Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

MUSIC FOR VIOLA • Maxim Rysanov (va); Evelyn Chang (pn) • AVIE 2111 (68:34)


BRAHMS (arr. Rysanov) Scherzo in c, “F.A.E. Sonata.” GLINKA Viola Sonata in d. ENESCU Concert Piece. BRIDGE Pensiero. Allegro appassionato. FRANCK (arr. Rysanov) Violin Sonata in A. TABAKOVA Whispered Lullaby


Young Ukrainian-born Rysanov tears into this music like a prime-time cold warrior. The fierceness seems to suit the Brahms—the Scherzo from the collaborated “F.A.E. Sonata”—to a tee, and I wondered aloud if Brahms ever considered scoring it for the instrument himself. The rich tone of the viola melds perfectly with the repeated, dramatic rhythmic motion that serves as Brahms’s structural Leitmotif , and the result is quite a gallop indeed, paralleling the excitement of Schubert’s Erlkönig.


The Glinka is of course a viola mainstay, and while Rysanov doesn’t have the tonal allure of the milk-chocolate sound that Yuri Bashmet supplies on his superb RCA recording, he certainly equals the extraordinary efforts of Michael Zaretsky on the Fanfare approved “Black Snow” album (22:5). And comparison to Bashmet is perhaps unfair—few artists produce the kind of sound he does, and I would not want anyone to think that Rysanov’s is not up to snuff—far beyond that rather placid category, in fact. The two Bridge pieces sit as curiosities in the middle of this recital, but worthwhile nonetheless, a true contrast in style and mood given in a seven-minute period.


Enescu never ceases to amaze me. Something as innocently titled as Concert Piece turns out to be an intense rhapsody that can out-Brahms Brahms himself, and the composer certainly did not short-change either the viola or the piano, infusing both parts with drama, virtuosity, and almost out-of-control feeling. I can only imagine what would have happened if the work had been longer than nine minutes.


The real surprise here is the sensational performer-arranged version of the Frank Violin Sonata. Comparisons are almost superfluous, as we all have our favorite violinists, and this work is hardly under-recorded. But on viola? I have never liked the composer-penned cello arrangement, so I was quite leery of this one. That is, until about 20 bars into it. What a tempestuous torrent of passion the artist takes us on! There are no tricks here, as Rysanov even drops octaves when needed in order to maintain the integrity of the line, but his sound is so persuasive and gripping that this reading has rocketed up to the top of my list, no matter what instrument. I would be remiss indeed if I didn’t mention the thundering contributions of pianist Evelyn Chang to this entire recital, looking every bit the wisp of a girl judging from the cover photo, but getting a sound worthy of Liszt.


The last piece is a contemporary work called Whispered Lullaby , and it makes for a fine come-down after so seething a session. This is definitely an artist to be on the lookout for, and Avie’s unique partnering structure pays off here in a big way. The sound is a little bright, perhaps a suggestion of stainless steel vs. the oak of a place like Kingsway Hall (it was in fact recorded in Potton Hall, Suffolk), but sympathetic to detail and dynamics. I can offer no less than the strongest recommendation.


FANFARE: Steven Ritter

Classical Music

To the best of my knowledge, Imogen Cooper has come only recently to directing as well as playing concertos. In October last year I heard her at the QEH with the Northern Sinfonia in Beethoven – her playing was as fresh and spontaneous as always. Here she is, on record, in Mozart, a composer clearly very close to her heart.

It is actually the 23rd concerto that we hear first on the disc. The opening is very serene, very unhurried, even slightly Romantic in feel. Maybe one should really start listening with K291 as K488 is almost too comfortable. That said, there are some nicely sprung rhythms later on and the cadenza is simply tremendous, exhibiting real depth. Throughout there is a chamber music feel to it all, the give-and-take between piano and - in particular - winds a joy. The famous F sharp minor slow movement begins with a piano rumination that had me in mind of Daniel Barenboim's early version of this work from his cycle of the 1960s and 1970s with the English Chamber Orchestra. Indeed, all credit to the Northern Sinfonia for sustaining Cooper's intensity so well and losing nothing to their more southerly colleagues. Cooper adds decorations to Mozart's large, bare intervals - towards the end, around six minutes in. The finale begins with Cooper opting for a completely different touch, a harder staccato that delineates the territory immediately. Again there seems to be very slight blurring from the middle frequencies of the orchestra, though.

