Classical Music

Classical Music

Secretly, I hope to make something of myself, but after Beethoven who can do anything? These words by the juvenile Franz Schubert might explain why it took him 15 years - until 1827, just one year prior to his death - to begin writing both of his great piano trios, works of epic, almost symphonic dimensions. This new interpretation by violinist Thomas Albertus Imberger with David Geringas, cello and Michael Korstick, piano works out the lyricism and thematic work as well as the affects and discontinuities which illustrate the large influence, that Beethoven's composing had on Schubert's oeuvre. Similar effects can be observed with the Notturno D 897, in contrast to the Trio Movement Allegro D 28, which being an early work exhibits closer ties to Mozart. Many awards, performances at international festivals and co-operations and recordings with musicians such as Jorg Demus, Evgueni Sinaiski or Paul Badura-Skoda as well as with the Israel Chamber Orchestra conducted by Roberto Paternostro and the orchestra "Spirit of Europe" under its principal conductor Martin Sieghart stress the young Salzburger's musical skills. Born in Vilnius / Lithuania, the cellist and conductor David Geringas is today numbered among the elite of music. His intellectual severity, stylistic versatility, his melodic feeling and the sensuality of the sound he produces have brought him awards from all around the world.

SCHUBERT Tänze des Biedermeier • Charlotte Baumgartner (pn) • GRAMOLA 98807 (69:16)


17 Deutsche Tänze (Ländler), D 366. Deutscher in C?, D 139. 11 Ecossaisen, D 781. Menuet in c?, D 600. Two Ländler in E?, D 679. Variation on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, D 718. 12 Valses nobles, D 969. 2 Minuets with 4 Trios, D 91. Waltz in G, D 979. 16 Deutsche Tänze and 2 Ecossaises, D 783. 16 Wiener Damen-Ländler and 2 Ecossaises, D 734. 2 Deutsche Tänze, D 841


SCHUBERT Moments musicaux, D 780. Impromptus, D 935. 12 Grazer Waltzer, D 924. Grazer Galopp in C, D 925 • Charlotte Baumgartner (pn) • GRAMOLA 98824 (79:58)


These two discs, whose German titles translate as Biedermeier Dances and Autumn Leaves , constitute some of Schubert’s last music for piano, most of it composed around the fall of 1827. The excellent liner notes by Stefan Baumgartner-Tauböck give an interesting little history of the dance etiquette of the Biedermeier period—the types of dances, their order, and Schubert’s role as composer and player—and perhaps of greater significance, the confluence of light and dark emerging from Schubert’s pen, when the lighthearted dance music can suddenly turn poignant and piercing. There are numerous examples in the sets of dance music on the Herbstblätter CD (waltzes and galops in the Ländler tradition, probably improvised at the Schubertiads organized by his friends and fortunately written down by the composer). On that Autumn Leaves disc, light-hearted dances are juxtaposed with the serious, often poignant music of the Impromptus and some of the Moments musicaux. Even though the dances are brief works, mostly constructed in two sections (8 + 8 measures), the wealth of Schubert’s musical imagination lends constant variety and charming melodies. The Impromptus and Moments musicaux are, of course, among Schubert’s best-known and most recorded piano pieces and need no further description.


Charlotte Baumgartner, by virtue of birthplace, heritage, and training, is as authentically qualified as anyone can be to perform Schubert’s music. She is a native Viennese who was trained in a conservatory in Vienna. (Later, as a grant recipient, she also studied at Indiana University with Edward Auer and Leonard Hokanson.) But Baumgartner’s qualifications would count for little without her inherent musicality; and happily, her Schubert playing is tasteful and elegant, keenly sensitive to the many nuances of the Viennese classical style and to the intensely expressive language of Franz Schubert. In general, she uses pedal sparingly and her playing is very clear. Her use of rubato is subtle and refined, and she demonstrates most convincingly the exquisite sensibility of Schubert’s style, without any exaggerations. The Moments musicaux are exceptionally beautiful, especially No. 2 in A? (memorably heard as the background music in the heart-rending film Au revoir les enfants). Perhaps more striking changes in color would be welcome, but there is no denying Baumgartner’s affinity with Schubert, in which she displays her acquaintance with the great traditions handed down from previous Schubertians such as Schnabel, of course, and Clara Haskil, Lili Kraus, Wilhelm Kempff, and Annie Fischer.


