This is a rather rare and special disc. Rare, because as far as I can tell this is the first recording in the original English language of this late Hindemith opera and special because it is very good.

Hindemith conducted the first English performance of the opera at the Juilliard School in New York just nine months before his death in December 1963. For the libretto he persuaded Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) to collaborate with him in adapting his own one-act play of the same name that he had written thirty years previously. Wilder remains a cornerstone of the American literary and theatrical establishment but was notoriously unwilling to allow his works to be used for alternative theatrical or musical use. Hence although The Matchmaker did make it to the stage as Jerry Herman's Hello Dolly, he refused permission for his most famous works; Our Town and The Skin of our Teeth. The latter was mooted as a musical by Bernstein - which the author accepted - but when that venture collapsed he rejected Bernstein's further approach to make it an opera. According to the liner written by Tappan Wilder - Wilder's nephew and literary executor - he was extremely well versed in music in general and opera in particular as well as many languages. Skills, one imagines, that must help the collaborative process between composer and librettist a lot.

The dramatic conceit behind this highly compressed work is essentially a simple one. The drama is presented in a single fluid sequence of Christmas dinners in one household over a period of ninety years. There is no significance with it being Christmas except that it is a day that brings families together so the audience witnesses the succeeding generations in the same setting. Apparently Orson Welles credited the original play as the inspiration behind the famous 'breakfast-montage' sequence in Citizen Kane where the audience witnesses the changing/decaying relationship between Kane and his first wife. Hindemith writes in a similarly fluid style - there is little division between scenes. He uses recurring motifs to signify the passing years. Wilder's libretto revisits moments of perfunctory conversation that will be familiar to every family; "how many years have we lived here?", "you were missed at church today", "I remember when ..." With such conversational text it comes as no surprise that Hindemith writes in an arioso/recitative style - this reminded me in technique if not style of that used by Vaughan Williams in his equally compact and dramatically potent Riders to the Sea. There are few if any arias or indeed ensembles. That being said a highlight of the score is a dramatically moving and technically brilliant sextet where Sam, one of the central family's sons is on leave from the army. He tells his family to act exactly as normal so he has memories to treasure and over their prattling inconsequential small talk he sings a touching counter-melody chorale-like song; "I will hold this tight! I shall remember you!"

To give some sense of the dramatic compression at work: Sam exits; "and so good-bye", the next line of the text laments his death in the war "He was only a boy, a mere boy ... What can we do ... only time can help " and the line following that has moved the plot forward by some years and introduces another character on another Christmas day. Memory, memorial and how we live through the actions and memories of our relatives past and future lie at the heart of this work. The house is the unchanging focal point - although the closing line of the work is "And they're building a new house" but it is the lives of the inhabitants of the house that count.

Not because the text is convoluted or opaque this is an opera that requires considerable concentration if you are not quite literally to lose the plot. Fortunately the entire libretto - in English and Hindemith's own German translation - is included. Layers of potential confusion are added by the fact that - as with many families - certain names are passed down hence we have two Lucias and two Rodericks. Even more confusion comes from the fact that the same singer sings both Lucias and another sings two different roles. Seen live, this might be clear through transitions of costume or setting - with only the ear to guide — blink (in an auditory sense) and you will have dropped a decade. My sole observation with this as a piece of theatre is, I wonder if the compression prevents the audience becoming engaged with any individual character - they simply do not inhabit the stage long enough. That being said, Wilder's drawing of character is so searching and well-observed that I think most of us would recognise personality types and scenarios from our own experience that give weight and resonance to these precisely-drawn sketches.

Hindemith makes no attempt to place the music in time or place. Just the opposite in fact - his chamber orchestra includes a rather anachronistic harpsichord. This was surely the right decision - with such an express journey over the best part of a century it would end up a patch-work of pastiche. Neither does he make any particular significance of it being Christmas except for the work's brief Prelude//Introduction which is a rather curdled and harmonically dense take on "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" - which is about as un-merry as it is possible to imagine. In the essay accompanying the disc by Joel Haney he describes the work as one "which ponders the experience of time as a condition of human possibility and limitation -'the bright and the dark' - through the rise and decline of an American bourgeois family". The brilliance of both authors lies in the way they tie this sense of continuity across time - Hindemith's is a slightly subtler skill because he uses fragments of melody and motif which burrow into the subconscious so by the second or third listen the ear begins to pick up on the connections the music is making with recurring characters situations or text. Hence, this is the work of a master-craftsman. As so often, I find the accusation of Hindemith being a dry or dusty composer wholly without justification. No, he does not write big arching overtly emotional melodies. Rather he points to subtler, more 'real' scenarios which have resonance and truth for the engaged audience member.

