Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Benjamin Moser writes of his new program with Avi: “I have had the idea for this project since 2016. For the occasion of the 10th anniversary of my prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition and of my first album with Russian music, I wanted to make another recording, a sort of “Volume 2” with Russian repertoire. Within that framework I wanted to couple a well-known work with others that are more seldom performed: the Pictures at an Exhibition seemed like a good choice, since I had always wanted to play them- particularly in the original version, which I love. I wanted to couple them with Rachmaninoff’s 1st Piano Sonata, a seldom-performed work which is both marvelous and underrated. But then I discovered Earl Wild’s arrangements of Rachmaninoff songs, and soon became thrilled with these technically demanding yet delightfully lyrical miniatures. A further inspiration was provided by the focus on “America” chosen by the Ruhr Piano Festival, where, in the summer of 2017, I performed the programme now featured on this album under the name “Songs and Pictures” in a live recital- a daunting challenge indeed! Now, in cooperation with Deutschlandradio Berlin and Avi, this recording now finally sees the light of day.”

Classical Music

Friedrich Cerha's output has solid roots in an extended musical tradition, while spanning a wide arc from the b eginnings of new music all the way to the present. This is not only due to the composer's respectable age, but primarily to the great number of activities he has pursued in the course of his long life, along with the great variety of influences he has incorporated into his work.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The title 'Solitaires' evokes the singularity of each work on this album; each of these works needs to be polished like a diamond, as Karla Haltenwanger, the pianist of the Boulanger Trio, remarks. Violinist Birgit Erz adds: "We want to shed new light on the piano trio genre by focusing on small, concentrated forms. In such short pieces, everything needs to be immediately in place: the tuning, the attitude, the timbre, from the very first second!"

Soloist and leader of the Camerata Bern, Antje Weithaas - "For any violinist, the Brahms Concerto is a special challenge and a precious gem, a piece one works on for decades. I studied it more intensely for the first time when I was 18-19; now I'm astounded to note how one's perception of such a work can change so radically. Amongst all violin concertos, Brahms, Beethoven and Mendelssohn play an essential role, and I would add Britten and Shostakovich. The Brahms Violin Concerto is part of our essential repertoire, and was composed at a time when the "customary" violin concerto no longer had any significance as virtuoso display for a soloist (incidentally, that's my own credo as a performer). This is a symphonic work, an aspect that relates it to the recording of Berg and Beethoven I made with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra a couple of years ago. Those two pieces from different stylistic periods are actually works for orchestra with obligato solo violin - and the same applies to the Brahms Concerto. The violin often plays passagework around the orchestra melody, as in the Beethoven Concerto, which is why I find the symphonic approach so important here as well...We tackled the challenge of performing and recording without a conductor. Of course, when I otherwise perform this concerto with a conductor, I intensely learn and think through the orchestra part in my head. It is a challenge I am aware of, and I thus probably would never have had dared to perform this concerto without a conductor. But since I've often performed the Beethoven Concerto with the Camerata Bern without a conductor, I started thinking that the Brahms Concerto just might work as well. Over teh past 7-9 years we have become so well-acquainted with one another on a musical and personal level that by now we manage to communicate with blindfolds on. I probably would not have dared to embark on this adventure with any other ensemble. The most important thing is that each musician should remain in a "chamber music" attitude while providing the necessary symphonic energy and assuming his/her share of responsibility.

Classical Music

“What we are about to hear is not a performance by conceptual artists who have decided to set a discarded Bechstein or Bluthner on fire- no, we are going to hear piano pieces by Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya.” The words of the renowned Dutch music critic quoted above offer a precise, vivid description of the musical output of one of the most enigmatic composers of our time. It is hard to apply the usual musicological jargon to Ustvolskaya’s music. She was not the apocalypse of the 20th century- she was its echo. Thanks to providence, she was never sent to one of Stalin’s concentration camps: destiny allowed her to live in seclusion as an artist never blinded by hopes of success. In choosing solitude, she was by no means a Romantic “hero” fleeing from reality, overtly proud of fulfilling a mission or playing an exclusive role. Her seclusion, instead, was the bitter loneliness of a noble soul trembling in view of the world’s utter imperfection. She mourns for it. She prays for us. Ustvolskaya chose to live the life of a hermit. Contact with other human beings was something she often found difficult- even with musicians who really liked her. As she put it herself: “My sincerest wish would be to crawl into a barrel like Diogenes and just live secluded therein. That would be the best option for my life…”

