Piano Concertos - Mozart, W.A. / Beethoven, L. Van / Tchaiko

ROSSINI, G. / BEETHOVEN, L. van / MOZART, W.A. / BIZET, G.:

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, "Choral"

BEETHOVEN: KLAVIERKONZERTE 1-4

BEETHOVEN, L. van: Die grossten Werke (Greatest Works)

BEETHOVEN, L. van: Romance No. 1 / MOZART, W.A.: Ave verum c

Beethoven composed nine symphonies, each so striking individually that it is best not to attempt a general description. With them, and in them, he endows orchestral music with new dimensions and qualities, and correspondingly new demands on the audience’s habitual ways of listening. There is reflection and sensation, a dominant constructive spirit, atmosphere and emotionality – all intertwined with a perspective that was radically new at the time.

Nagano clearly knows what he wants to achieve in this repertoire, and the best of his work will no doubt hold interest and fascination among Beethoven lovers.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

Opera Choruses - NICOLAI, O. / WAGNER, R. / BEETHOVEN, L. va

On the occasion of conductor Georges Prêtre's 100th birthday in August, the label SWRmusic will release an 8CD box-set containing a wonderful collection of representative orchestral works by eleven composers, thus showing the fruitful collaboration between the French conductor and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSO). Most of the recordings are being released for the first time, with the exception of the works by Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss, which have previously been released by this label.

The Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1945 and has developed into one of Germany’s most important musical ambassadors over the following seven decades. World-renowned conductors, as well as some of the world’s greatest soloists, have been guests of the Stuttgart RSO, including Carlos Kleiber, Ferenc Fricsay, Karl Böhm, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Hans Knappertsbusch, Sir Georg Solti, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Kurt Sanderling, Gary Bertini, and Herbert Blomstedt, as well as Maria Callas, Mstislaw Rostropowitsch, Maurizio Pollini, Yehudi Menuhin, Alfred Brendel, Hélène Grimaud, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Elina Garanca, Rolando Villazon, Hilary Hahn, Sol Gabetta, and Lang Lang, to name just a few.

This new album of Beethoven’s late String Quartets by the prestigious Tetzlaff Quartett offers a fitting tribute to Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year. These monumental works which are given fresh interpretations by the quartet are among the greatest achievements in the history of Western art music written by a composer who had already largely lost contact with the world. When writing his final String Quartets (Op. 127–135) Beethoven was quickly becoming increasingly ill and understood that he would never be able to recover fully. Beethoven had just completed his 9th Symphony when he received a commission to write String Quartets. What resulted was a string of totally unique masterpieces highly individual in their language and unusual in their form. String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132 is a work in 5 movements with movements Nos. 1, 3, and 5 being the central bearers of meaning. The quartet’s hub and pivot is the middle part of the work, Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lidischen Tonart (Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode). The biographical context of this title is obvious and specifically refers to the severe bout of illness experienced by Beethoven from the middle of April to the beginning of May 1825. The Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 is a work that has fascinated listeners for two centuries. Originally, String Quartet in B flat major, Op. 130 and Grosse Fuge Op. 133 were part of one and same work. Beethoven had written the Fuge as the final movement for the String Quartet, but his publisher urged him to write a new ending. For this album, Tetzlaff Quartett performs the String Quartet Op. 130 together with the Grosse Fuge, thus bringing the work back to its original form.

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REVIEW:

The immaculate execution prevailing throughout the Tetzlaff Quartett’s earlier Schubert/Haydn release for Ondine similarly yields top tier Beethoven. Before describing the performances, I should address one characteristic (or quirk, if you will) that crosses that tenuous line between painstaking calibration and micromanagement. It concerns an occasional yet slightly irritating tendency to telegraph Beethoven’s sforzandos with tiny gratuitous dynamic swells. At the same time, the ensemble applies infinite degrees of vibrato with the utmost sophistication and specificity, imparting a stinging intensity to unison passages and delicate contrapuntal interplay in Op. 132’s first movement.

They take the lilting second movement’s “ma non tanto” directive to heart, where minimum vibrato and disembodied tonal qualities transform the Trio section into a folk dance. Here, however, I like the Hagen Quartett’s faster pace and suaver ensemble, plus their unusual rendering of the“L’istesso tempo” over the four alla breve bars, where they create a jolting “four against three” effect. The Tetzlaffs conventionally apply the “L’istesso tempo” to the individual notes in these bars, so that the quarter note equals the quarter note throughout. The great central Adagio is on the cool side, yet the slow and sustained writing couldn’t be more beautifully controlled and modulated. But the fourth movement’s rigid dotted rhythms and arch diminuendos reduce the composer’s joy to cuteness.

Every detail of timbre and bowing seems worked out to the proverbial nines in Op. 130’s first movement, and befits the music’s mercurial nature. At first I felt the second movement’s main theme to be held back and self-aware, yet it provides a contrasting context for the faster and more boisterously rendered second theme to flourish. In the third movement the musicians give distinct points of view to the sustained and detached passages as if they were characters in a drama instead of abstract contrapuntal lines. They glibly toss off the fourth movement, as if embarrassed to dance, yet bring a heartfelt, singing sensibility to the swifter than usual Cavatina.

Instead of Beethoven’s revised finale, the Tetzlaff Quartett presents the composer’s original ending, namely the Grosse Fuge. On one hand, their clipped style and bottomless palette of low-level dynamics transforms the gnarly, combative string writing into something quite lithe, transparent, shimmering, and (dare I say it) fun. Not unlike turning a warty frog into a handsome prince! If you want a Grosse Fuge that scratches and screeches and spews venom on each sforzando hammer blow, look elsewhere. However one ultimately responds to these interpretations, the fact is that Christian Tetzlaff and his colleagues realize their conceptions without the least hindrance, hesitation, or compromise.

– ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Lars Vogt continues his cycle of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos with the Royal Northern Sinfonia with this second volume in the series. The recording also includes Beethoven’s Triple Concerto where Lars Vogt is joined together with his longtime artistic partners Christian Tetzlaff and Tanja Tetzlaff. Vogt’s recordings of chamber music with the trio have gathered astonishing reviews and recording awards, including Grammy nomination for the recording of Brahms Piano Trios (ODE 1271-2D). Beethoven’s Triple Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Cello in C major, Op. 56 is a work radiant with joy, described by many as a concerto for piano trio and orchestra. The work, completed in 1803, has standed unrivaled in its genre. Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 is a slightly earlier work and it was premiered together with his Symphony No. 2 in a concert in 1804. It has been noted that the theme in the first movement of the concerto is possibly a quotation from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 written in the same key, and the both works do ressemble each other in formal, rhythmic, and thematic aspects. C minor key is also a key in which Beethoven wrote many of his most important works, including the 5th Symphony, the Pathetique Sonata and Piano Sonata, Op. 111. Lars Vogt was appointed the first ever “Pianist in Residence” by the Berlin Philharmonic in 2003/04 and enjoys a high profile as a soloist and chamber musician. His debut solo recording on Ondine with Bach’s Goldberg Variations (ODE 1273-2) was released in August 2015 and has been a major critical success. The album’s tracks have also been streamed online over 6 million times. Lars Vogt started his tenure as Music Director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia in September 2015. In June 2017 Lars Vogt was nominated for the Artist of the Year 2017 Award by the Gramophone magazine.

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REVIEWS

Vogt and the Tetzlaff siblings approach the Triple Concerto's Allegro movement with warmth and a bristling energy. The crucial opening of the C minor Concerto just misses utter serenity here, but a devilish Rondo is pure delight.

– BBC Music Magazine

The Triple Concerto represents Beethoven taking a break from high seriousness, and here it’s a delight. The piano concerto, directed from the keyboard, gets a thrilling performance from all.

– Sunday Times (UK)

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

There's no question that Olli Mustonen is a brilliant pianist; the only question is whether or not his innate quirkiness, sometimes amounting to perversity, will get the better of him. It did in the first two releases in this cycle, but happily it doesn't here. Make no mistake, his impish sense of humor and delight in hyper-clear, staccato phrasing is still very much in evidence, but now it's placed in service to Beethoven's genius. This is most evident in the Fourth Concerto, which receives a performance that many will find revelatory. Right from the opening, played with a forthright brusqueness very different from the "metaphysical" inwardness we usually hear, you feel that Mustonen will be very much his own man.

Because this is Beethoven's most Mozartian piano concerto, most players stress the music's elegance and lyricism. Not here. Mustonen's crisply articulated runs and angular phrasing (check out his initial entrance) turn the piano into an individual personality in vivid contrast to the suave cantabile of the orchestra. In the slow movement, where the roles are essentially reversed (calm piano vs. angry orchestra), Mustonen achieves the necessary Olympian calm without mannerism, and this makes his single feverish outburst all the more impressive. The finale, taken not too quickly, is still Vivace in all matters rhythmic, which is exactly right, and through it all the Tapiola Sinfonietta accompanies beautifully.

The "Emperor" displays many of the same qualities: listen to Mustonen's articulation of the opening cascades; to his delicacy in the "toy music" of the second subject; to his characterful touch in the Adagio; and to a finale that once again takes Beethoven's "ma non troppo" modification to the basic Allegro tempo seriously (without compromising the music's joyous character). The only reservation in this case stems from the fact that the Tapiola Sinfonietta sounds too small in the string department to give the first movement's principal theme the weight that it ideally requires, but with excellently balanced engineering and some particularly attractive work from the horns and winds, this is a disc that deserves serious consideration. And as I said, the Fourth Concerto really is special.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Beethoven, L. Van: String Quartets Nos. 3 and 12

With Resound Beethoven, the Orchester Wiener Akademie brings the music of the great master back into the venues where they received their premiere performances. The focus of this recording is theatre music. Herbert Fottinger has taken the role of narrator in this production of Egmont. John Malkovich serves as narrator in the English version. Producer Stephan Reh captures the acoustic qualities of these venues with fullness and transparency.

The Orchester Wiener Akademie and it's conductor Martin Haselb�ck continue the Resound Beethoven series, performed on period instruments and scrupulously respecting the orchestral layouts of 200 years ago. Volume 8, the last volume of the series, is devoted to two emblematic works, both of them dedicated jointly to Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz and Count Andreas Kirillovich Razumovsky: Symphonies nos. 5 and 6. Each of these symphonies has a name attached to it. While the Fifth Symphony is sometimes called the 'Fate' Symphony for more or less determined reasons, Beethoven himself named the Sixth 'Pastoral', thus pursuing the venerable tradition of the musical pastorale while conferring a new dimension on it. The Orchester Wiener Akademie recorded these two works in the Landhaus Saal of the Nieder�sterreich Palais, Beethoven's favorite concert venue. Between 1819 and 1827, all his nine symphonies were performed there at the 'Concerts spirituels' founded by Franz Gebauer, and it was in this same palace that the Austrian Revolution of 1848 began.