Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Ben van Oosten’s impressive discography of French organ music has somehow neglected one very important person: Cesar Franck. Now the Dutch organ wizard fills this glaring gap with a marvelous show of virtuosity on four releases bringing together the whole of Franck’s organ oeuvre, from his early efforts to the three great masterpiece cycles. Once again van Oosten performs on the legendary L’Orgue a Michel-Ange in St. Ouen’s Cathedral in Rouen. Today this organ, one of Aristide Cavaille-Coll’s most magnificent instruments, is preserved in its original state. Cavaille-Coll and Cesar Franck were close friends. Franck tested many brand new organs in Cavaille-Coll’s workshop and wrote the Trois Pieces for the inaugural concert of the Trocadero Organ on the occasion of the World’s Fair in 1878. Good fortune for posterity: Franck’s premiere manuscript with the original registrations is extant and offers outstanding insights into his idea of sound. This idea is shaped essentially by the colors of a symphony orchestra. As he wrote to Cavaille-Coll, “My organ, it is an orchestra!” However, Franck’s beginnings as a pianist are in full evidence: broad chords and accompaniment arpeggios like those in the Fantaisie in A major are rather untypical of organist’s hands. It is thus that Franck developed a unique personal style. Ben van Oosten conveys all of the aforementioned in remarkable fashion.

César Franck’s Violin Sonata is the diamond solitaire of the violin literature. Incomparable lyrical wealth forms a bold contrast when it meets the wildest intensity. Here formulaic violin composition and empty virtuosity are nowhere to be found; the challenging violin part and the incredibly high velocity of the piano part mean that the musicians have to give their all. This work is also popular with cellists, and the outstanding qualities of both stringed instruments form a perfect union in David Riniker’s brand-new version for piano trio.

Shortly prior to his death Franck kept a resolution that he had made many years before. His Trois Chorales creates the impression of a legacy in which he repeatedly refers to his great model Bach.

The phenomenal bass register of MDG’s “Manfred Bürki” Steinway concert grand piano of 1901 offers a profound foundation, and Kolly’s skillful hands even produce what is actually impossible – 32’ sounds! This high-resolution SACD recording guaranteeing genuine three-dimensional listening pleasure in the home with MDG’S 2+2+2 sound is the perfect complement to this suggestion.

Classical Music

POULENC Melodies on Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire: Dans le jardin d’Anna; Allons plus vite; La Grenoullière; Montparnasse; Hyde Park; Anguille; Carte-Postale; Avant le Cinéma; 1904; Rosemonde; Le Présent; Chanson; Hier. Banalités. Bleuet. Le Bestiaire. Cortège d’Orphée. Calligrammes • Holger Falk (bar); Alessandro Zuppardo (pn) • MDG 6031658 (58:51 Text and Translation)


What an utterly delightful CD this is! From start to finish light, bright, engaging, and completely immersed in Poulenc’s unusual sound world. Holger Falk, a name unknown to me, is an extraordinarily light, high baritone, a true bariton-matin, a voice classification virtually nonexistent among German singers—but here he is, with an upper range so free and extensive, both in full voice and voix mixte , that much of the time he sounds like a tenor. It is also a unique voice; though it has a definite German lyric-baritone sound, there is no one else he reminds me of. The voice has a velvet sheen that is wholly unique. And what an artist he is, much more subtle in a lyrical sort of way than declamatory as so many of his brethren tend to be. I found his interpretations of the famed Le Bestiaire a trifle more restrained than Thomas Allen’s outstanding recording of them (CRD 3437, the orchestrated version with the Nash Ensemble), yet comparing Falk to Allen—as well as to Pierre Bernac, in the original 1945 recording with Poulenc on piano—reveals not only that he is able to hold his own as an interpreter, but that his voice sounds much more tenorish than either of those esteemed singers. Falk’s extensive high range sounds like an arched extension of his lower tones, rather than an add-on as in the case of Bernac, whose voice—after not having heard it in some years—suddenly strikes me as somewhat Russian in quality, particularly the low range.


