From the multi-award-winning stage and film composer of Alien 3 and Batman Forever comes a new oratorio. War, terrifying silence, and violent death invite simple statements as well as, hopefully, more complex ones. This work, despite a plethora of interwoven texts, is a direct utterance: a lament, a conjuring of brief images, which rub against each other to evoke not just a surge of emotion but a sense of purgation. The instrumentation and word-setting is not without beauty (especially the Vietnamese flute and snatches of children’s songs); choirs will enjoy performing it. The work is gestural in concept: a cello elegy in the first movement from the splendid Yo-Yo Ma; an unnerving helicopter simulation, a pithy extended scherzo, a diabolic chorus listing Vietnam combat operations, a dose of Mahlerian threnody. Perhaps most effective are two extended solos, setting Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, which freshen up the prevailing monodic feel: that for Maddalena in the first part, where a genuine feel for angular chromatic line surfaces; and that for Panagulias merging into duet in the final movement. Here, and at the close, Goldenthal achieves a dramatic cogency not wholly evident elsewhere. If not Psalmus hungaricus or A Child of Our Time, it’s at least related in spirit. A fine choir, and top-notch wind phrasing.

Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Roderic Dunnett, BBC Music Magazine

The success of Tavener’s The Protecting Veil for cello and strings has inevitably meant that every major recording company feels obliged to have its own version. Sony now makes its bid with Yo-Yo Ma and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, director David Zinman. Ma has been working hard of late to promote his image as an intelligent, sensitive cellist (but listen to how he plays and this seems unnecessary). With Zinman he has won a 1997 Grammy for recordings of new cello concertos by Danielpour, Kirchner and Rouse, so the Tavener seems a natural choice. It’s partnered by Wake Up... and Die, the world premiere recording of a work that is dedicated to Ma and written for solo cello and orchestral cello section. The seven sections of The Protecting Veil challenge performers to capture the repose of Tavener’s mystical style, while retaining a sense of forward momentum without which most listeners will switch off. Though lacking a concerto’s rhetoric, the piece can still benefit from the special tone and sense of propulsion that an experienced soloist will bring to it. This is Ma’s strength; his playing is fuller and slightly more driven than that of the richly poetic Isserlis on Virgin’s benchmark original. Couplings may also be important. With Wallfisch and the RPO come Eternal Memory and Thrinos, two other Tavener cello works, finely played; with Knight and the English Sinfonia, Nyman’s Strong on Oaks. Even so, if your aim is to update your original purpose, Ma looks like a firm favourite.

Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Nicholas Williams, BBC Music Magazine


Since making an immediate impact at its world premiere at the 1987 Proms concerts, John Tavener's The Protecting Veil has gone on to great critical acclaim and popular success. The widespread reception of Tavener's work has been aided in large part by the eloquent advocacy of its first interpreter, Steven Isserlis, whose Virgin recording continues to rack up the sales. Indeed, it is the sensitivity and spiritual intensity of Isserlis's premiere performance and subsequent best-selling recording that has made Tavener's meditative work the most popular cello concerto written in the modern era. Now, with the first recording by a certified international star cellist of the stature of Yo-Yo Ma, the future of The Protecting Veil seems assured.

A work of quiet, at times, ascetic meditation, Tavener's opus rises to moments of transcendent beauty and a spiritual exaltation rarely heard in music of our cynical postmodern age. Redolent of the incense and religious mystery of the British composer's Russian Orthodox faith, The Protecting Veil is cast in a single, broad, 45-minute span, divided into eight sections. The work is a staggering technical as well as interpretive challenge for the soloist, who is called upon to explore a wide yet often subtle range of expression, with barely a bar's rest throughout.

More remote and otherworldly than Isserlis's in the long opening solo, Ma's playing is consistently gentle and inward, his tonal coloring more subdued, as one might expect from an artist who seems most inspired exploring a minute range of quiet expression. Yet Ma's playing is less moving than Isserlis's at the opening, where the British musician's plaintive, febrile solo has an almost human vocal quality. Zinman's accompaniment is more assertive (or less pointedly refined— Rozhdestvensky's finely judged support is terrific), yet echoes Ma's every turn of phrase like a glove. Still, for all his laserlike focus and intensity, Ma's playing here is strangely missing in the spiritual element that is so essential to this contemplative music.

