Part, A.: Berliner Messe / Fratres / Collage Uber B-A-C-H /

The American pianist Tzimon Barto and the world famous conductor Christoph Eschenbach have had a very long and close friendship together. After their successful Capriccio recording of Tchaikovsky’s B flat Minor Concerto they follow up now with recordings of the Brahms Concertos, cornerpieces of the piano concerto literature and further examples of these two artist’s close working partnership. Mr. Barto and Mr. Eschenbach, iconoclasts both, offer a new focus on these masterpieces. Also to be heard are Mr. Barto’s interpretations of the 4 Ballades, op. 10.

The Goldberg Variations' alternation of connection and freedom, fantasy and strict form, was able to lead in a hitherto unknown way to a higher unity, raising them to the rank of a real compendium of the art of variation, strongly influencing Beethoven, Brahms and Reger. Tzimon Barto's international breakthrough came in the mid-1980s, when he appeared at the Vienna Musikverein and the Salzburg Festival at the invitation of Herbert von Karajan. Tzimon Barto has since performed with nearly every major international orchestra. “…a pianist who particularly cares about poetry." (Piano News)

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REVIEWS:

[Photoptosis] is usually considered Zimmermann's defining work but never has it sounded so raw-boned and unrelenting: kudos to the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz and Karl-Heinz Steffens for pulling off such a chancy, intrepid performance.

– Gramophone

The symphony is impressively taut and compact...Karl-Heinz Steffens's performance of Stille und Umkehr, Zimmermann's final orchestral work, reveals it to be a haunting and obsessive miniature masterpiece that is hard to forget.

– Guardian (UK)

Joseph Haydn’s orchestral work The Seven Last Words of Our Savior On the Cross was commissioned in 1783 for the Good Friday service at Oratorio de la Santa Cueva. There are seven main meditative sections, which are all slow movements labeled “sonatas, that are framed by an introduction and an “Earthquake” conclusion, for a total of nine movements. The present release is from a live performance at the Vienna Konzerthaus, on March 15, 1992. Sandor Vegh conducts the Camerata Academica des Mozarteums Salzburg for this performance. This release is part of the Capriccio Encore series, which is a series of re-releases of the most famous recordings from Capriccio’s back catalogue, fully re-mastered and competitively priced. The legendary recordings of artists such as Sandor Végh, Ton Koopman, Sir Neville Marriner and the Vienna Boys’ Choir also contain repertoire highlights that have a particularly special appeal, from the baroque to the present day.

Liszt: Schubert Song Transcriptions

Schreker, F.: 5 Gesänge / Ein Tanzpiel / Festwalzer Und Walz

REVIEW:

So far as I know, only two pianists have recorded comprehensive Scriabin solo-piano cycles. One is Michael Ponti; the other is Maria Lettberg, a Riga-born Swedish national residing in Berlin, who lived with this repertoire for years, and even wrote a doctoral thesis on Scriabin. She recorded all of Scriabin’s solo piano works with opus numbers between 2004 and 2007 for a co-production between the Capriccio label and Deutschlandradio Kultur.

Unlike Ponti, with his horribly-engineered and ill-tuned instrument, Lettberg enjoys the advantage of a beautifully regulated concert grand and resplendent, lifelike engineering. She revels in the composer’s dynamic extremes and inner-voice labyrinths both real and implied. Her big, juicy sonority and refined articulation consistently address the sensual element that perpetually lurks underneath the surface of nearly every composition, from the early, Chopin-influenced Preludes, Etudes, Mazurkas, Waltzes, and sundry short pieces to the harmonically ambiguous, intensely mystical late sonatas and poems. Granted, you won’t encounter the ice in the fire revealed throughout the younger Richter’s incisive live Second, Fifth, or Ninth sonatas, nor the jackhammer impact of Horowitz’s repeated chords in Vers la flame or his trills in the Tenth sonata. At the same time, Lettberg can unleash enough fervent momentum to help tighten looser-knit works like the Fantasie Op. 28 and the rarely played Allegro Appassionato Op. 4.

