A great introduction to Shchedrin's piano music.

Two of Rodion Shchedrin's works are entitled Concerto cantabile and Concerto sotto voce. These two epithets - sotto voce and cantabile - can be applied to much of his output. He produced bright, brilliant pieces (like the justly famous Carmen-Suite ballet), or works full of daring, rough folk humor (like the popular Concerto for Orchestra Naughty Limericks). Still, the core of Shchedrin's music is dark-hued, philosophic, often religious, always thoughtful. The spiritual closeness to Bach is evident, and not only in the abundance of old-fashioned polyphony. Probably the most successful of the Soviet composers that emerged in the Fifties under the shadow of Shostakovich, Shchedrin is the one with his face turned to the past. Not technically: he knows and uses all the atonal - polytonal - dodecaphonic - aleatoric - you name it - brushes. His music rarely grips you from the first measure: it requires submergence and listening. But when you are in - you are in. And you can be sure that the experience won't leave you with disappointing emptiness: those simple, sparse, seemingly tuneless constructs are genuine, deep music. It is strange. It is Art.
 
More and more of Shchedrin's music is recorded in the West, but these are mostly concertos and choral works of the latest years. The more welcome is then the all-Shchedrin piano recital of pieces from his first creative period, presented so sympathetically by Marina Lomazov.
 
I can't say that I completely understand the logic of the Piano Sonata of 1962. The second and third movements hold very naturally together - the second is a dim, deep abyss, the third a devilish toccata, burning like black fire. Preceding these two goes a much lighter Allegro da Sonata, like an echo of Petrushka's Shrovetide Fair. It is attached, but does not seem to belong.
 
The ten preludes from The Polyphonic Notebook (1972, the latest composition on this disc) are very interesting and rewarding. I wish all 25 were recorded, but even the present torso is a wonderful sequence, full of delicacy and balance. This is one of Shchedrin's Bachianas. The texture is sparse - listen to the lower voices!
 
The earliest composition - Poem of 1954 - could be a page from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. The Humoresque, similarly, may evoke Prokofiev in his more angular self. Yet its voice is not derivative, and the piece is funny and memorable. A la Albéniz is a cold-smoke tango, with enough big pauses for glances, yes and nos, and other decisions. Together, these three miniatures show how multi-faced Shchedrin's muse can be.
 
The four pieces arranged from The Hump-backed Horse ballet bring to the front another big love of the composer: the Russian folk culture. The music is very sincere and innocent, which suits well the fairytale subject of the ballet.
 
Finally comes my favorite: Two Polyphonic Pieces. The Invention is hypnotic. As it is often with Shchedrin, you cannot pinpoint exactly where the “musical experience” is coming from. It's like plain pieces of mosaic summing up into a picture. Basso Ostinato is another virtuosic toccata, a veritable tour de force, completely enthralling. There are torrents of energy, like armies clashing in the night, order and chaos in search of a resolution.
 
Marina Lomazov is a perfect performer for this music. She never "overcooks" it; everything that needs to be dry stays dry. Yet there is all the required energy, and maybe even more. Lomazov plays with ultimate precision, but the result is not mechanical: it is human, personal and soulful, even in the most abstract constructs. There is this "transparent virtuosity" that does not expose itself glamorously, but works for the good of the music. And she does wonders with the rhythm. I wish she considered recording Prokofiev's Sonatas.
 
The recording quality is very satisfactory. The liner-notes are not especially generous. Still there is enough information about the works, the composer and the performer. This disc gives a good overview of Shchedrin's directions in his earlier years, and the selections from the Polyphonic Notebook are a real teaser. It is a multi-character program, recital-like, with changing moods and styles, not a unified album. It is a great introduction to Shchedrin's piano music. It is also a great introduction to a very fine pianist, Marina Lomazov.
 
-- Oleg Ledeniov, MusicWeb International

Myron Silberstein's career as a concert pianist, accompanist, teacher, and composer has spanned nearly twenty years. First coming to prominence in 1991 upon winning the Giornate Musicali International Piano Competition in Sperlonga, Italy, Mr. Silberstein's full-length European debut followed in 1992. His 1993 recital at Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall attracted the attention of Connoisseur Society Records, for which he recorded works by Franck, Bloch, and Giannini in 1994. This recording was named to Fanfare Magazine's "Want List" of 1996 and was cited by critic Peter J. Rabinowitz as the best debut recording of the year. On his new release, Myron Silberstein has chosen to record the works of one of the most important composers of the twentieth century- Vincent Persichetti.

