PROKOFIEV Piano Sonatas: Nos. 1–5 • Alexandra Silocea (pn) • AVIE 2183 (65:16)


As with Beethoven, one can with the revisions he made to the Fifth Sonata follow Prokofiev’s development almost from the beginning of his career to the end of it. Though a handful of the nine sonatas became popular with audiences and performers right from the beginning, others fell into the cracks of history shortly after their inception. Many of these sonatas became popular not only with Soviet pianists of the era, but musicians worldwide—Richter, Gilels, Horowitz, Gould, Cliburn, Argerich, François, to name just a few. In choosing to record the complete sonatas for her debut recording (of which the present release is just the first volume), Alexandra Silocea pits herself against some of the greatest pianists of the last century. Even in considering just the lesser-known sonatas, she has stiff competition from both Frederic Chiu and Anne-Marie McDermott, who have both recorded excellent complete cycles of these works. So the question remains, how does this young pianist, now in her mid-20s, fare? Remarkably well, actually. She possesses both the maturity to handle the subtleties of this music along with the requisite mechanical skill to handle the technical hurdles that Prokofiev throws at the pianist. She might not have the kind of fiery temperament that Gilels and Weissenberg bring to the Third Sonata’s climaxes, but the assured way she handles the dramatic alternation from the percussive opening to the more lyrical semplice e dolce theme is masterly. Her quirky way with the Second Sonata’s scherzo movement can stand at the top of the list for great performances, while her romantic yet never over-sentimentalized way with the First Sonata’s obvious debt to Rachmaninoff imbues the movement with a sound all of its own—one that Prokofiev was soon to abandon. Will this perhaps lead to the First Sonata being performed more in public? One can only hope so. Her ghostly, almost pale sound is equally perfect for the Più mosso section of the Second Sonata’s first movement. Silocea may possess a thin sound in general, but she has a beautiful one in regards to her melodic line, and has the ability to maintain a long line over a large span of time. Her crescendos and diminuendos always lend the pieces a feeling of momentum, which is especially important in these often forward-propelled movements. How will Silocea fare in the later sonatas? Only time will tell. But if she can manage to bring the same technical assuredness and musical sensibilities to these works, then we could be looking at not only an auspicious debut, but a very fine overall cycle of Prokofiev’s sonatas. I for one am looking forward to the second installment—in other words, highly recommended.


FANFARE: Scott Noriega

One’s first impression of this CD, in an aria from Orlando comparing Love to the Wind, with its bouncy coloratura and light attitude, might mistakenly be that soprano Amanda Forsythe is “one of those coloratura songbirds,” albeit a very good one. This would be selling her short: yes, she’s most certainly a superb singer, with staggering agility and high notes perfect and free, but she uses every note in her well placed, many-hued voice. Sudden plunges into a not-quite chest voice on words like “dolor” (sadness) color and vary the experience of the aria.

And the next aria, “Geloso tormento” from Almira, with its obbligato oboe and aggressively unhappy strings, gives Forsythe even more emotional room: like any good “early music” soprano, she can sing without vibrato, but what she does with the first two words of the aria are special. The second syllable of “geloso” is attacked white and she sings a crescendo on it, adding vibrato; “tormento” finds a rolled “r” and a shudder on “men”. She embellishes freely and dramatically in the da capo section (here and in each other such aria).

It is a joy to hear a singer rethinking much of this familiar music without ever distorting it, such that the CD’s 55 minutes of singing (broken up with four expertly played orchestral excerpts from Terpsichore) truly impresses like a first hearing. And you never tire of Forsythe, as you might with other light-and-high-voiced singers. A bauble such as Atalanta’s flirtatious “Un cenno leggiadretto” from Serse has such character that it enchants anew. She has no fear of leaning on her voice but she never forces or makes an ugly sound; drama comes from inflection and diction.

