The internationally celebrated, Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet joins forces with legendary pianist Menahem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio for Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34, a pillar of German Romanticism that opens with one of the most recognizable melodies in classical music. Pressler, a consummate chamber artist, performs the virtuosic piano part with a clarity and transparency that makes the piano seem like a fellow member of the string ensemble. This noteworthy generation-crossing collaboration — a half-century separates the pianist, who is in his 90s, from the quartet members — yields a spacious, sweeping traversal of the Brahms Quintet that sets its own pace to build suspense and drama. While Pressler has performed the Brahms Quintet with marquee string quartets of the past 50 years, this is his first recording of it. The album offers the unusual, perhaps unprecedented, pairing of Brahms’s early Piano Quintet with a string quartet by his champion Robert Schumann, in this case, the String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 41, No.1, which the Quartet has been performing since early in its career. Dedicated to Mendelssohn, this buoyant, sprightly Romantic quartet showcases the Pacifica’s virtuosity and exuberant performance style while offering a contrast to Brahms’s moodier masterwork. This is the Quartet’s first recording of a Schumann work.

REVIEW:

Menahem Pressler was 91 when he recorded the Brahms Piano Quintet for the first time in his long and distinguished career in 2014. He’s clearly up to the task. Admittedly, tempos are slower than usual for the most part, and you won’t find the kind of dynamism and power in loud tuttis commonly served up by younger keyboard hotshots–although Pressler suddenly sheds decades in the finale’s exultant coda, matching the Pacifica Quartet’s urgent sweep note for note. There’s purpose and meaning in every phrase, every gesture, and every nuance on Pressler’s part.

Listen to the tension that the pianist generates in the soft unison rising scales prior to the first-movement exposition repeat, hear the haunting sense of mystery and flexibility in the Scherzo’s Trio, and notice how Pressler’s tonal shadings enhance the conversational lilt in the fourth movement’s main theme. Having so finely tuned and attentive an ensemble as the Pacifica Quartet on hand doesn’t hurt, of course! If the Hough/Takács and Andsnes/Artemis versions score for fluency, assurance, and grandeur, Pressler’s insights are priceless, and we’d be poorer without them.

A 2016 recording of the Schumann A minor Quartet Op. 41 No. 1 fills out the disc. The Pacifica members make a compelling case for this inspired yet arguably sprawling work. They draw out the first movement’s introduction, giving little clue about the fierce Allegro around the corner and the sharply drawn dynamic contrasts with which they’ll characterize the music.

Ferocity also defines the ensemble’s hair-trigger articulation in the “Mendelssohn on steroids” Scherzo. The Presto sounds faster than it actually transpires, due to the players’ sophisticated balancing of lines and ever-so-discreet italicizations of harmonic felicities; rarely do you hear such fusion of forward drive and contrapuntal clarity as the Pacifica Quartet delivers. It’s an absorbing performance, notwithstanding my preference for leaner and edgier versions by the Zehetmair and Eroica Quartets.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

AMERICAN WORKS FOR PIANO DUO

The Dover Quartet, “the young American string quartet of the moment” (The New Yorker), launches its emerging, three-volume complete Beethoven quartet cycle with the six Opus 18 quartets, often cited as the epitome of the classical string quartet as developed by Haydn and Mozart while foreshadowing Beethoven’s future innovations. 

Grammy-nominated violinist Jennifer Koh and virtuoso pianist Shai Wosner play 20th century works by three remarkable Central European composers who intertwine folkloric influences with their own unmistakable originality. The album includes Leoš Janáček’s Moravian influenced Sonata for violin and piano, Béla Bartók’s impassioned Violin Sonata No. 1, and compelling miniatures by György Kurtág, including Tre Pezzi for violin and piano and selections from Signs, Games and Messages.

REVIEW:

Jennifer Koh studied with Felix Galimir at the Marlboro School and Jaime Laredo at the Curtis Institute; she won a silver medal at the 1994 International Tchaikovsky Competition (a year in which no gold was awarded) and has appeared with all the major American orchestras and many abroad. One may see her in action on YouTube, performing Paganini with the Chicago Symphony, displaying amazing aplomb and panache for an 11-year old, or for any age. She has tended to avoid the warhorses of the repertory, as her recordings—from Bach to Zorn—show.

In a brief discussion of this disc (also seen on YouTube), pianist Shai Wosner says “it’s intense music; we wanted to milk the most out of every bar.” Yet the Janá?ek performance strikes me as just the opposite: A silky violin and a gentle piano—in a warm, reverberant acoustic setting—emphasize the inherent beauty of this music rather than its intensity or its connections to folk music. Janá?ek’s spiky harmonies and jumpy, stabbing attacks are played down. Many listeners may prefer this Romantic-era approach, but it soft-pedals the composer’s essence, the character that makes him unique. For a more vibrant performance, try Gidon Kremer and Martha Argerich on DG, which John Wiser nailed (Fanfare 16:4) as having “a touch of Gypsy exoticism.”

György Kurtág has written what we call full-length works, but our attention has been focused on his many sets of miniatures. Signs, Games, and Messages (also the title of this disc) and Játékok (also “Games”) are both large collections of small pieces composed over many years. Are they completed? Only the composer could answer that question. The former are for “vn, va, vc, db in various combinations, as solos, duos, trios, qts.” (The New Grove II); these four are played here by the solo violin. Játékok are for piano, some with vocal additions—momentary noises rather than song or poetry. Tre Pezzi are for violin and piano; they are played together, as a three-movement work, whereas the other pieces are more or less randomly distributed around them (at the artists’ pleasure, of course), providing instrumental variety to these 27 minutes. But this variety may disrupt the accumulated effect of a Kurtág collection: a Mode CD has 24 Signs, Games, and Messages played by violist Maurizio Barbetti, and it is stunning—perhaps it is his magnificent performance, capturing every mood, every wry twist, that makes such a difference.

