Classical Music

REVIEWS:
Fanfare (1-2/00, pp.232-233) - "...The Third Quartet has an unusually bouncy opening movement for a minor-key work, and the playing here is a beath of fresh air....As a Cherubini enthusiast, I welcome the David Quartet recordings wholeheartedly..."

'My end is my beginning, and my beginning my end' - with those words the four members of New York Polyphony end a programme which explores the themes of grief, loss and mortality. Apart from the closing paraphrase by Jackson Hill (b.1942) on Guillaume de Machaut's famous 14th century rondeau Ma fin... and two examples of plainsong, all works included on endBeginning, the ensemble's first disc on BIS, were composed by masters of the Franco-Flemish school of polyphony active in the first half of the 16th century. The music was partly used liturgically, for instance Brumel's Mass for the Dead, which incorporates the first known polyphonic setting of the text Dies iræ, 'Day of Wrath' as its extensive centre piece. Similarly the Lamentations by Crecquillon, a setting which is possibly appearing on disc for the first time, would have been used in churches during Holy Week, with the destruction of Jerusalem as mourned by the prophet Jeremiah standing as a symbol of the Passion of Christ. The two Gregorian chants Libera me and In paradisum both form part of the Roman Catholic burial service, the first a prayer for the soul's delivery from eternal death and the second an evocation of the hereafter. Of a more subjective nature, the two texts Absalon fili mi ('Absalom, my son') and Tristitia obsedit me - Infelix ego ('Sadness has besieged me - Alas, wretch that I am') have moved their respective composers to settings of rare intensity. Formed in 2006, New York Polyphony is establishing a reputation as an exceptionally fine vocal chamber ensemble, and has been praised for a 'rich, natural sound that's larger and more complex than the sum of its parts' (National Public Radio, USA). For this disc the four members have sought out the 14th-century church of Länna, Sweden, and its superb acoustics.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The 26th Volume of Bach Cantatas with Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan consists of three works composed for performances during the last three months of 1742. They are part of the composer's projected (but discontinued) Chorale Cantata Year, in which every cantata for a whole year was to be based on a well-known chorale rather than on the traditional gospel reading for the Sunday in question. The text of the chosen hymn was thus reworked by the librettist into poems suitable for setting into recitatives, arias, duets etc. Of the three works in question, BWV 180 (Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele) is the most famous -- based as it is on a communion hymn by Johannes Crüger. Among Bach connoisseurs, its opening chorus -- which also opens the disc -- has long been regarded as one of the most beautiful in any of the cantatas. ('One can tell from the composition that the master was working on one of his favourite melodies', wrote Albert Schweitzer.) BWV 122 (Das neugeborne Kindelein) was intended for the Sunday after Christmas, which in 1742 was also New Year's Eve, and is a meditation on the future, seen in the light of the recent birth of the Saviour. The BIS Cantata Cycle has recently been earning even more praise than usual. In the yearly best-of-lists of the critics of the German magazine Fono Forum, the whole series is put forward as Edition des Jahres, and Volume 24 was named Choc de l'année in the influential French review Le Monde de la musique, while Diapason gave it their November Diapason d'Or. In the same month Volume 25 was chosen as Disc of the Month by BBC Music Magazine, while in the December issue the Gramophone critic wrote: 'Suzuki projects the unity of each work with carefully sculpted opening choruses, well-leavened recitatives and urgent, radiant orchestral playing -- a recording series, reaching near its mid-point, of outstanding consistency.' This the 26th volume will surely be seen as a worthy successor!