Either it's an editorial lapse or John Tavener has rethought the structure of The Protecting Veil, since the booklet divides the work into seven parts, not the previous eight. (The second section, "The Nativity of the Mother of God," is now enfolded into the eponymous opening section, which in its quarter-hour length now comprises about a third of the entire work.) In the section formerly known as "The Nativity," Isserlis conveys more of Tavener's startlingly inventive writing, suggesting a Middle Eastern bazaar milieu, yet Ma scores in his rather jaunty "Annunciation," which is quite different from Isserlis's. Yo-Yo Ma is a wonderful musician, but here, as at other times I must confess, I find his committed, even strenuous intensity sometimes eclipses the musical essence of the work he is playing. Ma's more spacious conception of the long central solo, "The Lament of the Mother of God at the Cross," seems better judged to me than Isserlis's relatively fleet account—the one aspect of Isserlis's performance that doesn't seem quite right. Yet despite adding nearly two and a half minutes, Ma doesn't find any greater spiritual mystery and sorrow in this section. Most crucially, the opening up at the start of "The Resurrection"—likely the most striking representation of pure spiritual exaltation written by any composer in the last 20 years—doesn't have any of the sense of joyous release, power, or exhilaration of the Virgin performance, sounding merely loud and busy. In the ensuing section of "The Dormition," however, Ma is superbly moving, and his withdrawn, expectant playing is most impressive. Yet it is just that kind of insight that is missing elsewhere in this performance. The final apotheosis is powerful and resonant, but I must confess I expected more from this performance and was disappointed. While there are moments of insight, I don't feel that Yo-Yo Ma is entirely inside of this music as Steven Isserlis so clearly is, evident by the natural eloquence and unique authority of his playing.

Where this new Sony issue does score is in the world premiere recording of Wake Up. . . And Die, commissioned by Sony for its star cellist. Tavener's work is scored for solo cello against an ensemble cello accompaniment. The opening palindromic solo is rather meandering, but at 4:48 a quick upward run by the soloist heralds the emergence of the backing cellos, and from then on the music becomes consistently more interesting. In fact, Wake Up. . . And Die is an inspired work with moments of striking beauty, expertly realized by Ma, and it makes a suitable coupling for its celebrated discmate.

Yo-Yo Ma is never less than interesting, and the many who admire the quiet eloquence of The Protecting Veil will snap this disc up for Wake Up. . . And Die, as they should. Yet in the main work, Steven Isserlis and Rozhdestvensky remain without peer, conveying more of the spirituality and beauty of Tavener's "lyrical icon in sound" than any rival. In fact, listening again to Isserlis's recording, my normally rambunctious West Highland White Terrier was mesmerized, silent, and transfixed by the long, singing line of Isserlis's opening solo. (I don't recommend this as an everyday critical technique, but it certainly was interesting.)

Superb recorded sound. And a special plaudit for the striking cover photos by Annie Liebovitz. The back shot of Ma's cello alone in an ethereal glowing light could not convey more perfectly the mystery and religious solace of the music. Would that all cover art were this apt and inspired.

-- Lawrence A. Johnson, FANFARE [1/1999]

MOZART, ELGAR, GRIEG, BACH TO

The term “modern music” no longer suffices to describe the latest expressions of recent avant-garde composers. Modern music still means the music that came after Debussy and Strauss. It is Stravinsky and Ravel, Hindemith and Falla; it is Bartok, Prokofiev, Britten and Malipiero. Modern music is the breakdown of tonality and traditional harmony and the development of the twelve-tone system by the masters of the Viennese school – Schoenberg, Berg and Webern – and the spreading of this method in every country since the war. Modern music is still Dallapiccola and Petrassi, and the ready listener has little by little grown accustomed to all these expressions – the more recent ones (those relating to the relinquishing of traditional tonality) with somewhat greater difficulty.

But the works of those composers who have come to the fore since Hiroshima seems to cut away violently from this pattern, as difficult as its acceptance had proved to be. So, for them the term “new music” is most appropriate.

The evolution which has led to today’s baffling results is governed by an inner logic. Once the use of the twelve-tone “series” was firmly established, the desire quite naturally arose to extend this serialization process to the other “parameters” of music, that is, to subject its rhythmic, timbral and dynamic aspects to the same laws governing the disposition of the pitch of the notes.

