Classical Music

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Classical Music

GADE Piano Trio, op. 42. Piano Trio (1839): first movement. Novelettes, op. 29. Piano Quartet: Scherzo • Trio Parnassus; Thomas Selditz (va) • MDG 303 1665-2 (64: 06)


Gade’s works for piano trio are pragmatic, thorough, technically accomplished, and compact. Their reluctance to sprawl is an advantage as it allows one to concentrate on their salient features, which include romantic ardor, lyric profusion, and a confident sense of projection. The op. 42 Trio in F Major was written between February 1862 and December 1863, and the vibrant playing of Trio Parnassus and the excellent recording allow a full exploration of its Schumannesque elements. Pianist Chia Chou anchors the performance with considerable strength and finesse, while violinist Yamei Yu essays some effective slides. Michael Gross is the excellent cellist. They bring a fine corporate sense of buoyancy and lyricism to the second movement, an Allegro molto vivace. (However, I was able to go back to the first-ever recording of this movement, in a 1917 performance by Albert Sammons, W.H. Squire, and William Murdoch, and there you will find a far greater sense of characterization and intensity.) The Andantino is a rather lovely Lied, rich in legato, and the finale rings with an almost Mendelssohnian panache.


The 1854 Novelettes are possibly as well known as the trio. There are five miniatures in all, and one explicitly quotes Schumann. They’re played with genuine poise, with fine unisons, excellent soliloquies, and a judicious balance. The plangent elements of the Larghetto are as well explored as the more bucolic, folkloric elements of the central Moderato. The discarded finale to the Novelettes in the original 1853 version—Gade revised the work in 1854—is also included, and it’s a fiery and confident affair. The projected four-movement Piano Trio of 1839 never materialized and all that remains is the opening movement, a solid 12-and-a-half-minute affair opening with an Adagio section and moving on to the Allegro con fuoco . Sketches do exist of the inner movements, but nothing remains of the finale. It’s a very strongly programmatic movement, and fortunately Gade’s narrative has survived, a typically romantic one, reprinted in the liner note. But it’s not at all necessary to know this narrative to appreciate the slow, intense introduction and the extroverted Allegro replete with passionate declamation. The Scherzo for a piano quartet (1836) is a youthful, big-boned work strongly reflecting Gade’s absorption of Mendelssohn once again.


I referred earlier to the recording quality, which certainly enhances this traversal of the complete piano trio works materially and so too, obviously, the playing. There is a fine performance of the op. 42 and the Novelettes by the Abegg Trio on Tacet 112, but that is coupled with the Chopin Trio. So if your priority is wholly Gade, then this MDG fits the bill perfectly.


FANFARE: Jonathan Woolf

Classical Music

HOFMANN Octet. Serenade. Sextet • Berolina Ens • MDG 948 18086 (SACD: 78:03)


There are some 20 composers named Hofmann or Hofman or Hoffman or Hoffmann listed in ArkivMusic.com. This one is Heinrich Karl J. Hofmann (one “f,” two “n”s). I find only one other listing of a piece by this composer on ArkivMusic, and nothing in the Fanfare Archive. Hence, this 78-minute program of three substantial chamber works fills a need.


The music is conservatively romantic in style, coming from a composer (1842–1902) who lived through the ages of Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, and early Mahler, seemingly without being touched by any of them. Does that mean Hofmann is not worth remembering? The extensive program notes by Michael Wittmann make a strong case for the composer, noting that music need not be “metaphysical” to be eminently enjoyable and worthy, and that Hofmann “was one of the most frequently performed German composers during his lifetime.” Wittmann goes on to make the almost unbelievable claims that the Symphony, op. 22, of 1874 was “for a time the most frequently performed symphony in the German empire,” and that “the cantata Märchen von der schönen Melusine was performed more than 1,500 times” between 1875 and 1895 in Germany, England, and the U.S.A.