The two discs were recorded on different instruments, both of them slightly oversized; after the Hamburg Steinway, they are the top choices for most European (and other) pianists: a Bösendorfer for Autumn Leaves and a Fazioli for the Biedermeier Dances . The Fazioli, which has a marvelously sonorous bass, sounds a little anemic and tinny in the high treble range, but there is little essential difference in overall sound quality between these two fine pianos, and the recordings are superb. I hope that Baumgartner will continue recording Schubert and demonstrate her insights into the sonatas.


FANFARE: Susan Kagan

On this release, recorded in 1978 and 2007, Paul Badura-Skoda and Jorg Demus present works by Schubert for piano four hands. The artists comment: “There are no such things as the two of us - two studious, open-minded young Viennese musicians who want to serve their darling Schubert with all their Four Hands in what is probably the most beautiful chamber music hall in the world, which Brahms loved so much that it later was named Brahms Hall, in the venerable house of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde - among the founding members were Beethoven and Schubert - on the most Viennese of all pianos, the Bösendorfer with its singing, downright Schubertian treble. Both of us had just escaped physically and spiritually sound from the turmoil of war; one thought of creating a new world of the beautiful and the good, both of us at least in music. We had a unique generation of great masters to look up to: Wilhelm Backhaus, probably the greatest of all Bösendorf players, Walter Gieseking, Edwin Fischer - we were even granted to study together in Lucerne in 1948; Paul remained connected to him throughout his life. Above all, the wonderful violin sound of the Vienna Philharmonic delighted us, and in Furtwängler the brilliant overall conception: Have you heard "His" Unfinished, or the Great C major symphony? Schubert's songs delighted us with the wonderful voices of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Irmgard Seefried, and soon also by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Joseph Krips had just presented the opera with a Mozart style that was fully natural. The whole world seemed to breathe a sigh of relief (it was before the darn Iron Curtain) and Vienna was once again the capital of music. And so we played the piano with our Four Hands, above all Mozart and Schubert, as faithfully as possible to the scores of Schubert, but we were happy to incorporate temperament, feeling and inspiration into our ten fingers.”

Classical Music

GÁL Violin Concerto, op. 39. Violin Sonatas: op. 17; in D • Thomas Albertus Irnberger (vn); Roberto Paternostro, cond; Israel CO; Evgueni Sinaiski (pn) • GRAMOLA 98921 (SACD: 75:30)


Violinist Thomas Irnberger has compiled a collection of works for violin by the Viennese expatriate composer (living and working in the United Kingdom after the Anschluss ) Hans Gál (1890–1987), including not only two violin sonatas but also the Concerto for Violin and Very Small Orchestra, with which the program begins. According to the notes, both the concerto and the Sonata in D Major come from the period of 1932–33, in the latter year of which he had experienced a personal encounter with Adolf Hitler during a ceremony honoring Richard Wagner. In any case, the three-movement prototypically Viennese concerto opens with an atmospheric “Fantasia,” firmly tonal though chromatically meandering. The solo part weaves itself into the orchestral fabric, highlighted with woodwind timbres (the piece opens with an oboe solo), and the engineers have tucked Irnberger neatly there. The violinist doesn’t attempt to make a grand statement (even in the cadenza near the movement’s center, which in any case seems to serve musical rather than virtuoso ends), creating for the solo part a somewhat reticent personality. The second movement begins with what sounds almost like a pastoral woodwind solo, and the movement develops in a simple but lush folk-like outpouring in which Irnberger interweaves sensitively with Roberto Paternostro and the Israel Chamber Orchestra. A ruminative cadenza, harmonically more adventurous, serves as a transition to the finale, which, despite its sprightly tempo, never evolves into a violinistic showpiece; the mood, in any case, softens into the kind of atmospheric meditation featured in the two preceding movements, except during the almost strident cadenza near the end. Once again, Irnberger sinks the individual in the service of the concerto’s overall aesthetic.