PERSICHETTI String Quartets: Nos. 1–4 • Lydian Str Qrt • CENTAUR 2833 (76:44)


The creative legacy of Vincent Persichetti (1915–1987) comprises a large and extremely varied body of work, much of it still barely known to even the musically sophisticated public. Among his less frequently heard works are his four string quartets, which span the period 1939–1972. Fairly evenly spaced throughout his productive life, they represent most facets of his enormous compositional range. However, not represented by the string quartets is his most ingratiating vein: the lively, diatonic, largely consonant sub-style found in his most popular works, many of those composed during the 1950s for wind ensemble and for piano solo. The aspects of his style represented by these string quartets are found in their most austere manifestations. Therefore, though most are masterful works, not to be overlooked by anyone with a serious interest in this extremely important but currently under-rated composer, they are definitely not the music one would select as an enticement for the general listener.


The String Quartet No. 1 dates from 1939, when Persichetti was still seeking a distinctive creative voice of his own. Many of his works from this period, such as the Piano Sonata No. 2, Sonata for Violin Solo, and the Sonata for Two Pianos, are quite dissonant harmonically and attenuated tonally—especially as viewed within the context of American music at that time—but without a depth of expression commensurate with the severity of the language. For me this is not a winning combination, and I find these pieces, including the String Quartet No. 1, to be among the composer’s less successful efforts. Two of the quartet’s four relatively short movements—the two faster ones—display a mercurial energy that is somewhat engaging. But the other two movements—almost Schoenbergian in their willful angularity—offer little appeal.


The String Quartet No. 2 is probably the easiest to approach, as its materials are largely modal and diatonic, although it is not by any means a romp. Composed in 1944, it may be viewed in the context of such contemporaneous pieces as the Piano Sonata No. 3 and the Symphony No. 3. These compositions are overtly “American-sounding” in their materials, and strongly influenced by devices and principles found in the music of Roy Harris—self-directed (autogenetic) formal designs rather than classical models, and much use of parallelism (organum). In addition to its generally lighter tone, the quartet includes some curious reminiscences from Beethoven, most obviously the Grosse Fuga . (Quotations—from his own works as well as those of others—form one of many cryptic aspects of Persichetti’s creative personality.)


The 1950s were Persichetti’s most fertile decade, and the period when his own distinctive compositional voice emerged most clearly. The 40-odd pieces from this decade may be readily divided into two sub-categories: those that are highly accessible, often intended to appeal to younger musicians, and those that are quite challenging. String Quartet No. 3, composed in 1959, falls into this latter group, along with the Concerto for Piano Four Hands, Symphony No. 5, Piano Sonata No. 10, and Piano Quintet. (This Third Quartet even makes some explicit reference to the Fifth Symphony.) All five are multisectional works, each integrated into one movement based on a single theme usually introduced at the outset. These works—though often largely atonal and dense with significant substance—achieve a masterful fluidity and lucidity of contrapuntal motivic development that can capture a listener’s interest on first hearing, and sustain it through deeper study and analysis. In fact, these five works are arguably Persichetti’s greatest compositions, although among them, the Quartet No. 3 is probably the most austere and difficult to penetrate, owing to its 12-tone theme, its often-glassy sonorities, and the abstraction of the medium. But it is a brilliant work—one that rewards attentive and repeated listening; it is probably my own favorite among Persichetti’s string quartets.