Koh and Wosner are superb in Bartók’s First Sonata. She expresses the full measure of the music without ever producing a single ugly or even awkward note; he is a powerhouse as well as a subtle presence. They do “milk the music” to its fullest intensity. It is astonishing that Koh’s elegant, liquid tones can be so assertive, matching Wosner at every step. There have been so many recordings of the Bartók sonatas, seemingly half of them by Gidon Kremer, often partnered, again, by Martha Argerich. Kremer takes a lighter view of the First Sonata than Koh—I am particularly partial to his 1972 Hungaroton recording with Yury Smirnov. Kremer’s playing has more edge than Koh, in two senses: He finds a special relish in the music, at the cost of some less than silky tones. I like the result, but listeners who prefer a purely beautiful violin should snap up this Cedille disc.

FANFARE: James H. North

Trio Settecento, the “superlative Chicago-based early music ensemble” (Gramophone) completes its grand tour of the European Baroque with An English Fancy, its highly anticipated survey of English Baroque chamber works. It is the final leg of a musical journey that has delighted record collectors and critics alike. Early-instrument enthusiasts will be intrigued by the prominent role of the viola da gamba in this repertoire. Previous installments include An Italian Sojourn, A German Bouquet, and A French Soirée.
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Dmitri Shostakovich’s long-lost Impromptu for Viola and Piano, Op. 33, recently unearthed in the Moscow State Archives, receives here its world-premiere recording on Matthew Lipman’s Ascent, the acclaimed young American violist’s solo debut album, featuring, in the artist’s words, “music enraptured by flights of fantasy.”

Recipient of a 215 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Lipman has created an album of uplifting and spiritually transcendent works for viola and piano, dedicated to his late mother. Hailed by The New York Times for his “rich tone and elegant phrasing,” Lipman is heard in the world-premiere recording of Clarice Assad’s fantasy piece, Metamorfose, which the violist commissioned. It’s a poignant commentary on grief and acceptance. Robert Schumann’s Fairy Tale Pictures is dreamlike and fanciful. York Bowen’s richly expressive Phantasy draws on the Russian Romantic tradition. Garth Knox’s free-flying Fuga libre transfigures Bach-like fugal fragments through modern, coloristic performance techniques. The album’s finale is the first-ever recording on viola of Hollywood composer Franz Waxman’s popular violin showpiece, Carmen Fantasie. England’s The Telegraph praised Lipman as “gifted with poise and a warmth of timbre” for his recording of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with violinist Rachel Barton Pine, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and Sir Neville Marriner (Avie), which topped the Billboard classical chart. Lipman’s collaborator on Ascent is pianist Henry Kramer, winner of the Second Prize at the 216 Queen Elisabeth competition and top prizes at the 215 Honens International Piano Competition and 211 Montreal International Music Competition. His first commercial recording, dedicated to Liszt oratorio transcriptions, was recently released on Naxos.

Jorge Federico Osorio, “an imaginative interpreter with a powerful technique (The New York Times), deftly pairs Brahms’s final solo piano works with those by Schubert for an inventive program of richly satisfying works that capture the essence of each composer’s towering individuality. Here, Osorio records Brahms’s Three Intermezzos, Op. 117, and Six Piano Pieces, Op 118, which he last recorded nearly two decades ago, to great acclaim: “Quite marvelous,” said BBC Music Magazine. “It’s clear that Jorge Federico Osorio is an important Brahmsian,” proclaimed the Chicago Tribune. On his new album, Osorio’s penchant for color accentuates the individual character of these concentrated miniatures. Osorio has also chosen to record Schubert’s final two Piano Sonatas, D. 959 and D. 960, epic in scale and brimming with melodic invention. His insights into the music’s architecture yield eloquent performances of these spacious, ambitious masterworks.

REVIEW:

A generous feast: All of Brahms’ last piano pieces bracketed in between Schubert’s last two sonatas, performed by a musicianly virtuoso, captured in intimately close yet amply robust sonics. Jorge Federico Osorio’s mastery beckons your attention. The Schubert D. 959 A major sonata’s sprawling first movement receives a fluid and intelligently nuanced reading, followed by an Andantino that assiduously builds up to and decompresses after its shattering central climax. The scherzo’s easy lilt and winsomely varied chord arpeggiations justify a more easygoing, less precipitous tempo than usual. While the Rondo finale doesn’t quite match Pollini’s winged poetry, one cannot ignore Osorio’s firm left-hand underpinning and clear voice leading.

At times his rhythmic inflections in the D. 960 B-flat sonata Molto moderato’s exposition pull focus from the narrative flow, yet these gestures still sound internalized and well considered. In contrast, Osorio unifies his expansive conception of the Andante sostenuto with a hypnotic, resolutely steady accompanying ostinato figure. The Scherzo is curvy and playful, as Osorio leaves you guessing as to which of the Trio’s off-beat bass notes he will accent. On the other hand, the left-hand syncopations in the Rondo’s second theme recede too much in the background, although once the tumultuous minor-key theme kicks in, Osorio’s poetic and dramatic powers decisively click into focus.

