Classical Music

Classical Music

Anders Koppel: String Quartets - Mezzo Saxophone Quintet

Distinctly Russian, unabashedly Romantic and full-bodied, yet intellectually devised and highly disciplined, Medtner' compositions for violin and piano encompass music of rare beauty and power, gratifying for both performer and audience. Violin Sonata No.

BRAHMS Viola Sonatas: op. 78 (trans. Csaba Erdélyi); op. 120/1; op. 120/2 • Roberto Diaz (va); Jeremy Denk (pn) • NAXOS 8.570827 (70:55)


To twist an old saw two ways: Familiarity breeds contempt of the unfamiliar; familiarity breeds comfort. The familiar G-Major piano and violin sonata was transcribed by contemporary violist Csaba Erdélyi for piano and viola, and was transposed to D in keeping with Brahms’s transposition to D for his piano and cello version of this sonata. Erdélyi reasoned that if it works for violin and for cello, then why not in between—for viola. To my ears, this music thus altered by Erdélyi flattens its appeal, ironically by adding a sharp. The problem is the lowered-by-a-fourth pitch, which relegates too much of the piano sound to the “bass-ment,” especially in the Adagio. The viola sonorities are also dulled. The conclusion of the Adagio suffers most where the beauty of the rising and falling piano figure is sharply diminished by the key shift down to B? from the original E?. Here, Erdélyi sharpens the pain, fittingly by deleting a flat. I have not heard Brahms’s cello version, and I might not like that either. ArkivMusic does not list Brahms’s cello transcription separately, but I did find a few cellists listed who have recorded it.


The clarinet is the focal instrument in Brahms’s last four chamber works: the A-Minor Trio (op. 114), the B-Minor Quintet (op. 115), and the two op. 120 sonatas. Clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld was the dedicatee of these four pieces. Brahms recognized that the viola could substitute for the clarinet in the two sonatas, therefore he published the sonatas for clarinet or viola. The clarinet version seems to have been rooted in tradition, but the viola version has recently taken a firm hold, especially with the growth of recorded music. Currently, ArkivMusic lists about 60 clarinet versions and close to 40 viola versions.


Now I confess my secret conversion. After growing up with the clarinet versions and, without ever listening, disdaining the viola versions, when I first heard the viola versions a few years ago, I became a convert (my “con-version”). The viola sound in these sonatas is much more satisfying to me than that of the clarinet, although I love both versions. With that prejudice on the table (or on the page, or on the screen), the opus 120 performances by these two artists are excellent in every respect. As to phrasing, dynamics, tone coloring, tempos—whatever qualities I can muster—these are performances that belong in everyone’s collection.


Jeremy Denk is a pianist of growing reputation, having appeared as soloist with several major orchestras throughout the world. Roberto Diaz is a noted violist. Formerly principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he is now president and CEO of the Curtis Institute of Music. Their contribution to the Brahms opus 120 sonatas is most welcome.


FANFARE: Burton Rothleder

Together with Casella, Malipiero and Respighi, Pizzetti was one of the leading composers of the generation of Italian composers born around 1880.

Feldman's canvas contains sparse, isolated tones and commentary in an environment of heightened concern. (Concern negates the idea that Feldman's music embodies an existential void.) Concern creates tension, energized by the composer's sense of responsibility, and desire. The music sounds familiar at times, where a motif occurs and is not forgotten, but returns in another place in another guise. Or multiple motifs (each instrument's personal statement) are reassembled into something resembling something else, or only itself. Even Feldman's repetition is never exact, as there are slight shifts in weight, shade, density, intensity. And when, eventually, the music ends, it just ends, for no need, or reason, with no explanation, no answers.

Classical Music

Classical Music

A 2017 Critics' Choice Winner at American Record Guide!

Evgeny Kissin (b. 1971) made his debut with the Ulyanovsk Symphony Orchestra when he was only eleven years old. The next year, he performed his first solo piano recital in Moscow. When he recorded the two Chopin piano concertos with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Moscow in 1984, his fame exploded. Each and every piano masterwork is included in this set, as Kissin was a master of broad-ranging repertoire. Staples by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Stravinsky, Scriabin, and more are all here. This specially priced hardcover box set documents many of Kissin’s extraordinary achievements, as it holds all of Kissin’s recordings for both RCA and Sony Classical.

