HERZOGENBERG Piano Quartets: in e, op. 75; in B?, op. 95 . String Trios: in A, op. 27/1; in F, op. 27/2. Legends • Belcanto Strings; Andreas Frölich (pn) • cpo 777 438 (2 CDs: 125: 33)


This is a repackaging in a budget priced twofer of previously released singles, both of which have already been reviewed in these pages. Raymond Tuttle covered the first of these two discs containing the E-Minor Piano Quartet and the A-Major String Trio in 25:2. The second disc, containing the B?-Major Piano Quartet, the F-Major String Trio, and the Legends for cello and piano, received two reviews, one by William Zagorski and another by Martin Anderson, both in 24:4. I’ve little to add to their conclusions.


By now it is well known that Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843–1900) practically worshipped Brahms. But it wasn’t enough for him to try to imitate the elder composer’s style; he ended up marrying the woman that Brahms had proposed marriage to and then reneged on. Modern psychology might call it a classic case of transference: in marrying Elisabet von Stockhausen, was Herzogenberg subconsciously marrying Brahms, or at least getting as emotionally close to him as possible? Out of deference to Elisabet, Brahms tolerated Herzogenberg’s fawning, remaining as cordial towards him as he could; but if one reads The Herzogenberg Correspondence , edited by Max Kalbeck, it’s telling that Brahms speaks to Herzogenberg in fairly formal and neutral, if not a bit distanced, language, and more often than not addresses his letters to both Herzogenberg and Elisabet as husband and wife rather than to Herzogenberg individually.


Despite the interpersonal dynamics at work in this somewhat odd three-way relationship, Herzogenberg did manage to sustain an independent career of his own. Moving to Leipzig in 1874, he teamed up with Bach scholar Philipp Spitta to establish the Leipzig Bach Verein; and during his 10-year stewardship of the institution he tutored a number of students, one of whom was Ethel Smyth. He declined, however, to tutor Vaughan Williams, advising him instead to study with Max Bruch. Herzogenberg’s own catalog of works is fairly impressive in numbers if not in consistent quality. He wrote eight symphonies, numerous choral works, including a requiem and an oratorio, The Birth of Christ , which has enjoyed some currency, and a great deal of chamber music, of which we have five examples on these discs.


There isn’t much to say beyond what Anderson, Tuttle, and Zagorski already said in their aforementioned reviews. After “a Brahmsian wave washed over him,” Tuttle called the E-Minor Piano Quartet, written in response to Elisabet’s premature death in 1892, “one of the best works Brahms never wrote.” Its dark, brooding, and passionate first movement does indeed echo some of Brahms’s earlier chamber works with piano, but a close listening reveals Herzogenberg’s lesser grasp of formal structure and the tightly knit motivic relationships that inform Brahms’s works.


Zagorski found the B?-Major Piano Quartet almost more Brahmsian than Brahms, opining that not only could Brahms have written it, but that “it would have to be Brahms on a particularly good day.” Anderson seems to have reached the same conclusion, calling the piece “scarcely less engaging than Brahms’s own essays in the genre.” In this I would agree. This was to be Herzogenberg’s last chamber work, and so he had plenty of time and practice to perfect his carbon copying.


In the two string trios, Herzogenberg was on his own turf. Apparently, the medium held no interest for Brahms, who, to the best of my knowledge, wrote nothing for this combination of instruments. The trios are not among Herzogenberg’s earliest works; he was 36 when he wrote them in 1879. As I listened to the first of them in F Major, I tried to relate it to something I’d heard before, something I was familiar with, but a point of reference kept eluding me until I re-read Tuttle’s review. He cited Grieg, pointing to “the third movement’s central fiddle tune.” Perhaps it was just the power of suggestion, but suddenly I did begin to hear certain resemblances to some of Grieg’s orchestral writing for strings.


Legends , alternately for viola or cello and piano, was written in 1888 following a lengthy illness during which Herzogenberg had been bedridden and then only able to venture out in a wheelchair. Dedicated to Joseph Joachim, the work is in three movements, and could easily be taken to be a viola or cello sonata. It’s of an absolutely exquisite beauty, especially its central Moderato movement, and it sounds nothing like Brahms. With its sweeping arpeggios in the piano, it’s more reminiscent of Schumann, and its singing melodiousness calls to mind Saint-Saëns.