Weber, Spohr, Reinecke, and Bruch are the names that come to mind when listening to Hofmann’s chamber music. It is invariably pleasant, easy-going, lyrical, and melodious without being remarkable. It does not reach out and grab you, but then neither does Beethoven’s Septet, which was one of that composer’s most popular works during his lifetime. As a measure of Hofmann’s standing in the U.S. in the late 19th century, it was the New York Philharmonic Club that commissioned his Serenade for Flute and Strings. The Serenade impresses not so much for its melodic ideas, but for the skill with which Hofmann handles his material. The addition of a double bass to the standard string quartet gives the music an almost symphonic weight. The sonata-form first movement is full of sparkle, the second has an elegiac quality, the scherzo makes its mark with unusual rhythmic patterns, and the energetic finale is imbued with strong dance-like impulses.


Asked to name an octet for the mixed ensemble of strings and winds, most music lovers would have no trouble citing Schubert’s. But beyond his, what else is there? Not counting those that include piano, I can come up with the paltry list of only Spohr, Rheinberger, Hindemith, Sigismund Neukomm, and now Hofmann. (I’ve probably missed an obvious one; perhaps some kind reader will send a letter to the editor.) Hofmann’s Octet is not for quite the same forces as Schubert’s (Hofmann has a flute, Schubert a double bass). Purely by coincidence, I would assume, Hofmann’s Octet opens with a subject that seems almost a clone of Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings. The movement breezes along in a most genial vein, and is followed a bucolic slow movement, a gavotte that will inevitably set faces smiling and feet tapping, and a finale that romps along with Brahmsian vigor.


The 11-member Berlin-based Berolina Ensemble is a first-class group that turns in committed performances full of vitality, dynamic contrast, and color. Hofmann may not be a composer on the order of a Schubert or a Weber, but the Berolinas make such a strong case for him that while listening one cannot but fully enjoy the experience. Excellent sound.


FANFARE: Robert Markow

Classical Music

Classical Music

Our first collaborative project with Klingekunst and the ensemble’s soloist and leader Sieglinde Größinger presents premiere recordings of the earliest Viennese flute concertos, which date from the reign of Empress Maria Theresa. The selected concertos by Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Giuseppe Bonno, Florian Leopold Gassmann, and Matthias Georg Monn, heard here on historical instruments, represent a significant contribution to the artistic recovery of the forgotten Viennese music culture of this epoch, a field that is only beginning to be researched. When Emperor Carl VI died in 1740, his successor Maria Theresa inherited a state budget burdened by heavy deficits. Forced to adopt economy measures, the new empress suspended the operation of the court orchestra and then offered its services to interested parties. However, the artistically marginalized musicians did not accept defeat when these unexpected developments put them in an existentially precarious position. No longer obliged to serve and obey a court aesthetic, they delighted in experimentation with new styles and forms of expression. The revolutionary character of these exciting times very much may be viewed as preparation for the Viennese classical period. Moreover, the flute now became a solo instrument for use in the orchestra and concert performances. Until about 1740 it was only rarely employed and then merely for additional tone color, but now it first enjoyed its share of spotlight.

SAINT-SAËNS Piano Trios: in F, Op. 18; in e, Op. 92 • Vienna Pn Tr • MDG 9421763 (SACD: 64:07)


These are two of Saint-Saëns’s most engaging chamber works. Still an early effort, completed by the 29-year-old composer in 1864, the F-Major Trio seems to take its cue from Mendelssohn, though Saint-Saëns spins a somewhat lighter, airier confection, with a first movement that has a distinctively dance-like character. The second movement, said to be based on a folk tune from the Auvergne region of France, begins in a furtive, almost foreboding tone, claimed by note author Elisabeth Deckers to recall “similarly pallid movements by Schumann.” Mendelssohn makes a comeback in the brief Scherzo, while the last movement turns to Schumann once again, with a fugato episode reminiscent of the last movement of Schumann’s Piano Quintet.


