Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Petri was in his youth something of a multi-instrumentalist. We remember him as Busoni’s greatest pupil and a Lisztian of coruscating brilliance but he was also a violinist – not surprising as his father, Henri, was an internationally renowned performer and teacher – but also, less predictably, as a French horn player good enough to take a place in the Dresden Symphony. Petri was a musician of the utmost clarity, distinction and directness with a technique remarkable even into old age and whose conception of space and tonal value gave him a persuasive insight into music of intellect and weight. As a Beethovenian he was distinguished - as a Chopin player he maybe reflected something of his teacher Busoni’s own professed ambiguity and duality of response. Petri’s pre-War Columbias have been collated on APR and demonstrate his strengths in abundance. Music and Arts has here brought together his concerts and broadcasts from the period covering 1954 to 1962, the year of his death. His reluctance to travel, his physical lack of flamboyance, indeed his active distaste of extravagance and extraneous gesture and detail, meant that audiences didn’t much clamour to hear him. Their loss is evident from this uneven but nevertheless exceptionally significant series of survivals.

There’s a caveat to be made about the actual piano sound on some of these off-air and private recordings; it can be rather harsh but it’s not at all unlistenable. There are also some imperfections to be expected – some wow and distortion (minimal and fleeting) some dropouts (ditto) as well as pitch distortion. These are all honestly noted in Music and Arts documentation and I should mention them here; they didn’t unduly trouble me. The repertoire is very much Petri’s canonical one – the last Beethoven sonatas, Busoni, Chopin as well as Bach-Busoni and Bach-Petri. He was always a charming exponent of Gluck, a more unexpected one here of Medtner. Of Liszt there’s but a fleeting glimpse – Venezia e Napoli, taped in the last year of his life.

We start with his Chopin Preludes Op. 28. Well, best to get this over with I suppose. I find his Chopin rather disappointing. His rubati in the Agitato opener are well judged if unexceptionable (he was known to scorn the emotive exaggerations of some of his colleagues) but he is very, very cool in No. 4, the Largo in E. There’s a dispassionate control in No. 6, a Lento from which, however, he seems to wish to expunge feeling. He is fine though in another Largo, No. 9 in E – his truly noble sound is affecting – but there isn’t enough distinction between the hands in No. 11, where he fails to differentiate the melody line in the right hand. There’s even a distribution between hands – something that seems to me afflicts No. 13 in F sharp as well. The Sostenuto in D flat (No. 15) is very dry playing indeed – Petri adamantine in his refusal to indulge colouristic potential; in addition his left hand covers the right at some crucial moments. He improves considerably for the B flat Presto and the power contained within as he does for the virility and energy of the Allegro appassionato conclusion (he omits Nos. 21 and 22 for some reason). Throughout I felt him most comfortable with the athletic, technical side of the Preludes and rather less indulgent towards the lyrical side that Busoni himself felt most ambivalent about. Of his Busoni indeed I could hardly say anything other than that it is magnificent. The Song of Victory from the Indian Diary is 1.16 of powerfully sustained pianism of an exalted level whilst the eloquence of the Bluebird Song shows that what he failed to do so glaringly in Chopin he could manifestly do in Busoni. The final dance shows off Petri’s superb rhythmic control, his colour and his sheer depth of tone (never overdone). He was seventy-seven when he was taped in Busoni’s All’Italia – sheer virtuosic panache. The disc finishes with twenty-five minutes of Petri with the eminent pianist Carlo Bussotti in a stratospherically impressive Fantasia Contrappuntistica; the two men seemingly joined at the musical hip so intense and marshalled their decisive vision.

The second disc is rather more bits and pieces – but what bits what pieces. The Medtner is very impressive playing indeed if not quite in the Moiseiwitsch or Medtner class. The Danza Festiva is rather heavier than the composer’s own recording but the Op. 20/2 Fairy Tale in B has some seismic attacks. The Schumann Fantasiestücke are in somewhat splintery sound but he plays them with rather more overt affection than he did the Chopin; the Allegro con fuoco second is sonorous, the third is affecting, without affectation, and the Vivacissimo, Dream Visions is full of filigree drive, albeit one accompanied by a degree of tape distortion. His own Bach Chorale arrangements are justly famous as are his recordings of them. Sheep may safely graze is nourishingly intimate and beautifully adept with its sudden pianissimi, whilst I step before Thy Throne grows in authority and grandeur. There’s little real difference between Petri’s 1930s recording of the Minuet (from the W.F. Bach Notebook) and this one, made in 1958. His Schubert-Liszt is duly frolicsome and the Nocturne in D flat has quite a lot more vivacity and colour than he lavished on the Préludes, albeit his rhythm is rather heavy.