The Quartet No. 4 dates from 1972, when Persichetti was seeking to embrace a number of the newer compositional devices appearing in the works of younger composers, and integrate them into his vast musical language. These pieces elevate such elements as gesture and texture to the status of musical ideas, subject to their own intensive development, while avoiding discernible tonality except in the most isolated—although often quite structurally significant—moments. This was also a time when Persichetti was preoccupied with his series of Parables , 25 pieces that he defined enigmatically as “non-programmatic musical essays about a single germinal idea. They convey a meaning indirectly by the use of comparison or analogies.” Most of the Parables are short studies written for monophonic instruments, but some are larger works for fuller forces. And some of these bear other designations, their inclusion among the Parables indicated by subtitle. For example, Persichetti’s sole opera, The Sibyl , is subtitled, “Parable XX.” Similarly, the String Quartet No. 4, completed the same year as the frequently played Parable IX for band, is subtitled, “Parable X.” In a sense, this work is a conceptual expansion of the previous quartet, relying less completely on linear contrapuntal development, while embracing texture and gesture as primary elements, as noted above, often exhibiting contrapuntal relationships of their own. Though its rarefied, ethereal sonorities, fragmentary textures, and lack of perceptible tonality may seem somewhat forbidding upon initial acquaintance, Persichetti usually maintains a discernible metrical pulse that functions as an internal anchor, while the ongoing developmental processes remain lucid and coherent.


To its credit, Centaur does not bill this new release as “First Recordings.” Presumably, it is aware that 30 years ago Persichetti’s four string quartets were issued on a two-LP set that featured the New Art String Quartet, then in residence at Arizona State University. This was a beautifully performed and handsomely packaged and annotated set, produced by composer David Cohen (who had been a student of Persichetti) and was available only from Arizona State directly. Unfortunately, that set probably found its way into only a handful of collections—I’ve never met anyone who even knew of it! I’ve often thought that those recordings ought to be reissued on CD, what with the broader means of dissemination available today via the Internet. Perhaps this new Centaur release preempts the need for such a reissue. There is no question but that the Lydian String Quartet plays with considerably more polish, precision, and confidence, and the quality of recording is significantly superior as well. However, in an ideal world, I’d still like to see the Arizona set reissued, simply as another—and quite respectable—take on the music. Perhaps of lesser importance to most listeners, Cohen’s program notes were more astute than are those by the Lydian’s first-violinist Daniel Stepner; and there is an excellent photo of the composer gracing the Arizona jacket, while Centaur offers no photo of Persichetti.


FANFARE: Walter Simmons

This new release is a rousing program of patriotic works for piano by John Philip Sousa, James Hewitt, Charles Grob, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and more. Kirsten Johnson was born in America, but has lived in the United Kingdom since 1994. While she is now a dual-national, she remains very proud of her American heritage and roots. Recording this album was a very important task for her, and one that she did not take lightly. A multi-instrumentalist, she began on piano and recorder, then added clarinet, organ, and harpsichord to her arsenal. A mentor once told her, “You’re a musician first and a pianist second,” a mantra by which she has lived out her professional career.

Classical Music

Includes chorale(s) for org by Johann Pachelbel. Soloist: Joseph Payne.
Includes work(s) for org by Johann Pachelbel. Soloist: Joseph Payne.

Includes work(s) for org by Johann Pachelbel. Soloist: Joseph Payne.

Here's an attractive and stunningly played program of saxophone quartet music, ranging from baroque transcriptions to modern shades of blues. Proceeding in chronological order, the Renaissance Suite serves up three late-16th century vocal works by Aichinger, Palestrina, and Le Jeune, arranged to bracing effect by William Schmidt. Similarly, Fred Henke manages to map Scarlatti's keyboard terrain in terms of saxophone geography. Roger Greenberg's arrangement of Bach's famous D minor Toccata and Fugue, however, barely hints at the music's gushing, improvisatory fervor. By contrast, the sensuous, massed cello writing in Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 lends itself well to four saxophones (actually five: the original wordless soprano part is assumed by the great saxophonist and pedagogue Harvey Pittel).


Jean Rivier's Grave et presto and Theodore Stern's three-movement Quartet are well-crafted, conservative works that typify mid-20th century neo-classic tonality. Charles H. Ruggiero's Three Blues for Saxophone Quartet use the time-honored 12-bar blues form as a jumping off point for whimsical invention. The gorgeous sound does ample justice to the Orion Quartet's superb musicianship and rich tonal palette. Classical saxophone connoisseurs will surely want to acquire this disc.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Parisian composer F.J. Naderman wrote some of the most beautiful harp music of the first half of the 19th Century. Based in the Netherlands, Lucia Wisse loves this music, and it shows in these committed, passionate performances. Lucia Wisse began studying harp with Margot Flipse-Broeders at the age of 6. After Margot’s death, Lucia inherited her harp because she was her most promising pupil at the time. Lucia followed with lessons with Helga Terlouw-van Renesse, Edward Witsenburg, and in Brussels with Susanna Mildonian. She studied at the conservatory in Utrecht with Emily Boedijn. She followed master classes with big names and won prizes at various competitions. As a soloist she has performed with orchestras at home and abroad.

