TCHAIKOVSKY: The Seasons (excerpts) / RACHMANINOV: Preludes

Few pianists have had the courage to tackle Ives' "Concord" Sonata in public. Easley Blackwood made it his signature piece. Blackwood earned high praise for his concert performances of Ives' "Concord" Sonata, a set of transcendentalist meditations named for Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcott family and Thoreau, all of whom lived in Concord, Mass. Critic Max Harrison of The London Times declared Blackwood's performance of the piece "the finest account I have ever heard."

Chicago Symphony Orchestra flutist Richard Graef, a Blackwood colleague in the Grammy Award-winning Chicago Pro Musica chamber music ensemble, performs in the sonata's "Thoreau" movement.

Copland's Piano Sonata, long overshadowed by his populist works, represents his most profound and personal thoughts. A surprisingly lively middle movement explores fast rhythms in irregular, rapidly changing meters. "I never would have thought of those rhythms if I had not been familiar with jazz," Copland remarked.

SOLER: Keyboard Sonatas / Fandango, Vol. 1

Includes work(s) by various composers, Henry Thacker Burleigh, Henry Holden Huss. Soloists: Rachel Barton Pine, Matthew Hagle.

This excellent program features a pair of extremely tuneful, attractive, and unknown works for clarinet, piano, and strings by two contemporaries of Brahms. Walter Rabl (1873-1940) stopped composing in the early 1900s to devote himself to teaching, and his Clarinet Quartet of 1896 reveals a youthful composer full of promise. Sure the use of sonata form in the first movement is textbook-schematic, but the tunes are first rate (the exotic minor-key second subject is really special). The second-movement Adagio similarly shows a composer with a wider range of expression than you might at first expect, and the entire piece is extremely well-written for the four players (clarinet, violin, cello, and piano). It's quite a find.


Josef Labor (1842-1924) belongs to an older generation, and his quintet (he adds a viola to the above distribution of forces) adds a touch of Spohr's chromaticism to its basically Brahmsian cast. Actually, although the notes as usual use Brahms as their point of reference, he was by no means the model that we make of him today simply because most writers aren't interested in what people actually played and heard at the time in question (the same observation applies to Wagner). Rabl recalls Dvorák as much as Brahms, and Labor, as just mentioned, doesn't sound especially Brahmsian at all, despite the fact that the finale is a set of variations, much as in Brahms' own Clarinet Quintet. The nice thing about this piece is that despite the potential for chromatic sludge, it really does contain attractive thematic material, and the concluding variations, so often disappointing when the music seems to demand a more vigorous, less sectionalized finale, are particularly appealing.


The performances by the Orion Ensemble are extremely fine. When it comes to sheer limpidity of timbre, clarinetist Kathryne Pirtle isn't quite on the level of, say, Martin Fröst, but she plays very well and blends quite beautifully with her colleagues. Balances in mixed ensembles such as this, particularly with a piano involved, always are a bit tricky, but not here. Everything falls naturally into place, and the interpretations are unfailingly lively and stylish. The engineering is drop-dead fabulous, as natural and lifelike as you will find anywhere. If you love good Romantic chamber music, then you will surely find this release to be just about as good as it gets.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

An unexpected treasure! The first track of this hugely enjoyable survey of the piano music of Mexican composer Manuel M. Ponce (as he is described in Cedille?s presentation: the M is for Maria) is one of those deliciously ?lazy? numbers that haunts the imagination long after it has been listened to; the rendition here of the first of the Canciones mexicanas , Estrellita , also reveals the total dedication of Jorge Federico Osorio.


Ponce (1882?1948) is not a composer to come my way too often, and, if I am honest, not a composer that I would actively seek out. Yet the music recorded here is captivating: a mix of local color and rhythm (not least from Cuba) with something of the salon and an awareness of European models. I suppose Chopin is in there somewhere (well, he is!), an influence that sits very easily with the ?popular? cut of most of the music here, which is disarmingly inventive, wholly unpretentious, and which offers listening that is undemanding and pleasurable, yet varied enough to sustain 75 minutes of playing time. Estudios de concierto revel in technical display, and Osorio plays brilliantly the three pieces that constitute this set, as he does the whole recital, and he clearly loves the music, too, its song and dance, and its heartfelt (and unpredictable) harmonies. This is lovely music, exuberant and intimate, playful and touching.