In the main, Osorio’s late Brahms charts a direct path that differs from Arcadi Volodos’ poetic ruminations. Compare, for example, Volodos’ discursive rendering of Op. 117 No. 1’s central episode alongside Osorio’s comparatively stronger rhythmic delineation of the same passage and you’ll hear what I mean. Still, Osorio offers illuminating rhetorical touches: notice his yearning hesitation on certain of Op. 119 No. 2’s upbeats, Op. 118 No. 4’s thoughtful contrapuntal interplay between the hands with barely a trace of pedal, the pinpointed control of Op. 116 No. 5’s short phrases, not to mention the strong tenor voice presence in Op. 116 No. 6. And his angular parsing of Op. 117 No. 3’s main theme underlines the music’s unsettled qualities that more than a few pianists too willingly flatten out. Even in a catalog crowded with excellent recordings of these works, Osorio’s cultured artistry offers much to savor over repeated hearings.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

Gaudete Brass, a quintet devoted to presenting serious brass chamber music and commissioning new works, brings a fresh perspective to music of John Corigliano with an inventive album of brass works by the prolific American composer and his protégés. “The excellent Gaudete Brass” (Gramophone) honors Corigliano, winner of Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Pulitzer Prize, with world-premiere recordings of his groundbreaking Fanfares to Music for on- and off-stage brass choirs, his stately Antiphon for double brass quintet, and a new arrangement of the Rossini-esque Overture from his popular Gazebo Dances. Gaudete commissioned the title track, Steven Bryant’s sevenfive, in honor of Corigliano’s 75th birthday, and the numbers seven and five figure prominently in its musical architecture. David Sampson’s boisterous Entrance opens the program, while his surprisingly restrained Still is luxuriously lyrical. Jonathan Newman’s Prayers of Steel evokes the Midwest landscapes in Carl Sandburg’s poetry. Jeremy Howard Beck’s ROAR exploits the brasses’ ability to do just that. Conrad Winslow’s The Record of a Lost Tribe summons an imaginary, bygone civilization. All works except Entrance receive their world-premiere recordings on the album.

The world-class vocal ensemble Chicago a cappella does Christmas choral music fans a real service by daring to create a program entirely of contemporary (primarily within the last 20 or so years) works that defy the usual and predictable holiday concert choices that guarantee instant audience familiarity and gratification (not that there's anything wrong with those beloved, treasured standards!). Most of the works featured here require a bit more-than-usual attention from listeners--the composers and arrangers obviously approached such common texts as "What sweeter music", "Il est Né, le Divin Enfant", "O Come, O Come Emmanuel", "Noël nouvelet", "I wonder as I wander", "Lo Yisa Goy", and "The Huron Carol" with an idea to say something that hadn't already been said. And they do--splendidly. Then we have entirely original pieces by Stephen Paulus (Splendid Jewel--from a 14th-century Italian text), Gwyneth Walker (The Christ-child's Lullaby--inspired by a traditional Hebridean song), Richard Proulx (Prayer of the Venerable Bede--from a text found on the wall of Galilee Chapel in Durham Cathedral), and Danish composer Per Nørgård (En stjerne er sat--a dialogue between the Angel and the shepherds).

It's a tribute to the power of the Christmas story and to its enduring, compelling fascination for composers that the best of them continue--more than 2000 years later--to devote their efforts to writing music to recognize and celebrate the birth of Christ. And we are fortunate to have choirs of this caliber to bring this music to us in a context that presents it most favorably and gives it a permanent presence in our listening repertoire.

Another of the disc's strengths is the sheer variety of music, from the Nigerian setting of the text "For unto us a child is born" by Christian Onyeji, to Rosephanye Powell's "spiritual-like" Who is the baby?, to Yemeni composer Chaim Parchi's alluring Chanukah tune "Aleih Neiri", arranged for choir by Zamir Chorale of Boston founder Joshua Jacobson. The nine singers of Chicago a cappella are absolutely right-on in every respect, and the sound is ideal. This is an unqualified success, a holiday treat, a musical bounty that will both challenge and enliven your Christmastime listening. Highly recommended!

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

MESSIAEN Visions de l’Amen. DEBUSSY En Blanc et noir • Ursula Oppens, Jerome Lowenthal (pn) • ÇEDILLE CDR 90000 119 (60:51)


In 1941, Olivier Messiaen was released from Görlitz prison camp, where he had been taken following the fall of France in the Second World War. Visions de l’Amen for two pianos was his first large work after this. The listener will search in vain for any shred of a reaction to the war in this music: Messiaen was inhabiting an intellectual and spiritual space far removed from the ravages of war. It was premiered in Paris in 1943 by the composer and his brilliant 19-year-old pupil, and eventual wife, Yvonne Loriod. Her part—taken by Ursula Oppens on the current disc—“has the rhythmic difficulties, the bunches of chords, everything concerned with speed, allure, and quality of sound”; his had “the principal melody, the thematic elements, everything demanding emotion and power.” So Messiaen wrote in the preface to the score.


Messiaen offers seven meditations on various theological subjects, somewhat tenuously linked by the idea of “Amens,” much as he was to do in his next great cycle, Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus , where another difficult-to-translate word, regard , is used to provide cohesion to the 20 meditations on the birth of Christ. In Visions de l’Amen , the first piece represents an act of creation—no less than the Creation of the Universe—while the last describes the final Consummation. The second and fifth illustrate the adoration of God by cosmic and celestial creatures; the third and sixth describe the suffering of Jesus and of humanity; the central fourth piece is about desire “in its highest spiritual sense,” as the composer put it.


A considerable degree of cohesion over these disparate pieces is achieved by the use of a single theme, the theme of Creation, in four sequences of chords. This provides the material for most of the seven movements. As he was to do with Vingt Regards , Messiaen allots the first movement to a statement of the theme. In this case, over 39 measures, it is played five times by Lowenthal while Oppens contributes metrically complex, bell-like music (“bells shivering in the Light,” as the composer put it). The opening, pianissimo , is wonderfully evocative. The low chords of Creation, deep inside the piano, are barely more than a cosmic growl, Oppens and Lowenthal drawing in the listener compellingly. This opening Amen of Creation is one long crescendo and the players sculpt the increasing dynamics with complete conviction so that the apparently abrupt cut-off is surprising, even on repeated listening.


