SCHUMAN Symphony No. 6. Prayer in Time of War. New England Triptych • Gerard Schwarz, cond; Seattle SO • NAXOS 8559625 (60:51)


I was working as office administrator for a church at the time of 9/11, and can still remember the shock and angst following the attack and its aftermath. The minister came to me one day and mentioned how horrible things were. I remarked that at times like this I thought of Olivier Messiaen and his three fellow musicians, held prisoner in a Nazi POW camp, thinking that not only their own ends were near but the end of the world, and how Messiaen responded, artistically, with his masterly Quartet for the End of Time. The minister looked at me as if I had just said I came from Mars and said, “Well, I don’t know how to rock and roll any more!”


Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. I respond more to Messiaen and those other works written as a response to the angst of a war that shattered mankind to the very depths of its soul. William Schuman’s response was his 1943 Prayer in Time of War and, afterwards, his abstract but darkly soul-shattering Symphony No. 6. The Prayer met with good critical response when it first appeared, the symphony with antipathy bordering on outright hostility. Its premiere with the Dallas Symphony conducted by Antal Dorati on February 27, 1949, incensed the audience so much that, in Schuman’s words, “They questioned whether they should even complete payment of the commission.”


The symphony, following the dark music he wrote for ballets by Antony Tudor ( Undertow ) and Martha Graham ( Night Journey ), is similarly black and angst-ridden. Like Vaughan Williams’s own Sixth Symphony, it is a highly personal reaction to a postwar world in which so many thousands of lives were ended or disrupted, a world dominated by power struggles with the Soviets, the atomic bomb, and the intense effort it took to pick up shattered lives and move on. The fact that Vaughan Williams’s work was understood and appreciated in England while Schuman’s was vilified in America probably has something to do with the level of property destruction the former country suffered. America itself was largely protected, at least physically, and like the onset of the Depression, the postwar years created a market for soft, soothing music. Schuman’s existentialist bombshell was not what audiences wanted to hear.


Even today—perhaps especially today, in an uncertain world caught between Islamic jihads on one side and an economic freefall on the other—Schuman’s symphony and Prayer speak to us deeply unless, of course, you are one of those who just don’t know how to rock and roll. The Prayer is gentler in expression. Despite a dangerous-sounding Più animato section in which the storm of war is depicted, its overall mood is soothing in its multitonal, Ives-like expression. The second outburst, consisting of brass fanfares and animated strings, is more hopeful than nihilistic, and it ends with the same soft chord with which it began. Conversely, the symphony is consistently dark, a tunnel with no light at its end but only the quietude of resignation and emotional defeat. One of the more furious outbursts at about the 20-minute mark didn’t seem to me as well composed as the rest of the work, but even this somewhat spurious moment seemed to me to indicate our powerlessness against forces too strong to fight.


Gerard Schwarz has developed over the years into an outstanding conductor, with only a few of his recordings sounding emotionally shallow. This music is very much his métier as, apparently, was the Mahler Seventh he recorded a while back. These performances lack nothing in drama, feeling, or outstanding orchestral balance. Schwarz’s only rival in the symphony with which I’m familiar is the recording by American conductor Hugh Keelan with the New Zealand Symphony (Koch 7290), a fine performance as well if, to my ears, a little less seamlessly joined than Schwarz’s. The Prayer is combined with Schuman’s Fourth Symphony and Judith on First Edition 11, played by Jorge Mester and the Louisville Symphony, but the splendidly professional polish of the Seattle Symphony surpasses Louisville’s playing capacity of that time.


After two such melancholy works, Schwarz ends this CD with one of Schuman’s most popular pieces, the New England Triptych , three pieces for orchestra after William Billings. Here the language is also bitonal but the overall mood more positive. It’s a wonderful way for the disc to end and, again, Schwarz gives a performance comparable to the best available, including Howard Hanson’s classic account for Mercury Living Presence (432755) and Leonard Slatkin with the St. Louis Symphony (RCA 61282). Their versions have, perhaps, a trifle more swagger, but Schwarz is not eclipsed; and, when combined with these shattering performances of the symphony and Prayer, it makes for an indispensable disc for those who admire Schuman’s unique musical aesthetic.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley


If we set to one side the disavowed first two symphonies Gerard Schwarz has now completed recording the Schuman symphonies. Only the Schwarz-Seattle-Naxos Eighth awaits issue. The series began with a handful of Schuman symphonies recorded by Delos in the 1990s. Naxos has picked up the baton dropped when the gloriously ambitious Delos project stumbled and fell. That they are doing this at bargain price is remarkable as with so much that Naxos does. Naxos have reissued all the Delos session symphonies and continued and completed the cycle in Seattle. This disc mixes the Delos-originated 1990 session for the Triptych with newer Naxos fixtures in 2005 and 2008. The transcript of an interview with Gerard Schwarz can be found on the Naxos website.

The Sixth Symphony was first recorded by Ormandy in the 1960s on CBS AML 4992 and reissued on Albany TROY256. It’s a work of nocturnal reclusion; not at all restful. Although Schuman has his lyric heart on display it is not close to his sleeve. The song is sweet but haunted and darkly clouded with Bergian strands – even a touch of Allan Pettersson about it. Barber in his most introspective brown study comes to mind and the tension never lets up. Kinetic fury has usually been part of the Schuman palette and so it is here (try. 20:00 onwards) although occluded lyricism dominates and acts as an indefatigable magnetic pull. The work is presented in a single half hour track. The Sixth was commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra League and the Dallas orchestra premièred it with Antal Doráti conducting on 27 February 1949. It’s an impressive piece if without the compulsive concentration that bowls over listeners to the Third Symphony and the Violin Concerto.