In addition to being an outstanding song interpreter, then, Falk has a voice I could listen to all day without fatigue. His range, arched phrasing, sensitive dynamic shading, and ability to color his tones all mark him as an artist of outstanding sensibility. I should also point out that Alessandro Zuppardo, though in a supporting role, is equally sensitive and highly musical, capable of give-and-take with his singer to a degree rare among duos who are not permanent concert partners, but since he has had extensive experience accompanying singers (among them Renato Bruson, Mariella Devia, Fabio Armiliato, Cecilia Bartoli, and Vincenzo La Scola) this comes as less of a surprise. This is a disc you’ll play over and over and over again, if you enjoy Poulenc’s songs or modern French song in general. MDG’s outstanding sound quality—rich, round, with just the right amount of natural reverberance—lends an extra patina of quality to this release. Bravo, Falk and Zuppardo! I hope to hear much more of you in the years to come.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Jean Françaix's music represents a rare combination: it is modern and intelligible. When he penned his Wind Quintet No. 1 shortly after World War II, he was already a world-famous composer whose clear, constructive musical idiom had made him a real people-pleaser. People were looking for emotionally direct music with an intelligible message and found it in Françaix's fresh, light, and witty style. - MD&G

”Musical fireworks ... this new recording of the complete wind quintets of Jean Francaix marks the stupendous debut of the Berlin Chamber Ensemble.”

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



FLYING SAXOPHONE CIRCUS • Milan Turkovi?, cond; Selmer Saxharmonic • MDG 910 1625-6 (SACD: 59: 01)


SHOSTAKOVICH Suite for Variety Orchestra. DVO?ÁK Slavonic Dances, op. 46/1, 7, 8. MILHAUD Scaramouche. GERSHWIN American Stories Suite. MATITIA Devil’s Rag


If Flying Saxophone Circus , the title of this CD, conjures up images of a troupe of madcap comedians and “something completely different,” I think you have gotten the point. As the program notes, with their references to magical materializations in Red Square and abductions by jazz-loving space aliens make clear, here indeed is a unique experience. With this eclectic program of Shostakovich, Dvo?ák, Milhaud, Gershwin, and Jean Matitia, played by a saxophone dodectet (I’ve waited my whole life to use that term) called the Selmer Saxharmonic, this is about as different as things get here in the classical aisle.


The Shostakovich Suite for Variety Orchestra (post 1956)—usually misidentified, as it is here, as the lost-but-now-located 1938 Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2 —is the perfect opener for a disc of this title, as the style of these delicious waltzes, polkas, and gallops, taken from film and ballet scores, is strikingly similar to music played in Russian circuses. (That the composer could apparently write these crowd-pleasing tunes with the same skill and conviction as his darkly intense symphonies and string quartets is a mystery worthy of further exploration. It surely doesn’t sound like slumming to me.) The band’s multilayered saxophone sonority expands on the color offered by the four saxes in the original orchestration, with some excursions into pizzicato and other sounds usually alien to reed instruments. The performance of the insinuating Waltz No. 2, made familiar in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut , is particularly convincing.


The other works are just as effectively done. The Saxharmonic’s Dvo?ák dances capture the Slavic flavor while adding the colorations of his wind serenade, the saxophones morphing credibly into flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons. The Scaramouche may seem a bit heavy at first, but well before they get to the “Brasileira” one almost begins to believe it was written for this ensemble. Then the German musicians transform into a 1930s dance band—with an amazing sax line—for the suite of Gershwin show tunes arranged by French saxophonist Jean-Marie Londeix. They finish off with the fiendishly difficult Devil’s Rag for 12 saxophones by another French sax player and teacher, Christian Lauba, writing under the nom de plume Jean Matitia. Pure magic.