Armida’s enraged recit “Dunque I lacci” and the anguished “Ah! crudel” that follows from Rinaldo are tragic in scope and sound, heavy with rage and sadness. The brief, insane B section that pops out of Armida’s deranged mind, “O infidel”, filled with tommy-gun coloratura, is a spectacular display, and Forsythe sadly lopes into the da capo with a voice filled with desolation. Morgana’s “Tornami a vagheggiar” from Alcina is sung for fireworks, and they light up the sky.

Jeanette Sorrell leads the period instruments of Apollo’s Fire devoid of any affectations, and the band plays smoothly and expertly. This is clearly Forsythe’s show and the orchestra and conductor offer great support. I could go on but find no need to; I hope you get my point. This is a knockout recital by a major American soprano.

-- Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

In 2009, period-instrument oboist extraordinaire Gonzalo X. Ruiz joined Monica Huggett and her Ensemble Sonnerie in a recording of Bach’s Orchestral Suites which included a reconstruction of the Second Suite replacing the familiar flute solo with oboe, a premise soundly supported by the musicians’ research. The album went on to top the Billboard Classical Chart and was nominated for a Grammy Award. Gonzalo returns with an equally convincing recording of concertos commonly heard on keyboard, performing his own adaptations for oboe and oboe d’amore. He joins forces once again with Monica, this time with her Portland Baroque Orchestra. Upon hearing the beauty and virtuosity of Gonzalo’s playing it becomes easy to believe that Bach had the sound of the oboe in mind when composing these popular works.

Violinist Augustin Hadelich is one of the fastest-rising stars of his generation. With three critically acclaimed and Billboard-charting releases on AVIE to his credit, he now delivers what promises to be one of the most important concerto recordings of the year, pairing the Violin Concertos by Jean Sibelius and Thomas Adès, the latter only the second recording of the composer's work. He is superbly supported by Hannu Lintu conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Describing his decision to couple Sibelius with Adès, Augustin says, "Programmes I like most are ones where the pieces are connected, but in a subtle way. As we listen to an apparently contrasting programme, we notice similarities--we hear phrase shapes, harmonies, rhythms, and colours in one piece that remind us of something that we heard in the other. The deep, rumbling timpani and low winds in the Sibelius concerto bridge the gap to the Adès, a work which also explores the lowest depths of the sound spectrum, creating chasms over which the violinist performs a tight-rope act. The intensely emotional first and second movements of the Sibelius, and the even more extreme and heart-wrenching second movement of the Adès, create another such connection. Both composers love playing with complex rhythms: Sibelius sticks to polyrhythms, while Adès really pushes the envelope having the solo violin and orchestra play in different meters--or even at different tempi! The dances in the last movement of the Sibelius have a counterpart in the almost tribal-sounding last movement of the Adès. There are many other such comparisons, and, in my view, combining these concertos on one recording makes each one shine in a way that they wouldn't without the other." Augustin rounds out the recording with Three Humoresques by Sibelius. The release will be supported by a major publicity and marketing campaign, and a performance of the Adès with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. critical acclaim for Augustin Hadelich "Here is a young artist with no evident limitations." - The New Yorker

'The American Album' by the Cypress String Quartet is a stunning appreciation of the American musical spirit from 1893-1936, headlined by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s “American” Quartet, with works by Charles Griffes, Samuel Barber - his Quartet, Op.11 includes the famous “Adagio” - and contemporary composer Kevin Puts.

Anna Clynne’s enormous palette of colors and special effects coalesce into an aural three-dimensional experience of striking originality. Equally there’s a comforting familiarity to her music, as she draws inspiration from historic styles that she transforms into a new musical dialect. Anna’s background in electro-acoustic music and her fascination for a variety of multi-media – including poetry, visual art and videography – combine to create rich and exhilarating textures of popular appeal.