A bonus DVD features Lettberg in excerpts from different sonatas interspersed with discussions about the music and a multi-media project called “Mysterium”, where video artist Andreas Schmidt reinterprets the music in terms of abstract manipulations of color. While Lettberg may not displace favorite versions of specific works, her overall consistency, meticulous technique, and total identification with Scriabin’s idiom deserve nothing less than our highest rating. Capriccio’s bargain price is enough to forgive the pianist’s poorly organized booklet notes, although they contain many interesting quotations from the composer.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10, Jed Distler)

WELLESZ Piano Concerto , op. 49 1; Violin Concerto , op. 84 2 • 1 Margarete Babinsky (piano); 2 David Frühwirt (vn); Roger Epple, cond; RSO Berlin • CAPRICCIO 5027 (53:15)


Egon Wellesz, born in Vienna in 1885, is among the group of composers of “degenerate art” who survived the Nazi era physically, but not artistically. Like Braunfels, Zeisl, Mittler, or to a lesser degree Hartmann, his music died twice: once when the Nazis declared it “degenerate” and forced him into emigration, then again when the heavily subsidized postwar arts scene thought him not “degenerate” enough—too tonal, too beholden to music rather than organized sound. Even the many, many honors he received in the 50s, 60s, and 70s—in that sense he was luckier than many a colleague with a similar fate—smacked of guilt and placation, not genuine interest in his œuvre.


Wellesz was taught by Guido Adler (also Webern’s professor), became one of the first private students of Schoenberg, and later Schoenberg’s first biographer. In 1974 he died a CBO scholar in Oxford but was buried in his unappreciative home town, Vienna.


On this disc, further exploring “lost” 20th-century repertoire, Capriccio presents a piano concerto that decidedly, finally, doesn’t remind me of Ravel’s! Not that I don’t adore Ravel’s piano concertos to pieces; I do. It’s just that it started to seem like a strange running joke how anything from Zeisl to von Einem ( Fanfare 33:6) to Krenz ( Fanfare 33:2) seemed to remind of Ravel’s G-Major work. Wellesz doesn’t, partly because of his bold writing for piano and a more reticent orchestral part. From the first movement’s unhurried orchestral introduction over an impatient, then calming piano part, to the sudden spunk that picks up at around the two-minute mark, there is little that would immediately, much less invariably, remind one of any other composer. The virtuosic spikes that the pianist traverses, meanwhile, don’t just strike me as jazzy because I am listening to it (and writing this) as I am at a jazz festival in Bolzano, between gigs in this medieval town in South Tyrol. Pianistic ruminations and short orchestra exclamation marks take turns, with much of the material given to the solo piano. The five-minute, unintrusive slow second movement has the ability to just flit by if you don’t pay attention. The orchestra attempts to wax lyrically; the piano interrupts with coy runs. The third movement takes over stealthily with another slow introduction before virtuosity breaks through once again, pulling through to the end with some rambunctiousness and grand gestures. All together the work is not, to my ears, as wholly marvelous a discovery as Eric Zeisl’s (cpo 777226), to mention just an even more obscure work from a composer with a similar-enough biography. But it’s well worth listening to if concertos in general, and that lost period of music in particular, are of interest to you.


The same verdict stands for the Violin Concerto from 1961—even though it is considerably different in style. If you know Wellesz’s symphonies (also on cpo), you will have noticed a distinct break between the essentially late-Romantic symphonies Nos. 1 through 4 and the more explicitly modern Nos. 5 through 8. Wellesz called his Violin Concerto the brother of his Fifth Symphony and that is reflected by a greater—belated, if you will—incorporation of some elements of the serialist school. All movements are based on the same material, albeit a situation that Wellesz claimed to have discovered only after the fact.