The third disc gives us his trademark Gluck-Sgambati Melodie – and this time he must cede to his earlier self; he’s heavier, more emphatic, less treble oriented preferring to concentrate instead on the middle voicings. The captivating beauty of that earlier recording has been replaced by a philosophic depth that does seem rather alien to it. His Beethoven Op. 90 Sonata is characteristically plain speaking and strong; the second of the two movements is especially buoyant and decisive. The Chopin examples here, the Sonata in B and the Nocturne in F sharp, are vitiated by choppy rhythm. Petri was seventy-eight when these performances were taped so maybe that has something to do with it but whilst there are tonally delightful glints in the opening Allegro of the Sonata it sounds as if, like a mathematician, Petri were actively breaking the movement – and indeed the work as a whole – into units. The algebraic-philosophic-contrapuntalist approach here renders much of this very disappointing. I liked the lento much more though and whilst the presto finale again suffers from rhythmic insistence there are still compensatory features of colour and vivacity.

The final disc is in many ways the most consistently elevated in musical terms, principally because it finds Petri addressing Beethoven. There are some technical frailties in the opening of Op. 109, it’s true, but more important by far is the sense of powerful direction. Again the tiny Prestissimo second movement taxes him for a moment but we should concentrate on the Andante finale. Here Petri is very direct, almost casual, but as the movement advances and his architectural priorities become clearer we are aware of a mind of illuminating integrity at work. By the later variations he develops a degree of metrical flexibility that one would not have earlier suspected. There is no undue sentiment and I would certainly understand those who hold this to be a logician’s Beethoven. My own instincts are for something more overtly expressive but I can but admire the tremendous concentration of his approach. The A flat Sonata, Op. 110, again taped in 1954, certainly lacks to my ears the molto espressivo in the first movement requested of the performer. But Petri is careful to reserve the weight of his intelligence and tonal resources for the first, Adagio section of the finale. He keeps this moving with an almost Arietta delicacy, though he certainly employs weight and shading. The Fuga is strong and determined. In Op. 111 his Maestoso is fast, strong, with no great tonal beauty to it. I have to say I found it inflexible, on one level and rather superficial. It’s a performance that seeks to divide and fracture still further, rather than reconcile, the character of both movements. With a pianist such as Solomon the seemingly disparate and oppositional movements take on congruence and a retrospective sense of rightness. With Petri the implacably oppositional nature of the Sonata is starkly delineated. In that Arietta finale Petri is flexible without coming to a stop; his syncopated passages are driving, even a little peremptory, but he never seeks to extract huge weight of left hand tone or to indulge abstraction. This is intelligent, lean, technically adept and impressive playing, whatever ones view of its ability to move, which I happen to find relatively limited.

Documentation consists in the main of an interview between annotator Frederick Maroth and Petri’s English pupil, Claire James who had attended the famous Busoni-Petri two-piano London recital of 1921. They deal with the central features of Petri’s pianism with acumen, as one would expect, with some quietly revealing information disclosed along the way. This is a set of some real importance in capturing Petri’s art at a time when he was given considerably less than his due. Even at his most phlegmatic his brand of musical stoicism added an imperishable page to the annals of pianism on record in the twentieth century.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Recording all the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti on the piano is an undertaking of great moment and fascination: a journey through shared cultural experience, as well as one that explores the subtle thought processes of a musical genius, with his Italianate approach to art. This is the fifth volume in this outstanding series. Carlo Grante is one of Italy’s foremost concert pianists. He has performed in such major venues as the Vienna Musikverein, the Berlin Philharmonie’s Chamber Music Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, and more. He has appeared as soloist with all of the world’s major orchestras. In 2014-2015, his series “Masters of High Romanticism,” featuring three recital programmes each devoted to Chopin, Chumann and Brahms, was taken to major halls in New York, Vienna and Berlin. Though best known for his Scarlatti, Mozart, and Chopin interpretations, Grante has had many contemporary works dedicated to him, including Adolphe’s Chopin Dreams. He has released nearly 50 recordings.