Conductor Adam Fischer reflects on Mahler’s Third Symphony: “Mahler’s entire output seems like one long farewell to me: it is as if he was bidding farewell to the past and likewise to the future, since he had a great fear of death. At the end of his symphonies we often encounter utopias, as here in the Adagio of the Third, and many years later, particularly, in the Ninth. Something new sets in, but the movement is still a closure. From it we learn that whatever is new will no longer occur in this world. The Third Symphony, on the whole, is one of Mahler’s richest: the individual movements are so different from one another that they almost seem to stem from different periods of Mahler’s life. The Third contains its own world in itself- already in the first movement, longer than most Beethoven symphonies. Then Mahler plunges into the Wunderhorn world: the world of simplicity where his style seems inspired by Schubert. He quotes from his own works and creates his own mythology. Just as in a grand novel, the same figures appear in different stories. The second and third movements belong together; then, a new dimension is introduced in the fourth one with the human voice. With the contralto’s first note, Mahler truly opens up a new world. This is a new kind of composition altogether. The measures almost seem to flow into one another; Mahler is freeing himself from the rigors of rhythmic bars… This abandonment of the rigorous diktat of meter represents a challenge for every conductor.”

C. SCHUMANN Piano Trio in g. SCHUBERT String Quartet No. 13 in a, “Rosamunde” . String Trio in B? • Gunilla Süssman (pn); Antje Weithaas, Christian Tetzlaff, Gergana Gergova (vn); Rachel Roberts, Wolkver Jacobsen (va); Alban Gerhardt (vc) • DEUTSCHLANDFUNK 8553294 (68:40)


Reading almost anything written about Clara Schumann, I am reminded somehow of Anne Brontë, a fine novelist who was the talented sister to two geniuses. Anne can’t win in the critical world, and Clara, who besides being reputedly one of the best pianists of her era was one of its better composers, can’t win either. The annotator to this collection of live performances from the Spannungen Chamber Festival virtually apologizes for Schumann as a good student who, sad to say, never learned “that rules are meant to be broken.” It strikes me that, living with Robert Schumann, and hearing his works, Clara Schumann had plenty of opportunities to realize that rules could be broken. Perhaps his pathology made her leery of going outside certain boundaries. Nonetheless, I find her Piano Trio a mostly pleasing work with touching themes that aren’t necessarily developed as compellingly as those of the greatest of her contemporaries. But the Finale is memorable and lively.


Schubert is the greater companion here. The String Quartet is played almost carefully, or at least to my mind with not the most desirable fervor. Lines meant to fade sensitively seem rather to peter out. I prefer my recordings by the Italian Quartet, the Guarneris and the Emerson Quartet. The playful String Trio is performed well, but still I would pick up this disc mainly for the Schumann.


FANFARE: Michael Ullman

“The piece is unlike no other of its kind,” Bela Bartok affirmed: “the world of ideas it contains is entirely new.” Timbre acquired an unusual, novel dimension by having the two lowest strings tuned one half-step down, to B and F#, respectively. Thus the three lower strings form a B minor chord, which Kodaly places in particular prominence at the onset of the sonata. Julian Steckel was first inspired to tackle this “everest of cello literature” for the first time at the age of fifteen. The technical challenge was certainly exciting in itself, but he was also fascinated by the music’s beauty, and by Kodaly’s special musical language- “even though at that time I didn’t yet know what was Hungarian about it, or what came from Debussy or other sources,” he remarks. Steckel proceeded to work on the sonata with several cellists including the venerable Hungarian-American legend Janos Starker. He studied the work’s historical background: “When you know where a certain music is coming from, it reinforces the sort of telepathic connection you feel with the audience, and you end up playing much more convincingly.” Janos Starker, for one, insisted that “all the beginnings, including those in the slow movements, are consonant. You should never play as if you were murmuring. In this music, none of the beautiful cantilenas ever emerge out of nothing. You must always remain entirely clear in your expression and in the way you produce the sound. The fact that the music is rhapsodic should not entice you to start playing freely all the time. Precise rhythm is of utter importance. Otherwise you would be fishing in troubled waters, and the music would become a sort of goulash soup…”

HAYDN Piano Trio in Bb, Hob XV:20. ROSSINI Duo for Cello and Double Bass. SCHUBERT String Quartet No. 14, D 810, “Death and the Maiden” • Martin Helmchen (pn); Veronika Eberle, Antje Weithaas, Christian Tetzlaff (vn); Rachel Roberts (va); Marie-Elisabeth Hecker, Tanja Tetzlaff (vc); Alois Posch (db) • AVI-MUSIC 8553259 (66:11) Live: Heimbach 6/6-10/2011


