Classical Music

RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No. 2. STRAVINSKY Le Sacre du printemps. HONEGGER Symphony No. 5, “Di Tre Re” • Igor Markevitch, cond; RIAS SO • AUDITE 95605 (73:15) Live: Berlin 1952


Igor Markevitch (1912–83) was born in Kiev into a family of Ukrainian, French, and Italian lineage. At 14, living with his family in Switzerland, the teenaged Markevitch was discovered by Alfred Cortot, who took the boy with him to Paris and enrolled him in the Ecole Normale. It was there that he trained under Cortot and Nadia Boulanger for a career as a pianist and composer. His first break in the latter capacity came in 1929, when the 17-year-old was commissioned by Serge Diaghilev to write a piano concerto and to collaborate on a ballet. The ballet project came to naught when Diaghilev died later that year, but the young Markevitch completed the concerto, which was subsequently published by Schott.


For the next dozen years, between 1929 and 1941, Markevitch dedicated himself to composing, averaging two works per year in a variety of musical genres and forms. But after the onset of a serious illness late in 1941, he decided to abandon his career as a composer and turned his attention to conducting. He was not, however, a neophyte to the order, as this sudden occupational change might suggest. He had made his conducting debut at the age of 18 leading the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; in subsequent appearances with various ensembles, he had already distinguished himself as a recognized exponent of French, Russian, and 20th-century repertoire. As a point of passing interest, it might be mentioned that the conductor Oleg Caetani—currently director of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra—is Markevitch’s son by his second wife, Donna Topazia Caetani, herself a distant descendant of the Roman family of 14th-century Pope Boniface VII.


Markevitch’s discography is by no means negligible, but unlike those of other more widely celebrated media darlings (the roughly contemporaneous Karajan comes to mind), his recordings have yet to be cataloged and collected together systematically in a way that makes it easy to grasp the full measure of his contribution. Record labels devoted to restoring historical material, such as Archipel, Tahra, Testament, and Urania, have made a few random stabs at it, but the fact remains that Markevitch’s recordings are scattered far and wide, and some, still available only on LPs selling for eye-popping prices, are difficult to come by, assuming you can afford them. I found, for example, a vinyl copy of what claimed to be a 1955 Rite of Spring with the Philharmonia on an RCA Red Seal LP posted on eBay for an asking price of $145.99. Curiously, this is the only reference I’ve come across to a 1955 Rite , and one to boot on RCA. I’m guessing it was originally pressed in the U.K. by HMV, and I suspect that the actual recording is the 1952 version, 1955 probably being the date of the RCA pressing. What do these eBay sellers know?


Markevitch did make commercial recordings of all three of the works on this disc, in some cases more than once. In 1954, he recorded the Ravel with the Philharmonia; with the same orchestra he led The Rite of Spring twice, in mono in 1952 and in a stereo remake in 1959. Yet another late recording of the Stravinsky with the Suisse Romande Orchestra dates from 1982, one year before the conductor’s death. And for Deutsche Grammophon, in 1950s mono, he recorded Honegger’s Symphony No. 5 with the Lamoureux Orchestra. To the best of my knowledge, all of these are now, or at one time have been, available on CD.


Like another, slightly earlier conductor I can think of, Dimitri Mitropoulos , Igor Markevitch is, I believe, vastly underrated. The recording at hand, however, should go several miles toward boosting his reputation. To begin with, whatever audio engineer Ludger Böckenhoff and the Audite team have done to remaster the original source material, it qualifies as a latter-day miracle. The sound on this disc—its dynamic range, frequency response, and depth of stage—is simply phenomenal. At nine seconds into the Rite of Spring’ s “Dances of the Young Girls,” for instance, a cross-rhythm pops out in the bassoon that I don’t believe I’ve ever heard before, even in the latest state-of-the-art SACD recordings.


