The Pavel Haas Quartet is yet another exceptional young ensemble from the Czech Republic, and this debut recording is a major statement. They are coached by Milan Škampa, violist of the Smetana Quartet, and their performance of Janácek's "Intimate Letters" reveals their mentor's influence in details such as the quick tempo for the finale. Otherwise this is very much an individual performance of a work that seems able to absorb just about anything interpretively that you might care to throw at it.


In this case, we hear an unusually wide range of tempo contrasts, but also extreme care in making transitions from one section to the next. The frantic outburst in the middle of the second movement offers a particularly telling example, and the collective virtuosity required to phrase with such unanimity is really astonishing. In short, this is yet another first-rate performance of this glorious work, one of the pinnacles of the quartet literature. It also makes the ideal coupling with the Second String Quartet of Pavel Haas.


Haas is best known today for his brief Study for Strings, written in the Terezín concentration camp and first performed under Karel Ancerl and his orchestra of Jewish musicians. A pupil of Janácek, and the one composer often said to most resemble him in style, Haas died at Auschwitz in 1944. The Second Quartet's subtitle, "From the Monkey Mountains", refers to a popular Czech resort area and highlights the music's sources of inspiration: nature, folk music, and many of the same sights and sounds that Janácek evokes in his music (chamber or otherwise).


One unusual feature of this quartet is the inclusion of percussion in the finale ("Wild Night"). It works splendidly, though the piece also can be played without it. The only serious competition for this music comes from the Kocian Quartet on Praga, a disc containing all three Haas quartets, and good though that performance is, this one is even better, if only slightly so. Part of the reason stems from the perfectly balanced ensemble and beautifully smooth string sonority, a specialty of the best Czech quartets from the Smetana to the Panocha, Prazák, and Talich Quartets. This quality allows the players to really dig into the music without ever making an ugly sound (except when the music asks for one).


For example, that nasty explosion just before the end of "Intimate Letters", or the grinding sonorities of "Coach, Coachman, and Horse" in the Haas quartet, really stand out, much more so than in performances where a generalized timbral harshness is mistaken for intensity of expression. Kudos also to percussionist Colin Currie, whose trap-set playing meshes ideally with that of the quartet, neither too prominent nor too reticent, giving the Haas finale all of the color and personality that it needs. Great sonics too. A stupendous release! [10/16/2006]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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LISZT Années de pèlerinage , Book III: Les Jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este. Harmonies poétiques et religieuses: Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude; Funérailles. Nuages gris. 4 Little Piano Pieces : No. 2 in A?. Mephisto Waltz No. 1. BEETHOVEN-LISZT Adelaide. BACH-LISZT Fantasy and Fugue, S 463 • Garrick Ohlsson (pn) • BRIDGE 9409 (76:27)


A few months back, I was wowed by a blazing new Liszt recital from Valentina Lisitsa (see Fanfare 37:4). Here, on a solidly engineered disc featuring a pianist of an earlier generation, we get something substantially less dazzling, although in its own way even more impressive. Not that Ohlsson lacks technique: whether in the clarity of the voices in the Bach-Liszt Fugue or of the sprays of notes in Jeux d’eaux , Ohlsson strides through this often transcendentally difficult music with supreme and fully justified confidence. Still—and I mean this as a descriptive, rather than an evaluative, claim—there’s a maturity to the playing that we don’t hear in Lisitsa’s more exuberantly youthful and improvisatory performances.


For the most part (the closing Mephisto Waltz is the primary exception), Ohlsson has chosen from Liszt’s more sober works—and for the most part, his moderate tempos and (where appropriate) his bass-centered sonority give the details of the music a chance to sink in. More importantly, I think, he manages to probe beneath the surface of the music and (miraculously) to do so without sacrificing any of its immediate rhetoric. Thus, for instance, there’s no lack of virtuoso sparkle in Jeux d’eaux ; but Ohlsson is also unusually alert to its subtler emotional shadings, capturing the disarming splashes of nostalgic regret, in particular, as well as anyone. Similarly, while he can crush you with the climaxes of Funérailles , he’s unusually tender in the quieter moments, giving the work a nobility it doesn’t always have in the hands of more consistently extroverted pianists like Horowitz and Barere. In his appropriately enthusiastic review of Ohlsson’s previous Bridge Liszt recording (the Sonata and the Ad Nos Fantasy , 35:2), Patrick Rucker referred to Ohlsson’s “profound wisdom and almost excruciating beauty”—and the same overriding qualities certainly characterize this remarkable Funérailles , too.