But I go on too long. So, here’s the endorsement: This is the group I’d want to book if I was having a cost-no-object party. The ensemble boasts 12 of the finest saxophonists in Germany, playing everything from sopranino to bass. The music is ingenious and accessible to a wide variety of tastes. The arrangements, most of them by tenor saxophonist Christoph Enzel, are technically sophisticated, true to the various styles, and great fun. Bassoonist/conductor Milan Turkovi? (he still plays in the Vienna Concentus Musicus) leads lively, idiomatic performances. These range from subtle to brazen as appropriate, with not a trace of the stiffness that often creeps in when wind ensembles tackle orchestral repertoire. The sound is magnificent and the notes are a hoot . Why wait? Drop your copy of Fanfare (temporarily of course) and get to your favorite retailer post haste. If you enjoy this repertoire, or the sound of saxophones, you will love this SACD.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames

Fine performances, very well recorded – an excellent sampler of music for flute at the time of Quantz.

The booklet note to this CD, by Brian Berryman, leader of La Ricordanza, tells us that one of Quantz’s obituarists (unnamed), described his flute-playing as “learned, fiery and sublime”. When Charles Burney met the elderly Quantz in Berlin, an encounter he reported in The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Provinces (1773), he liked the man, describing him as “an intelligent man”, who “talks well concerning music”. He added, however, that “talking and composing are different things” and confessed to finding his music “frequently common and insipid”. “Fiery and sublime” or “common and insipid”?

There certainly isn’t anything here that seems worthy of the epithet “sublime”; perhaps the German “erhaben” has other overtones of which I am ignorant? Nor would I want to dismiss any of Quantz’s work on this disc as “common” or “insipid”. “Fiery”, however, wouldn’t be too bad a description of some of the writing - and here, some of the playing - in the fast outer movements of the two pieces by Quantz which are played with great vitality by La Ricordanza. Those two pieces are coupled with one each by four other composers: Leclair, C.P.E. Bach, Johann Gottlieb Graun and Michel Blavet. Samples of their work are here because one of the aims of the disc is to illustrate what its subtitle describes as “the sources of Quantz’s inspiration”.

Quantz was one those composers who achieved something more-or-less individual through synthesis rather than through startling originality. The point is implicit in something else that Burney says about Quantz, in comments based both on his conversations with the composer and on Quantz’s own Memoirs. Burney records how Quantz had benefited from his friendship with Johann Georg Pisendel. “Pisendel”, writes Burney, “had in his youth been taught to sing by the famous Pistocchi [one of the great castrati], and had received instructions on the violin, from Torelli; however, having travelled through France and Italy, where he had acquired the peculiarities in the taste of both countries, he so blended them together as to form a third genus, or mixed style of writing and playing, which was half French and half Italian. Influenced by his example, Quantz declares, that he always preferred the compound style, to the national one, or that of his own country”. Quantz himself made a kind of musical Grand Tour between 1724 and 1727, visiting Italy, France, England and the Netherlands, learning acquisitively along the way – he certainly encountered Blavet in Paris in 1726 and Leclair in Turin in the same year; Graun and C.P.E. Bach he knew, naturally, in Berlin.

The concerto by Quantz which opens the disc - and of which this is the first ever recording - has some fair Italianate fire in its opening allegro di molto and its closing vivace di molto, both movements played with appropriate panache by Brian Berryman, very well supported by the remaining members of La Ricordanza. The intervening movement, marked ‘Grave ma con affetto’ makes one feel sure that Quantz had listened to some of the strikingly expressive music of the younger C.P.E. Bach. Quantz’s Sonata in C major - if it is by Quantz, there being some doubt about the attribution - is unusual in its use of both transverse flute and recorder as solo instruments. It is an attractive and engaging piece, in which the brilliant articulation of the recorder contrasts effectively with the softer, broader tone of the flute. At times it sounds like a version of the frequently claimed antithesis between the vivacity of the Italian manner and the more sentimental idiom of the French!