The five works on Anna Clyne: Mythologies were written over a 10-year period between 2005 and 2015. The performances on the album feature the BBC Symphony Orchestra and four internationally-acclaimed conductors. Masquerade, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to open the Last Night of the Proms 2013 and conducted by Marin Alsop, captures the spirit of that quintessentially English tradition. The title evokes an 18th-century outdoor festivity featuring fireworks, acrobats and street entertainers. This Midnight Hour, conducted by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo, encapsulates the modernity and decadence of two European poets, Nobel Prize-winning Spaniard Juan Ramón Jiménez and Frenchman Charles Baudelaire. Oramo also conducts The Seamstress, a single-movement violin concerto in all but name, featuring soloist Jennifer Koh as well as the whispered voice of Irene Buckley reciting the work’s inspiration, a poem by William Butler Yeats.

More poetry by a Nobel laureate, the Irishman Seamus Heaney, inspired Night Ferry; conducted by Andrew Litton, the work conjures crashing waves and weathered seafaring. The album concludes with rewind, conducted by André de Ridder. It’s a wild romp imagining the backwards scroll of a video tape complete with glitches, skips and freezes.

Mythologies became an instant media and popular success when it was released in October 2020 – “hands-down one of the half-dozen best classical albums of 2020”, according to New York Music Daily. The album is now presented in both a CD version and as a magnificent 2-LP set. The splendor of the glossy gatefold and 180-gram vinyl in particular is an appropriate match for Anna’s enormous palette of colors and special effects.

REVIEWS:

I found her music colourful, full of energy and overflowing with ideas which grip you from first to last. The present release of her compositions spanning the decade from 2005 up to 2015 thus offers a fine survey of her recent orchestral music and there is no better place to begin with than the first work recorded here, the short Masquerade, a brilliant concert-opener if ever there was one. The music skips along with high spirits until it concludes with a quotation from John Playford's The English Dancing Master which comes as a surprise - although I for one would not be surprised to learn that that very tune had already been there since the very beginning but cleverly and subtly disguised. Anyway, this short and brilliant work presents Anna Clyne's music-making in a nutshell, as it were.

These superb works receive committed readings from all concerned and, besides singling out the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing at its customary best, I would like to draw attention to Jennifer Koh's impressive take on the violin part in The Seamstress, one of the gems in this collection. I hope that many will derive as much musical pleasure from this very fine release as I have, and that it will not take too long before more of Clyne's orchestral music is committed to disc.

-- MusicWeb International

Mythologies is an apt title choice for this striking collection by London-born composer Anna Clyne (b. 1980). However ancient mythological tales might appear at the surface level, their archetypal themes resonate across the ages, as relevant today as when they were born, and they're fantastical in nature too, populated as they are with gods and mythical beasts. In similar manner, Clyne's music exudes an era-transcending quality in these phantasmagoric pieces, some of which stretch out for twenty minutes at a time. The Grammy-nominated composer is a tale-spinner whose creations transport the listener to dazzling realms.

Certainly a key part of the recording's appeal has to do with unpredictability: in not conforming to long-established scripts, the pieces are able to unfold in any number of stylistic directions, even if ultimately each develops in accordance with her sensibility.

-- Textura

Anna Clyne: Mythologies became an instant media and popular success when it was released in October 2020 - "hands-down one of the half-dozen best classical albums of 2020", according to New York Music Daily. The album is now presented in a magnificent 2-LP set, the splendor of the glossy gatefold and solid 180gsm vinyl an appropriate match for Anna's enormous palette of colors and special effects. Anna's compositions balance striking originality with a comforting familiarity as she draws inspiration from historic styles and transforms them into a new musical dialect. Her background in electro-acoustic music and her fascination for a variety of multi-media - including poetry, visual art and videography - combine to create rich and exhilarating textures of popular appeal. The five works on Anna Clyne: Mythologies were written over a 10-year period between 2005 and 2015. A kaleidoscopic orchestral showcase, the set opens with Masquerade. Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to open the Last Night of the Proms in 2013 and conducted by Marin Alsop, this curtain-raiser captures the spirit of that quintessentially English tradition, evoking an 18th-century outdoor festivity featuring fireworks, acrobats and street entertainers. This Midnight Hour, conducted by the BBC Symphony Orchestra's Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo, encapsulates the modernity and decadence of two European poets, Nobel Prize-winning Spaniard Juan Ramon Jimenez and Frenchman Charles Baudelaire. Oramo also conducts The Seamstress, a single-movement violin concerto in all but name, featuring soloist Jennifer Koh as well as the whispered voice of Irene Buckley reciting the work's inspiration, a poem by William Butler Yeats. More poetry by a Nobel laureate, the Irishman Seamus Heaney, inspired Night Ferry; conducted by Andrew Litton, the work conjures crashing waves and weathered seafaring. The set concludes with rewind , conducted by Andre de Ridder, a wild romp making reference to another vintage format, the VHS tape.