Ohlsson also has an enviable sense of architecture. This emerges not only in his treatment of the individual works (there’s consistent impetus to Bénédiction , a work that can easily stall but that here provides an engrossing sense of journey), but also in his design of the program as a whole. I particularly enjoyed the way that Jeux d’eaux , which follows the joyful reading of the Bach-Liszt Fugue, serves as to prepare us for beauties of Bénédiction —as well as the way Nuages gris (played with remarkable finesse) and the second of the Four Little Piano Pieces provide a transition between the grimness of Funérailles and the dash of the Mephisto Waltz.


In sum, music-making that deserves to be savored. I hope that Bridge and Ohlsson have plans for continuing the series.


FANFARE: Peter J. Rabinowitz

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SCHUBERT: Octet in F major

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ETUDES OP.10

The Staatskapelle Dresden unquestionably belongs to the international elite of orchestras. Here, the outstanding wind soloists of this vaunted orchestra, together with the Munich-based pianist Margarita Höhenrieder, perform two special works from the Viennese classical repertoire: Mozart's Quintet for oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano in E flat major, K. 452, and the Quintet in E flat major, Op. 16 by Beethoven. As a very special encore, oboist Bernd Schober has edited the beloved Andante from Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 for wind quintet and piano.

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FRITZ KREISLER

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GRAZYNA BACEWICZ: Bartlomiej Kominek, piano; Radom Chamber Orchestra/Maciej Zoltowski. GRAZYNA BACEWICZ - MUSIC FOR CHAMBER ORCHESTRA: Divertimento forstring orchestra (1965); Piano Quintet No. 1 (trans. for piano and string orchestra)(1952); Concerto for string orchestra (1948).

Miguel del Aguila has for several years now been making quite a name for himself throughout the Americas. He has been a prize-winner of awards such as the Kennedy Centre Friedheim. He was Composer-in-Residence with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. However his music has hardly ever percolated beyond America.

This is not the first CD to contain some of his music but I believe it’s the first to be devoted entirely to him. He has been described as a composer of “turbulent fantasy” and the anonymous booklet notes here comment that in his music there is “captivating interplay, even fertile tension, between Classical formal balance and Romantic excess”. I have to say that this Uruguayan composer is a typical example of cross-over, not though manufactured, but with a real living and genuine language so beloved of those for whom modern music normally takes too much concentration time.

The opening work is infectious and clever. “Charango Capriccioso” is built gradually from a very still and quiet start to a manic climax via repeated and obsessive syncopated rhythmic patterns. It then peters out after massive chords to a thoughtful and forgiving coda. The recording seems a little choked when the music is at its most wild. Perhaps the volume is tricky to adjust at the beginning; nevertheless this piece creates a promising opening impression.

The second work ‘Presto II’ is an enlarged version of the finale of his Second String Quartet which Aguila wrote whilst living in Vienna where the form is considered to be ‘sacrosanct’. Apparently its performance was reviewed as “not serious” by the local press. It is frenetic and spends most of its time in 7/8 time. It finds time to take a bow towards 1920s Jazz. It also contains ‘col legno’ and ‘sul pont’ effects and ends with a shout from the players. Good fun.

I have to describe ‘Life is a dream’ as a heroic failure, despite the fact that it is quite original and at times catchy. The composer has translated a poem by Pedro Calderon del Barca (1600-1681) about the meaning of life. This is narrated, practically twice - incidentally there are two narrators; the female not named - at varying points during the work’s progress. The “reality” is represented on stage but there is a “distant reality ... personified by the first violin who finlly joins the on-stage performers.” There is then a dance - “a dysfunctional jota” - with the evocation of guitars. There’s a flavour of Andalusia and the Phrygian mode present throughout old Spanish music is much in evidence. It is a complex tapestry of a work and one hearing I felt was probably quite adequate. However for the purposes of this review I listened again and, sadly, found it even less revealing.

If you felt, as I did that Aguila is the musical grandson as it were of Astor Piazzolla then ‘Salon Buenos Aires’ will add further ‘confirmation’. The first movement is a Samba, which in addition to the rich instrumental mix adds some (uncredited) disembodied, vocalising, and demonstrates what we are told in the booklet notes that “The three movements comprise a nostalgic musical portrait of 1950s Buenos Aires” which “springs from the composer’s childhood memories”. The middle movement grows from and ends in mist but builds to a powerful climax. This is a ‘Tango to Dream’ transition. Its thickly contrapuntal middle section would have benefited from more air around the players. In fact the recording as a whole is rather too close for comfort at times. This is the longest movement but we move on to an irritating - to this reviewer anyway - ‘Obsessed Milonga’. I should not have been surprised because the notes quote the newspaper the Wiener Zeitung as describing the composer as “of obsessive vitality”. A Milonga is incidentally an earlier Uruguayan tango form. The flute leads off manically with the melody and the other players repeat it in various keys for the next four minutes.