Cpo and the Belcanto Strings (Wolfgang Schröder, violin; Daniel Raiskin, viola; and Ramon Jaffé, cello), joined by pianist Andreas Frölich in the piano quartets, currently seem to have a lock on this corner of Herzogenberg’s output. It therefore pleases me to be able to report that they make excellent advocates for Herzogenberg and his music. The playing is technically polished throughout, and performances are sensitive and responsive to these scores’ many felicities and admirable qualities.


For those of you who love Romantic chamber music and have not previously acquired these discs as singles, I would strongly encourage you to add this two-disc set to your collection.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Based on Henry Rider Haggard’s novel of the same name, August Enna’s Cleopatra immediately followed Heksen (The Witch), his most successful opera. + In his Violin Concerto, Enna stands with one foot in Nordic music and with the other in the Italian opera. In the second movement, we encounter the work’s greatest surprise: it is introduced by beginning of the famous aria “Vesti la giubba” from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, which Enna develops into a highly expressive cantilena. + In his Symphonic Fantasy (1930-31), the composer’s talent for instrumentation, virtually unrivaled in the Danish music of his times, stands out.

Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek had a very conflicted relationship with the German symphonic legacy. His First Symphony, subtitled “Tragic,” is anything but. The Second, the “Ironic,” is arguably too cute for its own good. The Fifth is a suite of dances orchestrated from piano originals–it’s not really a symphony at all. The two immaculately crafted works on this release make the best impression so far, while confirming that when it came to dealing with the imposing musical tradition that he inherited, Reznicek basically hadn’t a clue. Even so, there are times when failure can be interesting, especially when it’s done with such craft.

The Third Symphony, subtitled “In the Olden Style” (in the score, not on the tray card), is written for classical orchestra: double winds, two trumpets, four horns, timpani and strings. Its music is pure pastiche. It begins with a 15th century folk song, and continues with a first movement that recalls Schumann, albeit with better orchestration. The third movement is a faux Haydn minuet (sound clip) with tipsy harmonies, while the finale takes the accompaniment of the opening of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony and combines it with the tune of the Scottish Symphony’s scherzo. It tries really hard to be adorable, but winds up sounding forced and tired. The trio of the minuet is a bland Ländler, and the finale fails to sustain the energy of its opening. It’s really a bit sad.

The situation hardly improves in the Fourth. Its slow movement is a “Funeral March for a Comedian,” and might strike you as a bit like Prokofiev, without the melodic character. The scherzo is just a good piece of traditional symphonic writing, but the outer movements are a mess. This work adds trombones,and features two crashes for cymbals and bass drum in the finale, but is otherwise just as conservative, not to say inhibited, as its predecessor. The grand chorale at the end never quite achieves the culmination that Reznicek obviously intends, and like the Third Symphony you get the sense that the medium simply resists the composer’s best efforts to write something plausibly honest and genuine.

In short, these two decadent relics are fun to listen to as desperate attempts to grapple with a tradition that, however vital and vibrant just about everywhere else in the world, was truly dead in Germany. They are fascinating documents of their time (the first decades of the 20th century), and Frank Beermann contrives to offer the most successful release thus far of the three devoted to Reznicek’s symphonies.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The kind of ‘popular’, socially functional dance music which is quite prominent in the work of, say, Haydn and Mozart plays a less central role – for all kind of obvious reasons – in the output of Beethoven. But such music does exist, and here is a fine, richly enjoyable anthology of it.

The twelve German Dances (WoO 8) were written for the annual masked ball of the Pension Society of Viennese Painters, held on 14th November, 1795. The society had a tradition of commissioned distinguished composers to write new music for the ball – Beethoven’s predecessors included Haydn and Dittersdorf. The young Beethoven’s contribution is, by his standards, rather slight in nature, but the dances have real charm and are not without a degree of sophistication. No.6, for example, employs some unexpected accents over a pseudo-rustic drone in a manner that is quite engaging. No.5 has some pleasant writing for the clarinets; no.10 makes entertaining use of the piccolo and of the triangle and tambourine in a kind of alla turca idiom. No.12 has a surprising coda, with a solo for posthorn, before a rather grand conclusion – so grand, indeed, that it must surely have taken the dancers by surprise!

