpieces written just before completing his 1st Symphony. In 1980, the composer revised his second sonata by adding an extensive second movement, almost an entirely new sonata, to the existing work. Nørgård’s 3rd sonata “What – Is the Word!” from 1999 is a short “Sonata breve” that takes its title from a quote by Irish playwriter Samuel Beckett. Another major Danish composer of our times, Poul Ruders (b. 1949), has also written 5 symphonies alongside several concertos and three operas. Ruders wrote his 10-movement Bravourstudien in 1976, just at the brink of a major stylistic change. This work is a set of variations on a Medieval folk tune “L’homme armé”. In this work, however, the original theme is heard at the very end of the work.

Mahler: Symphony No. 5

Elena Denisova is one of the outstanding personalities in the elite class of Russian violinists. Her exceedingly high degree of musical maturity, individual interpretation and superlative virtuosity are recognized by audiences and critics alike. This could be heard recently at the Festival Opening Celebration of this year's Salzburg Festival in the Kollergienkirche.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and yet cannot remain silent, wrote Victor Hugo in 1864. Half a century later, his words had never felt more pertinent. Every composer writing during World War I found a unique way, through their music, to describe and protest against the horrors that were tearing civilization apart. Created in the depth of morbidity, Debussy's parting musical gift is a subtle, dignified, and heroic celebration of youth and joie de vivre. A sense of patriotism in the war years links Debussy with the foremost Moravian composer of the day, Leos Janacek. Ottorino Respighi was only in his thirties when the war broke out. His 1917 Sonata for violin and piano is a work of Romance written in the time of hate, a reminder that the past and the future remain beacons of hope in desperate times. Commissioned for this recital programme to reflect on the centenary of The Great War from our own times, Kenneth Hesketh's Inscrizione, derivate, subtitled 'A lie to the Dying,' is a quasi-meditation on the dying man, his anxious thoughts and the spasms of his failing heart being weaved conspicuously into a narrative of disquieting melancholy. Foyle-Stsura Duo has been praised for "playing of compelling conviction," (The Daily Telegraph) and "astonishing mutual feeling, understanding and responsiveness." (Seen and Heard International)

After award-winning Langgaard recordings, the Nightingale String Quartet turns to one of the great unsung quartet cycles of the last century, that of Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996). Volume 1 in this new cycle takes in the composer’s first published quartet, his momentum-fueled Quartet No. 3 and his taut Quartet No. 15 with its pathos-imbued funeral march. These are fresh new performances that support the idea that the deeper you dig into Holmboe’s music, the more you find. Nightingale String Quartet is based in Copenhagen and is made up of Gunvor Sihm and Josefine Dalsgaard, violins, Marie Louise Broholt Jensen, viola, and Louisa Schwab, cello. All the members of Nightingale String Quartet studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where Professor Tim Frederiksen has been their faithful mentor ever since the Quartet was founded in 2007.

-----

REVIEW:

Vagn Holmboe’s 20 numbered string quartets constitute one of the 20th century’s most substantial and rewarding bodies of work in the genre. Collectors have come to know these compositions largely through the Kontra Quartet’s complete recorded cycle on Dacapo. The label now launches a new Holmboe project with the young Nightingale Quartet, whose Rued Langgaard quartet cycle set reference standards. In every way they match the Kontra’s technical polish, ensemble discipline, and textual integrity. Yet their interpretations sometimes differ.

For example, the Nightingale’s leaner spelling out of the gorgeously dense chords in the third-movement introduction of the First quartet contrasts to the Kontra’s massive and fuller-bodied impact. On the other hand, the second movement’s slithery Presto passages gain from the Nightingale’s faster tempo and lighter articulation.