So to this performance; Leon Botstein and his American Symphony Orchestra clearly thrive on the discovery and performance of little-known and under-appreciated works. In the past with some of the grander-scale and overtly Romantic works I have found Botstein's approach to be a degree clinical and unwilling to unbutton. Here the precision and measured emotion of Hindemith's score seems to chime perfectly with his aesthetic. This is a recording of a single live performance which given the ensemble complexities and unfamiliarity of the piece is remarkably good. There is no audible audience noise - my only sorrow is that the hall ambience is cut off very quickly at the end of the work - to preclude applause one supposes. The orchestra play very well - the engineering places the instruments quite closely behind the voices which occasionally obscures the text. All of the singers are of a very high standard and fortunately most of the text is sung with commendable clarity. Of particular brilliance is the beautifully light and clear singing of Kathryn Guthrie as Leonora. Indeed the entire cast are excellent both in ensemble and individually. None make any attempt to 'age' their voices with their characters - something perhaps an actor in the original theatrical version might.

Bridge present this single CD in a double CD case - presumably to allow for the thicker than usual liner/libretto. As well as the text the liner includes the usual performer biographies as well as two useful essays about the work. The disc runs for less than fifty minutes but so concentrated and complete in itself is the work that a filler would seem inappropriate and unnecessary. A fascinating and rather moving work. It reveals Hindemith and Wilder as masters of the slow-burn potent theatrical experience which lingers in the memory for the power of its insight into the human condition.

-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Arlene Sierra, Vol. 3 presents chamber music composed over a sixteen year period (1997-2013), by the brilliant composer. An American composer based in London, Arlene Sierra writes music that takes its impetus from rich sources including military strategy, game theory, Darwinian evolution, and the natural world. Her music has been lauded for its “highly flexible and distinctive style” (The Guardian), and its “remarkable brilliance of color, rhythmic dexterity and playfulness” (NPR Classical). Declared “a name to watch” by BBC Music Magazine, Arlene Sierra is the subject of a critically-acclaimed series of portrait discs with Bridge Records. She has received fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the MacDowell Colony and the Tanglewood Music Festival, and has had portrait concerts at the Crush Room, Royal Opera House, London, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, Vermont and Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, New York. A Takemitsu Prize-winner and Latin GRAMMY nominee, Sierra has received commissions from BBC Radio 3 and the BBC Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Bremen Philharmonic Society, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Albany Symphony, the Cheltenham, Huddersfield and Tanglewood Music Festivals, and many ensembles and soloists.

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Style, sympathy, and technical aplomb... it's doubtful that the Cavatina's sophisticated and artistic playing could be surpassed...There’s more potential in the union of flute and guitar than is commonly realized, and this CD provides an incentive to investigate additional repertoire. Cavatina has inspired and commissioned new music of this type and I, for one, look forward to hearing it as soon as possible. Warmly recommended. - Fanfare

Includes work(s) by Brian Ferneyhough.

It is an astonishing gift of fate when a creative artist, known to the world for a particular achievement, is suddenly shown in a quite different light thanks to the existence of a single document that has somehow escaped the ruthless culling mechanisms of time. Harry Partch's Bitter Music is such a document, a "diary of eight months spent in transient shelters and camps, hobo jungles, basement rooms, and on the open road". This long-lost journal of Harry Partch's wanderings during the Great Depression (from cleaning sewers to having tea with Irish poet W. B. Yeats) is an extraordinary musical portrait of an American pioneer, chronicling his occasionally hilarious and often heartbreaking struggles to forge a new music system outside the classical tradition. This premiere recording of Bitter Music takes the form of readings and collected musical fragments- an aural diary of what was going through Partch's mind and ear during a critical period in his artistic development.