“Structuring” (the organization of musical material) by means of total serialization of parameters was the first step the new music took beyond Webern. This extension of the serialization process to all parameters brought about a heightening of interest and investigation into the qualities and components of sound. The increased concern for this “tone color” and other hitherto unstructured aspects of sound and the diminishing interest in pitch as the primary structural element made it necessary to alter traditional listening habits. Where pitch distribution had been the primary expressive unit, now the other parameters took on equal or greater importance.

The new music, like all other forms of contemporary art, may or may not be liked, but its consistency cannot be questioned. There is an inner logic which has determined the various phases described above and which is already creating others in more and more rapid succession. They must not be taken as gratuitous and unrestrained expressions of individual extravagance.

-- from the liner notes by Massimo Mila

“Rachel” the debut album from American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørenson, showcases the depth and variety of her incredible voice, which leading French daily Le Monde cites as “without a doubt one of the most impressive voices in the opera world.” The album includes key arias and scenes from Verdi, Mozart, Puccini, Dvořák, and Lehár that reflect her stellar career performing on the world’s most prestigious opera stages. Ms. Willis-Sørensen is joined by one of her vocal idols on the famous duet from La Bohème: tenor Jonas Kaufmann, here making his first guest appearance of this kind.

The new album sees this immensely gifted singer, who possesses an impressive vocal and dramatic range, explore a wide swathe of repertoire to showcase her versatility, vocal depth, and artistry. An intimate portrait of the artist at this stage in her career, each piece included on the album was carefully selected by Ms. Willis-Sørensen as she presents a collection of her favorite arias and scenes that she hopes will move the listener as they have moved her. Her dramatic expressivity and vocal virtuosity are both on display in full force, in arias ranging from the album’s centerpiece Verdi scenes, with weighty roles such as Desdemona in Otello, Leonora in Il Trovatore and Violetta in La Traviata, to the ‘Vilja-Lied’ from Lehár’s operetta The Merry Widow and ‘Song to the Moon’ from Dvořák’s Rusalka.

REBELO: VESPER PSALMS & LAMENT

2007 issued double CD anthology of recordings by one the most influential classical composers of the 20th Century commemorating his 70th birthday.

Tracks:
1. GLASS, PHILIP - LIGHTING
2. GLASS, PHILIP - FACADES
3. GLASS, PHILIP - EVENING SONG
4. GLASS, PHILIP - A GENTLEMAN'S HONOR
5. GLASS, PHILIP - HYMN TO THE SUN
6. GLASS, PHILIP - METAMORPHOSIS FOUR
7. GLASS, PHILIP - OPEN THE KINGDOM
8. GLASS, PHILIP - DANCE II
9. GLASS, PHILIP - GLASSPIECE NO. 1
10. GLASS, PHILIP - CHANGING OPINION
11. GLASS, PHILIP - OPENING
12. GLASS, PHILIP - FLOE
13. GLASS, PHILIP - KNEE PLAY
14. GLASS, PHILIP - FUNERAL FO AMENHOTEP
15. GLASS, PHILIP - WICHITA SUTRA VORTEX
16. GLASS, PHILIP - FORGETTING
17. GLASS, PHILIP - DANCE IX
18. GLASS, PHILIP - DAM

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartets: No. 3; No. 14; No. 15. Piano Quintet • Juilliard Str Qrt; Yefim Bronfman (pn) • SONY 79018 (2 CDs: 127:38)


Among the releases celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Juilliard String Quartet (of course, none of the original members remain) is this most welcome set of Shostakovich quartets. Welcome because, despite the Juilliard’s longstanding commitment to 20th-century music in general and their having given the American premiere of the 15th Quartet in 1975 (with two of the current members, cellist Joel Krosnick and violist Samuel Rhodes, participating) in particular, this is apparently their first recording of any Shostakovich quartets. (The performance of the Piano Quintet, however, was recorded in 1999 and originally issued along with Bronfman’s account of Shostakovich’s two piano concertos—see Fanfare 23:4.) Most welcome because the quartet brings its usual penetrating insight and commitment to this music.