A fascinating version of Mahler’s Tenth. 

There have been two other recordings made of Clinton Carpenter’s completion of Mahler’s 10th (Farberman/Philharmonia Hungarica and Litton/Dallas). Only the Litton is currently listed on ArkivMusic. Furthermore, the Singapore account seems to be the only DVD of  any version of the complete 10th, making it doubly welcome. Following highly successful performances in China in 2009, this live performance was subsequently taped in August in the concert hall of Singapore’s iconic, gleaming, bug-eyed arts complex known as Esplanade, Theatres on the Bay.

Mahlerians have been arguing for decades over the merits and demerits of the various completed versions of the 10th. There are now at least seven of them (counting Cooke twice), all recorded at least once, providing plenty of fodder for Mahlerians (or are we Mahlerites?) to chew over. Lan Shui has thrown in his lot with the Carpenter version, believing it to be “more authentic” than Cooke’s. I will not attempt to take sides on the issue; all have their strong and weak points. Suffice it to say here that, generally speaking, the Carpenter version is more densely scored than the familiar Cooke version(s), incorporates more interpolated contrapuntal lines, and employs far more percussion (the beginning of Scherzo I sounds almost like a timpani concerto). As a result, principal melodic lines sometimes become obscured and the viewer finds the camera zeroing in on an instrument seen but not heard.

Those familiar with Cooke will easily detect numerous differences in the orchestration; again, this is purely a matter of speculation, and each listener must decide for him- or herself as to the judiciousness of each detail. The movement with the greatest departure from Cooke is Scherzo II, where the orchestration sounds downright clumsy at times. But compensating are passages like the transition to the fifth movement, with its dull thuds in the bass drum rather than the brutal whacks Cooke calls for, followed by ghostly muttering and murmuring in the double basses and other low forms of instrumental life. Following all this grisly groveling Cooke assigns the hauntingly beautiful melody to the solo flute, as does Carpenter, but the latter adds an oboe, harp, and horn—a moment of true magic.

Far less contentious is the excellence of the performance at hand. The Singapore Symphony once again shows the world that it deserves to be ranked with the best. Though this is a live performance, there is nary a missed note or imprecise attack to be heard. (Touch-up sessions, I was told, were minimal.) Special commendation goes to the many felicitous touches from principal flutist Jin Ta, principal oboist Rachel Walker, and principal horn Han Chang Chou, though the latter is unfortunately too far from the microphone. In the opening Adagio, conductor Lan Shui emphasizes the music’s inherent lyricism rather than its passionate intensity, drawing forth seamless arcs of sound and tonal beauty from his superb string section. At the other end of the emotional spectrum is the absolutely terrifying scream of anguish near the end of the symphony, with the high trumpets piercing the air like a laser beam. But regardless of whether the passage is a ravishingly beautiful melodic line or a rush of instrumental virtuosity, Lan ensures that it makes musical sense. There is an innate feeling for phrasing and structure to every gesture he makes, and the orchestra responds accordingly. Particularly delicious are the episodes in both scherzo movements, where Lan injects a good dose of old-fashioned Viennese schmaltz, something I’d not heard before in this music.

The visual element has been tastefully considered and imaginatively executed. At the huge explosion of agonizing dissonance near the end of the Adagio, the camera takes us deep into the bell of the tuba, as if peering into the black abyss. During the piercing trumpet screams that immediately follow, the screen slowly goes white as our eyes are led directly into blinding light. There are numerous opportunities to enjoy the sheer visual beauty of the hall, which abounds in gorgeous color and striking textures. There are enough camera angles so that virtually every musician gets quality time in the lens but without the constant, annoying flitting around that mars so many orchestral videos these days.