The work manages to suggest density while retaining clear lines, and it is—at four movements—considerably more expansive than the Piano Concerto. After its premiere it was favorably compared to Berg (which it obliquely refers to) and Schoenberg. I don’t hear the beauty in it that I hear in the Berg (which, it should be pointed out, benefits from the advantage of far greater exposure, familiarity, and tons of wonderful recordings). It also seems less austere than Schoenberg’s concerto. Listeners who can just be brought to enjoy or accept the harmonic language of the Piano Concerto will find the Violin Concerto less attractive; tougher listening. But with some good will they should be able to access that work, too … especially via the Andante sostenuto, the fourth and last movement which, a terse and frenzied cadenza apart, has repose and considerable lyricism to offer. The violin part in the first movement has a good deal of electric, buzzing moments that are highly enjoyable. For getting to know the composer Wellesz, I’d start with the symphonies, but if they have turned you on already, then his two full-size concertos will be a mandatory expansion pack.


I know it must be frustrating for soloists or ensemble musicians when their work is done away with in one sentence, only because they are not famous enough to have pre-impressed the critic. This kindly dismissal usually takes place with adjectives like “adequate” or “perfectly acceptable.” Unfortunately for lack of comparison, knowledge of the score, and any immediately sensed enthusiasm about the playing (as in the Wetzler recording— Fanfare 33:4—for example), that’s exactly what I’ll have to do. Certainly the soloists Margarete Babinsky, David Frühwirt, or the Berlin RSO under Roger Epple don’t stand in the way of enjoyment.


FANFARE: Jens F. Laurson

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Czech American composer Jaromir Weinberger (1896-1967) was best-known for his opera Schwanda the Bagpiper, but he also excelled in other genres. The pieces featured here include his Overture to a Chivalrous Play (1931), 6 Bohemian Songs and Dances (1929), and Passacaglia for organ and large orchestra (1932). Organist Jorg Strodthoff is featured on the Passacaglia. The album also features the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducted by Gerd Albrecht.

Malpopita was the second of Goehr's radio operas - opera for a new medium...A pleasure to make the acquaintance of Goehr's tangy satirical radio fable. I would like to hear more of Goehr’s music. You will too.

Walter Goehr, the father of composer Alexander Goehr, was busily engaged in providing music for Berlin Radio in the Weimar Republic. During the 1920s he had studied with Schoenberg and Krenek.

Malpopita was the second of Goehr's radio operas - opera for a new medium. Here it is revived from the piano score and given new instrumentation by Andrew Hannan.

The premiere of Malpopita took place in Berlin on 29 April 1931 when the conductor was none other than Erich Kleiber. The next year Goehr, with his wife the pianist Laelia Rivlin, left to take up a position in London with the Columbia Gramophone Company. He was soon to become its musical director. After the second world war he had a similar position with the American Concert Hall label. He toured widely throughout Europe and made many recordings. He was said to be most proud of his world premiere recording of Bizet's symphony in C. Extremely active in broadcasting, during the war he was famed, under the pseudonym George Walter, for his radio series beamed to occupied Europe. After the war his conducting of a wide range of music continued including revivals of Monteverdi's Vespers and Incoronazione di Poppea. He also presided over broadcasts of the Brecht-Weill Berliner Requiem, Britten's Serenade, Tippett's Child of Our Time and Concerto for Double String Orchestra, Messiaen's Turangalila and Seiber's Ulysses. In film music he may be best known for his score for David Lean's Great Expectations (1946). Phenomenally energetic and driven, he died 'in harness' in the cloak-room of Sheffield Town Hall after a performance of Handel's Messiah.

Goehr's musical language in Malpopita is at times redolent of Weill as in the accordion contribution to Gestrandet (tr. 11). The factory scenes at the start (tr. 1 and 2) have the stamp, thunder and iterative regularity of great machines. The thunder and ring of metal is the signature and is bound to make us think of Mossolov and of Fritz Lang's humanity-servitude foundry scenes in the film Metropolis. It's a style that returns in tr. 14 (Oil Oil Oil). The sleazy-romantic bier-keller culture can be heard in tr. 4. The opera mixes speech and singing - mostly singing and even the spoken sections have a sung effect. There is nice use made of spatial effects in tr. 10 for the wreck of the Esperanza. The female chorus in Das Dicke Ende even gives us a Honolulu sway - a sort of Honoluluation - alongside the mechanistic roll-call stuff which finally grinds down even Adam.