The so-called Jeunehomme Concerto begins with Cooper rather surprisingly indulging in unnecessary point-making in her initial dialogue with the orchestra. Just one misjudgement – an over-tenutoed note on the orchestra around 1:28 in. But with Cooper's pianistic re-entrance, all is civility and expert balance. Cooper even relaxes enough to give a really cheeky end to the cadenza.

The middle Andantino is peppered with moments of magic; the finale contains large swathes of superbly even passagework, scampering around wonderfully. Perhaps Cooper milks the Menuet that forms the centrepiece of this finale rather, but one can still revel in the beauty of her phrasing. True, I still maintain much affection for Cooper's mentor, Alfred Brendel, in this piece - I refer to the earlier ASMF recording now on a Philips twofer - but Cooper's recording shall now ever be at its side.

There is little doubt that this disc will bring much joy. The applause at the close of both concertos is eminently deserved.

-- Colin Clarke, MusicWeb International

THE RISE OF THE NORTH ITALIAN VIOLIN CONCERTO 1690–1740—VOL. I: THE DAWN OF THE VIRTUOSO • Adrian Chandler (vn), dir; Mhairi Lawson (sop); 1 La Serenissima (period instruments) • AVIE 2106 (77:51 & )


NAVARA Sinfonia/Sonatas: in C; in a. COMPOSER X Laudate pueri Dominum, RV Anh 20. 1 LEGRENZI 3 Balletti e correnti, op. 16. ALBINONI Concerto in G, op. 2/8. VALENTINI Concerto with 4 Violins Obbligato, op. 7/11. VIVALDI Violin Concertos: in G, RV 310; for 4 Violins, RV 580


According to the booklet’s biography, the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded Adrian Chandler a fellowship at Southampton University to study the development of the violin concerto in northern Italy from 1690 to 1740, a project that apparently resulted in Avie’s recording items from that literature. Although the title of the collection, “The Dawn of the Virtuoso” might suggest some of Vivaldi’s most fanciful flights, the level of technique demanded by the collection’s works remains on a rather low level. Navara’s five-part Sinfonia or Sonata in C Major (as well as the one in A Minor), for example, may feature what the notes describe as “imposing” violin parts, but they can hardly make an electrifying impression on today’s audiences, inured by Ernst and Paganini to relatively subdued technical feats like Navara’s (while curiously, Vivaldi’s violin parts can still make a listener’s heart pound).


The Laudate pueri Dominum by “Composer X” apparently belonged to a group of pieces that Vivaldi himself had studied. Mhairi Lawson’s rich lower register lends a somber quality to the work, although she brings startlingly dramatic excitement to the “Suscitans” section. Legrenzi’s Balletti e corrente (a selection of six very brief pieces scored for what the Adrian Chandler’s notes describe as the “typical” north Italian ensemble of two violins, alto viola, tenor viola, and cello: Balletto II in G Minor, Corrente II in G Minor, Balletto IV in E Minor, Corrente IV in E Minor, Balletto VI in F Major, and Corrente VI in F) sound bracingly crisp and energetic, bubbling with virtuosic energy if not energetic virtuosity.


Chandler identifies Albinoni’s op. 2 as the first work regularly to include solo passages. But although Albinoni supposedly distributed the “lion’s share” of these in the Eighth Concerto, written for four solo violins with strings, striking solos in the manner of Vivaldi’s Concertos, op. 3 (the tenth of which La Serenissima includes in the collection) just don’t make an appearance. Valentini’s Eleventh Concerto, in six movements (one of them multisectional), sounds far more progressive in the quicksilver writing for the solo instruments in the second movement and especially in the brilliant fourth-movement Presto—as well as in the bold but skillfully laid-out chromatic passages of the opening one. At more than 17 minutes’ duration, the piece dwarfs all the other purely instrumental ones in the program. After all these historical divagations, Vivaldi still sounds masterly, both in his solo Concerto, RV 310, and in the celebrated Concerto for Four Violins, RV 580, to which Chandler and the ensemble have added stirring rhetorical flourishes and richly conceived ornamentation.