Classical Music

Fritz Kreisler poured forth a steady stream of transcriptions of popular songs, like The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise, of those that would sometime become popular songs, like Dawes’s Melody, as well as of tunes that entered the public consciousness without ever quite achieving popular status. All these are in addition to his soon-to-become beloved original compositions, like the “Lanner waltzes” Liebesleid, Liebesfreud, and Schön Rosmarin. Nicolas Koeckert and Milana Chernyavska have collected Transcriptions of the Third Kind with Slavic flavoring in an anthology of almost popular (at least, recognizable) favorites by Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, and Dvo?ák. These he plays with a combination of tonal warmth and technical alertness that wins him a place among violinists who play Kreisler’s works, if not quite as Kreisler himself did, at least as convincing in their own way. The number of violinists in this category will, of course, vary from listener to listener. Surely, Elman must belong there, although he sounds nothing like Kreisler, and so does Francescatti, whose dashing style and biting clarity hardly recall Kreisler’s Gemütlichkeit. Yet, since even so aristocratic and individual a violinist as Milstein can fail to make his point in some of these works, it’s clear that a strong personality and redoubtable technique don’t suffice. While Koeckert glories in the rich tonal possibilities of such pieces as Rimsky-Korsakov’s Hymn to the Sun, he never becomes smarmy, taking, for example, a brisk tempo where he might bog down in Dvo?ák’s Humoresque. Hearing Kreisler’s recordings for the first time may offer a jolting surprise to those who had experienced his pieces only in performances by other violinists. (The number of such listeners may be greater than anyone might estimate: I once encountered a recent master’s degree recipient from a well-known music school—in violin performance, no less—who mused about how wonderful it would be if we could actually hear the way Kreisler played his own pieces. O tempora, O mores!) Kreisler’s playing sounds vibrant yet expressive, and, of course, authoritative and convincing. But it’s not sentimental in the popular sense. Even in Ethelbert Nevin’s songs, The Rosary and Mighty lak’ a Rose (both of which he recorded twice, the latter for its first time with Geraldine Farrar in 1915), he never wallowed. He may have addressed his audiences in the vernacular, but he refused to condescend. Koeckert also walks this fine line, although his chosen material doesn’t bring him so close to the abyss. And he sparkles with the required brilliance in pieces like Tchaikovsky’s Humoresque. Whatever composer Kreisler transcribed always emerged from the process sounding a bit like Kreisler, or at least, Viennese, like Kreisler himself (think of his reworking of Paganini’s First Violin Concerto). He infused some of this personal element into his piano parts, which, like Heifetz’s, give the distinct, if not distracting, impression of being well crafted. And Milana Chernyavska plays them that way. These pieces would be hard to come by, at least in one place, outside RCA’s 10-CD Kreisler collection, 19:4. All the more, then, do they deserve an enthusiastic welcome in Koeckert’s idiomatic and ingratiating collection, in reverberant yet revealing recorded sound that Kreisler himself could only have envied. Recommended.

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Naxos' Takako Nishizaki Plays Suzuki Evergreens albums feature acclaimed violinist Takako Nishizaki who, as a child, studied with her father, Shinji, and with Shinichi Suzuki himself.

Gaubert: Works for Flute, Vol. 2

Naxos' Takako Nishizaki Plays Suzuki Evergreens albums feature acclaimed violinist Takako Nishizaki who, as a child, studied with her father, Shinji, and with Shinichi Suzuki himself.

Perhaps it's the passage of time, or it's simply the New Zealand String Quartet's embracing, unselfconscious style and illuminating technique, but the atonal sounds of Alban Berg's String Quartet Op. 3 sure seem a lot closer to late-19th century romanticism than they did 40 or so years ago when listeners in my generation first paid attention to Berg's music. And since the work was written almost 100 years ago, that's as it should be, as is the fact that it's now much easier to get past the larger and still-challenging sonic picture to appreciate the inner textural and motivic details.

Of course, our ability to really hear and follow what's going on depends on the performance--and these four musicians may be the best on disc (surpassing the Leipzig and Pražák quartets) in all-important matters of linear clarity, dynamic shading, and sustaining the developmental tension throughout Op. 3's two long, difficult movements. In the Lyric Suite, ensemble unanimity and precision in the increasingly fast odd-numbered movements is critical, and the New Zealanders not only accomplish this but also never forget the intrinsic drama and emotional intensity that haunts this music, especially impressive in the Allegro misterioso and Adagio appassionato movements at the heart of the work.