The worthy filler, Five Elements , is a 12-minute suite of five short pieces by Messiaen’s only pupil, the Chinese-born Chen Qigang, now living in Paris. Dating from 1998, it has become one of Chen’s more frequently played works (in this country I know of performances by orchestras in Milwaukee and Los Angeles), and it has been recorded before, on an all-Chen Virgin Classics CD. Didier Benetti’s performance there is good, but Lan is more imaginative in bringing out the exquisite subtleties and colors in this music of Takemitsu-like delicacy and purity. Each of the “elements” (not physical substances, but rather “cyclic movements which constitute the universe”) is scored for a different combination of instruments and is visually framed in a different color (blue for water, red for fire, etc.) while the camera locates the various sources of sound, often using a split screen and resulting in a kind of advanced guide to the orchestra. Mallet instruments and special effects in the strings (harmonics, tapping, col legno , etc.) play major roles in the highly varied and fascinating sound world of Five Elements.

The disc comes with good booklet notes by Marc Rochester in five languages (English, French, German, Japanese, Chinese), brief interviews with Lan about the music, and a small photo gallery. All in all, this is a product well worth watching as well as hearing, and anyone who loves the Mahler 10th owes it to him- or herself to acquire this release.

FANFARE: Robert Markow

Announced as a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Mahler’s birth, this recording by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra is also apparently the first video/Blu-ray release of his Symphony No. 10 as completed by Clinton Carpenter. This version is less frequently heard than the ‘performing version’ by Deryck Cooke, but as discussed in Tony Duggan’s excellent comparative review of recordings of Mahler’s Symphony No.10, Carpenter was the first to begin working on this project, commencing as he did in 1946. The first edition was completed in 1966, ten years before Cooke’s was published in 1976. As well as these two, there are also versions by Joe Wheeler, and more recently Remo Mazzetti, Rudolf Barshai (1924-2010), Nicola Samale and Giuseppe Mazzuca.
 
Beginning with the Adagio, the only movement completed by Mahler and which has often appeared as a single movement on Mahler symphonic cycles, we get the measure of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shui’s conducting. Directing without a score, Shui doesn’t linger or cloy with over-sentimental fussiness. This is perhaps not quite the most gripping of Adagio recordings, but it works well enough – clean and efficient, rather than streaked with the blood and sweat of intense and daring risk-taking. The real passionate work comes later on. The recording is detailed and bright, and although the absolute sheen of the strings may not be quite as glossy as Sir Simon Rattle in his later Berlin Philharmonic recording this is clearly a crack band, standing up well to the edge-of-the-seat scrutiny of microphones and assorted cameras. The impact of ‘that chord’ at 19:15 will make you jump out of your seat, cleverly preceded by some disarmingly innocent celestial ceiling-gazing by the video director.
 
Musically things become interesting with the second movement Scherzo. Carpenter clearly had a different idea to Cooke about what Mahler might have done had he lived to revise his scoring, and there are quite a few extra trills, counter-melodies, darting changes of tempo and other twiddly bits added to what was actually quite a substantially notated original. The overall effect is for this reason not hugely different to the Cooke version, and the extras either add character or pickiness, depending on your mood or point of view. Having become so used to the Cooke version it’s hard to know whether the opposite would be the case were the tables turned, but to my ears the music is eccentric enough without too much extra superimposed material. The rather Hollywood tinsel of the final section, marked ‘Pesante’ with Cooke is a case in point. This does stand very well as a performance in its own right however, and with absolute conviction from the performers as good a case as any is made for Carpenter’s version of this movement.
 
