Classical Music

REGER Violin Concerto in A, Op. 101. Aria for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 103a/3 • Ulf Wallin (vn); Ulf Schirmer, cond; Munich Radio O • CPO 777736 (SACD: 61:24)


More than half-a-dozen recordings of Max Reger’s self-described “monster” Violin Concerto in A can be found on disc, and three of those—not counting a fourth in a chamber orchestra arrangement made by Rudolf Kolisch for Schoenberg’s Vienna Society for Private Musical Performances—have been reviewed in Fanfare . Two of them fall into the category of historical or archival performances: One, a 1944 performance by Georg Kulenkampff with Willem van Otterloo conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is part of a 13-CD set featuring the Amsterdam orchestra; the other, a performance by Manfred Scherzer with Herbert Blomstedt and the Dresden Staatskapelle is included in a seven-disc set of Reger’s orchestral works featuring various conductors and orchestras and recorded between 1963 and 1984.


Since then, Reger’s just under an hour-long massive concerto hadn’t received much attention on disc, until recently, when all of a sudden, two new recordings appeared, and now, with this one, a third. Violinist Tanja Becker-Bender tackled the work with Lothar Zagrosek and the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra for Volume 11 of Hyperion’s “Romantic Violin Concerto” series, and it was reviewed, in 35:5, with reservations, by James H. North, who expressed a preference for a no-longer-available recording by Edith Peinemann. Actually, North might be interested to know that the Peinemann can still be had, though in the form of a download file from various sites. The other quite recent recording is Benjamin Schmid’s with Hannu Lintu and the Tampere Philharmonic on Ondine, a CD that unfortunately I haven’t heard. I do, however, possess the Hyperion disc, and what I can say is that if you have even a passing familiarity with Reger’s orchestral scores, there’s at least one reason why this latest entry from CPO, in co-production with BR Klassik, is the version of the concerto to have.


Reger was anything but sparing when it came to orchestrating his scores; some would call his results dense and opaque. CPO’s new recording of the concerto is the only one to date to take advantage of multichannel SACD technology, and it really makes a difference when it comes to clarifying the concerto’s layered textures. Subtle details emerge here that go unheard in Hyperion’s recording. For example, in this new version, you can actually perceive in measures 22–23 that the first and second violins are playing divisi. Of course, none of this would matter if the soloist wasn’t any good, but Ulf Wallin is a long-time veteran on the recording scene, with nearly three-dozen albums to his name, mostly in late 19th- and early 20th-century repertoire, which puts Reger right up his alley, and, in my opinion, he simply beats Becker-Bender at the game.


In comparing Becker-Bender to Peinemann, North noted in his review that Becker-Bender’s timing of 56:56 felt a bit rushed in places to Peinemann’s 62:23, but Peinemann may be more the exception than the rule, for Wallin and Schirmer’s reading comes in at 56:26, and it doesn’t feel rushed to me at all. Our first recording of a work or the one we’re most familiar with often tends to establish itself in our minds as a model for the way it should go. In any case, I realize that for not a few listeners, acquiring a taste for Reger’s music can take some time and effort, but the violin concerto is a beautiful score, rich in ripe romantic melody and harmony, and Wallin’s playing reveals a genuine love for it. His tone caresses Reger’s lyrical flights in a way that, for me, Becker-Bender’s doesn’t, and technically, Wallin is stunning. His flying staccatos in the big first movement cadenza have a Heifetz-like spring and zing to them, and his double-stopping is surgically clean and accurate.


If you don’t know Reger’s Violin Concerto at all, I can almost guarantee that you’ll find Wallin’s recording a special treat. But even if you already have another version of the work, you owe it to yourself to acquire this one for an outstanding performance and a quite remarkable recording. The Aria for Violin and Orchestra is a five-minute bonus. It’s Reger’s own orchestration of the Aria from his Suite in A Minor for Violin and Piano, which was played at the composer’s funeral by his good friend and colleague, Adolf Busch. This receives my highest recommendation.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

On his new GENUIN album, cellist Christian Erben, a member of the renowned Gewandhaus Orchestra, presents one of the most intriguing oeuvres for his instrument from the 20th century: Max Reger's three suites for solo cello. Baroque grandeur and intellectual depth, late-Romantic harmony, and masterful counterpoint: no one had explored the soloistic possibilities of perhaps the most human of all instruments as comprehensively since Johann Sebastian Bach as Max Reger did. Christian Erben delves into the immense suites down to the finest detail and brings their tonal intricacies to light!

Max Reger is best known for vast, abstract keyboard works in fugue and variation form. But alongside these masterful constructions his creativity also turned to more introspective album pages that reveal an entirely different side to his character. The influence of Schumann can be found in the first of his Improvisationen alongside echoes of Brahms and Chopin in the Six Morceaux. We also encounter rhapsodic miniatures from Aus meinem Tagebuch and the popular Maria-Wiegenlied, with the late collection Tr�ume am Kamin appearing as a self-confessional summary of Reger's career and style.