This isn?t all of Ponce?s piano music, not by any means, for he wrote about 100 works for the instrument (I take this information from Grove ); here, in addition to those works played complete, we are offered four movements from Trozos romanticos and eight mazurkas (of which there are at least 23 examples). All very insouciant, then, and Osorio is the ideal musician to bring this music alive, which he does with a lilt and demonstration that is natural, convincing, and dedicated. Ponce lived in Paris for eight years; the last movement of Suite cubana reminds of Ravel and Debussy without aping either and the two studies dedicated to Artur Rubinstein contrast the slow and intense first one with the nervous and agitated second. The recording quality is first-class: the piano is forward and vivid but without being dry or boxy, and without compromising dynamic variety or color. I am delighted to add this alluring music to my collection, and to share an enthusiastic recommendation with you!


FANFARE: Colin Anderson

Includes work(s) by Frederic Rzewski. Ensemble: Eighth Blackbird. Soloists: Matt Albert, Molly Alicia Barth, Matthew Duvall, Lisa Kaplan, Michael J. Maccaferri, Nicholas Photinos.

This posthumous anthology consisting of selections from 50 years of work by composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932?2004) includes six world premieres?that is to say, it took 50 years for this man?s lifetime output to be recognized. Perhaps that is not so shocking. After all, how easy was it for a black man in the 1950s to obtain a bachelor?s and master?s degree from Manhattan School of Music, and compose his first major work at the age of 22 within the confines of a segregated society? But Perkinson, the namesake of black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875?1912), didn?t consider himself generically a black composer. Whether or not he allowed himself to be typecast as an ethnic artist, Perkinson?s interpretation of white, WASP, and Western musical convention is spiked with vintage blues and jazz. His music is, therefore, in an uncanny and paradoxical way, the reverse of the cultural plundering associated with Gershwin?s and Dvo?ák?s musical appropriations. Consequently, if Perkinson?s music isn?t especially innovative, we shouldn?t be surprised that a victim of discrimination and ghettoization would not choose to further isolate himself by throwing 12-tone rows into the mix. After all, experimentation is the spawn of prosperity, not the privilege of the hardship.


Perkinson?s Sinfonietta No. 1 for strings, composed in 1955, might have been considered, if composed by a young Caucasian, the work of a wunderkind. The precocious piece is an homage to Bach, and throughout his life Perkinson returned to fugal writing as a religious rite of appreciation for the German master. Two years later, Perkinson began to infiltrate into his technique the echoes of his ancestor slaves. Quartet No. 1 , based on ?Calvary? (Negro Spiritual) weaves together the dualism of his segregated world into one lucid harmonious dream.


The next selection on the disc was composed 20 years later. One wonders what happened in the intervening years, though we know that Perkinson had the opportunity to work with Leonard Bernstein, Max Roach, Alvin Ailey, Jerome Robbins, Marvin Gaye, and Harry Belafonte. He also co-founded and conducted the Symphony of the New World. Blue/s Forms for solo violin (1972) is a deep reverie of black experience as seen through the filter of Paganiniesque writing. Sanford Allen plays it with tender feeling. Equally luscious is Lamentations, a black/folk song suite for solo cello, played by Tahirah Whittington.


Just before his death, Perkinson composed the last selection on the disc, Movement for String Trio. It is a profoundly sweet, sad, Barberesque self-requiem for a man who should have been heard, and one hopes will be heard now?though he won?t be here to enjoy the long overdue recognition.


FANFARE: David Wolman

"•The Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra’s superstar clarinetist Anthony McGill join forces for the clarinet quintets of Mozart and Brahms – widely considered the greatest chamber works for clarinet and strings. • Both are mature masterworks inspired by phenomenal clarinetists of their day. • This is McGill’s first commercially released album as featured soloist and his Cedille Records debut. • This is the Pacifica Quartet’s ninth Cedille album."