The three-movement Violin Sonata, op. 17, from about 1922, opens with an imposing statement for solo piano and an auspicious entry for the violinist that mark it as a work in the grand manner, once again seemingly Viennese (some of the harmonies suggest works like the Viennese Rhapsodic Fantasietta by the quintessential Viennese violinist-composer Fritz Kreisler, even though Christian Heindl’s booklet notes mention “involuntary” resemblances to the works of Johannes Brahms). Perhaps Irnberger’s own Austrian origins (born and trained in Salzburg) account for some of the ambiance. The second movement’s slightly faster tempo allows it to serve as the scherzo-like centerpiece of a three-movement design of slow-fast-slow movements, although, as in some of Brahms’s works, the tempos here seem to assimilate to each other. Irnberger and Evgueni Sinaiski play this movement with especially delicate sensibility, although Irnberger’s passages on the G string exhibit a ruddy glow (it doesn’t seem as though Gál’s works in general exploit these instrumental tonal possibilities, maintaining as they do a rather high tessitura). The lush but somber third movement occasionally rises to moments of intense expressivity in Irnberger’s and Sinaiski’s performance before ebbing into a meditative ending.


Heindl explains that although the composer completed his Sonata in D Major in 1933, he never published it, though, reviewing the manuscript later in life, he found it “good.” Once again, a scherzo (this time explicitly marked as such) takes its place at the sonata’s center, but in general the writing for both instruments seems to veer less often into ruminative channels than did its counterpart. The duo rises to the first movement’s more high-flown rhetoric, with its expanded harmonic palette. As in the earlier sonata, too, the quicker central movement occasionally pauses to allow the instrumentalists to smell the roses, though it ends puckishly enough. The finale’s opulent opening licenses Irnberger at last to revel in the rich lower registers of his violin before launching authoritatively into the bracing Allegro.


Gramola’s recorded sound balances the violin and orchestra in the concerto and the two instruments in the sonatas. Budding aficionados of the composer’s music—and of the music of the period—should deeply appreciate Irnberger’s efforts to make his works known. Recommended.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Classical Music

For her debut album, young pianist Anastasia Huppmann has chosen works for solo piano by Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt. These two composers developed a friendly relationship while they lived in Paris. Nationalistic ideals were beginning to sweep across Europe, which led both composers to draw musical elements from their native countries of Poland and Hungary. Anastasia Huppmann began studying piano at the age of five. At the age of six she began receiving special instruction in piano and composition, and only a year later she appeared on live television performing her own compositions.

Classical Music

Classical Music

"This may not be the best performance of Bruckner's Eighth, but it has become the one I most cherish, because it is the one that most cherishes the music. More than any other, it takes me where I want to go when I listen to Bruckner. If music so rich needs to be listened to as slowly as possible, well, with this recording, it can be."

-- Richard Lehnert, Stereophile

It is perhaps no coincidence that the duration of this performance runs to what will seem to many an extreme and etiolated 104 minutes. That would be unprecedented, were it not for the fact that the timings overall and for individual movements match almost exactly those of the recording made by Sergiu Celibidache with the Munich Philharmonic for EMI in 1993. I do not know if Celibidache was in any sense Rémy Ballot’s mentor, but Ballot certainly studied briefly under him in Paris in the 1990s and this recording suggests that he imbibed the precepts of that eccentric maestro.

Comparisons with other recordings are to some degree otiose, insofar as no other recording apart from Celibidache’s begins to approach the leisureliness of this one but the other recordings this most resembles include the two by Karajan, especially the earlier one from 1957, Giulini’s two recordings from 1984 with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic respectively, and Gunter Wand, also with the BPO in 2001. These are all massive, vertical interpretations aspiring to transcendence, as opposed to the fleeter, nimbler versions by such as Tennstedt, R?gner and even Furtwängler, using his own adaptation of the 1892 Haas edition.