The three concert performances on this disc derive from an annual chamber music festival entitled “Tensions [ Spannungen ]: Music in the Heimbach Hydropower Station,” which does in fact take place in a functioning hydroelectric installation, built in 1904 in Art Nouveau style and located in Germany’s Eifel region. Lars Vogt, the festival’s artistic director, writes in his introductory notes that the title is “not only an allusion to the electric current normally produced in this…installation but also to the underlying musical tensions and contrasts in the festival’s music program.” Electricity, in the figurative sense, is certainly a feature of the excellent performances on this disc.


The Haydn Trio offered here, No. 20 according to Hoboken but No. 34 in the Landon listing, is a relatively late work, one of a group of three trios written in 1794, during the composer’s second visit to London. Its three movements total just over 13 minutes in this performance by violinist Veronika Eberle, cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker, and pianist Martin Helmchen. Their rendition is excellent, predictably larger-scaled and more assertive than the fine period-instrument recordings by Trio 1790 (CPO) and by Patrick Cohen, Erich Höbarth, and Christophe Coin (Harmonia Mundi), achieving an ideal combination of energy, exuberance, precision, and elegance. The crystalline clarity of Helmchen’s pianism and the perfect intonation and burnished tone of the string players further contribute to the success of this performance.


Unlike his string sonatas, Rossini’s Duo for Cello and Double Bass is not an early work but rather dates from 1824, when the composer was already approaching the end of his operatic career. It was written for a well-known double bass virtuoso of the time, Domenico Dragonetti, who, according to the notes, lived from 1763 to 1841 but performed in the presence of Berlioz in 1845, making him one of several musicians who have been credited in print with performing after death. (Other sources indicate that his actual death date was 1846.) This instrumental combination might seem unpromising and be expected to yield a dull, boomy sound, but in Rossini’s hands it actually works quite well. Cellist Tanja Tetzlaff assumes the lead role that would go to a violin in a more conventional ensemble, but the playing of bassist Alois Posch is supple and euphonious. Together the instruments produce a warm, throbbing sonority, and this being Rossini, there is plenty of engaging melody in the three movements of the piece.


To conclude the program, violinists Antje Weithaas and Christian Tetzlaff, violist Rachel Roberts, and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff deliver a performance of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet that is of astonishing power and intensity, with urgent tempos, forceful attacks, strong dynamic contrasts, and explosive climaxes. In taking the lengthy exposition repeat, unlike most competitors, these players prolong the first movement to over 15 minutes, which may not sit well with those who feel Schubert goes on for too long, but that is not a viewpoint I share, and in any case the performance is so gripping that no one is likely to complain of monotony. Although their treatment of tempo is not rigid, the Heimbach musicians, unlike many ensembles, relax only slightly in the more lyrical portions of the movement. Their urgency and vehemence continue into the Andante con moto second movement, where most ensembles opt for a more relaxed, lyrical approach. An unusually forceful and angry Scherzo is followed by a headlong and vehement finale. Technically, the playing is of a high standard in terms of intonation, articulation, and tone quality, although it is not note perfect, as is understandable given the live concert setting and the extremely intense, highly charged nature of the interpretation. Also notable is the unusually open and detailed texture of this performance, in which the contribution of each instrument can be heard distinctly.


There are many fine recordings of “Death and the Maiden,” but I do not know of another that matches this one for intensity and dramatic power. In contrast, that of the Alban Berg Quartet (EMI) flows smoothly and mellifluously, with a blended sonority. The Budapest Quartet (in its 1953 Columbia recording, available from ArkivMusic) is also comparatively genial and lyrical. The Emerson Quartet (DG) and the Juilliard Quartet (in its 1959 RCA recording, reissued by Testament) get a bit closer to the Heimbach approach but still do not match its relentless drive, towering climaxes, and searing passion. The Heimbach performance is greeted with thunderous applause and foot-stamping at the end, as it should be.


In addition to the quality of its performances, this disc benefits from excellent, realistic sound that positions the musicians precisely in a spacious acoustic and is vivid, well balanced, and free from harshness. The concert audience is very quiet, except for its enthusiastic applause after the performances, although faint background noise may be heard during silences and in quiet portions of the Schubert. This is an outstanding release, and I strongly recommend it to all lovers of chamber music.


FANFARE: Daniel Morrison