Although the Third quartet’s five-movement “arch” form (slow-fast-moderate-fast-slow) owes an obvious debt to Bartók’s own Third quartet, Holmboe’s somewhat sunnier harmonic language goes its own way. It’s a toss-up between the Kontra’s intensely expansive, dynamically varied opening Lento and the Nightingale’s cooler temperament, brisker pace, and precisely calibrated attacks and releases. Some listeners may prefer the Nightingale’s supple scampering in the Allegro assai to the Kontra’s slightly heavier reading, yet the latter’s broader tempo allows the occasional “droning” bass lines to resonate more effectively.

My colleague David Hurwitz describes Holmboe’s late quartets as more complex but also more personal and concentrated, and that’s especially true of his three-movement No. 15. The Kontra’s slower unfolding of the fourth-movement introduction conveys a sense of mystery and otherworldliness that I feel digs deeper than the Nightingale’s drier reserve. But once the Allegro kicks in, the Nightingale’s gaunter, crisper approach better enlivens Holmboe’s knotty contrapuntal writing.

If this first volume is any indication, the Nightingale Quartet Holmboe cycle will complement rather than supersede the Kontra Quartet, and that’s all to our advantage. And to Holmboe’s advantage, of course!

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

For Gabriel Feltz, Sergej Rachmaninoff's Third Symphony "communicates, in a very moving way, the life-long struggle of one of Russia's greatest musicians with this genre." Because of this, it was particularly important for the conductor to show the exuberant power of imagination, the changing moods and the extremely elaborate instrumentation of Rachmaninoff's work. Passion, discipline, dedication- these virtues are not only at home in Dortmund's football stadium, but also in the Dortmund Philharmonic. Since it's foundation in 1887 the city's orchestra has consistently been at the forefront among Germany's concert and opera orchestras. The Philharmonic Concerts are just as dazzling as the performances in the Opera House and are the reason that the Dortmund Philharmonic is consistently counted among Germany's finest orchestras. The renowned orchestra has been directed by General Music Director Gabriel Feltz since the 2013/2014 season.

Josef Suk is the successor of Dvorák, and aside from Leoš Janácek, he is considered the most important composer of the Czech modernism that began with him. Starting from the influence of his famous mentor, Suk finally found his way from late romanticism to a very independent and complex late style. On this recording one can hear his Piano Quintet in G minor op. 8 and Zivotem a Snem, which consists of ten pieces for piano. The pieces are presented by Kiveli Dörken. Kiveli Dörken was born in 1995 in Duesseldorf, Germany. She has been playing piano since the age of five. Her first music teacher was Marina Kheifets. In 2003, at the age of eight, she was the youngest candidate ever to pass the entrance exam for the early studies program for gifted children at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien (HMTM) in Hannover (class of Professor Karl-Heinz Kämmerling). Following her professor’s death in 2012 she continues her studies in HMTM under Lars Vogt.

The “Songs from the Chinese”, a cycle of six songs on poems translated from the original Chinese by Arthur Waley (1889–1966), were written in 1957 and premiered the following year by the duo of Pears and Bream. By the late 50s Bream was a lutenist and guitarist of great renown and had accompanied Pears in works by Dowland and other early music of the British Isles, concerts that inspired Britten to write for the duo some music of his own. His cycle naturally invited comparison with another great set of songs from the Chinese, Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde”, and the reception at the time was favourable: “as a whole, they make a statement about life (and particularly the transience of youth and beauty) as poignant and personal as Mahler’s” (critic Jeremy Noble in Tempo,1959). The sixth instalment of Britten’s lifelong project of folksong arrangements was published in November of 1961 in a second wave along with volumes four and five, which followed some 12 years after the first three volumes were issued in the 1940s. Volume Six contains six English folksongs and is the only one of the sets that he scored for voice and guitar. These folksong arrangements are as much a product of Britten’s admiration for Bream as are the “Songs from the Chinese”. In fact, when Pears and Bream premiered Britten’s song cycle at the Aldeburgh Festival (17 June 1958), they performed three of these folksongs on the same concert. Britten wrote the guitar solo “Nocturnal” after John Dowland in 1963 for Bream, who premiered it the following year (12 June 1964). The nine movements of the work are a “variations & theme”, progressing opposite to the usual order of a theme and variations. The model, “Come, Heavy Sleep” from the First Book of Songs by John Dowland (1563–1626), is only revealed at the end, with the variations leading up to it hinting at the song with treatments of various thematic fragments. Marcello Nardis and Duilio Meucci complete this album with three additional works by Dowland including the original “Come, Heavy Sleep” on which Britten based his Nocturnal, another well-known song, “Flow my tears”, and the lute solo “A Dream”.