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LISZT Années de pèlerinage , Book III: Les Jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este. Harmonies poétiques et religieuses: Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude; Funérailles. Nuages gris. 4 Little Piano Pieces : No. 2 in A?. Mephisto Waltz No. 1. BEETHOVEN-LISZT Adelaide. BACH-LISZT Fantasy and Fugue, S 463 • Garrick Ohlsson (pn) • BRIDGE 9409 (76:27)


A few months back, I was wowed by a blazing new Liszt recital from Valentina Lisitsa (see Fanfare 37:4). Here, on a solidly engineered disc featuring a pianist of an earlier generation, we get something substantially less dazzling, although in its own way even more impressive. Not that Ohlsson lacks technique: whether in the clarity of the voices in the Bach-Liszt Fugue or of the sprays of notes in Jeux d’eaux , Ohlsson strides through this often transcendentally difficult music with supreme and fully justified confidence. Still—and I mean this as a descriptive, rather than an evaluative, claim—there’s a maturity to the playing that we don’t hear in Lisitsa’s more exuberantly youthful and improvisatory performances.


For the most part (the closing Mephisto Waltz is the primary exception), Ohlsson has chosen from Liszt’s more sober works—and for the most part, his moderate tempos and (where appropriate) his bass-centered sonority give the details of the music a chance to sink in. More importantly, I think, he manages to probe beneath the surface of the music and (miraculously) to do so without sacrificing any of its immediate rhetoric. Thus, for instance, there’s no lack of virtuoso sparkle in Jeux d’eaux ; but Ohlsson is also unusually alert to its subtler emotional shadings, capturing the disarming splashes of nostalgic regret, in particular, as well as anyone. Similarly, while he can crush you with the climaxes of Funérailles , he’s unusually tender in the quieter moments, giving the work a nobility it doesn’t always have in the hands of more consistently extroverted pianists like Horowitz and Barere. In his appropriately enthusiastic review of Ohlsson’s previous Bridge Liszt recording (the Sonata and the Ad Nos Fantasy , 35:2), Patrick Rucker referred to Ohlsson’s “profound wisdom and almost excruciating beauty”—and the same overriding qualities certainly characterize this remarkable Funérailles , too.


Ohlsson also has an enviable sense of architecture. This emerges not only in his treatment of the individual works (there’s consistent impetus to Bénédiction , a work that can easily stall but that here provides an engrossing sense of journey), but also in his design of the program as a whole. I particularly enjoyed the way that Jeux d’eaux , which follows the joyful reading of the Bach-Liszt Fugue, serves as to prepare us for beauties of Bénédiction —as well as the way Nuages gris (played with remarkable finesse) and the second of the Four Little Piano Pieces provide a transition between the grimness of Funérailles and the dash of the Mephisto Waltz.


In sum, music-making that deserves to be savored. I hope that Bridge and Ohlsson have plans for continuing the series.


FANFARE: Peter J. Rabinowitz

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Miguel del Aguila has for several years now been making quite a name for himself throughout the Americas. He has been a prize-winner of awards such as the Kennedy Centre Friedheim. He was Composer-in-Residence with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. However his music has hardly ever percolated beyond America.

This is not the first CD to contain some of his music but I believe it’s the first to be devoted entirely to him. He has been described as a composer of “turbulent fantasy” and the anonymous booklet notes here comment that in his music there is “captivating interplay, even fertile tension, between Classical formal balance and Romantic excess”. I have to say that this Uruguayan composer is a typical example of cross-over, not though manufactured, but with a real living and genuine language so beloved of those for whom modern music normally takes too much concentration time.

The opening work is infectious and clever. “Charango Capriccioso” is built gradually from a very still and quiet start to a manic climax via repeated and obsessive syncopated rhythmic patterns. It then peters out after massive chords to a thoughtful and forgiving coda. The recording seems a little choked when the music is at its most wild. Perhaps the volume is tricky to adjust at the beginning; nevertheless this piece creates a promising opening impression.

The second work ‘Presto II’ is an enlarged version of the finale of his Second String Quartet which Aguila wrote whilst living in Vienna where the form is considered to be ‘sacrosanct’. Apparently its performance was reviewed as “not serious” by the local press. It is frenetic and spends most of its time in 7/8 time. It finds time to take a bow towards 1920s Jazz. It also contains ‘col legno’ and ‘sul pont’ effects and ends with a shout from the players. Good fun.