My Soul’s Repose is a collection of choral works from the twentieth century (except for the Faure) sung beautifully by the Orpheus Chamber Singers. Featured composers include Stephen Paulus, Rene Clausen, Franz Biehl, Eric Whitacre, and more. The Orpheus Chamber Singers is a professional chamber choir of 25 mixed voices in Dallas, Texas. Artistic Director Donald Krehbiel’s reputation for producing stellar performances of a wide variety of choral repertoire is unmatched in North Texas. Orpheus Chamber Singers has offered exceptional choral music experience to audiences for sixteen years, performing repertoire from across the centuries and around the world. As a pillar of the Dallas arts community, Orpheus is committed to the success of Dallas’ expanded Arts District and also brings performances to Plano, Richardson, Allen and beyond.

This album features some of the greatest romantic works for viola of the 19th Century. These works are far too often overlooked. Deubner and Fauchet turn in fully committed, romantic performances.

THÉRACHE Missa Comment peult avoir joye. Missa Fortuna desperate : excerpts . Missa O vos omnes : excerpts . Gaude Maria. Verbum bonum. JOSQUIN DES PREZ Comment peult avoir joye. ISAAC Missa Comment peult avoir joye —excerpt • Peter Urquhart, dir; Capella Alamire; Alamire Consort • CENTAUR 3282 (50:39 Text and Translation)


Pierrequin de Thérache (c.1470–1528) spent his career at the court of Lorraine in Nancy from 1492, serving from 1500 to 1527 as master of the choirboys. One motet heard here, Verbum bonum , is his most well-known work, not least because Mouton used it as the cantus firmus of a Mass. Peter Urquhart’s plan to present more of his work embraces an entire Mass, excerpts from two more Masses, a second motet, and related works by two contemporaries. The Josquin chanson provides the cantus firmus for the main work on this program, and Isaac’s Mass (of which we hear only a single Agnus Dei) is also based on Josquin’s chanson. All that might have been used to fill up the disc would be a sample of Mouton’s Mass, mentioned in the notes.


I knew just where to find the only previous recording of Thérache’s music in my collection, for the estimable Dominique Vellard recorded a disc for the K617 label devoted to the chapel of the dukes of Lorraine ( Fanfare 19:6). That disc included the entire Missa O vos omnes (on a motet by Loyset Compere) and the same motet Verbum bonum. Pascal Desaux, who wrote the notes and provided the research for that disc, estimated Thérache’s birth a little earlier, at c.1460. The connection between the court of Lorraine and the cathedral of Cambrai, where the unique manuscript of the Mass is found (a source as well for works of Josquin des Prez), is the brothers Loyset and Pierrequin de Thérache. They spent their early days in Cambrai, but Loyset eventually became music copyist at the cathedral, while his brother went off to Lorraine. Little wonder that the latter’s Mass found its way into the Cambrai manuscript. That Mass is heard here with the shorter pieces inserted to break up the sequence of movements (without separating the Kyrie-Gloria pair), exemplifying the familiar style of the Josquin era. The performance is of high quality, sung by a homogeneous vocal ensemble of fine tonal sheen and precise execution.


This disc deserves notice for the obscurity of the composer and the excellence of the performances, which should not have been neglected when it was issued over a year ago. The capella consists of nine singers, the consort five players. The Josquin and Isaac fillers, the only tracks that combine vocal and instrumental, are intelligent supplements to the main collection. Get acquainted with one more unfamiliar composer.


FANFARE: J. F. Weber

The Kentucky Baroque Trumpets formed in 2004 after Don Johnson was inspired at the Historic Brass Society Festival. The band performs a wide-ranging repertoire on both baroque and modern trumpets, keeping it's music accessible to a variety of audiences. This release captures the essence of great music before 1700, including composers such as Jean Baptiste Lully and Giovanni Battista Ferrini.