Obviously the edition chosen has an impact on timings, too. Both Ballot and Celibidache employ the 1890 Nowak version yet even the slowest of the other recordings that use this same score is still over a quarter of an hour faster then theirs, while many are as much as half an hour shorter. Even those recordings which use either the most complete Nowak edition of the original 1887 score, or the somewhat longer edition of the 1890 score produced by Robert Haas, or even the elaborated version as recorded by Schaller, do not begin to approach Ballot for expansiveness. Nor is comparison with many excellent historical recordings, such as those by Knappertsbusch, very valid, as they invariably used the revised and heavily cut first performance version of 1892.

If this preamble sounds like a critical caveat to the consumer against trying this recording, I hasten to add that I am merely trying to establish its uniqueness and am in no sense implying that excuses have to be found for Ballot’s tempi - although a predisposition on the part of the listener to tolerate them would be an advantage. Ballot carries off his vision of this symphony triumphantly; the weight and dignity of this monumental account enhance my conviction that it is the greatest Romantic symphony in the canon.

Of the twenty or so different recordings with which I am familiar, five of the best are with the BPO and three with the VPO, suggesting that the presence of a first tier orchestra steeped in Brucknerian tradition is of paramount importance – yet the virtuosity of the Upper Austria Youth Orchestra rides a coach and horses through that notion. Their talent and technical prowess are phenomenal, and there are certainly no more blips or minor flubs than one would expect to hear in any live performance by a first rate professional band. The notes tell us that 130 musicians with an average age of seventeen took part in this performance, although only 96 are named; presumably there were more guest instrumentalists than are credited and they make a magnificent sound. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that despite their prowess, they cannot quite emulate the security of attack or the silky sheen that Karajan’s orchestras achieve, and despite the emphasis conductor Ballot’s places in the notes upon the importance of varying dynamics, nor is their ability to shade them quite so subtly responsive.

This performance took place in the same location almost a year to the day after the Third Symphony was recorded live and subsequently released on Gramola label; I reviewed it here very favourably. The Ninth will follow later this year and the Sixth in 2016. The resonant acoustic of the Stiftsbasilika favours and even demands slower speeds if the articulation of faster passages is not be obscured by the reverberation. By all accounts, the recording engineers are better able to sift and clarify the sound than human ears listening live can process it; certainly there is no “sonic mush” here to trouble the listener. Inevitably, given the live location, this recording cannot match the transparency Karajan achieves in the studio but the sound remains rich and round, if slightly veiled. Coughing is minimal and there is no recurrence of the hum from the lighting which mildly marred the recording of the Third last year.

In many ways, the sum of this performance is greater than its parts: it clearly greatly impressed those present and remains mightily impressive as a recording per se and as a memento of what was evidently a great event, even if at individual points other interpreters are more effective – or simply different. Thus in the mighty, brooding opening, Karajan, Giulini and Furtwängler generate more tension, while Tennstedt or Maazel are more urgent and imploring, whereas Ballot tends to slow down marginally before the big moments such as the climaxes to the brass crescendos in order to emphasise and underline their impact. The Totenuhr, too, is especially chilling, dwindling spectrally into nothingness, its graduated dynamic beautifully judged.

Despite its length, there is absolutely no sense of dragging in the Scherzo and indeed some of the additional time is accounted for by Ballot sharing Thielemann’s attachment to making the pauses count, allowing the reverberation to fade and an expectant silence to prevail. The ostinato of falling fifths is superbly articulated. The distension of the Adagio represents the most daring of the risks Ballot takes with this music and but the results are heavenly. It is true that sometimes the young string-players do not “bow through” their phrases sufficiently to emulate the richness of tone their senior counterparts generate and the sustained phrases begin to fade and sag very slightly in comparison with the shaping of Wand or Karajan, but Ballot succeeds magnificently in creating a breathless hush, the descending octaves from the flutes hanging in the dusk like floating flares.

The finale is in many ways the most impressive movement of all. Ballot’s grip on phrasing, his exploitation of pauses and his meticulous care over dynamics results in a wholly satisfying melding of its four, disparate main themes into a coherent cosmic narrative. The din of the clashing cymbals in the final orchestral climax is overwhelming. Whatever your reservations regarding the arguable excesses of Ballot’s concept of this masterwork, this is a recording that every committed Brucknerian should hear.