Indeed, as you listen to these works afresh, you not only marvel at the individual players' virtuosity, but you also have to appreciate that the relatively warm yet pleasingly "edgy" quality to the sound and the oneness of spirit in the interpretations come from the highest-order functioning of the well-integrated collective parts of a mature, vital body--that is, a string quartet that's been together a long time, each member sharing life and breath in the music they make together. This is one reason we listen to the great string quartets--and besides the chance to hear Berg's fascinating and formidable scores again, that's the reason you shouldn't miss this extraordinary recording.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Includes song(s) by Heitor Villa-Lobos. Ensemble: Mobius. Soloists: Lorna McGhee, Alison Nicholls.

A few months before his death in February 2014 conducted by the then 83 year old world famous conductor Lorin Maazel at the Munich Philharmonic, the famous Verdi Requiem. He presided over there " his" orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic Choir and soloists class : Anja Harteros (soprano), Daniela Barcellona (mezzo- soprano), Wookyung Kim (tenor) and Georg Zeppenfeld (bass). The moving concert was recorded on three nights and this may be his last recording of the great conductors will now appear on Sony Classical. The press was then full of praise were " all desires and expectations (fulfilled) that can be put to this work. " (Süddeutsche Zeitung). And the evening paper Munich spoke of a " forceful and convincing " interpretation.

KURTAG / LIGETI / BERIO / SCRIABIN / LUTOSLAWSKI: Piano 4-Ha

REVIEW:

Çedille’s collection of German violin sonatas opens with Johann Schop’s brief  Noblemen , a set of “divisions” influenced, according to the notes, by the English style. It offers Rachel Barton Pine an opportunity for engaging in the kind of brilliant rapid passagework that characterizes pieces of this kind. Throughout the program, Pine plays with a sound that falls a bit on the nasal, pinched side of the spectrum, yet without the timbral (or technical) mannerisms in which earlier period instrumentalists with similar timbral predilections used to indulge. The repertoire provides for a kind of collegiality in which the Trio revels in this varied program, and the engineers have balanced the performers in an ambiance that’s just reverberant enough to enhance the sound of their ensemble. Strongly recommended for its exuberant, virtuosic music-making, elegant yet without a trace of slickness and serious without a trace of ponderousness. 

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Classical Music

While filled with Rossini's distinctive musical hallmarks and notable for some wonderful duets, Sigismondo was one of his very few failures in the genre, for which blame is usually laid at the feet of librettist Giuseppe Foppa. Today, however, we can appreciate how this tale of an abused wife who retains her love for her deranged husband pushes the boundaries of the grand narrative tradition info a more searching psychological drama. An emphasis on madness and guilt and coloratura expressions of finer feeling results in a fascinating meeting of convention with experiment, Rossini's subsequent re-use of his music for Sigismondo in later hit operas being ample evidence of its intrinsic quality.

Vaughan Williams' Piano Concerto is a wonderful, wholly characteristic work. The fact that it ends softly probably accounts for its lack of popularity in concert, but it's been very lucky on disc. Almost all of the available versions are very good, and this one is no exception. Ashley Wass offers a scintillating account of the opening Toccata, alternately brilliant and delicate, a lovely and lyrical Romanza, and an aptly gutsy fugue and finale. Having James Judd on the podium virtually guarantees sharply focused, idiomatic accompaniments. He's one of Naxos' most reliable and interpretively characterful conductors.

The couplings are also quite appealing. The complete Wasps suite is another excellent work that you'll probably never hear in concert, at least outside of England, and more's the pity. Judd delivers a flavorsome performance. His tempo for the overture is particularly well-judged, not as slow as Boult's but not as slick and swift as some prefer. Rather, he finds a sturdy liveliness of pace and gruff good humor that comes across as quintessentially English. The Folk Song Suite and Running Set march are charming and never seem to lose their tuneful freshness, while the entire program is very well played by the RLPO. Very good sonics too. A treat for RVW fans.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Etienne Cutajar is a star of the future and an extraordinarily gifted horn player. This CD presents music for horn with piano, with harp and solo. Included are two world premiere recordings: The Fantasie Sonata by Charles Camilleri (who attended the recording sessions and was most delighted with the performance!) and Jean-Michel Damase's "Aspects".

Recorded in Seabreeze Park, Rochester, New York.
Contains 13 tracks.