Fabulous playing from a pair of completely on-form pianists, which lends The Rite of Spring’s rhythmic themes a quite thrilling intensity.

– Gramophone [8/2015]

Jose Serebrier is a conducting legend, and one of the most recorded classical artists of all time. He has received forty-five Grammy Award nominations, and eight Grammy wins. Along with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Serebrier presents works by Samuel Adler. The compositions chosen include Adler’s Symphony No. 6, Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, and Drifting on Winds and Currents. Cellist Maximilian Hornung, who has already been recognized for his recordings, joins the orchestra for the cello concerto. “Jose Serebrier is a top rate conductor/composer with a sense of choice and judgement second to none. He gets the very best from a youthful RSNO.” (MusicWeb International)

Leo� Jan�cek is one of the composers who brought fame to Czech music worldwide, and his Glagolitic Mass, Sinfonietta and mature operas are regularly performed on prominent stages around the globe. Yet the composer's folk-based works have remained relatively little known, even though traditional songs pulsate in the very heart of his music, significantly forming his singular idiom, and serving as a source of inspiration without which Jan�cek's oeuvre simply cannot be imagined. Owing to the artist's collecting passion, today we can enjoy numerous lovely songs which have been preserved in both music scores and period audio recordings. The collections Moravian and Hukvaldy Folk Poetry in Songs contain the most beautiful of them all. Jan�cek left the songs in their pure form, afforded to them by the landscape and the people living in it, merely - and with the sensitivity of a precious painting restorer - furnishing them with congenial piano accompaniments. The landscape and the language of Jan�cek's Hukvaldy and Moravia have also been imprinted in the very souls of the artists who have recorded this album, focusing on the purity of folk songs, reflecting simple directness and enchanting poetics. The present recording is the fruit of their joint seeking and endeavor to get in touch with the candid and deeply symbolic world of the songs. Into the very heart of Jan�cek's singular musical universe

It’s not easy to make Rachmaninov’s prolix First Sonata cohere, yet not impossible. For example, Alexis Weissenberg’s gaunt tone, febrile temperament, and paragraphic sweep give shape and clarity to the work’s vast textural tundra. By contrast, Xiayin Wang often adapts a more lyrical approach and luxuriates in the keyboard writing while keeping a grip on momentum.

At first she seems to stretch out and sectionalize the right hand’s three-note phrases at bar 33 in the first movement, yet she’s simply leaning into the composer’s intentionally accented downbeats. The pianist allows inner voices and hidden melodies their songful due, even when they threaten to be obliterated by big, galumphing chords strutting in opposite directions. Her warm, sensitively voiced Lento shines among this movement’s finest recorded versions, notwithstanding Weissenberg’s more effectively translucent soft passages. While Wang clearly articulates the third movement’s complex thematic interactions (complete with its Dies irae quote), some of the obsessive dotted rhythms and driving climaxes bog down instead of being swept away.

Three Op. 23 Preludes provide an entr’acte. I understand the expressive intent behind Wang’s dynamic hairpins and tiny accelerations in No. 4, yet they wind up tangling up textural balances and cause the melodic thread to veer on and off a steady, floating course. Conversely, No. 5’s march motive truly swaggers, while Wang projects the Trio’s dynamic surges and famous countermelody with full-bodied presence. All the more surprising that she holds back in No. 6, which lacks the expansive dynamism and long line of Vladimir Ashkenazy’s reference recording.