The plot is as follows: Adam has been in the drudgery of factory work for ten years. He has had enough, picks up his cards and takes to the open road. He fetches up at a port and is signed on for a voyage on a yacht significantly called ‘Esperanza’. He and the other crewmen hymn the paradise of the South Sea island of Malpopita. Adam finds rapturous love with Evelyne. It becomes apparent that the boat is engaged in smuggling and they are pursued by government vessels. The yacht runs aground on the reefs of Malpopita. The island is the paradise ideal of liberation and freedom. The island idyll is short-lived as an exploratory team disappear and as Richard decides he wants Adam got rid of so he can take Evelyne for himself. The crew find oil. Despite Adam's warnings that exploiting oil will bring disaster the rest including Evelyne now move into oil extraction and processing. The great cycle turns again and the music of the opening scenes returns as the simple society fades before the glories of factory servitude and wage packets. All hope is gone. Even Adam returns to the pay packet roll-call and his number 937. Remind you of 1984?

Malpopita is a compact work lasting 66 minutes here presented in fifteen separately tracked scenes. The remaining 10 minutes is taken up by the final track comprising a Deutschland Radio Kultur feature on Goehr and the Malpopita-Project. It is in German and there is no translation.

The set is well documented although the slender font, small print and design background make legibility difficult.

Design issues aside this is a well presented set packaged in a slip case for the standard jewel box and the dumpy booklet.

A pleasure to make the acquaintance of Goehr's tangy satirical radio fable. I would like to hear more of Goehr’s music. You will too.

- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

STRAUS Der Tapfere Soldat • Siegfried Köhler, cond; Caroline Stein ( Nadina ); Johannes Martin Kränzie ( Bumerli ); Martina Borst ( Mascha ); John Dickie ( Alexius ); Gertraud Wagner ( Aurelia ); Helmut Berger ( Popoff ); WDR RO; Händel Collegium Köln • CAPRICCIO C5089 (2 CDs: 88:06)


The irascible playwright and man of letters George Bernard Shaw seems to have had a gift for producing stories that were ripe for adaption as light musical comedy. Shaw did not live to see his Pygmalion turned by Lerner and Loewe into the megahit My Fair Lady and make superstars of Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, and Audrey Hepburn. The British pundit (and one-time opera critic) was front and center, however, as his little antiwar drama Arms and the Man was turned by Oscar Straus and his Viennese librettists into the operetta Der Tapfere Soldat (The Valiant Soldier) and became an international hit. In fact, Shaw worried about his satirical play being turned into bad musical comedy. He agreed to let the story be used only if (1) none of his dialog or character names were used, (2) the operetta were to be advertised as a parody of his work, and (3) no remuneration was to be made. Never widely popular in the pre-World War I Germanic countries where soldiers were heroes and the military a revered institution, Der Tapfere Soldat went on to become a smash hit in New York in 1909 as the more aptly titled Chocolate Soldier , and then one year later scored another triumph right under Shaw’s nose in London. The old man publicly denigrated Straus’s popular operetta but lived to regret his lack of share in its box-office success.


The story involves a likeable young soldier in the Bulgarian army who, to avoid the fierce raging battle outside, climbs up the drainpipe and into the home of a mother, daughter, and another young friend, whose menfolk are also off at the war (actually, he drops right into the daughter’s bedroom). When threatened by his own gun by daughter Nadina, the soldier, Bumerli, laughs and tells her his cartridge case is full of chocolates; he has no bullets for his weapon. In spite of his not being the type of romantic hero she has been dreaming of, Nadina falls for her little chocolate soldier, as do the two other women. They hide him when soldiers come searching and provide him civilian clothes to aid his escape. Trouble comes when Nadina’s father and fiancé return with the regiment. Bumerli also turns up, ostensibly to return the clothes, but he is in love with Nadina. Outrage and hurt feelings ensue, but Alexius, Nadina’s intended, shows a marked preference for the young friend, Mascha. The typical operetta muddle is eventually sorted out and the parents are made happy when it turns out the chocolate soldier is the son of a wealthy Swiss businessman. So much for true love.