Maurice Greene (1696-1755), organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; Composer and Organist to the Chapel Royal; Master of the King’s Musick. Maurice Greene, described contemporarily (and he was a near-exact contemporary of Handel) as the leading English-born musician of his generation. And yet, today’s audiences have little experience listening to his music, especially his instrumental works. The truth is, his music is not better than Handel, it’s not as good as Handel, but it sounds like Handel at his most ingratiatingly English. If it’s not as melodically entrancing, it definitely captures the appeal of bright “happy” harmony and ear-catching melody, along with the character of both the gentle, verdant countryside and the stately court ceremony. In short, if you like the orchestral Handel, or the concerto grosso Handel, you’ll definitely enjoy the overtures presented here, in vibrant, clearly detailed sound, stylishly performed by Garry Clarke’s Chicago-based period-instrument ensemble Baroque Band.

This group can play notes with the best baroque bands, but throughout the six Overtures in Seven Parts (strings, plus harpsichord, flute, and oboe) and the two additional overtures (from the opera Phoebe and from Greene’s Ode to St. Cecilia’s Day) these musicians and their director show particular and welcome concern for expressive nuance and articulation that gives the performances a dynamic presence that’s far more satisfying to listeners than renditions that may be “proper” but fall far short of demanding a repeat.

The program’s producers opted to supplement/complement the recital with three selections from Greene’s Lessons for the Harpsichord, performed with his usual panache and absolute stylistic authority by David Schrader. My only suggestion would have been to intersperse the solo harpsichord works among the overtures rather than group them in one block–but having these pieces on the same disc as the orchestral works makes for nice variety as well as giving listeners exposure to another area of Greene’s rarely-heard music. I looked everywhere for information about Schrader’s harpsichord–an instrument whose disposition makes an impressive sound, but also has a certain character that organists and early-music keyboardists know can add a dimension to the music and the performance that goes beyond the mere designation “harpsichord” or “organ”. Whatever its provenance, Schrader’s instrument has a very pleasing, intimate quality, timbrally on the bright side and evenly voiced across registers.

And whatever may have prompted the producers and players on this recording to make a program of Maurice Greene’s instrumental music–the vast majority of the existing CD catalog contains choral works–we baroque music lovers can do no less than celebrate and enjoy the chance to hear–and hear again–these undeservedly obscure solo and orchestral pieces, most of them entirely new to the catalog. Strongly recommended.

– David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Like her previous album for Cedille, which paired concertos by Brahms and Joachim, everything about this release by violinist Rachel Barton Pine is exceptional, from the selection of couplings to the performances themselves. In the first place, it's wonderful to see a program built around concert pieces for violin and orchestra based on Scottish themes, since this permits a new view of an old chestnut and some welcome attention given to worthy but neglected repertoire. The chestnut in question is Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy, a marvelous work seldom played or recorded today, but one that is more substantial in length and in may ways more imaginative in content than the ever-popular Violin Concerto No. 1, with which it is sometimes mated on disc.


For this performance, Barton Pine has consulted Scottish fiddler and folk-music authority Alasdair Fraser for some stylistic pointers on an authentic inflection of the tunes that Bruch borrowed for his work. The result is a tastefully ornamented solo line, most obviously in the slower music (check out the opening of the third-movement Andante sostenuto). This is not, I hasten to add, a case of tarting up the music in a garish or unidiomatic fashion. On the contrary, Barton Pine is acutely sensitive to Bruch's actual text, paying particularly close attention to dynamics and articulation (her soft playing in both the opening adagio and the andante is exquisite). The addition of some melodic turns and grace notes simply enhances the natural expressiveness of the melodies themselves, a quality heightened by Barton Pine's smooth, singing tone.