The six minuets (WoO 9) belong to the same period, but are for strings alone (supplemented here by a harp). They are simple pieces, pleasantly melodic and largely unambitious in execution. In no.3 the alternations between pizzicato and arco are attractive; in no.5 the triplet accompaniment by the second violins has a particular grace.

Beethoven’s 12 contredanses (kontretänze) (WoO 14) were again written for the ballrooms of Vienna, a few years after the earlier sets of dances. They are lively and politely brilliant. In some of them one seems to detect touches that belong to Beethoven rather than just to the genre in which he was writing. It is certainly interesting to note that the seventh and the 11th dances share material with Beethoven’s ballet music The Creatures of Prometheus; the seventh is also echoed in the final movement of the Eroica.

The final set of dances on this CD belongs to a later period. The eleven ‘Mödlinger’ dances were, it seems likely, written in the wooded suburb of Vienna which bears that name, in 1819. That, we should remind ourselves, is the year of the Hammerklavier sonata and of the commencement of the Ninth symphony. These, in short, are the work of a fully mature Beethoven. Beethoven had real financial problems at this time, so it may well be that these dances were written for primarily commercial reasons; but it would, I think, be wrong to imagine that Beethoven didn’t take their composition at all ‘seriously’. Certainly they are far more sophisticated than the dances considered so far. They explore a range of forms – there are four waltzes, five minuets and two ländlers. There is a genial smile to all of the music; there are plenty of sparkling passages as, quite without condescension, Beethoven writes wonderfully accessible music. But it is also music that gets better at second and third hearings. These are delightful, small-scale masterpieces, in their own way just as worthy of attention as the far greater works that Beethoven wrote at much the same time.

The performances of L’Orfeo Barockorchester, playing on period instruments and directed by Michi Gaigg, are exemplary. The sense of scale is perfectly judged, distinctions of tempo and rhythm are clear but unexaggerated; the sound of the winds is particularly well-blended and the strings play with zestfully clear articulation. The sense is of an orchestra that sounds as though it is enjoying its work and is eager to share its own pleasure. One doesn’t often get the chance to hear these dances – and one certainly doesn’t often get the chance to hear them played so well, with both energy and sensitivity.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

Kabalevsky’s piano concertos have been well served on disc recently, with new recordings on Naxos and Chandos. The First concerto is the most ambitious, a bit long for its material, and heavily influenced by Prokofiev (his Second concerto, but without the spice). After this piece, the other three concertos become more concise, closer in style to (say) the Second concerto of Shostakovich. In other words, the music is colorful, tuneful, and completely “Socialist Realist”, but it’s good, clean fun and it’s helped immeasurably by Michael Korstick’s light, brilliant, and effervescent way with the piano parts. Along with the always reliable Alun Francis, the First concerto sounds unusually cohesive, while the original 1935 version of the Second comes off as a major statement.

The complete Kabalevsky music for piano and orchestra includes the equally tuneful Rhapsody, and a wonderful surprise: an arrangement of Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor D. 940 for piano four hands as a full-fledged piano concerto (complete with an interpolated cadenza in the finale). This work has been transcribed for orchestra by several different hands, notably Ernst Rudorff and Felix Mottl, but this arrangement is by far the most successful even if, or perhaps because, Kabalevsky provides a fully modern orchestration and doesn’t try to recapture Schubert’s own idiosyncratic scoring. The result is completely successful as an individual work of art in its own right and a real find; you can hear the start of the finale in the sound sample attached. Excellent engineering makes this two-disc set a thoroughly recommendable proposition.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Classical Music

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

Vanhal numbers among the most productive composers of the 18th century. Among other works, 77 symphonies and 60 solo concertos by him are documented. Burney remarked when the composer was only age 33 that he would not hesitate to name Vanhal’s symphonies among the most complete and perfect compositions, for many instruments, which the art of music can boast. This album contains world premiere recordings of 3 genuinely gripping works.