Complete Works For Cello And P

Works For Solo Violin Op.91 &

Complete Works For Clarinet An

Suites For Cello

Reger, Reubke: Organ Works

LIEDER

This is not an historical recording. Yet mysteriously the music is performed in an interpretation which is historically authentic down to the last detail. The key to this mystery is: The original performer was present at the recent recording session, but not physically: The music is heard on a modern Steinway. Never has music stored in the Welte-Mignon system sounded so "right" or so good. Thanks to TACET's much-praised recording technique, and because the Welte-Mignon memory system and sound production mechanism have now been newly adjusted for the first time by the leading expert in the field - and are thus able to meet TACET's requirements. (Welte-Mignon was invented in 1904.) the Welte-Mignon mystery can now speak to US without distortion.

REGER Sonatas for Unaccompanied Violin, op. 91: No. 1 in a; No. 2 in D; No. 3 in B?; No. 4 in b; No. 5 in e; No. 6 in G; No. 7 in a • Ulrike-Anima Mathé (vn) • DORIAN 90915 (2 CDs: 115:44)


Having just reviewed a recording of Reger’s suites for solo viola with Tabea Zimmermann for the previous issue, I was pleased to receive this sumptuously reconstituted set from Dorian of the composer’s complete op. 91 sonatas for solo violin. Max Reger, it seems, is beginning to attract more mainstream attention and more of an audience than has heretofore been the case.


Reger’s seven sonatas for solo violin are important additions to the repertoire, and choice in recorded versions is extremely limited. Therefore, I do not wish to be too critical of this retread, which was originally (and still is) available as two separate discs. But I must get one thing out of the way right off the bat. Once upon a time, Dorian was roundly criticized for recordings with such excessive reverberation that they sounded like they’d been made in an echo chamber. The company apparently took the criticism to heart, for their releases that followed were significantly less echoey. Unfortunately, these not-new recordings, made in the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy, New York, in 1992 and 1994, come from a period during which Dorian’s engineers were pursuing their sinful ways. I’ve heard quite a few more recent recordings that emanate from this venue, so I can vouch for the fact that it’s a hall with superb acoustics that sound nothing like this. The impression one receives the instant Ulrike-Anima Mathé’s bow touches the strings is of a vast, cavernous space that makes her violin sound three times normal size and dimensionally distorted.


That being said, judgment of Mathé’s playing should not be based on what her makeup artists did to pump it up on steroids. She articulates Reger’s difficult double-stopping and string crossings cleanly and with exceptional incisiveness. Her left-hand work is equally deft, capable of delivering pitch-perfect intonation and invigorating velocity. And though it’s hard to judge her tone quality due to the souped-up sound, I suspect that it would be quite pleasing to hear in a normal setting.


Reger-phobia is unwarranted. Anyone who has ever read anything about Reger or had any exposure to his music knows that he was obsessive-compulsive when it came to writing fugues, and that he had a “thing” about Bach. That fixation, however, led to the creation of some fascinating and intellectually stimulating music. If you enjoy listening to Bach’s sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin, you are virtually guaranteed to enjoy Reger’s sonatas, for they are Bach revisited and reheard through 1905 ears.


The technical difficulties posed by Reger’s sonatas are similar to those posed by Bach’s works for unaccompanied violin. To produce the harmony and the effect of multiple voices engaged in contrapuntal interplay, it is necessary to notate miles of double- and triple-stops and awkward string crossings, something that is neither easy nor natural to play on an instrument better suited to producing a single-voiced melody. Thus, works of this type require a technical whiz of virtuoso caliber, but they are not virtuosic display pieces in the same way that Paganini’s, Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst’s, or Eugène Ysaÿe’s somewhat later works for solo violin are. Reger’s sonatas, however, are no more boring, academic exercises than are Bach’s sonatas and partitas. The initial appeal may be intellectual, but gradually the music grows on you and blossoms into something entirely satisfying on an emotional level.


At the time these recordings were made, Mathé showed every promise of being a rising star. I’m not quite sure what has happened to her since. I reviewed a cpo CD of Friedrich Kiel’s piano quartets in Fanfare 31:5 in which she played violin; but other than that, on record at least, it doesn’t appear that she’s been very active, which is too bad, because her playing here is exceptionally good. And, as mentioned above, recordings of Reger’s op. 91 complete are few and far between. The only other current listing I find is on Troubadisc with violinist Renate Eggebrecht-Kupsa. Her account of the sonatas may be very fine (she has way more recordings listed than does Mathé), but I haven’t heard it.


Reger’s sonatas need not appeal exclusively to listeners who have a special interest in music for solo violin. So, provisionally recommended, as long as you can adjust to the recorded sound. Otherwise, you might wish to explore Eggebrecht-Kupsa’s version, although it’s pricey. I suspect, though I don’t know for sure since it was not yet listed at the time of writing, that the Dorian set, being a repackaging job, may be sold as a twofer.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

Classical Music

The two major organ works on these discs (his longest for organ) show Max Reger at the height of his powers; not only do they sustain a structural coherence over an impressive span, but they show an almost inexhaustible proliferation of invention. As well as the large-scale Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme and the Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue in E minor, this 2 CD Set includes a collection shorter preludes and fugues - the Five Easy Preludes and Fugues and two transcriptions of preludes and fugues by JS Bach from the Well-Tempered Clavier.