In rapid passages, her technique is perfectly secure, with multiple stops and octaves always in tune, and her sensitivity to the what is happening in the orchestra is second to none. The charming duet between violin and flute in the scherzo, for example, seldom has sounded better balanced or more effortless. The violinist is helped considerably by the excellent accompaniments provided by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Alexander Platt, which are notably refined and transparent but also offer plenty of the necessary rhythmic energy where called for (and to be honest, Bruch doesn't ask for much--it's mostly a gentle, lyrical piece).


The proceedings take on a bit more earthy vigor in the couplings. Mackenzie's Pibroch Suite is a marvelous and very substantial work (23 minutes) that ought to be better known. It has been recorded before, most recently by Hyperion, in a fine performance that Barton Pine betters by a slim margin, finding a bit more poetry in the opening Rhapsody and digging in for some extra character in the marvelous concluding Dance. McEwen's Scottish Rhapsody "Prince Charlie" evidently is new to CD, and it's equally enjoyable. What a pity that some enterprising violinist doesn't make a live program of some of the excellent short works for violin and orchestra that seem to exist these days only on disc! Sarasate's Airs ecossais is another gem whose technical fireworks Barton Pine handles with aplomb.


Closing out the disc is a Medley of Scots Tunes, selected and arranged for dueling violinists by Barton Pine and Fraser and expertly scored for orchestra by Barton Pine alone. The melodies, as might be expected, are wholly delightful, and the performance absolutely brilliant, bringing the program to a rousing conclusion. All together, you get more than 80 minutes of music on two CDs for the price of one, including a video documentary on how the project came together. I did not watch it, as the quality of the music-making speaks for itself, but others may be more interested in the visual element than I am. In sum, this collaboration between Barton Pine, Fraser, Platt, and the SCO is a triumph on all counts, a model of what a themed release ought to be, and it's all captured in demonstration-quality sound by Cedille's engineers. Without a doubt, this is one of the smartest and most purely lovable releases of the year. [7/16/2005]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon described Haydn’s D major cello concerto as one of the composer’s “weakest compositions”, an “uncomfortable” work, displaying “misjudgments of dramatic timing”, its concluding rondo “staid and melodically short-winded”. Whatever the theoretical, and to some degree subjective basis for that assessment, for most listeners, hearing this concerto will provoke nothing short of pure delight and appreciation for Haydn’s clever and catchy—and often virtuosic—thematic writing, buoyant rhythms, and thoroughly entertaining interplay between soloist and orchestra. There’s a reason why the work is represented on more than 100 recordings in the current CD catalog. And Wendy Warner’s addition to that number is a stellar confirmation of its popularity to audiences and particular appeal to performers.

That same popularity applies to the C major concerto, written in the 1760s, some 20 years earlier than the D major, yet only re-discovered in 1961 and given its modern premiere in Prague a year later. This work features even more brilliant bursts of virtuosic writing for the soloist—and Warner really digs in: you can just picture the flashing bow strokes, the swift, fluid motion of fingers, and a resultant musical enunciation that seems so easily and effortlessly produced, so absolutely natural, and so articulate and artful that you wouldn’t care if the tune were “Twinkle, twinkle little star”, you’d be just as impressed and satisfied. In fact, in view of the grand heap of Haydn cello concerto recordings, Warner’s playing places this one at the very top.

Warner’s impressive command of style and technique also serve to convince us that the “other” concerto on the program—a little-known work by Czech composer, and friend of Mozart, Joseph Myslivecek—is a more than worthy companion to the Haydn pieces; in fact, if you’re not paying very close attention, you won’t notice the transition from the Haydn C major concerto to Myslivecek’s work in the same key—the style and quality of Myslivecek’s composition makes an easy, almost seamless flow from one piece to the next. Combining this work with the two Haydn concertos was a smart bit of programming that, along with the unquestioned virtuoso performances of Wendy Warner, gives this disc an extraordinary value not only for collectors but for those who have yet to acquire a recording of these essential Haydn works. Praise for the orchestra and its conductor Drostan Hall must not go without mention—they are outstanding collaborators whose appropriately styled, energetic playing and remarkably tight ensemble complement every note and expressive utterance from Warner’s Guarneri cello. The sound, from College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, is consistent with Cedille’s highest standard. Don’t miss this.