I suspect that Wang has lived longer with the Second Sonata (heard here in the composer’s 1931 revision), for she knocks it out of the park. Wang keeps significant thematic matter, harmonic felicities, and magic transitional moments (such as the slow movement’s recollection of the opening movement’s first theme) in clear focus. At the same time she takes virtuosic flourishes, scintillating runs, and other decorative patterns out for a proverbial joyride, unpredictably speeding up and slowing down, yet maintaining continuity, flow, and excitement without a trace of vulgarity. Well, maybe a trace. But who cares? In short, a disc that gets off to a promising, searching start, and ends with a decisive knockout.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Hot on the heels of their acclaimed recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes, Stuart Skelton and Edward Gardner join forces with Christine Rice and the BBC Symphony Orchestra for this fascinating programme of early twentieth-century works. Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht needs no introduction, but far rarer is Oscar Fried’s contemporaneous setting of the same poem. Composed in 1901 for soloists and orchestra, Fried’s version is a true setting of (as opposed to Schoenberg’s reflection on) the text by Richard Dehmel. Lehár wrote Fieber in 1915 as the closing part of his song cycle Aus eiserner Zeit – he then made the orchestral setting a year later. Korngold’s Lieder des Abschieds (Songs of Farewell) date from the early 1920s, whilst he was still in Vienna, and shortly after he had completed the opera Die tote Stadt. Setting poetry by Christina Rossetti, Edith Ronsperger, and Ernst Lothar, the cycle is a poignant reflection on the Great War.

Intriguing; the Harrison and the Bloch are outstanding.

This is a very miscellaneous collection, but then followers of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road project will have come to expect nothing less. This particular CD was recorded as the climax of the Project’s year-long association with the city of Chicago. During that year Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road ensemble interacted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This involved a series of events which celebrated and explored many kinds of intercultural musical exchange, going beyond the specific cultural meetings and transferences which the Silk Road itself facilitated.

Here we have a sampling of such interactions, some rather more familiar and ‘mainstream’ than others. Of Jewish background, born in Switzerland, and a student in Belgium, Germany and France and resident in the USA from 1916 until his death - bar a return to Europe in the 1930s - Ernest Bloch was something of a one-man intercultural ‘event’ in himself and his music was always open to a variety of influences. Subtitled a ‘Hebraic Rhapsody for cello and orchestra’, Schelomo (Solomon) was written between December 1915 and February 1916. Bloch’s own programme notes for the piece spoke of the cello as “the reincarnated voice of King Solomon” and suggested that the orchestra was “the voice of his age … his world … his experience”. The languorous dances and slow, meditative music of much of the work’s first section are well and expressively played by Ma and the CSO under Harth-Bedova, the note of despair, of the all-embracing sentiments of Ecclesiastes (of which Solomon was, traditionally, the author) – “Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity” – never far from the surface. But perhaps this performance doesn’t quite do justice to what Bloch called the “complete negation” which characteries the work’s conclusion, where the playing seems a bit too ready to settle for rhetorical effect rather than substance. But, overall, this is a performance which puts a good case for the work and is well worth hearing.

The other familiar work is Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite - in which the CSO is conducted by Alan Gilbert - which grew from the young composer’s fascination with the nomads of the steppes, without too much in the way of direct borrowings from the music of such tribes. The modern listener is most likely to find in it a slightly politer, more westernied version of The Rite of Spring and indeed this work, like Stravinsky’s, was grounded in the composer’s collaboration with Diaghilev. Prokofiev’s rhythms are less complex and fierce than Stravinsky’s, the sense of ritualistic violence less intense, though the orchestration is brilliant and striking. The reeds of the CSO are particularly impressive in ‘The Adoration of Veles and Ala’, the first movement, while there is disciplined orchestral power galore in the opening of the second movement, ‘The Enemy God and the Dance of the Black Spirits’. Somehow, though, the performance doesn’t quite do full justice to the ominous, distinctly ‘Russian’ music of this movement, lacking the ultimate in intensity and drive. The dark evocativeness of the first part of ‘Night’ is more convincing and the final movement, ‘’Lolly’s Glorious Departure and the Ceremonial Procession of the Sun’ catches fire in the closing imagery of the rising sun. For all the efforts of orchestra and conductor, it is hard to see Prokofiev’s ballet music - striking as much of it is - as more than superficially involving any real cultural interaction.