Graun’s Concerto for recorder is amiable enough without making any very striking or, I suspect, memorable impression on the listener. Burney, evidently in a grumpy mood, dismissed Graun’s compositions as “languid” – and this isn’t, it has to be said, one of the compositions one would call as evidence in rebuttal of the charge. There’s no danger of sublimity here or, indeed, of very much fire. I suspect that Annette Berryman makes about as much as can reasonably be made of the piece. The Sonata by Leclair is altogether more interesting, not least for the beautiful Sarabande which forms its brief third movement and for the inventive allegro assai which follows it. Blavet’s Concerto is an interesting piece, its outer movements thoroughly Italianate and each involving a technically demanding cadenza both of which Brian Berryman negotiates admirably. The central slow movement is made up of two gavottes, in which the musical inflections are just as thoroughly French.

The Trio Sonata by C.P.E. Bach effectively steals the show. Report has it that it was first written when the composer was seventeen, before being revised around 1747 when Bach was in his early thirties, in Berlin alongside Quantz and Graun. The music takes more risks than Quantz or Graun were ever willing to take and, both melodically and harmonically it speaks with a greater individuality than either of the senior Berlin composers could regularly achieve. This isn’t just a matter of Bach being more stylistically advanced - historically speaking - than Quantz and Graun; he is simply possessed of a greater originality of musical mind. Where Quantz was a very effective synthesiser of musical idioms, Bach was something like the creator of a new one.

For anyone interested in the chamber repertoire for flute in the eighteenth century this should be informative and enjoyable listening. Since the playing is exemplary and the recording quality outstanding it can, however, be warmly commended to more than just those with a specialist interest.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

DAVID Salon Duett, Op. 25. Suite, Op. 43. 12 Salon Pieces. 3 Impromptus en forme de Valse • Stephan Schardt (vn); Philipp Vogler (pn) • MDG 903 1774-6 (SACD: 76:00)


Violinist Stephan Schardt and pianist Philipp Vogler present works for solo violin (the Suite, op. 43) and for violin and piano (the rest) by Ferdinand David, perhaps best known as the violinist who collaborated with Felix Mendelssohn on that composer’s E-Minor Violin Concerto. The first of these, a Salon Duett , takes the form of variations on a song by Eduard Haase. The variations reveal a composer of idiomatic, and at times virtuosic, works for his instrument (the frequent double-stopping and sprightly bowings—Schardt claims to have followed the originals as closely as possible—stand worlds apart from the more chaste part in Mendelssohn’s concerto). Schardt’s notes cite an appreciation of David by his student August Wilhelmj, who ascribed to his teacher the honorable intention of reconciling Nicolo Paganini’s virtuosity with classical compositional principles. That same virtuosity recurs in the 11-and-a half-minute, four-movement Suite for Solo Violin (Menuett, Gavotte, Siciliano, and Gigue), clearly based on the solo compositions of Bach. As in the Duett , Schardt plays with brilliant agility, crisp articulation, and sharp wit, bringing the energy of period performance (Schardt served for a time as concertmaster of Musica Antiqua Cologne) to these technically complex works. If many of the movements hearken back to Bach, the third, a Siciliano, pours newer melodic wine into the older master’s bottle, and the fourth, introduces chunky double-stops into the dance form. If violinists don’t follow Schardt’s lead and add this work, as many have now done with Johann Georg Pisendel’s, to their repertoires, Schardt’s high-spirited and brilliant performance can hardly be to blame.