Jerome Lowenthal observes in his CD notes that, on its first performance, Visions de l’Amen aroused immediate enthusiasm in some and annoyance in others, and it is in pieces like the fourth movement, Amen of Desire , that the possibly annoyed listener is tested the most. Messiaen has two themes of Desire, the first somewhat sweet, the second extraordinarily saccharine, if vigorous. Yet it is essential that we remember that Messiaen was completely sincere and unironic in this writing. It places a huge burden on the performers, who have to play with complete conviction if all parties are not to collapse in laughter. Paul Griffiths in his book Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time describes this second theme as “[moving] through ever splashier paroxysms of cheapened harmony” and it is to their credit that Oppens and Lowenthal pull this movement off triumphantly.


If the first movement is a composed crescendo, the last, Amen of the Consummation , is a more or less continuous fortissimo . It is a tour de force in this recording: Lowenthal hammers out the Creation theme in the middle register while Oppens manages seemingly superhuman feats in the extreme upper and lower registers simultaneously, peal upon peal of bells pouring out. And, not content with starting this movement seemingly flat-out, both players are able to summon even more energy for the final measures, which are awe-inspiring.


Turning to the fine performance by Katia and Marielle Labèque on Erato, still sounding very good, it is clearly a recording one could live with very happily (as one has). However, the newcomer has the edge in terms of sheer weight of sound. That fuller sound picture emphasizes the intensity of Oppens’ and Lowenthal’s reading, which really takes no hostages. When the sustain pedal is finally released to cut off the huge reverberation of the final chords of the work, one realizes that the attention has been held for 46 minutes through the sheer conviction of all (composer and players) concerned.


Rather than provide more Messiaen, Cedille has opted for Debussy’s two-piano work En Blanc et noir (In White and Black). The link here is that Debussy wrote this music in the France of the First World War. If you’ll look in vain for references to war in Messiaen’s music, here there are a number of allusions, more or less elliptical, to it. The middle of three movements, Lent, Sombre , opens very somberly, and Oppens’ and Lowenthal’s performance brings out all the subsequent mercurial, shadowy shifts of mood and harmony. Their reading of En Blanc et noir is warmer than some—entirely to the advantage of the music—entirely clear and recommendable.


Ursula Oppens turns in a performance of the Messiaen whose “speed, allure, and quality of sound” are impeccable while providing a large amount of “emotion and power” as well, while Jerome Lowenthal is no less compelling in his performance. It’s a shame that Cedille provides only 10 seconds to recover from Visions de l’Amen before the Debussy breaks in, but this is a trivial cavil, faced with such a commanding and excellent disc.


FANFARE: Jeremy Marchant


What a great idea to pair two major 20th-century French two-piano works, both composed in wartime. More importantly, Ursula Oppens and Jerome Lowenthal prove an inspired pair, pianistically speaking. Throughout Visions de l'Amen's seven movements the pianists navigate the composer's tricky rhythms and frequently thick textural hurdles with impressive ensemble exactitude, uninhibited dynamism, and cogent organization of melodic and decorative elements. One good example of this can be found in the third movement, Amen de l'Agonie de Jésus, where, in the Bien modéré section, the second piano's fortissimo tune is perfectly contoured against the first piano's chords in the same register (left-hand forte, right-hand mezzo-forte). Similarly, the duo's long-lined animation and textural diversity in the seventh movement prevents the music from sounding long-winded and from bogging down.

Oppens commands the first piano part's big chords and wide leaps with the utmost solidity, definition, and rhythmic focus, and always knows when to dominate and pull back. Lowenthal has all of the good tunes (as well as the bad ones; I still cannot get through the second piano's sickly sweet fourth-movement solo without wincing), and he relishes accents more than certain of his discographical competitors. He also allows himself freedom in solo passages when expressively appropriate, such as in his ever-so-slight yet heart-quickening accelerandos under certain crescendos in the second movement.

In contrast to the lean and streamlined profile characterizing the Kontarsky brothers' reference recording of Debussy's En blanc et noir, Oppens and Lowenthal opt for full and generous sonorities, even when playing quietly. Although they seemingly employ as little sustain pedal as possible, a mellifluous yet strong legato quality emerges from massive chords, rapid bass-register rumblings, and fleeting flourishes. Who said you can't be impressionistic and clear at the same time? Save for slightly congested climaxes, the full-bodied engineering is excellent. Lowenthal's superb, highly informative annotations add further value to this desirable release.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Conducted by Christopher Bell, Chicago’s Grant Park Chorus, “as fine a symphony chorus as any to be found anywhere in the nation” (Chicago Tribune), makes its a cappella CD debut with an all-American program of eight imaginative, moving, and sometimes whimsical works written between 1975 and 25, including four world-premiere recordings. Premieres include Abbie Betinis’s Toward Sunshine, Toward Freedom: Songs of Smaller Creatures. Lee Kesselman’s Buzzings: Three Pieces about Bees offers vignettes based on Emily Dickinson poems. Paul Crabtree’s Five Romantic Miniatures is a set of affectionate tributes to characters from The Simpsons animated TV series. The chorus made its commercial recording debut performing with the Grant Park Orchestra on the 211 Cedille Records release The Pulitzer Project, which attracted international attention. Chicago’s New City said the CD “spectacularly showcased” the chorus’s “remarkable transparency and flexibility.”

On a new double-album of solo organ works by Leo Sowerby (1895–1968) and another prominent Chicago composer, Frank Ferko (b. 1950), versatile keyboard virtuoso David Schrader plays four of Sowerby’s “greatest hits” for organ, including the monumental Symphony in G major, plus the rarely heard “March” from Suite for Organ, on the 68-rank Wicks Opus 2918 at St. Ita’s Catholic Church, Chicago. The world-premiere recording of Sowerby’s late Two Sketches is available on the album’s digital editions. Schrader plays a diverse program of eight Ferko compositions, all world-premiere recordings, including several based on music by 12th-century composer and Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Schrader performs on three noteworthy manual-action organs at the House of Hope Presbyterian Church, St. Paul, Minnesota, including the instrument for which one of the works was specially written.