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WAGENSEIL Symphonies: in g, WV 418; in B?, WV 438; in C, WV 351; in G, WV 413; in B?, WV 441 • Michi Gaigg, cond; L’Orfeo Baroque O (period instruments) • cpo 999 450 (62:19)


WAGENSEIL Symphonies: in C, WV 361; in F, WV 398; in D, WV 374; in A, WV 432; in E, WV 393; in A, WV 421 • Johannes Goritzki, cond; Stuttgart CO • cpo 777 112 (54:24)


Who was the most popular symphonist of the 1760s? Franz Josef Haydn, of course. Manuscripts and published editions of his early symphonies have been found throughout Western and Central Europe, from Italy to Sweden, Britain to Russia, in monasteries, court libraries, and private collections. But who was the most popular symphonist of the 1750s? Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715–1777) lays claim to that honor, with over 300 copies of 57 symphonic works disseminated across Europe. It was just Wagenseil’s bad luck, and that of many of his contemporaries, that his fame faded rapidly after his death. Most people equate quality with the final flowering of a form, and have little regard for the ingenuity with which it is treated in an earlier age.


Yet Wagenseil was no lightweight. Fux praised him greatly at the outset of his career, while esteemed critics such as Burney and Schubart did so in later years. He became a renowned harpsichord composer and performer, a greatly loved teacher whose pupils included several leading figures in the following generation, and a disciple of Baroque giants such as Handel even as his own music followed changing public tastes. To Maria Theresa he was the favorite court composer who would improvise fugues on demand, and who was paid wages for his lessons to the royal family considerably in excess of his yearly salary. His symphonies and operas were performed regularly at Esterházy during Haydn’s time there as Kapellmeister—but then his works circulated widely to general appreciation. A copy of his Lessons for Harpsichord even turned up in Thomas Jefferson’s personally written 1783 catalog of his musical manuscripts.


As a symphonist, Wagenseil followed the old three-movement Italian model, only substituting fast sonata-form finales in most cases for a dance movement. Over time, his slow movements and finales became notably more substantial than those of his predecessors. The Andante from the Symphony in B? Major, WV 441, is an excellent example of his art, from the descending open chords of its introduction to the breadth of its thematic material, and the richness of its subsequent development. His opening movements and finales tended to build upon short-breathed phrases that avoided the clichéd through some distinctive feature: the irregular phrase lengths and sudden leaps that lead off the Symphony in E Major, WV 393, furnish one example. Another, at the beginning of the finale to the Symphony in G Minor, WV 418, features propulsive rhythms surging back and forth under a descending g?-D?-d-G figure: heady crack-of-doom stuff, contradicted by the galant material that immediately follows in the interests of balance, but all the more impressive for what Wagenseil achieves during their combined development. None of these works take longer than a quarter of an hour to perform, and a couple of the earliest are in reality five-minute overtures, but there isn’t a single one that lacks memorability.


Of the two performing ensembles thus far engaged for this series, I prefer the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. While enjoying the clarity and timbral diversity L’Orfeo achieves, their wiry string tone and occasionally faulty intonation are drawbacks. The Stuttgart musicians possess a darker, less varied tone, and under Goritzki’s direction are more flexible in their rhythms and phrasing within the bounds of currently acceptable historical practice. They’re recorded somewhat distantly, however, losing some of their instrumental color in the process, while L’Orfeo benefits from close miking. The liner notes to the second volume are good, but the essay accompanying the first volume is longer, more detailed, and goes some way to establishing at least a sense of the environment in which Wagenseil operated.