A couple of pedantic niggles regarding the notes and their translation: Bruckner’s “Faszination für Zahlen” is rendered literally as his “fascination for numbers” when of course the correct preposition should be “with” if the sense intended is not to be reversed to mean that it is the numbers who are fascinated by Bruckner. Secondly, a critic is quoted as presumably favourably describing the Youth Orchestra as “[n]icht irgenwelche ästhetisch kaum erreichbaren Wiener, Berliner oder Münchner Philharmoniker”, which is translated into English as “not some aesthetically unapproachable Vienna, Berlin or Munich Philharmonic”. Apart from the fact that I cannot understand what is meant by the phrase in either language, “aesthetically unapproachable” sounds like a back-handed compliment, as does “scarcely accessible” – unless the sense is “irreproachable”.

-- Ralph Moore, MusicWeb International

For more than 50 years, the international Beethoven Competition held by piano manufacturer Bösendorfer and the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna has been taking place every 4 years; in 2017 for the 15th rendition, the Italian Rodolfo Leone was crowned as 1st prize winner by the highly regarded international jury from far more than 250 competing young talents. His play induces critics to utterances like “... he seemed to be communicating with distant worlds, as a true sound philosopher” (Oberösterreichische Nachrichten), which Rodolfo Leone documents with this Beethoven album. Besides the Sonata Op. 106, the famous Hammerklavier-Sonata, by extent and musical content the most complex, outshining all the others of Beethoven’s sonatas, an interlude, the Andante favori is given, which Beethoven originally composed as slow movement of the Waldstein sonata, Op. 53, which follows afterwards. This album is a debut with great interpretive maturity and indescribable power.

This is the longest recording by far of the first version of Bruckner’s Third Symphony. There are longish breaks between movements in this live performance and they somewhat exaggerate its duration and its real extent is more like just under 87 minutes, allowing for decent pauses. Nevertheless, it is still the most leisurely by far - except “leisurely” is hardly the word to describe so spacious, unhurried and grand an interpretation. The next slowest is Georg Tintner’s recording of 78 minutes, which cannot boast as fine an orchestra or indeed so gripping an interpretation. For purposes of comparison, I re-listened to recordings by Inbal and Blomstedt, who take just under seventy minutes. There's also the more eccentric reconstruction by Peter Jan Marthé, recorded live in the same venue in 2005 using an edition combining elements from all three published scores and substituting the 1876 Adagio. That interpretation by Marthé is in many ways closest to the recording under review here. I am one of those who, I fear, cannot countenance Sir Roger Norrington’s unseemly brisk 57 minutes.

According to the excellent notes by Executive Producer Professor Klaus Laczika, the justification for the tempi here is based upon an extrapolation from Bruckner’s comments in letters to Hans Richter concerning the Eighth Symphony. There he laments that conductors invariably played it too fast. Certainly the steady pulse and carefully scaled crescendo which mark the first five and a half minutes signal that we are about to hear an interpretation of real status and profundity.

Nowadays there is an increasing acceptance of the merits and legitimacy of the 1873 score. We may also now hear the Carragan edition of the symphony as it had developed in 1874, in the live recording by Gerd Schaller, derived from the copy Bruckner kept and progressively tinkered with. Certainly the power and serenity of this new recording, made in the Stiftsbasilika at St. Florian, provide the best possible advocacy of the virtues of Bruckner’s earliest thoughts. It is arguable that, despite its poor reception, the Third Symphony had significance to Bruckner’s personal development as a composer and to the symphonic music of his era similar to that of the Eroica to Beethoven in his. It represents a decisive break with what had come before. It establishes recognisable Brucknerian tropes, such as the reappearance of a central thema, the cyclical structure, the repetitions suggestive of litany, the granitic blocks of sound imitating the sonorities of the organ and the progress towards apotheosis; all those elements present here are to become fixtures in his subsequent œuvre. Only the Finale remains slightly unsatisfactory and disjointed; otherwise we are hearing what is recognisably the mature Bruckner.