I have to describe ‘Life is a dream’ as a heroic failure, despite the fact that it is quite original and at times catchy. The composer has translated a poem by Pedro Calderon del Barca (1600-1681) about the meaning of life. This is narrated, practically twice - incidentally there are two narrators; the female not named - at varying points during the work’s progress. The “reality” is represented on stage but there is a “distant reality ... personified by the first violin who finlly joins the on-stage performers.” There is then a dance - “a dysfunctional jota” - with the evocation of guitars. There’s a flavour of Andalusia and the Phrygian mode present throughout old Spanish music is much in evidence. It is a complex tapestry of a work and one hearing I felt was probably quite adequate. However for the purposes of this review I listened again and, sadly, found it even less revealing.

If you felt, as I did that Aguila is the musical grandson as it were of Astor Piazzolla then ‘Salon Buenos Aires’ will add further ‘confirmation’. The first movement is a Samba, which in addition to the rich instrumental mix adds some (uncredited) disembodied, vocalising, and demonstrates what we are told in the booklet notes that “The three movements comprise a nostalgic musical portrait of 1950s Buenos Aires” which “springs from the composer’s childhood memories”. The middle movement grows from and ends in mist but builds to a powerful climax. This is a ‘Tango to Dream’ transition. Its thickly contrapuntal middle section would have benefited from more air around the players. In fact the recording as a whole is rather too close for comfort at times. This is the longest movement but we move on to an irritating - to this reviewer anyway - ‘Obsessed Milonga’. I should not have been surprised because the notes quote the newspaper the Wiener Zeitung as describing the composer as “of obsessive vitality”. A Milonga is incidentally an earlier Uruguayan tango form. The flute leads off manically with the melody and the other players repeat it in various keys for the next four minutes.

If I have been a little luke-warm so far then all changes with the last work. ‘Clocks’ is for piano quintet and the composer might well have called it ‘A Clock Museum’. This is original, colourful and pleasing. It falls into six sections. The first 'Shelves of Clocks’ sets up a ‘tocking and a ticking’ with the use of a polyphony of very high pizzicatos and harmonics. There are sharp staccato piano notes. In movement two, ‘Midnight Strikes’ there are clangorous, resonant chords. The third is ‘The Old Clock’s tale’ which is romantic and generally slightly ‘Hollywood’ in effect. ‘Sundial 2000BC’ is great fun incorporating some rugged rather primeval vocal work with which we might associate Roman ritual. It features a 3+3+2 dance rhythm. ‘Romance of Swiss Clocks’ makes a fascinating contrast being rather twee and flecked with bon-bons. Finally there is the longest movement, the riotous ‘The Joy of keeping time’ based on various South-American dance rhythms. This ends with the clocks in an empty museum indulging in something near to a musical orgy.

The whole disc is played with great enthusiasm. I’m not mad on the recording quality as mentioned above but the booklet is useful with photos and succinct musical asides.

-- Gary Higginson, MusicWeb International

Christmas

Classical Music

Garrick Ohlsson completes his survey of Beethoven's monumental thirty-two sonatas, a project that the great American pianist has been working on for more than a decade. (Volume 3 of this series, won the 2008 Grammy for "Best Instrumental Performance".)

The meteoric ascent of Vassily Primakov's international career has resulted from a series of competition victories, prizes in honor of his artistry, and his award-winning recordings. Winner of First Prize in the Young Concert Artist International Auditions and the Audience Prize of the Gina Bachauer International Competition, Primakov was named the Classical Recording Foundation's "Young Artist of the Year" in 2007. His much-heralded recordings have garnered National Public Radio's "CD of the Year" (Chopin Mazurkas, 2010), American Record Guide's "Best of the Year" (Schubert Impromptus; and Dvorak Piano Concerto, 2011) and BBC Music Magazine's Music Choice. (Chopin Ballades, Brahms Intermezzi, and Scriabin Sonata No. 4, 2010). This new recording presents Primakov's renditions of some of Rachmaninoff's most beloved works, played on a superb Bechstein Concert Grand.