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Within the output of Sofia Gubaidulina, solo and chamber music occupies a position of prominence; she has written more than eighty such works. One of the earliest is the brief – and not really typical – Serenade for solo guitar from 1960, composed as a commission from a Moscow publishing house for inclusion in a collection of guitar compositions. The composer was asked to write a piece not overly difficult or progressive, and has later described the result as ‘music for pleasure’. Demonstrating a particular closeness to the guitar, Gubaidulina’s later writing for it has exploited its sound spectrum in previously unimagined ways. Two further works involving the guitar are included here, with Repentance from 2008 being a reworking of an earlier work, just as its title is a translation of the original’s Italian one, Ravvedimento. Her latest work involving the guitar, and also the latest on this disc (and a world première recording) is Sotto voce for viola, double bass and two guitars. About this unusual combination, Gubaidulina has remarked: ‘It fascinated me on account of its dark colour and its potential for contrast between a muted, almost whispered sotto voce sound and that particular sort of expressivity that low-pitched instruments possess’. Each with a duration of more than 20 minutes, these two works frame the equally substantial but much earlier Piano Sonata. Looking back at her youth, the composer has described the piano in her family home as ‘the only light’ in ‘a fairly grey and uninteresting existence’. Striking features of the sonata include borrowings from jazz and the twelve-tone row which underpins all its three movements – a nod towards the dodecaphony through which Gubaidulina asserted her place in the Russian musical avant-garde at an early stage. This varied and fascinating journey into the world of Sofia Gubaidulina’s chamber music is given us by a Munich-based group of eminent musicians.

Classical Music

If claims could be made for a certain composer to have invented a genre single-handedly, Felix Mendelssohn would be a strong candidate with his 'Songs without Words'. The term itself can be traced back to 1828, and a letter in which Fanny Mendelssohn mention having received a 'song without words' as a birthday present from her brother. Although Mendelssohn continued an existing tradition of writing short lyrical pieces for the piano, the concept of 'wordless songs' was new, and indeed the great majority of the Lieder ohne Worte display some sort of song-like structure (melody in the upper voice, an accom­paniment that is predominantly chordal or arpeggiated, ABA-form). Immediately popular with a wide audience, and soon a staple ingredient in domestic music-making all over Europe, the Lieder ohne Worte were also highly regarded by fellow composers, who imitated the style of Mendelssohn's pieces, and sometimes adopted his title for them as well. One such admirer was Robert Schumann, who was captivated by the 'Duett' (Op. 38, No. 6), hearing in it: 'lovers... conversing quietly, intimate­ly and confidently'. (The piece was in fact written for Cécile Jeanrenaud, who would later become Mendelssohn's wife.) Gathered on this disc are the first four books of the eight published collections of Lieder ohne Worte (two of which appeared posthumously) and an appendix consisting of five individual pieces which Mendelssohn never included in any collection but which nevertheless belong to the genre. One of today's leading exponents on the fortepiano, Ronald Brautigam has released complete sets of the piano music by Mozart and Haydn, and is currently recording a highly regarded series of the solo piano works by Beethoven. For the present disc he has chosen to play on a replica by the renowned maker Paul McNulty of a Pleyel instrument built in 1830, and thus contemporary with the music performed on it.

REVIEWS:
American Record Guide (11-12/97, p.201) - "...Osmo Vanska leads a slow version of Symphony 2, at 44:44 almost ideally paced....The orchestra sounds rich, warm, and full-blooded....[Vanska's] phrasing is richly varied and expressive, and his grasp of large-scale architecture is most compelling..."

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

REVIEWS:
BBC Music (3/98, p.66) - Performance: 4 (out of 5), Sound: 4 (out of 5) - "Suzuki...plays the most tautly structured Bach....[He] makes light of the technical demands - hands crossing, finger-knitting polyphony, dazzling figurations - and characterises each variation imaginatively..."

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Includes aria(s) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Ensemble: Swedish Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Sebastian Weigle. Soloists: Miah Persson, Yevgeny Sudbin.

Revelatory. The music of Samuil Evgenievitch Feinberg is hypnotic in the extreme, most obviously close to Scriabin in mystical mode. All credit to BIS (who already are doing sterling work for the composer Nikos Skalkottas) for releasing this magnificent disc, with superbly detailed annotations by Christophe Sirodeau, one of the two pianists featured on the disc, and a composer himself. Both Sirodeau and Samaltanos contributed to the Skalkottas/Feinberg concerts held in Paris in 1999.

Intriguing, also, to have two such fine pianists’ reactions to the same composer’s music. Rather than dwell on any immediate differences, it seems truer to the spirit of the disc to point out both artists’ obvious dedication to and love of this music, two facets that result in this disc being the special release it is. It is certainly on my short-list as one of my ‘Discs of the Year’.