Elman made two commercial recordings of the Tchaikovsky Concerto. The first, with Barbirolli in 1929, has seldom been out of the catalogue in one form or another. The second dates from an LPO session with Boult in 1954 and is much less well known. But dating from December 1945 comes this live Boston/Paray traversal that catches the great violinist still on the right side of physical infirmity and a gradual but inexorable waning of powers. These latter do manifest themselves in particular ways in the companion concerto, the Mendelssohn.

In terms of structure the Boston performance of the Tchaikovsky differs little from the 1929 traversal; the timings for the first movement are in fact almost identical though there are differences in matters of thematic emphasis, metrical displacements, vibrato usage and phrasal elasticity. This is still however, very recognisably, the master tonalist of old, one who imbued every phrase with lavish intensity and a throbbing, molten vivacity. He brings intense concentration and expressive shading to his opening rhetorical statement and the Elmanesque rubato that no-one could quite match. He is very slow and highly romanticised; the orchestral pizzicati that point the rhythm are delayed an age as a result. Elman lavishes prayerful simplicity after the cadenza and his voluptuous vibrato takes on an ever more devastating candour. Behind him the Boston winds are highly characterful and though there is some crunch and other such aural damage (especially in tuttis) it will detain only the pickiest of listener. Elman is not quite certain in his passagework at the end of the movement – though the harmonics are negotiated well enough – but one can hear how eventful and tactful is Tchaikovsky’s orchestration when a fine conductor is in charge clarifying lines. The orchestra emerge newly distinctive in the slow movement – flute and clarinet principals especially. Elman’s phrasing rises and falls, ever more rapturous and involved, his line taking on more and more a sense of direction, the orchestral string blending under Paray of real distinction. In the finale the orchestral accents are commensurately strong; this is the one movement where the excitement of a live performance impels Elman to a fleeter performance than his earlier commercial recording though oddly it’s not necessarily more overpoweringly exciting.

The Tchaikovsky is a reminder of Elman’s eminence; in the first decade of the century it was he who was the most fêted of young fiddlers and the Tchaikovsky was for a decade or more "his" concerto. The Mendelssohn dates from November 1953. His slightly earlier commercial recording with Defauw and the Chicago Symphony has always been highly regarded whilst the twilight Vanguard session in Vienna that produced the later disc, with the State Opera Orchestra under Golschmann has not. Again Elman’s overall conception changed little and the difference in timings between Mitropoulos and Golschmann are negligible. Elman is perhaps guilty of some rough playing in the opening movement of the Concerto; some rather inelegant expressive pointing is another particular feature (but how irrepressibly Elman it sounds). With the highlighting comes a rather static introspection and an equally glutinous tonal projection that can too dramatically personalise the line. Nevertheless against this one can cite the finger position changes that remind one of the old lion and the beautiful strands of lyrical weight he can and does lavish – even if the vibrato itself is now slowing and the tempos ossifying somewhat in terms of phrasal interconnectedness. In the Andante he no longer possesses the elfin projection or sense of relaxation that the greatest interpreters of this work bring to it (if indeed he ever really did – his recording with Defauw, though of course highly personalised, was highly impressive). He does rather distend the movement (to 7.50). He is jaunty and unmotoric in the finale; he never used it as a piece of showmanship as other, less scrupulous colleagues did. He also makes a couple of fluffs on the lower strings but these are minor details – even if the final bars are rather grandiosely emphatic.

The recordings have been handled with skill; the attendant problems are really insignificant ones and won’t be in any way problematic. As one who welcomes anything by Elman, no matter how minor, these major live performances have a still compelling part to play in expanding and widening the Elman discography; that they are ancillary to the main body of his recordings is undeniable but wise heads will want to hear them and reflect on Elman’s place in the hierarchy of great violinists.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

MICHELANGELI IN LONDON - THE J

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO. 9 MEN

"[A] lovingly prepared, executed and recorded performance..." Performance: 4 (out of 5), Sound: 4 (out of 5) -- Keith Potter, BBC Music Magazine