In short, both volumes can be recommended, though I suggest listening to Gaigg/L’Orfeo before buying to see if your reaction to their sound differs significantly from mine. The music, in any case, is excellent throughout. Two thumbs up to cpo—and here’s to expectations of a third volume, soon.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

With the eighth album of our complete recording of Kuhnau's vocal works, to be released in honor of the 300th anniversary of Johann Kuhnau's death in June 2022, this ambitious project now reaches its conclusion. This production delivers a range of musical genres that could hardly be wider. Everything is represented, from simple secular arias to sacred concertos still clearly in the 17th century tradition and elaborate cantata-like structures such as those presented by the mature Thomaskantor Kuhnau. The three arias represent a discovery of a special kind. Passed down in an anonymous score in the historical music collection of the Princely School of Grimma, they have recently been identified by René Bialik as autographs of Johann Kuhnau.

The arias of three or four stanzas each with partly choral refrain point both textually and musically to a representative occasion of origin, which was apparently celebrated outdoors. Unique in its own way is also the Latin chamber cantata "Spirate clementes, o Zephyri amici." Kuhnau's setting has a distinctly chant-like and flowing character rarely found elsewhere in his oeuvre.

Classical Music

Songs without words-Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy is regarded as the inventor of this genre representing a fascinating region within the piano literature. It has not been explained how Mendelssohn came up with this poetic term. In any case, these genial atmospheric pictures show US the composer at the height of his mastery and details of his individual style attest to his great gift in the field of melodic invention, part writing, technique and harmony.

DVO?ÁK Cello Concerto No. 1 in A. Waldesruhe, op. 68/5. Rondo, op. 94. Polonaise • Ramon Jaffé (vc); Daniel Raiskin, cond; Bergen PO • CPO 777 461-2 (54:04)


It may still be news to some classical-music lovers that Antonin Dvo?ák wrote not one but two cello concertos, of which the immortal B Minor is the second. The first concerto, in A Major, presented here, was penned by Dvo?ák as a 24-year-old apprentice composer in 1865 at the request of the Czech cellist Ludvík Peer, a colleague from the Provisional Theater Orchestra in Prague where Dvo?ák played the viola. The composer had only completed the accompaniment in piano score when he presented it to Peer, who took the entire manuscript with him when he moved to Germany later that year. The cellist apparently never performed the work, which was found posthumously in his papers sometime subsequent to his death in 1904, a few months after that of Dvo?ák. The world premiere performance was finally given in 1929 in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Dvo?ák’s death. A heavily cut and edited orchestral version, prepared by the German composer Günther Raphael and premiered in Prague in 1930 by George Szell with cellist Hans Münch-Holland, was initially successful but later heavily criticized for Raphael’s excessive editorial intervention. In 1975 the Czech musicologist Jarmil Burghauser published a new version, reedited and reorchestrated in collaboration with cellist Miloš Sádlo. Sádlo recorded that version, along with the B-Minor Concerto and Dvo?ák’s other works for cello and orchestra, with Václav Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic for Supraphon in 1976; the two concertos were issued together on a single CD in 2001. Ji?í Bárta recorded the complete original version with piano accompaniment for Supraphon in 2002 (reviewed by Michael Jameson in Fanfare 26:3), as part of a two-CD set of Dvo?ák’s complete works for cello and piano. Steven Isserlis remains an advocate of the Raphael version, but has not yet recorded it.


As with the first symphony—also penned in 1865, lost when the competition in Germany to which the composer submitted it did not return the manuscript, and recovered from a Nachlass in 1923—Dvo?ák never had a chance to revise this score, as he did with several other early works. Consequently, the amateurish, even ramshackle, formal construction of its three movements is apparent, especially in the uncut original, which meanders around for some 55 minutes, as opposed to only 33 for Burghauser’s reconstruction. Burghauser has skillfully cut fat while retaining flesh and sinew, and his orchestration is so natural that an uninformed auditor would never know that it was not by Dvo?ák himself. While what remains is not a masterpiece, it is absolutely delightful, bursting with sunny themes of charming naiveté; Brahms’s famous dictum that other composers could fashion entire careers from the scraps in Dvo?ák’s wastebasket applies here in full force. Perhaps only Schubert also had such an inexhaustible natural fund of spontaneous, memorable melody that makes even their lesser works treats worthy of repeated hearings; and no one else has Dvo?ák’s unique combination of wistful yearning for and uninhibited delight in the fundamental goods of home and hearth. Free from all artificiality, of radiant but uncloying sweetness, its fusion of life-affirming and soul-cleansing qualities always leaves one refreshed and renewed upon hearing it.