If I have been a little luke-warm so far then all changes with the last work. ‘Clocks’ is for piano quintet and the composer might well have called it ‘A Clock Museum’. This is original, colourful and pleasing. It falls into six sections. The first 'Shelves of Clocks’ sets up a ‘tocking and a ticking’ with the use of a polyphony of very high pizzicatos and harmonics. There are sharp staccato piano notes. In movement two, ‘Midnight Strikes’ there are clangorous, resonant chords. The third is ‘The Old Clock’s tale’ which is romantic and generally slightly ‘Hollywood’ in effect. ‘Sundial 2000BC’ is great fun incorporating some rugged rather primeval vocal work with which we might associate Roman ritual. It features a 3+3+2 dance rhythm. ‘Romance of Swiss Clocks’ makes a fascinating contrast being rather twee and flecked with bon-bons. Finally there is the longest movement, the riotous ‘The Joy of keeping time’ based on various South-American dance rhythms. This ends with the clocks in an empty museum indulging in something near to a musical orgy.

The whole disc is played with great enthusiasm. I’m not mad on the recording quality as mentioned above but the booklet is useful with photos and succinct musical asides.

-- Gary Higginson, MusicWeb International

MUSIC FOR PRINCE NIKOLAUS I ES

Christmas

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Garrick Ohlsson completes his survey of Beethoven's monumental thirty-two sonatas, a project that the great American pianist has been working on for more than a decade. (Volume 3 of this series, won the 2008 Grammy for "Best Instrumental Performance".)

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Fernando Benadon has a rich background as a composer, saxophonist, improvisor, and scholar. He brings this experience to his most recent recording project, delight/delirium, particularly to the final two tracks, Búgi Wúgi and Rhythmensional, both of which engage with the boundaries between improvised and notated music in interesting ways. For Rhythmensional, Benadon recorded an improvised drum solo by acclaimed Cuban jazz drummer and composer, Dafnis Prieto. Benadon then composed a through composed piece to be performed along with the recording of Prieto's solo - essentially turning Prieto's improvisation into fixed media. As a scholar, Benadon has had an enduring interest in the field of "microtimings", which investigates the aspects of time in a performer's performance that go beyond notation, particularly as they relate to different styles. By recording Prieto and then placing his playing at teh foundational level of the piece, in a sense, Benadon has frozen the microtimings in the improvisation while guaranteeing microvariation in the rhythmic realization of the score by the live performers playing along with Prieto's track. Búgi Wúgi consciously goes in the opposite direction, achieving the looseness of ealry jazz piano masters Earl Hines and Bubber Miley adn the post-modern sensibility of contemporary experiemental improvisors like Ethan Iverson and Vijay Iyer by keeping the left hand steady and meticulously notating improvised "sounding" material in the right hand. Cotxes in inspired by the visual imagery of Barcelona, as this unique quartet of sax, vibes, harp, and piano spin out lush, impressionistic harmonies through notated lines that again sound improvised. delight/delirium opens with materal that perhaps could be improvised, but reveals itself clearly as a fully through composed piece when we hear tightly coordinated unisons between clarinet and piano near the on eminute mark. Nevertheless, the work often falls forward like an improvisation, with a sense of structure that is less oriented towards managed development of material than it is towards a journey whose changes of directions are suggested each moment anew. Cosmicomics is the odd man out aesthetically on the recording, not only because it is the only large ensemble work, but also because it inhabits a more conventionally composerly sound world. The work ebbs and flows between the gently pulsating, impressionistic chords of the opening and more explosive moments that bristle with orchestral color. Cosmicomics is a more direct look at Benadon's material palette apart from his engagement with exploring the subtle boundaries between improvised and notated music.

The meteoric ascent of Vassily Primakov's international career has resulted from a series of competition victories, prizes in honor of his artistry, and his award-winning recordings. Winner of First Prize in the Young Concert Artist International Auditions and the Audience Prize of the Gina Bachauer International Competition, Primakov was named the Classical Recording Foundation's "Young Artist of the Year" in 2007. His much-heralded recordings have garnered National Public Radio's "CD of the Year" (Chopin Mazurkas, 2010), American Record Guide's "Best of the Year" (Schubert Impromptus; and Dvorak Piano Concerto, 2011) and BBC Music Magazine's Music Choice. (Chopin Ballades, Brahms Intermezzi, and Scriabin Sonata No. 4, 2010). This new recording presents Primakov's renditions of some of Rachmaninoff's most beloved works, played on a superb Bechstein Concert Grand.