Hans Knappertsbusch conducts Bruckner Symphony No. 8

Whether performing Grieg, Grainger, or Schumann, Grainger himself seizes on the music's rifts: while he can produce a fetching cantabile, he tends to disturb the surface by jabbing at the accompaniments, shifting mood without preparation, sharpening the rhythmic profile (a special boon in the Schumann Symphonic Etudes), and grabbing on to small details. The piano part of the orchestral In a Nutshell is not really a solo opportunity—but Grainger uses it as a platform to rail against the orchestra, snapping out his accents in a way that turns the music violent... Echt Grainger is certainly what we get on the Music & Arts CD... However, I can't help regretting Music & Arts's choices when they put together this CD. I have no complaints about the performances themselves. Grainger's antisentimental roughening of the Grieg (modeled, in part, on his mentor Grieg's own readings) is the most vital I know; and despite the sprinkle (and occasional downpour) of wrong notes, this particular performance (once available on an International Piano Archives LP) is arguably the best representation (he never made a studio account) that has survived. But why couple it with the commercial studio recordings of the Schumann works, which have long been widely available from both Pearl and Biddulph?

Still, Maggi Payne's transfers are good, too...and former Fanfare colleague Kevin Bazzana's elaborate essay serves as a model for the kind of annotation that [others] should be providing...

-- Peter J. Rabinowitz, FANFARE [3/1998]

The competition on my shelves for Elliott Carter's Fourth String Quartet consists of the Arditti's Etcetera performance, as part of a two-disc compilation done in 1988 of the so-far four, recorded under the composer's supervision. The Arditti prevails. They articulate the work's important inner voices exquisitely well and flyingly; their ensemble astonishes (as always), as does their feel for the work's vitality. But it's really such a close call: as I listen to the Composer's Quartet's rather more stolid perusal I think, well yes, but as they linger at the turns we've the opportunity to dwell on the architecture the Arditti discharges ever so pyrotechnically. So I suggest you have both, with the two Etceteras (KTC 1055/6) taking pride of place, should you lean toward but one view. Small production gaffe: the Carter's been assigned three tracks in the text and one on the disc. (The Etcetera also tracks the quartet's three connected parts as one.)

A performance of Mel Powell's String Quartet (1982) appears on a Musical Heritage Society CD, 512495T, Mel Powell: Six Recent Works, with the Sequoia String Quartet, and here too I favor the Sequoia's reading to the Composer's for its rather more supple and singing way with a complexly atonal score which rises nonetheless, and at their hands particularly, to heights of Romantic expressiveness, which the Composer's Quartet sacrifices to form. (The MHS disc's mixed Powell program is one the collector of the contemporary ought to have in any case.)

To the Babbitt quartet I've none to compare but have the very strong sense that the want of expressiveness remarked above seems here too to blunt somewhat the work's overall impact and, perhaps most tellingly, seems also to bond these three quartets into something like a familial—or better put, skeletal—resemblance. The recorded sound is very good. And so are the performances, make no mistake, though a touch too foursquare-analytical for this reviewer's tastes. But perhaps not for yours: recommended therefore as a t wo-thirds-confirmed different approach to good, important music. (You'll find a performance of Babbitt's String Quartet No. Four, performed by the Juilliard, on a CRI CD, 587, a fact I mention because Opus doesn't: its expanded format notwithstanding, Schwann appears to be as unreliable as ever.)

-- Mike Silverton, FANFARE [5/1991]

Do many Americans realize what they owe to Josef Gingold, who after a distinguished career as concertmaster and soloist has now taught several generations of violinists at Indiana University? In addition to teaching some of the stars (whose publicists often prefer to label their charges as Galamian or Heifetz pupils, even when it was Gingold who made musicians out of them) of the solo and chamber-music platforms, America's orchestras benefit mightily from having Gingold pupils populate their violin sections. The Faéré, from a two-LP set on Red Bud that John Wiser praised in Fanfare 8:5, p. 249, is a 1966 concert recording with much tape hiss and audience noise, but is no less lovely for all that: patience and experience are called for and supplied. The Kreisler items, some of which are rarely encountered in recital or on disc, are from a mid-1970s Fidelio LP (I cannot find the Fanfare review). Gingold's rhythms are perhaps not as springy and tight as Kreisler's from the 1920s—this is more like the later Kreisler, when Gingold knew him. The sound here is a bit metallic. While the entire Red Bud set should be transferred to CD, this is a worthy and desirable homage to Josef Gingold.

-- David K. Nelson, FANFARE [9/1989]

The Fauré is a mono recording; the Kreisler pieces are recorded in stereo.