Truth be told, their account of the Third Quartet didn’t grab me on first hearing. With the rich, resonant, tonally nuanced sound of the Borodin Quartet foremost in my memory, the Juilliards initially seemed lean and distant, and the way they speed through the score came across as unfocused nervous energy (following a moderately paced Allegretto, slower than most, they take three of the four remaining movements significantly faster than the Borodins). But after several rehearings, I came to appreciate the different interpretive details they bring out—such as the jangly Cubist feel they give the first movement’s quasi-fugue and the excitement they obtain by whipping up the tempo in its concluding pages, or the gypsyish quality that their quick phrasing suggests after reference point 55 in the third movement. They may not dig as deep as the Borodins; instead, theirs is a more measured, varied perspective—for example, though lacking the Borodins’ remarkable tension at dramatic points, such as the expressive passage at 108 in the finale, they redeem themselves by deftly emphasizing the dance tune that appears almost immediately thereafter, as if to soften the blow. My ears also gradually adjusted to the recorded sound, so that I came to realize what at first seemed distant was actually more of a natural concert hall ambience and balance than the beefed up (and effective, but enhanced) engineering afforded the Borodins (EMI).


If the Third Quartet benefited from a bit of familiarity to reveal its irony and edginess, the Juilliard’s 14th and 15th Quartets were immediately engaging and convincing—all the more impressive as these are Shostakovich’s two most enigmatic quartets. The 14th is dedicated to Sergei Shirinsky, cellist of the Beethoven Quartet, and here Joel Krosnick makes the most of his featured role. I once wrote in a review that I wouldn’t argue with Royal S. Brown’s assessment of this quartet as “the least appealing, least original, and least successful of the 15” ( Fanfare 12:1), but the Juilliard interpretation has put this music into a new light for me. They fearlessly attack the score’s dissonances, making it sound more tonally ambiguous—and thus simultaneously more original and mysterious—than has any other ensemble in my experience. In their hands, the opening pages sound like a drunken Beethovenian aborted fugue—high spirited but slightly off-kilter—and even the fragmented finale is played with an intensity that makes it sound more coherent than ever before.


In the 15th Quartet as well, notorious for its six introspective Adagio movements, the Juilliards don’t shy away from the music’s bleakness and occasional harshness. They embrace its stark, transparent textures—the waltz in the second movement (ironically titled “Serenade”) isolates individual lines like exposed nerves, and Rhodes’s viola solo opening the “Nocturne” is not pretty, but painfully necessary. Though separated by 35 years, the mood of the opening pages of the final quartet is remarkably similar to that of the second movement fugue in the Piano Quintet, growing from simple motifs into a contrapuntal web of deep emotion until chant-like themes emerge as temporary balm, offered without exaggeration or pathos. Speaking of the Piano Quintet, Bronfman is an ideal partner—a powerful presence in the Richter mold, who can project tenderness or urgency as called for, and whose attitude is perfectly in sync with the Juilliard’s direct, yet dramatic approach.


In sum, these are distinguished, distinctive performances that interpretively fall in between the robust, sometimes exaggerated Russianness of the Borodin or Sorrel style, and the brisk, almost analytical precision of the Fitzwilliam and Emerson accounts. Is it too early to start thinking about this year’s Want List?


FANFARE: Art Lange

Favorite Chopin, Vol. 2

Schumann: Piano Music

MENDELSSOHN String Quartets: No. 1 in E?, op. 12; No. 2 in a, op. 13 • Juilliard Str Qrt • SONY SK 60579 (55:29)

Can a chamber group have a musical identity that endures despite changes in personnel, the way an orchestra can? On the basis of the CD at hand, I'd have to say so. With the retirement of violinist Robert Mann in 1997 after 51 years (!), the Juilliard String Quartet has now, finally, turned over all its original players. Joel Smirnoff, for 11 years the group's second violinist, has moved confidently into Mann's chair, and Ronald Copes joined the quartet to take Smirnoff's old position. But listening to this excellent new disc of two Mendelssohn works, then to the Juilliard's late 70s recording of a Haydn op. 20 quartet (with the current violist and cellist, Samuel Rhodes and Joel Krosnick) and then to Beethoven's op. 18, no. 1, from a decade before (with an earlier bottom half of the quartet), I hear the same characteristic blend of refinement and soulfulness, the evolution of the lineup notwithstanding. Encountering the reconstituted Juilliard in the flesh was a highlight of last year's concert season for me; chamber music fans clearly have a lot to look forward to.