Straus wrote many catchy melodies for the early Viennese silver-age work, the most famous of which is Nadina’s solo “Komm, komm, Held meiner Traume” (Come, Come, Hero of My Dreams). Also popular was the humorous duet between the two leads, “Ach, du kleiner Praliné-Soldat” (Ah, You Little Praline Soldier). This recording was made for WDR radio in Cologne in 1993 and features clear, pure-voiced, light soprano Caroline Stein in the lead role of Nadina. She sings very well both alone and in ensemble and is much the best singer on the recording. Baritone Johannes Martin Kränzie sings Bumerli in a pleasant voice but has a noticeable wobble when he pushes his upper range. He blends in well in the ensembles, of which there are many in this light work. The second romantic couple of tenor John Dickie and mezzo Martina Borst sing well in this style of music, as do Mom and Dad, contralto Gertraud Wagner and bass-baritone Helmut Berger.


As far as I am aware, this is the only recording of Der Tapfere Soldat in German. The Ohio Light Opera Company recorded it in English in the late ’90s on the Newport label, where it is still available. A 1958 recording of highlights in English on RCA features much the best voices led by mezzo Risë Stevens and baritone Robert Merrill. That recording is out of print but can be obtained as a facsimile CD-R from ArkivMusic. Capriccio sadly does not provide a libretto, but there is a more than adequate synopsis and some brief bios. If, like me, you want these operettas in their original language, this is the one to buy. It will provide you an hour and a half of very enjoyable, frothy light music. Recommended.


FANFARE: Bill White


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Oscar Straus (note the spelling of Straus – only one ‘s’ at its end) was born in Vienna on 6 March 1870 but was not related to the famous Strauss dynasty.

He began his career emulating the satirical Offenbach, with Die Lustigen Nibelungen (The Merry Nibelungs). Richard Traubner in his excellent book, Operetta, A Theatrical History, suggests that it was “too musically advanced for Viennese ears” and national-socialist pro-Wagnerians were not amused. Those who relish the idea of lampooning of The Ring might like to know that Capriccio have a one-CD Köln recording of Oscar Straus’s The Merry Nibelungs again conducted by Köhler (C5088). Noticing the great success of Lehár’s The Merry Widow, in 1905, Straus decided to capitulate to public taste and entered the comfortable dream world of sentimental Viennese operetta with his smash success - in Austria and Germany if not in America and England - of Ein Waltztraum (A Waltz Dream) of 1907.

Straus’s The Chocolate Soldier (German title: Der tapfere Soldat or Der Praliné-Soldat) followed in 1908. It was based on George Bernard Shaw's 1894 play, Arms and the Man and the libretto was by Rudolf Bernaur and Leopold Jacobson. G.B. himself was not at all keen on such an adaptation of his play which had been successful in its Viennese run and only accepted the situation provided that Straus’s operetta was promoted as an unauthorized parody of his play and that he received no royalties for it. A bad mistake - because the show was a big hit in London and New York - but not quite so in Europe because of political sensitivities surrounding the Balkans where the action of the story was set. Later, Shaw tried to recoup some of his financial losses when M-G-M approached him for the film rights for The Chocolate Soldier. Louis B. Mayer refused Shaw’s exorbitant demands and the film went ahead with a mix of Straus’s and other’s music but to a different plot based on Ferenc Molnár's play Testor . The 1941 film starred Nelson Eddy and Risë Stevens – although Jeanette MacDonald had originally been pencilled in to star with Eddy.