Saint-Saëns was by no means old when he composed his Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor in 1892, but almost 30 years had passed since its older sibling had been born. Saint-Saëns was surely one of music’s more outré personalities. They say that as we grow older we regret the things we didn’t do more than the things we did. Saint-Saëns, I think, was a man who had no regrets. Writing to a friend about his new piano trio, he said, “I am working quietly away at a trio which I hope will drive to despair all those unlucky enough to hear it. I shall need the whole summer to perpetrate this atrocity; one must have a little fun somehow.”


The “atrocity” turned out to be a work in five movements, which exhibits a greater complexity and sophistication than are found in the earlier trio. Two fairly substantial outer movements frame three relatively short inner ones. The dark and somewhat brooding first movement is thought to have been inspired by Tchaikovsky’s A-Minor Trio—the two composers had been friends since the 1870s—while the second and fourth movements are characteristic of Schubert’s German and Viennese dances. Schumann makes another appearance in the brief Andante , while the last movement, unusual for Saint-Saëns, seems to nod in the direction of Brahms.


The catalog is not exactly overfull with recordings of these two trios, but the ones listed are very, very good. In 29:3, I reviewed and strongly recommended the Trio Wanderer’s version for Harmonia Mundi, and a subsequent release by the Florestan Trio, reviewed in 30:1, made a choice between the two difficult. With the arrival of this latest version by the Vienna Piano Trio, choice becomes even more difficult, for not only do the performances by this estimable ensemble match the excellent playing of the Wanderer and Florestan Trios, but MDG offers an extra incentive with its outstanding SACD recording. All else being equal, I’d have to say that if presented with these three recordings side by side, this new one with the Vienna Piano Trio is the one I’d choose.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

t was billed as a battle of titans. Franz Liszt had invited the leading pianists of his time to compose variations on Bellini's "March of the Huguenots." The international keyboard stars Chopin, Thalberg, Pixis, Czerny, and Herz had agreed to compete, but they never actually performed together in Princess Beliojoso's Paris salon. Claudius Tanski has now recreated this event with his master pupils. Unlike Liszt 175 years ago, he collaborates on equal terms with this circle of brilliant young stars emulating their immortal models with sovereignty and grandeur.

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

BUCHBINDER PLAYS BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTOS (Blu-ray Disc Version)


Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos 1–5 Rudolf Buchbinder, piano and conductor Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Recorded live at the Goldener Saal der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna on 5–8 May 2011

Bonus: - Buchbinder's Beethoven – A musical conversation between Rudolf Buchbinder and Joachim Kaiser

Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles (bonus): English, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Korean Running time: 186 mins (concertos) + 29 mins (bonus)

No. of Discs: 1 (BD 50)

In the late 1960s Leonard Bernstein caused a stir in London’s Royal Albert Hall when he played Ravel’s G major Piano Concerto whilst at the same time conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. We were not used to this sort of thing at the time. So that Bernstein could have maximum contact with his players, he turned the piano such that he was in amongst them, facing the orchestra with his back to the audience. He also removed the piano lid; in these ways his gestures could be seen clearly by the orchestral players and he could also maintain eye contact, an essential part of the conductor’s art. I remember a pretty stunning and immaculate performance on that occasion, but since then, most soloists have preferred to concentrate on their own music and leave the orchestra under the direction of someone else.
 
Buchbinder is one of the exceptions, preferring to direct the orchestra himself from the keyboard. He retains the normal soloist’s position with his profile to the audience and he has the piano lid raised. Considering this, the ensemble is remarkably good and mostly very tight, but there are times when there are imprecisions in togetherness, not only in rhythm but also in homogeneity of tone and colour. Sometimes I can hear less string sound at the start of a note, for example. So although there are great advantages in having one musician ‘in charge’ of a performance, I am largely in favour of using the services of a conductor as well as a soloist, especially in recorded music when a performance will be heard repeatedly and imprecise ensemble can become irritating.
 
That said, these performances are deeply felt and as the talk on the disc confirms, very thoroughly researched by Buchbinder who compares many different editions of the works he is performing.
 
I particularly liked the finales where there is real rhythmic vitality, combined in the third and fifth concertos with excitement and drama. The first concerto finale has wonderful wit and humour, but the opening of the fourth concerto finale is marred by poor ensemble caused by lack of a conductor. A really clear gesture must be given here to ensure precision and clarity.
 