But let’s not shortchange Markevitch’s role in this. His take on Stravinsky’s still shocking pagan ritual is bracing and determinedly defiant. In his hands, the composer’s score is not one for the lithe, acrobatically inclined danseur, but for the toned, hard-bodied gymnast. For Markevitch, it’s all about the interplay of complex, unyielding rhythms and sudden, explosive gamma ray bursts. The ear-shattering blast that introduces the “Ritual of Abduction” gave me a real start; it was like a Molotov cocktail being lobbed through a plate glass window. Not for Markevitch the toning down or smoothing out of Stravinsky’s heinous hosanna to the cult of ritualistic human sacrifice, a kind of musical prequel, if you will, to Shirley Jackson’s 1948 short story The Lottery . Interestingly, that story stirred up as much outrage as had Stravinsky’s Rite 35 years earlier. The music is a study in primitivism; it should, and was meant to, sound barbaric. Too many modern recordings I’ve heard, like a recent and highly touted one by Jonathan Nott and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra on Tudor, transform the score into something gentrified, as if it has now earned a place in the orchestral canon alongside Mozart and Haydn. Markevitch had it right, and he delivers the goods on this recording in one of the most heart-pounding performances of The Rite of Spring you will ever hear.


Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé too was one of the conductor’s specialties, and just as sensationalized as his portrayal of Stravinsky’s tribal blood-letting is, with equal artistry does Markevitch sensualize Ravel’s French goatherd and shepherdess. No gauzy Impressionistic veil can conceal the amorous passion and sexual tension between the two lovers, whose shyness and innocence are eventually overcome by the chemistry of raging hormones in Markevitch’s pitch-perfect performance.


I was rather surprised to find no reviews of Honegger’s Symphony No. 5, subtitled “Di Tre Re,” in the Fanfare Archive. It’s one of the composer’s more widely recorded works, with a number of fine versions available, including classics by Michel Plasson and Charles Munch. The current live recording with Markevitch is in direct competition with the aforementioned slightly later but still mono Markevitch effort with the Lamoureux Orchestra on Deutsche Grammophon. Unfortunately, I do not have that recording for comparison purposes, but I can tell you that the one at hand is every bit as good, performance-wise, interpretively, and sonically as the Munch with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on RCA, which I do have, and better performance-wise and interpretively, if not quite as sonically wide-spectrum, as the Neeme Järvi with the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra on Chandos, which I also have. The piece is worth getting to know, if you don’t already know it. It’s quite a magnificent score (the “tre re” refers to the three Ds struck on the timpani at the end of each movement), and Markevitch’s reading is deeply satisfying.


More often than not, I end up recommending releases of archival recordings such as this mainly to those who have a particular interest in the conductor or featured artist, but this one is different. The performances are fantastic, and the sound is as good as, if not better than, any number of newly minted recordings I’ve heard. This is an urgent buy recommendation.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

For this sixth volume in Quartetto di Cremona’s exploration of the complete Beethoven String Quartets, the ensemble tackles the String Quartet in A major, Op. 18, No. 5, and the String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130, pairing an early piece and a late piece to give some insight into the composer’s development. In both of these compositions, Beethoven’s incorporation of folk music can be seen. In other aspects, these two works are vastly different, the earlier showing his enthusiastic and uplifting style, and the later showing his passionate and sometimes brooding methods. Quartetto di Cremona has been internationally lauded for their “extremely mature and lyrical sound.” (Strad) The group formed at the Stauffer Academy in Cremona in 2000, and since then has acquired an extensive repertoire.

Classical Music

This album presents secular Christmas carols from Europe and South America. These traditional songs have been newly arranged by Manfred Frankel for voice, accordion, violin and percussion instruments. The carols are intended to sound as natural as possible and yet offer something unusual. Older and more recent songbooks from a wide variety of countries served as the basis for the adaptions - in some cases the original languages were retained, and in others the texts have been translated into German. The result is an impressive kaleidoscope of folkloristic, international Christmas carols. The different musical orientations from which Ursula Fielder and Manfred Frankel originally come - she from a "classical music", he from "folk music" - made them curious about each other. At first, they developed a Breton-Celtic programme: the success of this encouraged them to produce this somewhat different Christmas album with newly found, rather unconventional repertoire.

TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto 1. BARTÓK Violin Concerto No. 2 2 • Isaac Stern (vn); 1 Lorin Maazel, cond; 2 Ernest Ansermet, cond; Swiss Festival O • AUDITE 95624 (69:37) Live: Lucerne 1 8/23/1958; 2 8/18/1956


This release is of particular interest to me, for as one who was born, raised, and lived most of my life in San Francisco, I probably saw and heard Isaac Stern perform live in concert and recital more times than any other single artist. That, of course, was because of Stern’s close ties to the city in which he grew up and studied violin under Louis Persinger, one-time teacher of Menuhin, and with Naoum Blinder, the San Francisco Symphony’s then concertmaster. In 1936, Stern made his debut with the orchestra under the baton of Pierre Monteux, and though he would soon leave San Francisco to pursue a career as one of the world’s most recognized and sought-after violin virtuosos, he returned often to the city that had nurtured him to appear with the orchestra and in recital with his long-time accompanist, Alexander Zakin.


In 1945, Stern signed a recording contract with Columbia, an association that lasted uninterrupted for 40 years, one of the longest such artist/record company alliances in history. And during those years, Stern joined forces with famous conductors, orchestras, and chamber musicians to record the entire mainstream violin concerto and chamber music repertoire, and beyond, often more than once. If you grew up in the 1950s and began collecting records in junior high and high school, as I did, the chances are you grew up with Isaac Stern spinning on your turntables. He was Columbia’s intended rival to RCA’s Heifetz, and I readily admit that I learned much of the violin literature from Stern’s recordings before I discovered those by other celebrated artists.


These versions of the Tchaikovsky and Bartók concertos—let it be stipulated that we are dealing with Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2, the more famous one, so it needn’t be repeated on each subsequent reference—are not only previously unreleased, they’re claimed to be quite rare, as Stern was seldom recorded live. A 1959 Brahms Concerto with Monteux and the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood was captured live and released by West Hill Radio Archives, which, I presume is still available since it was reviewed by Richard Kaplan as recently as 35:3. But that was the Brahms, not the Tchaikovsky or the Bartók; and while Stern revisited the Tchaikovsky on a number of occasions with different conductors and orchestras, his track record with the Bartók, as far as I know, is limited to his one and only other version, a commercial studio recording he made two years after this one, in 1958, with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. That, of course, makes this Audite release all the more valuable.


Of the Tchaikovsky—not counting this live performance—there are four others I’m aware of: (1) a 1949 recording with Alexander Hilsberg and the Philadelphia Orchestra; (2) a 1958 recording with the same orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, released in both mono (ML 5379) and stereo (MS 6062) and originally coupled with the Mendelssohn Concerto, but reissued a number of times in various sets and singles, including one coupled with the Sibelius Concerto; (3) a 1973 recording with Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic; and (4) the violinist’s last, a 1978 recording with Rostropovich and the National Symphony Orchestra.


Let me deal with the Bartók first, since there’s only one other Stern version to compare it to, the aforementioned studio recording with Bernstein. Before proceeding, however, I need to voice a disclaimer. I’ve had Stern’s Bartók with Bernstein on LP for longer than I can remember, but I haven’t dusted it off and listened to it in ages because, frankly, I never liked it. The reason goes back to my opening paragraph, where I reminisce about seeing and hearing Stern live on numerous occasions in San Francisco, though never in the Bartók.


It was around that same time, however, that another San Francisco-bred violinist, who also returned regularly to the city to play with the orchestra, appeared in 1957 to perform the Bartók. I’m referring, of course, to Yehudi Menuhin, and that was my very first time hearing the Bartók. It made a deep and lasting impression on me.


In that same year, Menuhin made his classic recording of the piece with Antal Doráti and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, which was released on a Mercury Living Presence LP, and which I promptly acquired and haven’t parted with since. Menuhin had a special affinity for the piece—he’d recorded it four years earlier for EMI with Furtwängler and the Philharmonia Orchestra—and I found his reading of it not only more idiomatic than Stern’s but more rapturous. Nothing in Stern’s performance transported me the way those magical moments did towards the end of the second movement in Menuhin’s recording with Doráti.