-- David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartets Nos. 13, 14, 15. SCHNITTKE String Quartet No. 3 • Pacifica Qrt • CEDILLE 145 (2 CDs: 104:28)

With this fourth volume, the Pacifica Quartet brings its survey of Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets to a close. As with the each of the earlier two-disc sets, a bonus is offered in the form of a string quartet by one of Shostakovich’s contemporaries, this time the String Quartet No. 3 by Alfred Schnittke. Previous discmates were Myaskovsky, Prokofiev, and Weinberg.

Between two hospitalizations in 1970, Shostakovich managed to complete his 13th Quartet in August of that year. Alone among the composer’s 15 quartets, this Bb-Minor work is in a single movement and exhibits a palindromic form—ABCBA. Like the 12th Quartet before it, this one, too, is based on a tone row encompassing all 12 semitones of the chromatic scale. Shostakovich’s endgame, however, is to confirm tonality rather than to deny it.

Much of the composer’s music seems to dwell in dark, brooding, baleful places—that’s nothing new—but this 13th Quartet arguably surpasses in mood and atmosphere even the spectral chill and ghoulish humor of his earlier works. It unmasks the face of death, and it’s a visage so hideous to behold that gazing upon it will freeze your eyeballs in their sockets. I can only describe the Pacifica Quartet’s reading of the score by saying it achieves a sub-zero degree of cold that can penetrate and shatter your bones. Never have I heard such a graphic representation in music of the daemon Thanatos, not by the Fitzwilliam, Emerson, St. Petersburg, Brodsky, or Alexander String Quartets. This is scary stuff.

Shostakovich’s next quartet, No. 14 in F# Minor, reverts back to a key more convenient for string players, three sharps, allowing for the use of some open strings, and being a lot easier to finger than the five flats of the previous quartet. The composer began work on the piece in 1972, but took time off for a trip to Ireland and England, where he visited his friend, Benjamin Britten, in Aldeburgh. That delayed completion of the Quartet until the following spring, after Shostakovich had returned to Moscow.

The score is dedicated to Sergei Shirinsky, the original cellist of the Beethoven Quartet, and contains a cryptogram in the third movement on “Seryozha,” a familiar or affectionate form of address for Sergei. However, the pitches—D#-E-D-E-G-A—make no sense unless transliterated into their Cyrillic equivalents. The “E,” for example, represents the Cyrillic letter “ë,” which I’m given to understand is pronounced “yo,” thereby denoting the second syllable in “Seryozha.”

Compared to the 13th Quartet, No. 14 is positively playful. Still, being by Shostakovich, the music does have its bleak and menacing moments, but also one passage in particular in the third movement, beginning at 4:49 in this performance that’s of utterly aching beauty. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the score, but if my ears don’t deceive me, it sounds like the viola playing in double stops for a number of bars, accompanied by gentle pizzicatos in the violins. If I’m right, and it is the viola, then Masumi Per Rostad’s playing at this point is simply breathtaking; which is not to take anything away from Simin Ganatra, Sibbi Bernhardsson, and Brandon Vamos, whose playing throughout this entire series has been nothing but phenomenal.

Shostakovich’s last quartet, No. 15, is clearly a valedictory work in much the same way that Beethoven’s final quartets are. Completed in May 1974, a year and three months before his death, Shostakovich chose for this score what Stephen Harris calls “the mysterious but traditionally morbid key of Eb Minor.” “Morbid” may be one word for it, but with a key signature of six flats most string players would call it by a word or words not to be spoken in polite company. Had Shostakovich lived to write a 16th quartet, one can only wonder if he’d have upped the ante to seven flats with a score in Ab Minor or Cb Major.

In six movements, the 15th Quartet is the composer’s longest, playing for some 36 minutes in the Pacifica’s performance. Moreover, each of the six movements is in the same Eb-Minor key and in one degree or another of Adagio . As quoted by Elizabeth Wilson in Shostakovich: A Life Remembered , the composer himself gave this performance instruction: “Play the first movement so that flies drop dead in mid-air and the audience leaves the hall out of sheer boredom.”