For some listeners, the very broad and reverberant acoustic of the basilica might be problematic, but it serves to accommodate and underline the grandeur of this performance and rarely results in any “harmonic mush”. Only in passages such as the descending semiquavers at the start of the Finale and the demisemiquavers in the second theme of the first movement is there some blurring of the articulation. Otherwise, the hypnotic intensity and solemn sententiousness of the music is grandly served by the reverberation. The effect was perhaps even more impressive live than it is now on disc. Blomstedt’s live recording has a better orchestra and sounds marginally clearer than the Inbal but Ballot’s orchestra is equal to the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and he finds more transcendence in the music than either Blomstedt or Inbal, an effect enhanced by the sonority of the venue.

Ballot adopts a far steadier, more ominous pulse at the start of the first movement than competitive recordings and maintains a tempo which is truly “misterioso”. The horn blip at 2:36 is mildly unfortunate but that is virtually the only noticeable blot in what is after all a live performance of a notoriously difficult score. As compensation, there are many superb instances of masterly music-making, such as when twenty minutes into the first movement we hear a chord sequence descending a full octave by stages before the reprise of the first subject. Then Ballot, like Marthé, succeeds in making the climax of the movement an overwhelming event.

The Adagio is sublime; perhaps Inbal’s and Blomstedt’s more urgent pacing catches its lyrical quality and a restless forward momentum. By contrast, Ballot simply caresses one of the most beautiful tunes Bruckner ever wrote, giving the celestial melody space to breathe and using the silent pauses to great effect, hence its inordinately protracted duration: 23 minutes compared with the 17 and 19 minutes of Blomstedt and Inbal respectively. Again, the brass chorale is immensely grand and imposing, its tricky cross-rhythms expertly managed.

The impact made by the Scherzo is slightly compromised by the generous acoustic; Ballot presents it as great, rolling juggernaut, stressing its geniality and its rhythmic and thematic kinship with the Scherzo of the Ninth. It is not the least charming or perky and there is a tendency for the sound to wallow. Here is no crisp, graceful terpsichorean tripping; we are given instead a muscular romp.

The Finale is by turns exuberant and ethereal. Its serene, arpeggiated melody, underpinned by pizzicato lower strings seems to spiral heavenwards towards the dome of the basilica. Ballot is unafraid to risk over-emphasis of its naïve pathos by applying some daring rallentandos. Perhaps for some the sudden changes in direction and structural weakness of this movement result in its outstaying its welcome. On the other hand, the aureate blazing of the combined trumpets and trombones contribute to a climactic last five minutes of which Berlioz would have been proud. Inbal and Blomstedt make this movement dance but they do not generate the massive terror and dignity of the Last Trump which Ballot engineers here.

I am increasingly of the view that Bruckner’s music can withstand a variety of interpretative stances. As previous conductors have demonstrated, this is not the only way to deliver this symphony but it constitutes an entirely satisfactory and convincing vision of a majestic work.

There is however, one irksome sonic problem: a faint but perceptible whistle on G which persists throughout the whole recording - some interference apparently originating in the lighting in the basilica - and will prove irritating to listeners using headphones or equipment which emphasises the treble – or simply those of especially acute hearing.

-- Ralph Moore, MusicWeb International

I could, if I wanted to, but I don't... This was the alleged response of Anton Bruckner to singer Rosa Papiers question, why he wouldn't compose songs like Johannes Brahms did. Eight songs by Anton Bruckner are academically proven, which - with one exception - were composed during his time and life in St. Florian and Linz. With his latest recording, the distinguished Austrian Bass Robert Holzer devotes himself, along with Thomas Kerbl, piano and conducting, the choir Chorvereinigung Bruckner and the chamber orchestra of the Anton Bruckner private conservatory Linz, to the unjustly neglected songs and the Magnificat by Bruckner. A sensation came about in the year 2015 with the discovery of the song Der Mondabend, with it's world premiere recording being released on this album.