Some movements are a little slow and heavy by modern standards. For example in the first movement of Concerto No.1, Stephen Kovacevich and Colin Davis on CD give a much lighter and more deft performance. Buchbinder chooses to play the first of Beethoven’s three cadenzas, slightly adapted towards the end, and he plays it superbly. Most players, including Kovacevich, play the longer and more dramatic third cadenza, whilst Argerich plays the second. It would be interesting to know why Buchbinder chose the first cadenza. The enclosed booklet talks about Buchbinder’s career and gives us some information about his study of the many editions that have appeared since Beethoven’s time, but more details of the results of his studies would have been welcome. However, the bonus interview on the disc with Joachim Kaiser is very interesting and stimulating.
 
The first movement of Concerto No.3 is hardly allegro con brio and the first movement of Concerto No.4, marked to be played allegro moderato is much more moderato than allegro. A little more rhythmic life would not come amiss in these movements. In Concerto No.4 Buchbinder gradually moves the pace forwards as the music progresses, but for me this is one of the less successful movements. Although the sound is often beautiful, the performance is sometimes sluggish and there are tiny imperfections in ensemble and intonation. In the second movement, Buchbinder’s orchestra plays the opening theme really staccato, as marked in the two editions of Beethoven’s score that I own, to telling effect.
 
The high point of these performances for me is the Emperor, which I enjoyed immensely. It really takes fire, has great rhythmic energy and verve in the outer movements, and Buchbinder produces some beautiful tone and the subtlest of rubato in the slower sections. Magnificent playing all round with some incisive and vigorous playing.
 
It must have been a great occasion to hear these performances live and this is a fine record of the event. The playing is highly efficient and thoughtful with some wonderful, poetic moments, but somehow the performances do not achieve the greatest heights.
 
On a lighter note, I would not recommend buying this disc as an introduction to classical music for youngsters. There are many close-ups of the players, but sometimes they look so middle-aged, often miserable and grey. I wish the Vienna Philharmonic would cheer up a bit. As a music teacher, I think this could put a beginner off classical music for life! For children, maybe it is better to turn off the picture and just listen to some fine music making. But for the rest of us, this is a disc well worth seeing as well as hearing.
 
-- Geoffrey Molyneux, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Some compositions are so good that we wish we could have two of the same. The early Piano Trio in B major op. 8 by Johannes Brahms is one such work and one of music history’s greatest cases of good fortune: it has been transmitted in two versions. As we know, the overly self-critical Brahms otherwise completely destroyed all the early versions, sketches, and drafts of his works. The Vienna Piano Trio’s new Brahms edition in superior Super Audio sound on MDG opens with the late version of this work from the composer’s youth and then confronts it with his mature op. 87.

The piano part is of extraordinary difficulty – which is hardly surprising since the gifted pianist wrote it around the time of his Piano Concerto No. 2. The haunting scherzo in particular has what it takes and is a rewarding task for Stefan Mendl, who with his Viennese colleagues celebrates the spirit world on a venerable “Manfred Bürki” Steinway D.

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players. Antonín Dvorák’s American String Quartet is a prime contender for a top slot on the all-time hit list of classical masterpieces – and rightly so, as this new recording by the Leipzig String Quartet demonstrates. Here it is heard along with the same composer’s magnificent String Quintet, and the outstanding bassist Alois Posch joins forces with the Leipzig musicians on what promises to be a favorite album for all chamber music fans. And such a program calls for the finest SACD sound.

An enjoyable and enterprising organ release.

Spanning the greater part of the 19th century, Franz Lachner could count Schubert’s Viennese circle as friends, met Beethoven, and as a conductor he performed and promoted Wagner’s operas. His connection with the organ would have begun as a child, with music lessons from his father Anton, who was church organist in Rain am Lech. It was however late in life that he embarked on his trilogy of organ sonatas, modelling these pieces to a certain extent on the examples of Felix Mendelssohn, whose six organ sonatas Op.65 had been published in 1845.