REVIEW:

There’s a very serious talent at work in this music by Stacy Garrop. Silver Dagger is a folk-song setting for piano trio, along similar lines to Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, and it’s extremely beautiful and quite fetchingly composed for the three instruments. In Eleanor’s Words is a cycle of six songs drawn from the newspaper columns of Eleanor Roosevelt. The concept is a good one: Roosevelt’s prose often approaches poetry, and her unfailing intelligence makes for texts that are worth reading on their own, and for which Garrop has found a similarly conversational musical style that fits them perfectly. The music is attractive and approachable, but not facile. There’s a version for chamber orchestra that I would dearly love to hear, but it would be difficult to imagine a more affectingly sung performance than that by mezzo Buffy Baggott—and Kuang-Hao Huang accompanies beautifully.

Gaia is an ambitious string quartet in five movements lasting about 34 minutes...I loathed Garrop’s Second Quartet “Demons and Angels”, and this one strikes me as far more appealing and successful. The sonics are just great...this disc makes an excellent case for exploring more of Garrop’s music.

-- ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

Choral Concert: William Ferris Chorale – HOVHANESS, A. / COH

The Dover Quartet, “the young American string quartet of the moment” (The New Yorker) unveils the second installment in its critically acclaimed Beethoven quartet cycle on Cedille Records. The Dover’s three-album set of Beethoven’s “Middle Quartets” includes the three Op. 59 “Razumovsky” Quartets, infused with Russian folk tunes; the graceful “Harp,” Op. 74, named for its plucked string figures; and the intense Op. 95 “Serioso,” a forward-looking experiment that Beethoven originally intended “for a small circle of connoisseurs.” The Dover Quartet’s first Beethoven release, a traversal of the Op. 18 quartets, has garnered international praise. England’s The Strad said the ensemble exhibits “a beguiling freshness and spontaneity that creates the impression of these relatively early masterworks arriving hot off the press.” Toronto’s The Whole Note cited “performances of conviction and depth. This promises to be an outstanding set.” Utah-based CD Hotlist remarked, “The Dovers stand out from the pack by playing with utterly perfect intonation, a near-telepathic sense of ensemble, and a lovely balance of passion and clarity.” New York’s WQXR proclaimed, “It’s hard to imagine a group better suited to recording these works than the Dover Quartet.” In concert, the quartet has presented three complete Beethoven cycles, including the University at Buffalo’s famous “Slee Cycle” — which has offered annual Beethoven quartet cycles since 1955 and has featured the likes of the Budapest, Guarneri, and Cleveland Quartets. The Dover Quartet serves as the inaugural Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music and holds residencies with the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, among other prestigious posts.

Black Oak Ensemble, a string trio boasting three of Chicago’s most enterprising and dynamic chamber musicians, makes its recording debut with Silenced Voices, an album of intriguing works by six promising, early 20th century Jewish composers originally from Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands. One survived World War II as a member of the Dutch resistance, the others perished in concentration camps and elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Silenced Voices includes the world premiere recording of wartime survivor Geza Frid’s early Trio a cordes, Op. 1, an inventive work infused with Hungarian folk music influences. Composer-cellist Paul Hermann’s Strijktrio, a forward-looking, cosmopolitan work from the early 1920s, shares its melodies among all three instruments. Dick Kattenburg’s youthful Trio a cordes was praised in a 1938 concert review for its “remarkable mastery and a very personal style.” Gideon Klein’s Trio for violin, viola and cello is notable for its treatment of a Moravian folk song that serves as the theme of its middle movement. Hans Krasa’s Tanec (“Dance”) is a five-minute whirl of dancelike episodes framed by the sonic evocation of trains. His Passagalia is more somber, with its own train motifs, while its companion Fuga bears shades of Germanic and Czech influences and occasional grotesque touches. Sandor Kuti’s Serenade for String Trio brims with Hungarian folk music and piquant chord clusters. His Franz Liszt Academy classmate, conductor Sir Georg Solti, later proclaimed that Kuti “would have become one of Hungary’s greatest composers.” Praised for its “flamboyant vitality” and “expert performances” (Chicago Tribune), the Black Oak Ensemble comprises Swiss-American violinist Desiree Ruhstrat and British-born cellist David Cunliffe of the acclaimed, Grammy-nominated Lincoln Trio and French-born violist Aurelien Fort Pederzoli, a founding member of the groundbreaking, Grammy-nominated Spektral Quartet. Silenced Voices was inspired, in part, by the educational efforts of violist Pederzoli’s mother, a history teacher of Sephardic Jewish descent who led annual student field trips to locations such as Prague, Budapest, Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Terezin.

REVIEW:

None of these works in any sense identifies with the carefree café scene, nor strikes the fave licks of the waltzing salon partiers of the 1920s and ’30s. This is serious music that bristles and singes and sings, whose creators know strings and how to make three voices into the proverbial sum greater than its parts. And before I forget, the three members of Black Oak Ensemble—Desirée Ruhstrat (violin); David Cunliffe (cello); Aurélien Fort Pederzoli (viola)—are ideal advocates for this music, a threesome that often sounds like six, or like one, and makes the most of melody and makes magic of irregular rhythm and phrasing, of beautiful lines and jazzy utterances, reveling in the gritty groan of bows digging into strings, and finding the joy in rich harmony and an occasional raucous dance. Thanks to such insightful, committed, and masterful performances, those composers, though dead, are still speaking.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Vernier)

KELLOGG: Divinum Mysterium / CRUMB: Voice of the Whale

Now here's imaginative and illuminating programming for you: Bach's D minor solo partita featuring its renowned Chaconne, followed by a pair of late-Romantic violin chaconnes loosely patterened after Bach's powerful model. I like the lightness of touch, sweetly singing tone, and intimate drama characterizing Jennifer Koh's superb reading of the Bach partita. Her sound is not huge and assertive in the manner of Gregory Fulkerson and Nathan Milstein's reference versions, yet Koh's rich palette of dynamics and articulations, together with her purposeful bass lines, add variety and color to the steady tempos she favors. These qualities allow Reger's craggy lines to unfold in an unpressured manner that both complements and contrasts to Michelle Makarski's starker, bigger-boned traversal on ECM.