The 12 Salon Pieces , together constituting about 40 minutes of the program, also seem particularly violinistic, and the composer has taken full advantage of his knowledge of the instrument in crafting these melodically appealing miniatures. But they’re no mere catalogue of violinistic devices: The first two, Praeludium and Scherzo, sound almost like piano pieces by Robert Schumann (one of David’s friends) in their rhythmic verve and melodic outlines. The syncopated Tanz continues in the previous piece’s zesty vein (Schardt and Vogler re-create for the listener a sense of its exhilaration). David balances a Romanze (with a virtuosic middle section), with a faster-paced Rondo, and follows it with Ballade—the ordering of the suite’s movements make it digestible as a whole as well as in its parts. The duo imparts a strongly urgent forward motion to the Lied and rhythmic drive to the Marsch. They lend a jaunty air to the Impromptu and a more sober, academic one to the Canon (at least in its earlier moments). In this last, Schardt draws an especially rich and commanding tone from the lower registers of his instrument. Finally, a piquant reading of Ständchen leads to the final piece, a more exuberant Capriccio. Especially for violinists, but for many other listeners as well, this suite of character pieces may stand out from the period’s general (and occasionally tedious) production as both idiomatic and ingratiating. The recital comes to a close with three impromptus “in the form of a waltz.” The notes point out some of the novel effects David achieved in these, such as, in the first number’s middle, the violin playing an extended E in various octaves and the piano shifting the harmonies under it before resuming the main waltz. In the second waltz, the duo evokes a more melancholy mood; they’re headlong in the third.


Violinists, aficionados of the violin, as well as historians and general listeners, should find this program, its clear and rich recorded sound, and its enthusiastic and, at times, scintillating, performances highly appealing. Strongly recommended.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

LOUIS FERDINAND Trio in E?, op. 3. Piano Quartet in f, op. 6 • Tr Parnassus; Thomas Selditz (va) • MDG 303 1361 (69:35)


This excellent trio has made an important contribution to the classical music discography in seeking out forgotten and neglected works from the rich treasury of 19th-century music. Among the most polished and innovative composers early in the century is Louis Ferdinand, the gifted Prussian prince who died on the battlefield in 1806 at the age of 34. Under the tutelage of Jan Ladislav Dussek, who was in his royal entourage, Louis Ferdinand composed a small body of works, almost entirely for chamber ensembles including piano; all were published during his lifetime. Volume 1, containing two of the trios, was reviewed in Fanfare 29:3. Since there are only three trios all told, the Parnassus players extended the scope of this integral set to include one of Louis Ferdinand’s two piano quartets.


The Parnassus now has a new violinist, Yamei Yu, who recently replaced the original violinist of the trio, Wolfgang Schröder. She appears to share their excellent qualities as chamber musicians—precise ensemble and intonation—but her sound is not very intense, and lacks nuance. The writing for the cello does not appear to be very challenging, and the cello part blends nicely but lacks a real profile. As in so much chamber music of that period, the piano is the dominant instrument, and although pianist Chia Chou modulates his brilliant playing in the true spirit of a considerate ensemble player, he is the true leader of the group, with a flexible command over expressive fluctuations in tempo and dynamics. The finale of the op. 6 quartet presents some tricky ensemble problems, which are solved pleasingly in the pianist’s capable hands.


As noted in the review of Volume 1, Louis Ferdinand’s music is amazingly forward-looking, anticipating the harmonic and structural freedom of the early Romantics such as Mendelssohn and Schumann. But above all, we hear Schubert in his style—harmonic surprises, expressive melodies, rich but lucid textures. The Quartet, on the other hand, shows some Beethoven influence, for example, in the terse, abrupt style of the Menuetto movement. The op. 6 Quartet, incidentally, was well known to the Romantics; Schumann composed some variations for piano four hands on a theme from the quartet; Archduke Rudolph used another theme for a set of violin variations; and Liszt published an Elégie sur des motifs du Prince Louis Ferdinand de Prusse in 1847.


The Parnassus Trio has little competition in its Louis Ferdinand project; the trios recorded several years ago by the Horst Göbel Trio on Thorofon are no longer available. Zephyr Records has a two-CD project titled “The Poet and the Prince,” pairing chamber works by Schumann and Louis Ferdinand, but I have not heard either of the CDs.


Simply on the basis of their polished, tasteful music-making, the Parnassus Trio is strongly recommended.