The E?-Major quartet gets a fairly relaxed reading, though the playing is certainly never slack. There's a natural ebb and flow to tempos in the opening movement and, in the second, a wonderful variety of textures is realized. In the central Allegretto of the movement, the Juilliard achieves a Midsummer Nights Dream sort of fleetness. The Andante is indeed espressivo without becoming overwrought. The swirling tarantellalike finale is presented with an understated virtuosity, before a peaceful closing. The A-Minor work is played with a greater level of emotional intensity. Dynamic contrasts are effective—the Juilliard can turn on a dime—and Smirnoff's leadership in the opening Allegro is both fervent and accurate. We hear flawless balances in the Intermezzo, and beautiful shaping of the simple thematic materials. The quartet is, again, wonderfully light on its feet with the quicksilver middle portion of the movement. For the concluding movement, Smirnoff satisfies in his solo passages with assured, beautifully contoured playing, and the ending, in which Mendelssohn quotes from his song Frage, as he does at the very beginning of the work, is quite moving.

Sony's string sound is warm and sweet, without a touch of stridency. The recording, made at the Giandomenico Studios in Collingswood, New Jersey, is close-up and involving, but still breathes. The packaging is attractive, with photos of the musicians in a parklike setting, and informed, well-written notes that point up the influence of Beethoven on these youthful compositions.

Among recent versions of the Mendelssohn quartets, those from Vienna's Artis Quartet, on Accord, have received high marks in Fanfare. I like them, too: The Artis offers direct, energetic performances, taking consistently faster tempos than the American players. The Juilliard may please a bit more in the slow movements. I'd not want to be without either. Listeners on a budget can consider the three discs of Mendelssohn's music for string quartet from Naxos, performances by the Aurora Quartet (four musicians from the San Francisco Symphony) that received a laudatory notice from John Wiser in Fanfare 18:2. Although their readings of ops. 12 and 13 are thoroughly convincing, they don't, for me, rise to the level of either the Artis or the Juilliard, and the sonics are less pleasing.

The Sony disc is heartily recommended. The Juilliard Quartet is back.

-- Andrew Quint, Fanfare [5-6/1999]

BETTER THINKING MOZART

Also available: Great Moments at Carnegie Hall

A 2-CD set of highlights of legendary live recordings from the RCA and Columbia Archives.

Digitally remastered edition of this album from the acclaimed cellist. This release was remastered using DSD technology. Hear Yo-Yo Ma like you've never heard him before.

Portrait of Vladimir Horowitz

Includes canzone(s) by Hans Leo Hassler. Soloist: Lutz Kirchhof.
Includes fantasia(s) by Alonso de Mudarra. Soloist: Lutz Kirchhof.
Includes galliarde(s) by Anonymous. Soloist: Lutz Kirchhof.
Includes menuet(s) by Charles Mouton. Soloist: Lutz Kirchhof.

This work is a reconstruction of Angelo Poliziano's verse drama of 1480. Paul van Nevel has replaced Poliziano's lost music with arrangements of compositions by Serafino Dall'aquilano, Marco Cara, Bartolomeo Tromboncino and Michele Pesenti.
Includes la favola di orfeo. Ensemble: Huelgas Ensemble. Conductor: Paul Van Nevel. Soloists: Josep Benet, Nancy Long, John Dudley, Marie-Claude Vallin, Philippe Cantor, Daniel Bietenhader, Dirk van Croonenborgh.

This set contains both ADD and DDD recordings.

This collection contains mono and stereo recordings.

Jean-Pierre Rampal Plays Scott Joplin

Includes courante(s) for lute by Robert Ballard. Soloist: Lutz Kirchhof.

Danza Latina

NOCTURNE

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 "Scottish" & Symphony No. 4 "Ita

Beethoven's five sonatas for piano and cello are distributed through his works with unusual symmetry. The first two are quite early, published by the young careerist in 1797 to impress the cello-playing King Frederick Wilhelm II of Prussia, while the third dates from 1808 and is contemporaneous with the 'Pastoral' Symphony. The last two were written in 1815, when his output was slowing prior to his great late period.
Dutch cellist Anner Bylsma approaches these sonatas with characteristic gentility and winsome charm. He plays a modern instrument in a manner informed by early music practices, and is partnered by Jos van Immerseel on a vintage fortepiano, meaning that the performances are scaled back somewhat in volume. Not that Bylsma would be dominating anyhow; romantic heroism is not his game, but he and Immerseel balance each other quite well, reminding one that these pieces are not called cello sonatas on their title pages but rather 'Sonatas for Pianoforte and Violoncello.'