Richard Barth (1850-1908) was a violinist in Brahms' circle who also conducted and taught. Koh makes a thoughtful and musicianly case for Barth's skillfully-crafted and well-sustained B minor Chaconne, a work more violinists should investigate. At least its attractions now are known to one grateful critic, who expects to return time and again to this winning, beautifully engineered disc.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

The Billy Collins Suite comprises intimate chamber settings for eleven Collins poems, some sung, others narrated. (Cedille)

Surging with epic emotions, Royal Mezzo showcases mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore in symphonic portraits of commanding characters from legend, literature, and mythology. (Cedille)

Jennifer Koh and Jamie Laredo feature in this recital of works written for two violins. Includes two world-premiere recordings in addition to works by J.S. Bach and Philip Glass. Vinay Parameswaran leads the Curtis 20/21 Ensemble, to which composer David Ludwig (b. 1974) serves as Director. Anna Clyne's (b. 1980) dramatic and inventive works have been championed by musicians from around the world.

REVIEW:

Jennifer Koh’s collaboration with her erstwhile mentor at the Curtis Institute, Jaime Laredo, has resulted in a program of works for two violins played by both of them: Bach’s Double Violin Concerto and three new pieces, all accompanied by Vinay Parameswaran conducting the Curtis 20/21 Ensemble. In Bach’s and David Ludwig’s works, Laredo plays first violin, while in Anna Clyne’s and Philip Glass’s, Koh does. The recordings of Clyne’s and Ludwig’s works purport to be the first. 

The duo adopts quick but not precipitous tempos in the first movement of Bach’s Concerto. Both soloists produce a modern sound that blends well their soloistic counterpart and with the ensemble. They engage in no mannerisms, presenting the music straightforwardly, as they do in the slow movement, though their beauty of tone there provides a focus of interest, rendering their interweaving tonally ingratiating, quite aside from the musical compatibility it evinces. Should their individualities be expressed more obviously? Would the soloists in Bach’s time be clearly distinguishable in such a chamber setting? Quite aside from these more philosophical quibbles, their playing sounds equally homogeneous, as well as highly energetic, in the finale.

Clyne’s 2012 piece, Prince of Clouds, shimmeringly atmospheric and harmonically accessible in its opening, grows texturally chunkier as it progresses, recalling stylistically Benjamin Britten’s keen ear for string textures and resonances—and not only between the soloists but within the ensemble, too. Glass’s Echorus, perhaps even more atmospheric and just as firmly tonal in its harmonic underpinnings, trades on shifting melodic patterns, as do so many of his other works (recalling clouds subtly shifting shapes as they roll, although the two soloists emerge only tentatively from the textures), and rivets listeners’ attention to its hypnotic musical argument. The four movements of Ludwig’s 2012 Seasons Lost represent the four seasons in order but beginning (rather than ending) with “Winter.” The composer suggests that these recall a time before climate change merged the seasons. As do the other two recent works on the program, this one creates atmospheres; and, as does Clyne’s work, it also shows how sharply the composer’s ear discriminates among string sonorities. The composer likens the interweaving violin parts of “Spring” with that of the season’s luxuriantly sprouting greenery, while Summer suggests to him warm nights and bonfires: dark and mysterious and allusive, like the performances. “Fall” brings blowing winds in perhaps the most graphic of the movements, with shriller, almost Stravinskian sonorities and harmonies.

The program evinces a sort of continuity more integral even than the close interaction of the two soloists and the unifying string sonorities: A sort of downy blanket covers all of it, generating lots of warmth without inducing somnolence. Can this, rather than deterministic or aleatory blips and bangs, be the future of music? Has the tonal system really been played out, and did the experiments now almost a century old really come about as a result of historic inevitability? Many listeners could perhaps accept this program as a sort of gentle answer. In any case, the recital should appeal broadly for its performances and for its program (to say nothing of its clear recorded sound). It doesn’t jettison the past so much as it establishes a sort of healing continuity. Strongly recommended.

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Multi-award winning guitarist Denis Azabagic invites listeners into a realm where world, folk, and classical music intersect on Out of Africa...and Around the Word, the Bosnia-born, Chicago-based virtuoso’s first solo album on Cedille Records. Thomas weaves together strands of African singing styles, scales and rhythms, while paying homage to African string instruments, such as the kora and the oud.

REVIEW:

Acclaimed guitarist Denis Azabagic’s newest CD,  Out of Africa , features attractive works by some of today’s leading guitarist/composers. Bulgarian Atanas Ourkouzounov’s contribution is a captivating series of Variations on Pozaspa li iagodo? (Are you sleeping, Strawberry?). The rhythmically driven, harmonically inventive first variation comes as a startling surprise after the gentle simplicity of the opening statement. A slow, minor-tinged variation follows, with interspersed harmonics dotting the sustained soundscape. Variation three combines flowing figures with a recap of the first variation’s hectic pace, helped along by sharp accents and forceful dynamics. Next, a partly muted, subtly dissonant episode gives way to an invigorating half-Bulgarian, half-Greek Finale.