La Serenissima, recorded crisply in an amply resonant ambiance, plays with a bracingly accented and thumping, though bubbling, bounce that emphasizes the bass’s strong underpinning role; they eschew both the lushness of modern instrumental sounds and the whining and edgy abrasiveness of period ones. Much of the repertoire may be unfamiliar to listeners, but Chandler and La Serenissima make it highly accessible. Recommended to general listeners as heartily as to students of the period.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

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Classical Music

Bach’s three Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord were once thought to belong to the composer’s Cöthen period. His employer, prince Leopold, was an enthusiastic amateur gambist and the court orchestra boasted a performer of exceptional talent in Christian Ferdinand Abel. Yet it seems more likely that the pieces were written at Leipzig, possibly for Abel’s son Carl Friedrich who lived there for several years and who may even have been a Bach pupil. In all three Sonatas the gamba is partnered by an obbligato harpsichord, Bach placing the gamba line between the treble and bass keyboard strands to provide a distinct voice in the alto-tenor range. Bach always wrote expressively for this eloquent member of the viol family, above all in the wonderful G minor Sonata whose outer movements adhere to the ritornello principles of a Vivaldian concerto. Jonathan Manson and Trevor Pinnock form a hugely rewarding partnership. Both are spirited players with strong characters but who, yet, are susceptible to the sublime poetry of the Sonata’s centrally placed Adagio. There is much rewarding dialogue in these performances where neither player steals the limelight from the other. The conversational interplay between the instruments is animated and engaging and the rapport between the artists hardly can be placed in doubt. In short, I find greater athleticism and a greater sense of playful spontaneity here than in rival versions either by Jordi Savall and Ton Koopman for instance (Alia Vox) or Jaap Ter Linden and Richard Egarr (Harmonia Mundi). The fourth Sonata in their programme is a transcription of a piece best known in its B minor version for flute and harpsichord but which, in turn, derives from a partly preserved source in G minor. Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Nicholas Anderson, BBC Music Magazine

The enterprising violinist Philippe Graffin – whose recordings for Avie span the world-premiere recording of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto to the original instrumentation of Ravel’s Tzigane and specially commissioned works by Lithuanian composer Vytautus Barkauskus – comes up with another plum: the Elgar Violin Concerto but as you’ve never heard it before. Here he offers another world-premiere recording, performing from Elgar’s original manuscript.

The story goes that just as Elgar felt he had completed his composition he consulted Kreisler who was to give the world-premiere performance. The virtuoso violinist requested numerous changes to suit his own technique and temperament. Finding the original manuscript in the British Library was for Philippe a “rejuvenating experience, like opening the diary of someone you know well and discovering the reason behind their actions.” A similar story comes with Chausson’s Poème, a work that was greatly influenced by the great Belgian violinist Ysaÿe. On this recording Philippe restores a dozen or so bars that don’t appear in the final published version.

This release continues Avie’s association with the RLPO. Vernon Handley, arguably the greatest conductor of English music, was an inspired choice. His only prior recording of the Elgar was with a certain young man named Kennedy.

REVIEW:

It is thanks to the enterprise of violinist Philippe Graffin that we now have this premiere recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto in its original form. The fact that such a score exists may surprise many if not most Elgarians, but it is well known that Fristz Kreisler as the dedicatee of the concerto was asked for his comments on the solo part at a late stage. What Graffin has done is to consult the manuscript scores of the work, both full score and piano score, held in the British Library, and compare the solo part with what was later published by Novello, as modified by Kreisler. At two points in the first movement brief passagework which originally used triplet quavers was changed in the finished version to semiquaver groups. That is over in a flash each time, but more noticeable is the fact that the double-stopped violin flourish on the final page of the finale is less elaborate than what we know. That change, it seems, is owed not to Kreisler but to Lady Elgar, urging such a change on her husband, who duly responded.

Graffin’s performance with the ever-understanding backing of Vernon Handley and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is most distinguished. I cannot remember one on disc that so magically exploits the range of pianissimo that the score asks for. This is not a barnstorming performance, as so many are with this massive work, but one which in total concentration brings out to the full the tenderness and poetry, not just in the central slow movement (which contains only one difference on the opening phrase of the solo part), but in the other movements too, not least in the accompanied cadenza, which is yearningly beautiful.

The story is similar with the first version of Chausson’s Poème...the performance could hardly be more subtle, with Graffin maintaining the gentlest of dynamics while keeping total concentration.

The sound is first-rate and the disc comes with comprehensive notes, not just those of Graffin but a reproduction of the script of a 1937 broadcast by WH Reed, Elgar’s violinist friend, about the creation of the Concerto. Reed’s input into the development of the solo part, it seems, was from the start even greater than Kreisler’s.

-- Gramophone (Edward Greenfield)