Rudolf Innig however, in his own detailed and informative booklet notes, points out the differences between Lachner and Mendelssohn. The stately ‘predilection for elegiac-melancholy movements in moderated tempos’ recalling more often the piano music of Schubert, even though the harmonic language is in no way as experimental or far-reaching. There is a deal of enharmonic shifting and modulatory exploration, but rarely with a huge ‘wow’ factor or element of surprise. More ambitious in structure than the Sonata Op.175 is the Sonata Op.176, whose second and third movements are fused to form a ‘Fantasia with Fugue’, something which would be adopted by Lachner’s pupil Joseph Rheinberger. There are some dramatic gestures and a more searching air of chromaticism in this Fantasia, but there remains a reluctance to part with that sustained, rather religious feel, and one feels that perhaps a little more bravura might be welcome by this point. The music is beautifully crafted however, and one can easily revel in this lambent glow of warmly expressive organ sounds.

This is a good point at which to describe the organ used for this recording. Built in 1911, the instrument preserves the ideal organ sound as sought from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th, reflecting that warmly romantic sound for which Eberhard Friedrich Walcker (1794-1872) received just recognition. This is combined with a large sixteen stop swell, which gives just enough added weight and expressive potential to approach something akin to French symphonic models. Franz Lachner’s organ works demand considerable dynamic variety, and this instrument is a very good choice – not bowling the listener over with sonic fireworks, but carrying the composer’s detailed intentions with elegance and appropriate seriousness.

The third Sonata Op.177 is the shortest of the three, but by no means the lightest in musical content. A funereal opening Adagio sets the tone, and with each movement having a thematic or character relationship, this sonata has quite an organic feel, leading up to a final Andante whose ten variations lead up to the closest one gets to an apotheosis in these works. The additional variety of preludes and fugues on this CD are technically interesting and highly effective, without being works which are likely to shake your world to its foundations.

This is an enjoyable disc of works otherwise unavailable on recordings as far as I have been able to discover. MDG’s recording is very good indeed as usual, and while there might be those who might ask a little more lightness of touch from Rudolf Innig it would be hard to point to many places where the player has the opportunity for such frivolity. There is a nice added touch in the final repeat performance of the Fugue in E minor, but this time without the electric motor – the bellows being blown by hand. Speaking from experience, this is a harder job than it might sound: one has to be prepared for the extra ‘oomph’ required by denser passages, and it is a precarious balance sometimes between glorious teamwork and the whole thing collapsing like a dying set of bagpipes – something from which, for that evening at least, neither the player, the pumper or the audience are likely ever to recover.

Franz Lachner is a composer whose star is might possibly be on the rise - comparatively, with a recent release of his Requiem also to be found in the current catalogues. On the strength of this release there is certainly a good deal of pleasant music to be found from this direction, albeit not music which is likely to alter our perceptions of 19th century creativity to any huge extent.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Rubin Goldmark, the nephew of the famous Karl Goldmark, numbers among the countless composers from the last third of the nineteenth century whose names are no longer remembered today. While his uncle continues to enjoy a place in the concert world, Rubin Goldmark has not been granted this fate. Following the completion of his studies the twenty-one-year-old Goldmark assumed a teaching post at Jeannette Meyers Thurber’s National Conservatory of Music in Manhattan, where Dvorák, his earlier teacher, was the director. His melodically so very rewarding Piano Trio is to be situated in the direct Brahms succession and even that of Schumann. Viennese, Bohemian, and lively popular tones are clearly evident in this composition, which nonetheless freely develops without strictly adhering to potential models. In the Piano Trio composed by Felix Woyrsch in 1919 we repeatedly encounter elements offering glimpses of the twentieth century. However, this composition essentially remains a motivically concentrated, contrapuntally rich piece of work born of the spirit of the turn of the century. Woyrsch’s Four Songs op. 2 number among the songs for voice and piano with an obbligato solo instrument that have been sufficiently known in music history at the latest since Franz Schubert.