Stern, of course, didn’t suffer the deterioration in bowing that was already quite evident in Menuhin’s playing by 1957, but it may have been because of that, rather than in spite of it, that Menuhin’s performances took on a sense of vulnerability which made them all the more moving. Stern’s live Bartók under Ansermet in 1956 on the present CD is markedly different than his studio Bartók under Bernstein in 1958, and in some ways I like it better. At first glance, as you can see from the timings below, there’s an overall difference of only 16 seconds between Stern/Ansermet and Stern/Bernstein, which would suggest that despite different conductors, Stern’s view of the work hasn’t changed.

Stern/Ansermet (1956)	Menuhin/Doráti (1957)	Stern/Bernstein (1958)
15:39	15:30	16:22
9:47	9:08	10:01
11:33	11:08	10:52
36:59	35:46	37:15

But a closer look at the timings of the individual movements tells a different story. Under Bernstein, the first movement is almost a minute slower, which is just enough to make it sound a bit slack and lacking in thrust. Compare Stern/Ansermet to Menuhin/Doráti; they’re much closer, with Menuhin being only nine seconds faster. But tempo aside, in both cases, they project the music with a greater febrile intensity. Similarly, in the second movement, though Stern/Bernstein isn’t much slower than Stern/Ansermet, it loses even more of a sense of momentum under Bernstein, and considerably so compared to Menuhin/Doráti.


I think it’s in the last movement, though, that there’s a more serious interpretive misconstruing of the score under Bernstein. Bartók, as is well known, was intrigued by formal symmetry and proportional balance; many of his works exhibit both micro and macro mirroring structures, such as arch forms. The Violin Concerto is no different. The second movement is a set of variations, while the third movement is a variation on the material presented in the first movement. Therefore, it’s important for a performance to present the Finale in a way that reflects the tempos and thematic connections to the first movement. Stern/Ansermet and Menuhin/Doráti manage that better, in my opinion, than does Stern/Bernstein.


It wasn’t until receiving Stern’s previously unreleased Bartók that I was able to make this three-way comparison, and it reinforced for me my general lack of appreciation for the Stern/Bernstein version. Of course, one could make many other comparisons as well, for Bartók’s Concerto has been quite lucky on record. There are superb performances by Henryk Szeryng with Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw (another favorite of mine, next to Menuhin), Gil Shaham with Boulez and the Chicago Symphony, and for something more recent, a recording by James Ehnes with Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic on Chandos.


I’ve limited my comparisons to the above three because of their proximal dates, because of the San Francisco connection (both Stern and Menuhin coming of age there, and my hearing the Concerto for the first time performed there by Menuhin), and because Menuhin had a special association with the piece, though he was not the first violinist to play it. Zoltán Székely gave the premiere with Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw in 1939, while Tossy Spivakovsky gave the American premiere in 1943 with Artur Rodzi?ski and the Cleveland Orchestra.


Stern’s Bartók with Ansermet is a fine one, and preferable, I think, to his effort with Bernstein. When it comes to the Tchaikovsky Concerto on this disc, there isn’t much to say. Something that can be said of Stern is that he was a remarkably reliable, even-tempered player. He wasn’t an artist prone to either spontaneous white-hot inspiration or to having off days. When you bought a ticket to a Stern concert or a new Stern recording, you knew in advance what you were going to get, and what you got was never less than good, solid, professional musicianship of a very high caliber.


Frankly, I hear little difference between this 1958 Tchaikovsky with Maazel and the violinist’s studio recording with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra that same year. If there are any differences worth noting, they relate to the orchestral playing. The Swiss Festival Orchestra is an ad hoc assembly of musicians who come together annually for the Lucerne Festival. The players are all professionals, but they’re drawn from various ensembles around Switzerland and from various European orchestras. Well-rehearsed as they are, it would be disingenuous of me to say that they’re a match for the Philadelphia Orchestra in its prime under Ormandy. So, if you have the Stern/Ormandy Tchaikovsky in one or another of its various incarnations, I don’t think this one adds anything of any special merit to Stern’s recorded legacy. The Bartók, however, I believe does, so recommended to all audiences for the Bartók and to Stern fans in particular for a heretofore unpublished live performance recording of the Tchaikovsky. FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

V 5: EDITION FISCHER-DIESKAU

Dora Pejacevic regarded her Symphony as her most important work. Yet at it's premiere, one crucial detail was missing: her full name. In the programmes for the first performances in Vienna and Dresden, only "D. Pejacsevich" was listed. Why did the composer refrain from including her first name? And would the audience have reacted differently if they had known that the Symphony was written by a woman?