Sándor Végh's credentials as a Mozart conductor need no introduction. His musicianship, sense of style, and interpretive standards were second to none. Just listen to the way he handles the first subject of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik's opening movement, his execution of both forte and piano passages, giving each its particular character while always maintaining the long singing line. All of the performances in this set, drawn from the Salzburg Festival's Mozart Matinee concerts from 1988-93, show these same qualities in virtually every bar. The "little" G minor symphony is particularly noteworthy in this respect, perhaps because of its greater emotional range than the various divertimentos and cassations also included here; but there isn't a note anywhere that isn't vibrantly alive.

The three concertos with Schiff (Nos. 8, 11, and 13) comprise the most substantial works in this set. Although very well performed, Schiff and Végh made commercial recordings of these pieces for Decca that feature even better playing and engineering. In the two vocal numbers, including "Ch'io mi scordi di te?", perhaps the greatest concert aria ever written (and featuring Schiff in the piano solos), mezzo Daphne Evangelatos has a notably rich and pleasant tone, but she sings under the notes and fudges some of her passage-work. So there are small blemishes here and there. The sonics are good but variable over the five-year period in which the performances took place, and the programming may not be optimal from a marketing point of view if you already own the Decca set of piano concertos--but in all other respects this is a set to cherish.

--David Hurwitz, Classics Today.com

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BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas: No. 11 in B?, op. 22; No. 13 in E?, op. 27/1; No. 31 in A?, op. 110 • Garrick Ohlsson (pn) • BRIDGE 9266

(62:21)


BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas: No. 29 in B?, op. 106, “Hammerklavier”; No. 16 in G, op. 31/1 • Garrick Ohlsson (pn) • BRIDGE 9262 (69:15)


A recital of Beethoven piano sonatas that includes early and late music, as is the case with both of these new releases from Garrick Ohlsson’s series of the complete sonatas, should make the listener aware of the degree to which Beethoven evolved as an artist, but also those elements that marked him as a singular genius throughout his career. Some pianists do this by underlining elements in the earlier pieces that point to the unique, even eccentric nature of the composer; highlighting an odd harmony or an exuberant melodic structure, as examples.


Ohlsson takes a different tack. Although Beethoven was well into his so-called first period by the time of the Sonatas Nos. 11, 13, and 16, they are still classically conceived constructions, more so in mold of his teacher Haydn than Mozart, especially in his frequent use of humor. Ohlsson does not downplay the brilliance of this music, or even its boldness, but hears it as a continuation of a tradition rather than anything radical. Beethoven’s music, from the outset of his career, is filled with surprises and wonderful dramatic twists, but in this playing, they are always neatly within the context of the overall logic of the music. It is an equally good prescription for playing Mozart and Haydn.


The Piano Sonata No. 31 is full of extraordinary imagination, but is familiar enough to our ears to be considered the most accessible of the late sonatas, especially because of its magnificent neobaroque counterpoint writing. And the “Hammerklavier” is simply sui generis as a work of art. So somehow tying this music to earlier Beethoven isn’t really necessary, and Ohlsson plays them for their own sake. As has been noted in previous reviews, his tempos are on the broad side, which, in the case of both these late sonatas accentuates the grandiloquence of the music. This approach makes for an especially rewarding rendition of No. 31, which can sound rushed in less-mature hands.


The tempo question gets a bit sticky in the case of the “Hammerklavier.” Ohlsson makes no attempt whatever to play the first movement at the composer’s supposed metronome marking, but few do. Many have questioned the veracity of the marking, which seems ridiculously fast. A few pianists, notably Peter Serkin, can bring it off, with exhilarating results, but it is hard to deny that the more measured tempo of Ohlsson ultimately gives us a more musical and sensible interpretation. But for the full measure of what Ohlsson contributes to an immense and storied recorded legacy, one needs only to turn to his superb rendition of the hulking slow movement to this work. It is one challenge to gather up the furious notes of the outer movements of this behemoth, but in some ways even more daunting to hold together the oceanic center, which Ohlsson does with supreme grace and intelligence. It reflects everything else he plays. I can only echo previous Fanfare commentary from Boyd Pomeroy and Jerry Dubins to say that despite the multitude of excellent choices already available in this music, great artistry like this is always welcome.


FANFARE: Peter Burwasser