The shifting colours of the First Sonata are a fair indication of this composer’s sound-world. Shifting colours here both in the sense of Samaltanos’s keyboard touch, which is magnificent in its scope, but also in the harmonic language the composer uses. There is a lingering intensity about this statement, as the harmonies move from Scriabinesque to Bergian. The violent end of this short (6’50) Sonata comes as a surprise.

Although contemporaneous with the first Sonata, the Second (both date from the year of Scriabin’s death) exhibits a wide frame of reference. The booklet notes point us towards Medtner and early Szymanowski. Similarly in one movement, it comes across as a single flow of consciousness. The pianist here, Christophe Sirodeau, realises the fairly unrelenting intensity while demonstrating an approach generally softer than that of Samaltanos - more identifiably Gallic, perhaps?

The Third Sonata, although it was composed in 1916, had to wait until 1974 for publication! The Marcia funebre and the fugato were reused in his Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 20. Much larger in size (three times as long as the First Sonata), it speaks of extremities of utterance that, technically, pose no problem to Sirodeau. Quasi-consonant harmonic arrival points act as markers or as the notes would have it, ‘life-buoys’. The prelude is dark, and harmonically advanced in the manner of late Liszt, while the similarly dark chordings of the Marcia Funebre make this experience hard work for both pianist and listener. The third movement, curiously and confusingly, is also called ‘Sonata’. The reference point that kept on cropping up was Steven Osborne’s excellent Hyperion disc of Kapustin (CDA67159).

Feinberg dedicated his Fourth Sonata to Miaskovsky. The impulsive, thrusting nature of the music is again reminiscent of Scriabin, almost, at his most elusive. Samaltanos returns, using a gentle touch now. In his booklet notes, Sirodeau refers to Bulgakov’s magnificent novel The Master and Margarita, with its unlikely parade of horror/comic ‘happenings’, as a point of reference. It is easy to see what he is getting at although Feinberg comes without the laughs. Feinberg’s harmonic logic ensures a stream of free-flow washes from first to last. For some reason, on each playing of the disc it was at this point that I mentally remarked on the excellence of the recording. Perhaps this one is just that bit superior to the rest? The recording date for Sonatas 1-5 is merely given as ‘Spring 2002’.

Samaltanos is the featured pianist in the Fifth Sonata of around 1920-21. At first it reminded me of Scriabin’s Fourth Piano Sonata, where harmonic drug-hazed meanderings meet elusive prestissimi. However Feinberg inhabits a world of his own - the figure of Ravel simultaneously hovers over the opening. The Allegro main section is relatively violent, featuring determined arpeggios. It is magnificent, because of the surety of Feinberg’s compositional hand; always, you are aware that the guiding voice is that of a Master.

The Sixth Sonata is probably the finest work in the present set. It takes in a world of references - the bell-like tolling of the opening seems to recall Debussy’s ‘Cathédrale engloutie’ (Préludes I); but Janáček and Schoenberg both vie for attention, all sitting alongside a perceptive use of the B-A-C-H motif. Some of the reiterated block chords (around 6’) even sound like gestures from early Stockhausen electronic music! The performance (Sirodeau) is miraculous. It is here that virtuosity reaches its peak.

The structure of the Sixth Sonata is determined by its ideas - there is no recap as such, just a sense of continual evolution. As Sirodeau writes, ‘the composer seems to find himself on the tip of an apocalyptic sword ... and the listener remains imprisoned by the spirit of confusion and even of irreparable tragedy that dominates this work.’

Often dark and violent, but also containing passages of Messiaen-like luminosity, this is a tour de force, a piece that simply refuses to let the listener go. The very close is typical in its thought-provoking way, leaving the listener hanging in the air. Ee are left waiting for the next Sonata - Volume 2 of this series is a June 2004 release, BIS CD-1414.

Incidentally, Sirodeau’s biography of Feinberg (actually the first two pages of his booklet notes) are available for viewing on the Web at www.skfe.com/biog_en_feinberg_sirodeau.html .

The present issue is not really one to listen to straight through, not if you’re really listening - it would simply be too tiring. Enjoy the Sonatas one at a time, and enjoy the voyage of discovery.

-- Colin Clarke, MusicWeb International