HUMMEL Piano Sonata No. 3 in f. Fantasy after Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. MOZART Fantasy in c, K 475. Piano Sonata in F, K 332. MENDELSSOHN Andante with Variations • Daria Gloukhova (pn) • CENTAUR 3080 (55:54)


As a critic, you tend to notice that some labels produce consistently dull and uninteresting releases while others, for whatever reason, are consistently interesting and stimulating. Happily, Centaur is one of the latter companies. Nearly every Centaur release I’ve received for review is fascinating in one way or another, and some of them have replaced other longstanding reference recordings on my shelves.


If this disc doesn’t supplant any other in my collection, it is only because I have no other music by Hummel. Daria Gloukhova is a pretty young woman, 24 years old, and apparently so dedicated to Hummel that she has his family crest, name, and dates of birth and death tattooed on her left arm. I must admit that kind of scares me, but her playing is so absolutely mesmerizing that I forgive her whatever tattoos she chooses to inflict on herself, now or in the future. Go for it, girl! Whatever makes you play like this, I’m all for it!


She is similar to historically informed performers in that she plays in a straightforward rhythmic style, with no deviations for rubato. She differs from them in that she plays a modern piano, yet with such a tightly knit, cohesive style that you listen to her, mesmerized, from start to finish. We all know Hummel as a great pedagogue, like Carl Czerny, but are perhaps less familiar with him as a composer. This sonata and fantasy make a strong case to reconsider his worth; this is interesting music, half in the style of Mozart and half in the style of Beethoven, yet not really sounding like either. One wonders if someone would be charitable enough to finance a recording of Gloukhova playing some of his eight piano concertos, or perhaps his piano quartet and quintet. Gloukhova brings the same combination of warm tone, springy rhythm, and exceptional musical cohesiveness to Mozart’s Fantasy K 475 and Sonata in F. I’ve never heard Mozart played with such a combination of headlong excitement and dark, brooding colors. Gloukhova will completely change your perceptions, and expectations, of Mozart. Even the “lightweight” Sonata in F, played with delicious élan by Ronald Brautigam on BIS, sounds darker, moodier, more smoldering here in Gloukhova’s interpretation. This is a young woman who curries no favor with the modern tendency toward emotional detachment in her playing—she seems incapable of playing anything without going at it full bore. Her technique is absolutely dazzling, yet though, especially in the allegros, she seems to gobble up notes like Pac-Man, technique is not an end in itself but always, for her, a means to expressing the exultation or feeling she encounters in the music.


Hummel’s fantasy on Mozart’s Figaro is exceptionally imaginative, breaking up the components of “Non più andrai” into fragments in the introduction and then, after statement of the theme, running through virtuosic changes and variants in a most imaginative way, including a switch to minor for the bridge and a relaxation of tempo for further variants. The return to strict tempo does not mean a return to major, however, as Hummel keeps moving in and out of minor keys as well as numerous key changes. Gloukhova balances all this like an army of angels dancing on the head of a pin, her playing extraordinarily neat and, in this piece, playful as well.


Mendelssohn’s Andante with Variations receives a warm, glowing reading of its opening statement, then her by-now familiar condensation of pulse and smoldering, flowing legato in the variations. It should be reiterated that, for all her forward momentum, Gloukhova never plays anything in a shallow manner, which for me is the mark of a true artist. I can only hope that she goes far in her career; I’ll certainly be looking for her name on future releases.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZARTHORN QUINTET K 407; PIANO QUARTET K 478; CLARINET QUINTET K 581 WILLARD ZIRK - HORN; DAVID FOSTER - VIOLA; DADY MEHTA - PIANO;KIMBERLY COLE LUEVANO - CLARINET;ARIANNA STRING QUARTET: JOHN MCGROSSO, DAVID GILLHAM - VIOLINS;JOANNA MENDOZA, VIOLA; KURT BALDWIN - CELLO MOZART: CHAMBER MUSICQUINTET FOR HORN AND STRINGS IN E FLAT MAJOR, K 407QUARTET FOR PIANO AND STRINGS IN G MINOR, K 478;QUINTET FOR CLARINET AND STRINGS IN A MAJOR, K 581