The young Russian/American virtuoso, Vassily Primakov, has created an impressive buzz in the classical music world. Of a recent Lincoln Center performance, critic Jeremy Eichler in The New York Times wrote that Primakov "gave a fiery performance of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, with bold, expressive phrasing and dramatic commitment that brought the audience to its feet." The International Record Review heaped praise on his Beethoven CD (BRIDGE 9251), writing of the "thoughtful performances from a young musician who is more than a virtuoso." Winner of the Young Concert Artists Competition, Primakov combines deeply personal playing, brilliant technical command, and a seductive tonal palette reminiscent of an earlier era of virtuosi. Primakov's new account of both of the Chopin Concertos was recorded in May of 2008 with the Odense Symphony Orchestra directed by British conductor Paul Mann. Bridge Records is pleased to announce that Vassily Primakov has been signed to make a series of new recordings including upcoming recordings of Chopin Mazurkas; a Tchaikovsky disc with the Sonata, Op. 37, and The Seasons, Op. 37A, and a Mozart Concerto disc with the Concerto in B-flat Major, K. 595; and the Concerto in C Minor, K. 491, with the Odense Symphony Orchestra conducted by Scott Yoo. This new Chopin disc presents Primakov's first concerto recordings.

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas: No. 11 in B?, op. 22; No. 13 in E?, op. 27/1; No. 31 in A?, op. 110 • Garrick Ohlsson (pn) • BRIDGE 9266

(62:21)


BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas: No. 29 in B?, op. 106, “Hammerklavier”; No. 16 in G, op. 31/1 • Garrick Ohlsson (pn) • BRIDGE 9262 (69:15)


A recital of Beethoven piano sonatas that includes early and late music, as is the case with both of these new releases from Garrick Ohlsson’s series of the complete sonatas, should make the listener aware of the degree to which Beethoven evolved as an artist, but also those elements that marked him as a singular genius throughout his career. Some pianists do this by underlining elements in the earlier pieces that point to the unique, even eccentric nature of the composer; highlighting an odd harmony or an exuberant melodic structure, as examples.


Ohlsson takes a different tack. Although Beethoven was well into his so-called first period by the time of the Sonatas Nos. 11, 13, and 16, they are still classically conceived constructions, more so in mold of his teacher Haydn than Mozart, especially in his frequent use of humor. Ohlsson does not downplay the brilliance of this music, or even its boldness, but hears it as a continuation of a tradition rather than anything radical. Beethoven’s music, from the outset of his career, is filled with surprises and wonderful dramatic twists, but in this playing, they are always neatly within the context of the overall logic of the music. It is an equally good prescription for playing Mozart and Haydn.


The Piano Sonata No. 31 is full of extraordinary imagination, but is familiar enough to our ears to be considered the most accessible of the late sonatas, especially because of its magnificent neobaroque counterpoint writing. And the “Hammerklavier” is simply sui generis as a work of art. So somehow tying this music to earlier Beethoven isn’t really necessary, and Ohlsson plays them for their own sake. As has been noted in previous reviews, his tempos are on the broad side, which, in the case of both these late sonatas accentuates the grandiloquence of the music. This approach makes for an especially rewarding rendition of No. 31, which can sound rushed in less-mature hands.


The tempo question gets a bit sticky in the case of the “Hammerklavier.” Ohlsson makes no attempt whatever to play the first movement at the composer’s supposed metronome marking, but few do. Many have questioned the veracity of the marking, which seems ridiculously fast. A few pianists, notably Peter Serkin, can bring it off, with exhilarating results, but it is hard to deny that the more measured tempo of Ohlsson ultimately gives us a more musical and sensible interpretation. But for the full measure of what Ohlsson contributes to an immense and storied recorded legacy, one needs only to turn to his superb rendition of the hulking slow movement to this work. It is one challenge to gather up the furious notes of the outer movements of this behemoth, but in some ways even more daunting to hold together the oceanic center, which Ohlsson does with supreme grace and intelligence. It reflects everything else he plays. I can only echo previous Fanfare commentary from Boyd Pomeroy and Jerry Dubins to say that despite the multitude of excellent choices already available in this music, great artistry like this is always welcome.


FANFARE: Peter Burwasser

David Starobin returns to the music of leading Italian composer/guitarist, Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829), with a disc featuring Giuliani's solo and chamber music. Among the rarities are Two Rondos, op. 68, for piano and guitar, performed with the Israeli pianist, Inon Barnatan; Variations, op. 24a, played with Amalia Hall, winner of the Postacchini International Violin Competition (2013); and Variations on a March by Cherubini, arguably the finest solo of the composer's late period. The Italian journal Il Fronimo (Milan) wrote of Starobin: "David Starobin has grasped the authentic spirit, aided by his perfect instrumental technique. Here, the music acquires its truest meaning, exalting the quality of phrasing as it is rarely ever heard. Starobin's is a truly influential artistry, a great personality who does honor to both music and the guitar." - Bridge Records

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