With "Beethoven for Flute and Piano - Part II", audite continues it's CD series exploring the composer's contributions to this instrumentation. While the first release, "But in my style!", focused on the late works, this new double album turns to the composer's early Viennese period. Here, the flute does not appear merely as an ad libitum instrument, but takes centre stage as the tonal focus of both original compositions and arrangements. The spectrum ranges from a version revised and authorised by Beethoven himself to adaptations by Friedrich Hermann. In this way, the selection also offers a glimpse into the historical reception of his music. Together with the first volume, it presents a richly varied panorama of Beethoven's oeuvre for flute and piano.

In the second instalment of Alfredo Perl's complete recording of Beethoven's piano works, the sonatas, variations, bagatelles and individual pieces composed during the so-called "classical" period (1801-1814) take centre stage. Their expressive power and innovative virtuosity constitute a landmark in the history of piano music.

This great and popular series continues from Audite. This performance is taken from the Bavarian Broadcasting Company tape of a concert in Munich on October 8, 1982. Other titles in this series are Symphony No. 1 (Audite 95.467), #5, (Audite 95.465) and # 9, (Audite 95.471). This series will sell. Check now and make sure you have at least one in stock in each store.

V 3: STRING QUARTETS

BAROQUE-BOLERO: BAROQUE MUSIC

INTERMEZZO

EIN HELDENLEBEN & TOD UND VERK

MASS IN A-MAJOR OP. 12

V 7: EDITION FERENC FRICSAY -

SYMPHONY NO. 4 PIANO CONCERTO

V 1: EDITION GEZA ANDA MOZA

... A magic floats above everything [encompassing the whole work]... (Paris, 1877, Journal de Musique) The second album by Franziska Pietsch and her Spanish piano partner Josu de Solaun is dedicated to the multifaceted world of French violin sonatas. With their usual aplomb and artistic intensity, the duo explore emotional landscapes complementing those of their previous album. Moving on from the exuberant revelry, serious tragedy and brutal reality of the sonatas by Strauss and Shostakovich, the musicians are now roving between the poles of dream and reality. Real experiences and emotions are reflected in a visionary dream world, external reality is mirrored internally. Inner emotions and images become reality via the music, triggering new emotions: dream and reality mirror each other. Faure, Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc create this "mirror world" in diverse ways. The common theme is the fantastical, the magic of imagination, the poetic distance to reality and the intensive engagement with inner emotions. Thus the dream world becomes a retreat - for listeners and artists alike.

To mark what would’ve been the late choral as conductor, pedagogue and organizer Uwe Gronostay’s 75th birthday, audite is releasing the present Christmas carols CD recorded for the RIAS Berlin during the 14 years (1972-86) of his period as RIAS Chamber Choir artistic director. + The Christmas carols form a dramaturgical cycle, beginning with the mysterious night into which falls the light of God; narrative and devotional songs as well as hymns of praise follow, leading to the birth of Christ, then back into the night that also symbolically bears within itself the dawning of the new day.

Deep emotions and sombre laments, the torments of Hell and the radiance of Paradise, and the sounds of celebration: the Staatskapelle Weimar and Kirill Karabits are continuing their partnership on the Audite label with Franz Liszt's symphonic poem Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo, his Symphony to Dante's 'Divina Commedia' and - a world-premiere recording - his K�nstlerfestzug zur Schillerfeier. Their three previous releases have all been acclaimed by the press. The works that Liszt wrote for the Weimar Hofkapelle in the 1850s are the very embodiment of a Romantic ideal, combining literature, philosophy and the visual arts to create emotionally intense music that is turned both towards tradition and to the future. As a bonus download (15 tracks) Audite presents Liszt's melodrama Vor hundert Jahren, for which his K�nstlerfestzug was initially meant as a prelude.

Classical Music