MDG boasts—and rightly so—about their “sound ideal,” produced in the natural acoustics of concert halls without the use of any “sound-modifying manipulation.” Their success is evident on this recording; the sound is vivid and natural, the balance among the trio members just as one would expect it to be in a concert hall.


FANFARE: Susan Kagan

Steffen Schleiermacher has often fascinated his public with works by Morton Feldman. Along with Christian Giger, the solo cellist in the famous Gewandhaus Orchestra, he is now presenting Patterns in a Chromatic Field - an extensive composition showing us the minimalist master's more entertaining side. Here, highly virtuosic passages alternate with petrified soundscapes; now the instruments seem to melt, now their contrasting nature becomes the point of reference. While avoiding any sort of developmental idea, a tonal process of great suggestive power is produced over the course of some eighty minutes. -- MD&G

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REVIEW:

This is very satisfying and musically highly refined. There is a balance to be struck between enigmatic modernity and romantic affection for an abstract tradition which is in line with both Mark Rothko’s New York and Beethoven’s Vienna, and this is beautifully struck by these musicians. If you are a Feldman fan then this will be a very satisfying addition to your collection. Feldman newbies might find an 80 minute duo for cello and piano on a single CD track more than a little daunting, but, as with his other extended works, if you allow the piece its own space and inhabit it as you would an art gallery, then you will gradually sense your cells and synapses aligning themselves to something rather special.

– MusicWeb International

Volume 3 in Steffen Schleiermacher’s survey of Morton Feldman’s late and heavenly long piano works couples Piano (1977) and Palais de Mari (1987) for at least the third time on CD. Schleiermacher’s concentrated precision and masterful control of the composer’s minutely differentiated dynamics easily supersedes Ronnie Lynn Paterson’s less-polished pianism and overly slow tempos while matching Aki Takahashi’s surface sheen and wealth of nuance.

To be certain, Takahashi benefits from closer, more immediate engineering, and Mode fills out her disc with earlier (and much shorter!) Feldman fare. Yet Feldmanites who like MDG’s relatively distant ambience will appreciate how powerfully Piano’s sudden, loud chordal outbursts and residual overtones register. And in Palais de Mari, Schleiermacher’s vocally informed phrasing and long-lined fluidity contrasts to Sabine Leibner’s more austere deliberation (both interpretations hold equal validity, yet are quite different, and I wouldn’t want to give up either one). A worthy follow-up to Schleiermacher’s previous Feldman releases.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Includes work(s) by various composers. Soloist: Martin Rost.

Change the world; it needs it!'' Hanns Eisler always remained true to this challenge. Between the Great Depression and the Third Reich the committed communist endeavored to exercise influence with his music as his medium. On the first volume of our edition of Hanns Eisler's songs, Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiermacher present pieces from the years between 1929 and 1937 for whcih Bertolt Brecht supplied almost all the texts. A long-overdue rehabilitation of a composer who for many years was known above all as the German Democratic Republic's artistic spokesman! The tightrope over which the artists moved was very narrow. Today their honest and unconditional admiration for communism may seem rather strange - so that it is all the more remarkable how Holger Falk maintains a balance between genuine emotion and grand pathos! The spectrum is broad, and the repertoire ranges from the brazen ''Lied vom Anstrecher Hitler'' through the oppressive ''O Falladah, wie du da hangest'' to cabaret pieces like the ''Stempellied'' thematizing with original Berlin ''heart and fist'' the poverty experience by many people during the Great Depression.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players. Antonín Dvorák’s American String Quartet is a prime contender for a top slot on the all-time hit list of classical masterpieces – and rightly so, as this new recording by the Leipzig String Quartet demonstrates. Here it is heard along with the same composer’s magnificent String Quintet, and the outstanding bassist Alois Posch joins forces with the Leipzig musicians on what promises to be a favorite album for all chamber music fans. And such a program calls for the finest SACD sound.