From that point of view, Lou Harrison’s Pipa Concerto is more richly suggestive. The pipa is, to put it crudely but briefly, a kind of Chinese lute, with a pear-shaped wooden body. Harrison’s ‘concerto’ is very obviously the work of a man who, by the date of its composition, was steeped in oriental musical traditions and had given real thought to how they might exist creatively alongside western instruments and conventions. For Harrison the interface between oriental and occidental musics is familiar territory, a territory in which he can be unaffectedly and unpretentiously creative. As a result there is an ease and certainty of purpose to this concerto, which is beautifully played by Wu Man – some will have heard some of her other collaborations with, inter alia, Kronos Quartet and Yuri Bashmet. The concerto – which is perhaps better described as a suite than as a concerto if one insists on using western terminology – is various in mood and a thing of considerable beauty. In four movements - though one of them consists of four more or less distinct sections - the opening allegro balances eastern and western formality in a dialogue that has dignity and substance, while the fertility of Harrison’s eclectic imagination is evident in much of what follows. In ‘Troika’ the pipa sounds almost like a balalaika and in the brief ‘Neapolitan’ there are, perhaps unsurprisingly, but quite delightfully, echoes of the Italian mandolin tradition. In ‘Three Sharing’ the orchestra drops out and we are treated to a percussive conversation between the pipa of Wu Man, the cello of John Sharp and the double bass of Joseph Guastafeste. The most conventionally oriental episode comes in ‘Wind and Plum’, where the pipa’s cadences, against a lush orchestral background, are incisive and evocative. The penultimate movement is a lament, a ‘Threnody for Richard Locke’, a five minute elegy, powerfully melodic and exquisitely grave. By contrast the ‘concerto ends with an ‘Estampie’, in which medieval and renaissance dance rhythms meet (very fruitfully) the sounds of one of the lute’s ancestors. This whole concerto – the last of Harrison’s large-scale works – is the high spot of this disc.

In ‘Legend of Herlen’ the Mongolian composer Byambasuren Sharav draws on both native Mongolian traditions and instruments and on Western music. Western brass, in the shape of three trombones, and percussion - along with a piano - sit alongside the morin khuur, a two stringed fiddle and the sound of Khongorzul Ganbaatar, an exponent of the Mongolian tradition of ‘long song’, full of sustained and richly ornamented phrases. The results are intriguing and at times very beautiful, but perhaps most satisfying when Ganbaatar’s voice is accompanied solely by the morin khuur; the writing for western instruments is relatively pedestrian and predictable and actually seems to add very little to the Mongolian essence of the piece.

How far the Silk Road project has really succeeded – with anything like consistency – in uniting disparate musical traditions is a matter for debate. What is surely undeniable is that all their recordings have, at the very least, been stimulating, engaging and challenging. This new recording is no exception.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

The Deepest Desire

This re-release of Herbert Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi and A Kent Yeoman’s Wooing Song forms part of the new Hickox Legacy series commemorating the life and career of that great conductor. Mestro Richard Hickox’s lifelong commitment to British music in general is well-known, as is his work with the challenging, intricate music of Howells. This disc displays extremes of Howells’ emotional language - from the intense and powerful Hymnus to the sprightly and rather flirtatious Wooing Song – communicated masterfully by Hickox and his associates.