As revealed in the booklet notes, Vojislav Ivanovic’s Café Pieces were undertaken as a lark but, be that as it may, the results far surpass their frivolous beginnings: heard as a group they comprise a beautiful suite of music in the South American style, filled with lovely melodies, exciting rhythms, and humor. At one point, Tango Café (the third of the set) seems to quote the Russian/Gypsy song Ochi chyornye (Dark Eyes), but that may be coincidental: in all other respects, it’s a pitch perfect homage to Astor Piazzolla. The mildly melancholy Nostalgia , a tremolo study, offers guitarists an appealing alternative to Tarrega’s ubiquitous Recuerdos de la Alhambra.

Azabagic plays Carlos Rafael Rivera’s Canción more than a minute faster than various YouTube performances, but with no diminution in sentiment or liquidity of phrasing. For such a short piece—1:35 as played here—that’s a significant difference, almost twice as fast as the others.
REVIEW:

In his synopsis of his  Blues and 7 Variations , Dusan Bogdanovi? explains that “The seeming incongruity of idioms and compositional styles” reflects his interest “in developing a widely based musical world.” That global perspective is immediately apparent in the 13-bar (instead of the traditional 12) Blues at the heart of the piece, cast in 9/8, a meter more common to the Balkans than the American South. Bogdanovi?’s self-described “virtuoso set of variations” calls for great speed, fluency, and panache, attributes Azabagic has in spades; I’m guessing that this stunning performance will prove a benchmark for years to come.

Alan Thomas conceived his suite Out of Africa as a series of impressions inspired by African “styles of singing … additive rhythms, irregular metric groupings, and pentatonic or pandiatonic scales.” Besides being subliminally linked in this way, the various movements together paint a musical portrait of idealized daily life. Call at Sunrise welcomes the dawn with a catchy tune “presented in canon that gradually develops into a vibrant ostinato and vocalic melody” (Thomas). A joyous Morning Dance follows, and as the sun attains its Zenith, the sound of the oud is heard in the land: Azabagic convincingly imitates the characteristic microtonal sound by playing on a detuned string. I don’t know if Thomas consulted the Arabic maqam system of modes as he composed the music, but either way it’s a compelling bit of orientalism. After a last festive Evening Dance , the tender (and tenderly played) Cradle Song brings the suite to a quiet close. All told, Azabagic’s idiomatic, technically flawless performances of this colorful repertoire should be required listening for guitar lovers everywhere.

FANFARE: Robert Schulslaper

Soprano Patrice Michaels, “a formidable interpretative talent” (The New Yorker), and collaborative pianist extraordinaire Kuang-Hao Huang offer Notorious RBG in Song, an album of world-premiere recordings saluting the life and work of legal pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg in celebration of her completion of 25 years on the United States Supreme Court. Ginsburg, a longtime crusader for equal rights, has become a pop culture icon known as “Notorious RBG.”

Michaels, a vocalist of “spectacular and diverse gifts” (Journal of Singing) is also a gifted composer. Her nine-song cycle, ‘The Long View’, illuminates key aspects of Justice Ginsburg’s personal and professional life through letters, remembrances, conversations, and even Court opinions. The album concludes with songs by American composer Stacy Garrop, winner of many prestigious awards and commissions; JUNO Award-winning Canadian composer Vivian Fung; prolific art-song composer Lori Laitman; and an aria from Derrick Wang’s new comic opera, Scalia/Ginsburg.

American composer Stacy Garrop, recipient of many prestigious awards and commissions, based her deeply moving “My Dearest Ruth” on the farewell love letter the Justice’s husband, Georgetown University law professor Martin Ginsburg, wrote shortly before his death in 2010. The aria “You are Searching in Vain for a Bright-Line Solution,” from Derrick Wang’s opera Scalia/Ginsburg, which captured widespread media attention, crystallizes Justice Ginsburg’s views on interpreting the U.S. Constitution. JUNO Award-winning Canadian composer Vivian Fung’s humorous “Pot Roast à la RBG” provides directions for preparing the beef dish, using Justice Ginsburg’s own words as related in the text by daughter Jane Ginsburg. Prolific art-song composer Lori Laitman’s setting of the Emily Dickinson poem “Wider than the Sky” wasn’t written with Ginsburg in mind, but it was performed at her 80th birthday celebration because it perfectly embodied her intellectual breadth.

REVIEW:

This is a difficult production to review, not just because Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become such a significant figure in modern American life, but because the range of her achievements—whether as a jurist or as a wife, mother, opera maven, attorney, professional colleague and feminist icon—resists purely musical treatment. That’s not a reason to hesitate in offering her this lovingly produced tribute. Like RBG herself, who responded to the notion that women had no place in the legal profession by going ahead and doing it anyway, Cedille General Manager Jim Ginsburg (her son) and singer Patrice Michaels (her daughter-in-law) have taken the plunge with evident gusto.

The main item here is The Longview, an imposing portrait of RBG in nine songs composed by Michaels for voice and piano in an attractive, post-modern tonal idiom. There are vivid and beautiful numbers here, especially the central Anita’s Story, a wonderful tale of the power of Ginsburg’s words to change a life; but for many listeners the main interest will lie in the eighth song’s quotations of Ginsburg’s own legal opinions. Imagine setting this to music to get an idea of what Michaels is up to: “I have said before and reiterate here that only an ostrich could regard the supposedly neutral alternatives as race unconscious.” What results from this effort is not so much a conventional song cycle as a theater piece—I could readily imagine it staged, particularly as Michaels, whose voice is hardly conventionally beautiful but whose intelligent artistry is beyond question, performs it here.

The remainder of the program consists of four songs by four different composers, all inspired by RBG’s life and legend. Vivian Fung’s “Pot Roast à la RBG” is the most amusing; Stacy Garrop’s “My Dearest Ruth”, a love letter written by husband Martin Ginsburg from his death bed, is the most touching. I suspect that more than a few tears were shed both here and elsewhere during this project. Through it all, Michaels receives ideally sensitive support from pianist Kuang-Hao Huang, while Cedille’s engineering, as usual, is first class. The final impression that emerges is a portrait of a family as much as of an individual—a very remarkable family indeed. I suspect that RBG may regard this as her greatest achievement of all.

– ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

Strings Magazine calls Jennifer Koh’s new album of Tchaikovsky’s complete works for violin, “remarkable… thoughtful and vibrant.” Jennifer Koh won Musical America’s 2016 Instrumentalist of the Year award. Before that, she received top prize in the 1994 Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow, where she won three special prizes, including best performance for Tchaikovsky’s concerto. This is Koh’s eleventh album for Cedille Records. Her previous record String Poetic, was recently nominated for a Grammy Award.

REVIEW:

Well, here we go again. Just a few issues back (Fanfare 27:6) I was reviewing an Albany Symphony miscellany in which by far the most interesting piece was the Second Symphony of Robert Kurka, making its first appearance on CD after languishing in oblivion for decades since its release in 1961 on a Louisville LP. In that review, I recounted the sad circumstances of Kurka’s short life: his death from leukemia in 1957 at age thirty-six, just as his music was beginning to engender widespread attention in auspicious circles. Then, of course, I went on to advocate a more comprehensive survey of his work, etc. Now, just a few months later, arrives a new, all-Kurka CD, courtesy of Cedille, the Chicago-based company whose mission seems to include highlighting the work of lesser-known composers from that part of the country. (It was Cedille that released Kurka’s last, largest, and best-known work, an opera, The Good Soldier Schweik—see Fanfare 26:1—in 2002.) Kurka was born and raised in the large Czech community of Cicero, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

Although Kurka’s current reputation—such as it is—rests chiefly on Schweik, the opera suggests a direction in which the composer may have been going, but it is not really representative of the music he had been writing up to that time. Kurka is one of those composers with such a strongly individual voice that his music is instantly recognizable as his own. The most obvious influence on his style is Prokofiev, whose musical fingerprints are often clearly apparent. However, equally obvious is Kurka’s fascination with clashing major and minor thirds. This mitigates Prokofiev’s looming presence somewhat, while giving Kurka’s music a superficially American sound, leading some commentators to describe his style as “jazz-influenced.” However, there is an obsessive quality to Kurka’s attraction to this modal ambiguity that makes it seem more personal than a “national” trait. Take these two factors and distill them into the rhythmically vigorous, exuberantly optimistic generic language of American symphonic music of the 1950s and you have a good idea of “the Kurka sound”—except for one rather ineffable element: a most distinctive melodic/harmonic synthesis that is startling at first encounter and unforgettable forever after. (Two examples of this phenomenon found on the recording at hand: Symphony No. 2, third movement, second theme; Serenade, first movement, second theme.)

As with all composers whose lives have ended prematurely, one wonders what further accomplishments might have lain before him, in what directions his style might have evolved. Of course, such speculation is idle and fruitless. However, on the basis of what he did accomplish, Kurka stands as one of the leading contributors to the American orchestral repertoire of the 1950s, an enormously fertile decade for American composers. (I can cite more than 25 American symphonies composed during that one decade that qualify as works of the highest merit.)

The earliest work on this CD is called Music for Orchestra, and dates from 1949, although it was not heard until June 2003, when Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra performed it in conjunction with this recording. Predating the emergence of Kurka’s personal voice, it is a tight-fisted work in one movement of about 15 minutes duration. Far more fiercely aggressive and dissonant than the composer’s later works, the piece calls to mind the Bartók of, say, The Miraculous Mandarin and the Dance Suite. Although some passages are a little dry and uninteresting, for the most part it is quite compelling, and brilliantly performed here.

Kurka’s Symphony No. 2 dates from 1953. This was the first work of his that I heard, more than 40 years ago, and it made an immediate and powerful impact on me. These two new recordings—the recent Albany SO performance and this even more polished and tightly focused reading with the Grant Park Orchestra—have rekindled my enthusiasm, as they reveal subtle details barely audible on the old LP. As I wrote in the Albany review, Kurka’s Symphony No. 2 falls right into the mainstream style of the mid-century American symphonic genre: “conventionally classical in form, brash and assertive in attitude, propelled by energetic rhythmic syncopations, which are offset by more subdued, nostalgic passages. Fresh and exuberant, it reveals a certain naiveté, both compositionally and emotionally, and the influence of Prokofiev weighs heavily. . . . And yet, from the moment I first heard it, I was struck by both the authenticity of its expression and the strength of its unmistakable personality. . . .”

In four movements, the Serenade for Small Orchestra appeared the year after the symphony, and bears the following opus number. That it is the work of the same composer is unmistakable from the first phrase, although it is, on the whole, a more relaxed, somewhat less driven work. Each movement is associated with familiar lines from the poetry of Walt Whitman, although—as is typical of composers with strong personal styles—the result is far more Kurka than Whitman. This work was also first recorded—a year or two after the symphony—by Robert Whitney and the Louisville Orchestra. Although it always sounded a little lame in their rather scrappy performance, the Serenade sounds fresh and bright in this new recording.

The latest work on the recording, composed the year following the Serenade, is Julius Caesar, subtitled, “Symphonic Epilogue after Shakespeare.” Once again, only by the greatest stretch of imagination might one infer a connection with either Caesar or Shakespeare—but Kurka is everywhere apparent, notwithstanding an especially strong whiff of Prokofiev. The piece is notable, however, for a stronger sense of drama than one notes in the previous works, and a less obviously American flavor. It is also structured quite tightly, so that its nine-minute duration passes by disappointingly quickly.

Featuring little-known music of distinguished merit, meticulously performed and superbly recorded, this recording meets my Want List criteria, as one of the most rewarding releases of the past twelve months. I recommend it strongly and without hesitation to all enthusiasts of mid-20th-century American orchestral music—I’m tempted to offer a money-back guarantee!

--Walter Simmons, FANFARE