There’s a very good Wikipedia article on Straus’s The Chocolate Soldier that also details all the songs. Briefly the story is set in Bulgaria in 1885 during the war between Serbia and Bulgaria. Nadina, her friend Mascha and her mother are missing their menfolk away at the hostilities. Suddenly a soldier, handsome and charming bursts into her bedroom. He is Bumerli, a Swiss mercenary serving in the Serbian army. He is an ordinary soldier quite unlike her supposedly heroic fiancée Alexius. Bumerli carries chocolates in his pouch instead of ammunition! His charm captivates the ladies and as Act I closes all three are smitten. They all give him photographs of themselves inscribed with loving messages. He puts all three in his great coat and promptly forgets them. But he cannot forget Nadina. Six months later he returns for her but the three photographs are produced. Jealousy flare up between Nadina and Mascha, Bumerli is thought to be fickle and faithless and comic complications ensue. All is happily resolved at the end.

The big hit of the show is the well-known and popular waltz song, ‘Komm, komm, Held meiner Träum’ (‘Come, come hero of my dreams’). Here it is sung most beguilingly by sweet-voiced Caroline Stein as Nadina. She is singing about her Alexius in Act I, her fiancée and imagined hero, who turns out to be nothing of the kind. The lower tenor timbre of Kränzle makes Bumerli sound just that little bit too mature for Nadina. However the charm of their duet ‘Weill’s Leben suss und herzlich ist’ (‘Because life is sweet and beautiful’) cannot be diminished. Much of the music comprises ensemble writing - quartets, quintets, and sextets and soloists with choir. The Act I ensemble song with comic material for the soldiers searching for Bumerli and an interpolated stirring patriotic song lustily sung by Nadina is a highlight – so, too, is the following charming waltz-song trio for Nadina, Mascha and Aurelia They sing ‘Tiralala’ as all besotted, they dream of their Chocolate soldier. This number has some lovely orchestral felicities in the strings and woodwinds. Kränzle’s wistful Act II song ‘If one can, as one wants’ has an introduction that echoes the ‘Tiralala’. Kränzle has another charming if argumentative duet ‘Es war einmal ein Fräulein’ (‘There was once a maiden’) with Nadina before Act II’s exuberant finale closes with a ringing reprise of the big number, ‘Komm, komm, Held meiner Träum’ (‘Come, come hero of my dreams’). Conductor, Köhler consistently delivers telling sentimental and witty accompaniments to all the numbers. Mention should be made of the delicious irony of the orchestral accompaniments to the waspish numbers of Act II like the bickering between Nadina and Bumerli in ‘Pardon, pardon pardon! Ich steig ja nur auf den Balkon’ (Pardon, I rise only on the balcony)

A charming recording of a delightful operetta.

Ian Lace, MusicWeb International

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The Doppler brothers played a dominant role in the K & K Monarchy’s musical life as composers, conductors, musicians, and as orchestral soloists. They were on good terms with acknowledged artists of the era, such as Ferenc Liszt, Ferenc Erkel, of Jozsef Bajza. Capriccio starts with this first album in the release of ten total of the complete flute music composed by Franz and Carl Doppler, including many world premiere recordings and interesting autobiographical notes. Flutist Claudi Arimany has done all of the research for this project over the past two decades, and has invited some of the best musicians in the world to participate in this project, including Janos Balint and Shigenori Kudo, who are the flutists chosen for this album.

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Considered one of the most influential 20th century composers of the Americas, Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) composed a great oeuvre including ballets, operas, piano works, orchestral pieces and more. His works can be grouped into three periods, “Objective Nationalism” (1934-1948), “Subjective Nationalism” (1948-1958), and “Neo-Expressionism” (1958-1983). The four works featured on this release come from his late period of neo-expressionism. In these pieces traditional classical style can be heard, as well as Ginastera’s experimentations with the avant-garde. Arturo Tamayo conducts the brilliant Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin for this recording. Tamayo conducts in both the concert hall as well as the opera house, and conducts with orchestras across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

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