The music obviously speaks of facing death, but it’s not macabre and malignant like the 13th Quartet; rather, it’s mostly melancholy, sorrowful, and resigned, with the occasional defiant outburst. If I singled out violist Rostad for his playing in the 14th Quartet, I have to note first violinist Simin Ganatra’s superb execution of the third-movement cadenza in the 15th Quartet.

Shostakovich’s string quartets have been extremely fortunate from the very beginning to have received quite a few outstanding recordings. A number of them are cited above, but there are earlier ones by the Beethoven and Borodin Quartets that have historical significance, as well as more recent ones by the Sorrel and Mandelring Quartets (the last two of which I’ve not heard). But of those I have heard—and that would include all the others named in this review—I believe I’m prepared to say that this cycle by the Pacifica Quartet is the top contender. Whether you already have one or more Shostakovich quartet cycles in your collection, or you have none, the Pacifica’s is a must-have for anyone of the conviction that these are the most profound musical utterances in the realm of the string quartet since Beethoven.

Disc two closes with a performance of Alfred Schnittke’s String Quartet No. 3, composed in 1983. Seth Brodsky, assistant professor of music and the humanities at the University of Chicago (no connection to the Brodsky Quartet), notes Schnittke’s “anti-classical” or “polystylistic” approach, which “depends on shattering classical norms of balance, purity, and wholeness for a multiplicity of styles.” “Schnittke’s Third Quartet,” Brodsky continues, “shatters all three within its first minute. We hear only broken pieces from other times and other works—first from Orlando de Lassus’s Stabat Mater (later 1500s), then from Beethoven‘s Grosse Fuge (1825), and finally from Shostakovich‘s famous ‘musical signature,’ ‘D-S-C-H,’ first used in his Fifth String Quartet of 1952. Schnittke takes these three musical modules, from disparate traditions traversing half a millennium, and puts them directly after one another, only to have the whole thread snap and fall to the ground.”

As works by Schnittke go—at least among those I can claim to have heard—this Third Quartet is fairly accessible, an impression borne out by its relative popularity. Not counting the present version by the Pacifica Quartet, the work has received six recordings, one of which, with the Borodin Quartet on a Virgin Classics CD, to my surprise, I found on the shelf and dusted off for comparison. Once again, for playing of arresting graphic detail, the Pacifica wins hands-down.

This is a Shostakovich cycle for the ages.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Lera Auerbach’s music has been compared to that of Shostakovich, and with good reason. She remains committed to a fresh use of tonality, without denying herself the full resources of modern technique. The 24 Preludes for cello and piano follow the traditional journey through all the major and minor keys. There are passionate adagios, a sardonic reference to the Magic Flute Overture (Prelude No. 14), waltzes, scherzos, laments, and giddy allegros. The scoring for cello and piano is clever and handled with a keen ear for color and timbre.

Best of all, the performances are sensational. Auerbach is a superb pianist, and she handles her own frequently virtuosic writing with aplomb. Ani Aznavoorian plays a mean cello, both here and in the Cello Sonata. As Auerbach points out in her notes, the two instruments are equal partners in this latter work, a gripping emotional outpouring that concludes with a lament marked “with extreme intensity”. The preceding third movement is a wild toccata that recalls similar moments in Shostakovich’s Eighth quartet and Eighth symphony. Auerbach also makes evocative use of microtones both here and occasionally in the preludes as well. It’s an interesting addition to her expressive arsenal, particularly when they appear in a tonal context.

The program concludes with a brief Postlude for cello and piano, actually a “deconstruction” of the twelfth Prelude. Grim and eerie, it closes the program on a note of mysterious unease. The sonics are gorgeous, with perfect balances and a very realistic perspective. Fans of good contemporary chamber music will want to own this; it repays repeated listening and reveals Auerbach as a true force in today’s music.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com