As for this recording, it went immediately onto my 2010 Want List. The premiere Supraphon recording has always been something of a disappointment; while Sádlo plays with obvious commitment, Neumann’s accompaniment has a curiously dead quality to it—sober, almost dour, as if reluctantly but dutifully discharging a necessary but disagreeable obligation. (I am unfamiliar with the 1991 Koch recording of the two concertos, long out of print, by Werner Thomas-Mifune with Rudolf Krecmer and the Bamberg Symphony.) A parallel problem plagues the unabridged piano original; again, while Bárta performs with diligence and feeling, the piano accompaniment never rises above the perfunctory. But what a difference in the support provided here! Daniel Raiskin offers one of the most splendidly brilliant pieces of Dvo?ák conducting I have ever heard, with irresistible energy, enthusiasm, and affection, buoyant rhythms, and a keen ear for orchestral color; one hopes that cpo will be moved to produce a complete cycle of the symphonies with him as well. In the solo part, Ramon Jaffé takes a bit to warm up and get his intonation and tone fully centered; his exceedingly light timbre initially tends to sound a bit wiry and unfocused in the top register, but with the entrance of the lyrical second subject shortly before the 5:00 mark in the first movement he settles in and offers a vibrant performance, glowing with life and conviction. In listening to this, there were moments where I thought I would melt into a puddle of sublime happiness. There is music far greater than this, but none more simply and unaffectedly beautiful.


The album is nicely filled out with Dvo?ák’s shorter works for cello and orchestra. The Polonaise, originally written for cello and piano, dates from 1879; it too was misplaced shortly after its premiere and recovered posthumously, being published only in 1936, and is heard here with an orchestration dating from 1967 by cellist Heinrich Klug. Waldesruhe (Silent Woods) was arranged by the composer himself in 1892 from his op. 68 set of pieces for piano four hands From the Bohemian Forest , and the Rondo was composed at the same time. Both were created for cellist Hanu? Wihan, who would be the dedicatee of the B-Minor concerto two years later. The three pieces are presented in this order, with the objective being (according to the booklet notes by conductor Raiskin) to create in effect “another concerto cycle for cello.” While that unitary goal is not attained, I have no quibble with the eloquent and heartfelt performances themselves.


The sound quality is excellent, being warm and clear but not overly reverberant, with soloist and orchestra well balanced. No lover of either Dvo?ák or the beautiful in music can afford to be without this issue, which has my highest, even ecstatic, recommendation.


FANFARE: James A. Altena


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Putting together all of Dvorák's "other" music for cello and orchestra makes a great deal of sense. His early Cello Concerto in A is an amazing piece, only diminished by his late masterpiece from his American years. But that shouldn't diminish our enjoyment of this early effort, which stands head and shoulders above any other cello concerto composed up to that time (save, perhaps, for Offenbach's). The work's three movements play continuously and last a bit more than half an hour. Its melodic material is instantly identifiable as Dvorák, especially those folk-like, singing syncopations in the finale (the same alternation of 2x3 and 3x2 in 6/8 meter that we find in, say, Bernstein's "America" from West Side Story). The surprising, quiet ending is wonderfully poetic but not a letdown.

Had Dvorák orchestrated the work and managed to get it performed his career might have taken off earlier than it did. As it is, Dvorák scholar Jarmil Burghauser's scoring is perfectly appropriate and highly idiomatic, and since the piece is fully finished from beginning to end there really is no reason why it should not return to the repertoire as a first-rate example of early Dvorák. Ramon Jaffé plays it beautifully, with a ripe, singing tone and a great variety of color. The sudden, pale sonority in pianissimo that he conjures just before the slow movement's dramatic, minor-key outburst is particularly affecting. Daniel Raiskin and the orchestra accompany very well, while Dvorák's three other short pieces for cello and orchestra obviously belong here as well, and are equally appealing. Finely balanced engineering completes this wholly winning picture.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com