There is some structural adjustment going on in the ‘Purgatorio’, unnamed as a movement in this version. However, in essence the extra thematic flights and different approach to texture don’t create as much of a ‘new’ movement when compared to Cooke as you might think. It is with the fourth movement Scherzo that the sense of an alternative vision becomes most immediately apparent. Cooke’s version is rich and effective, but for me always leaves the sense of an unfinished work – the realisation that Mahler would certainly have done more had he lived to create a definitive and complete piece. Carpenter’s working of the material doesn’t sweep away all of the musical idiosyncrasies left by the bare bones of Mahler’s short score, but at least gives a more immediate impression of something established and rooted in its own tradition. There are some magical moments, and the Singapore players if anything warm to their task in this movement even more than in the rest of the piece. There are too many differences between Carpenter and Cooke to mention, and I have to admit to getting lost while trying to follow Carpenter using the Cooke score, but the overall effect is more important than the technical analysis in my view. I found myself sold on this version the more I listened.
 
The fifth movement Finale opens with that now famous damped bass drum, and sounds suitably funereal. Carpenter uses the keener edge of trumpets to top the brass chorale at bar 23, and the flute solo from 30 has a nice harp accompaniment illustrated well in a split view on the video. There is a certain amount of schmaltz in the orchestration which might take a bit of getting used to, but these sorts of things are questions of taste. The orchestral colourings to my ear sometimes have a Tchaikovsky-like flavour: the joviality of the Nutcracker drawn into pits of despond by the mood of the Sixth Symphony amplified by overwrought early 20 ^th century late-romanticism. There is no doubting the effectiveness of Carpenter’s orchestration, but there are moments where Cooke’s closer alliance to what historical Mahler research might consider a more ‘authentic’ realisation allows a clearer window into what Mahler actually left, rather than what someone else feels he might have done. This doesn’t quite tip into over-working of the material, but sails close enough at times. I don’t dislike the result, but am rather glad this plush cast of extras isn’t the only Mahler 10 we have.
 
The programme of this DVD also gives us Wu Xing or ‘The Five Elements’ by Chinese composer Chen Qi-gang. The five short movements each represent a different element: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal respectively. Clever camerawork helps the ear identify some of the effects which arise, but as with most pieces with such clear themes, the music is not difficult to interpret and follow. There is plenty of interesting percussion with Wood for instance, Britten-like brass chimes and licking flames rising from the double–basses and bass drum in Fire. This is all highly effective stuff, essentially romantic in idiom, but with some gorgeous melting harmonies and sonorities. Bonus features for the DVD include some introductions on both pieces in English from conductor Lan Shui and some photographs including backstage souvenirs, and some of the orchestra’s other concert performances.
 
With good booklet notes by Marc Rochester and clever use of Klimt’s ‘Der Kuss’ to illustrate Mahler’s marital crisis at the time he was working on the symphony, this is a very nicely produced DVD and an excellent recording of Clinton Carpenter’s completion of Mahler’s Symphony No.10. I have to admit to being far more used to hearing the Deryck Cooke version in a variety of recordings, and so accept any comments I may have on the Carpenter version will be compromised by having this as an ingrained reference point. I accept the validity and effectiveness of Carpenter’s version, but ultimately feel closer to Mahler’s intentions in the piece – at the state in which he left it – with Cooke. What this DVD shows is that there is most certainly more than one way to deliver this remarkable piece, and having the choice is most certainly more of an enrichment than a distraction from any one ‘true’ version of the score – something which can never exist in any case.
 
-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International  

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Pianist Alexandra Silocea joins with fellow Romanian cellist Laura Buruiana in two Russian staples of the repertory - the Sonatas of Prokofiev and Shostakovich - along with a much rarer offering by compatriot George Enescu: The single-movement Sonata in F minor, an early work that only recently came to light. Silocea has distinguished herself on previous AVIE releases in repertoire ranging from Debussy and Ravel to Liszt and, notably, Prokofiev. Among Buruiana's distinctions is first prize in the New York-based Young Concert Artists competition in 2003, and a PhD summa cum laude from the National University of Music in Bucharest, where she devoted her thesis to the Enescu F minor Sonata.

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