Prayer in a Time of War first saw light of day with Fritz Reiner and the Pittsburgh Orchestra on 26 February 1943. It’s a substantial movement of symphonic bearing and unyielding seriousness as befits the subject. The language is touched with some bleakness but it is less convoluted than that of the Sixth Symphony. This is the Schuman of the Third Symphony admitting and radiating facets that recall Roy Harris and Aaron Copland. The brass writing is gaunt, statuesque and excoriating; the drum-taps and cold fanfares referencing Lincoln and Whitman. It’s is a grand statement to put alongside his works of similar concision: Credendum, In Praise of Shahn and American Hymn. This is not its first recording; that honour goes to the Louisville and Jorge Mester – still to be had on Louisville First Edition.

New England Triptych is in three movements: I. Be Glad Then, America [5:05]; II. When Jesus Wept [7:53] III. Chester [3:08]. The outer movements are redolent of Tippett in zest, springiness and riotous exuberance. The Triptych was premièred in Miami on 28 October 1956, with Andre Kostelanetz conducting the University of Miami Symphony Orchestra. The next month Kostelanetz took it to the New York Phil. It is one of Schuman’s most accessible works despite its date. The three movements are based on hymns by the Revolutionary period figure, William Billings (1746– 1800). Schuman refers to “a fusion of styles and musical language”; acidic-epic Schuman meets devout Hanoverian. The middle movement recalls RVW’s Tallis and Bliss’s Blow Meditations.

Let’s not write off those first two symphonies (1935, 1937). I have heard the Second Symphony in a 1930s broadcast by Howard Barlow and the CBS orchestra and it’s by no means negligible. Then there are other works which will be worth revival – principally theConcerto on Old English Rounds and the spectacular symphonic cantata Casey at the Bat, superbly revived by Dorati in Washington as part of the American centennial event diary.

It’s a pleasure to report that this disc was generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts who seem to have moved away from a policy that appears at one time to favour only the work of the adherents of academic dissonance.

The notes are by Joseph W. Polisi, currently sixth president of The Juilliard School and author of “American Muse: The Life and Times of William Schuman” (Amadeus Press, 2008).

Keep watching for the Naxos Schuman Eighth secure in the knowledge that Schwarz and his Pacific Edge orchestra are fully equal to the challenges set by Schuman. Naxos will again, I am sure, provide a stunning recording as they have done here across a span of eighteen years – session to session.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

For enthusiasts of the orchestral Schuman and the American 20th century symphony this brings the Naxos Schuman project to a close in style.

Rejoice! With this disc Naxos complete their survey of the numbered Schuman symphonies. You will look in vain for symphonies 1 and 2: they were disclaimed by the composer. That’s a pity as it would be fascinating to hear these works of the 1930s. I have not given up hope.
 
Schwarz here has the conqueror-advocate’s measure of the bell-haunted Eighth Symphony. It was premiered in the Lincoln Center in 1962 with Bernstein conducting and was recorded by Bernstein the same year. That recording is easily and inexpensively accessible on a 1998 Sony CD alongside symphonies 3 and 5 via Amazon. While I still recommend that CD for an unassailably vital and kinetic Third Symphony Schwarz is to be preferred in the often more tensely reflective Eighth Symphony. He takes a minute and a half more than the comparatively opaque Bernstein but the Seattle results positively glow. This is a work that can be difficult to approach but I find it completely accessible in this Schwarz-Naxos version. Schwarz’s reading is as much of a revelation as Walter’s Brahms 3, Oramo’s Sibelius 6 and Ormandy’s Nielsen 6. The lucid and directly engaging recording is a co-conspirator in the results. The prestissimo finale showcases the audio engineering which accommodates solo strands and florid climactic material with a natural ease and without any sense of perspective zooming. Even Schwarz cannot completely transform the rather hollow gestures of the last page or two of this score but overall the Symphony emerges wonderfully well – better than ever.
 
Night Journey was one of four ballets on which Schuman collaborated with Martha Graham. Its spareness of utterance and angularity is only partly accounted for by the score which specifes fifteen instruments. A diminutive orchestra was not an unusual restriction for Graham ballets of that era – no doubt sensitive to cost and touring practicalities. The music has a Bergian astringency whether pensive, charged with nocturnal foreboding or fitfully frenetic. That inward quality echoes Barber’s tense dark chocolate romanticism but presents in more transparent textures. Night Journey has been issued on CD before by CRI but is not currently available. The Ives/Schuman Variations on ‘ America’ is a brilliant showcase built around a song that most Brits will recognise as God Save the Queen. The familiar tune is put through some wheezingly irreverent transformations. This is in no sense a representative Schuman work but is full of left-field fun.
 
It’s too easy to forget the sponsors without whose sense of judgement and even courage we would not hear the music. It’s much to the credit of the National Endowment for the Arts that they have financial sponsored this disc.
 
The more than capable notes are by Schuman biographer Joseph W Polisi.
 
For enthusiasts of the orchestral Schuman and the American 20 ^th century symphony this disc brings the Naxos Schuman project to a close in style.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

The last of Schumann’s Symphonies to be composed, Symphony No 3 ‘Rhenish’ was most likely inspired by a cruise taken by the composer and his wife down the river Rhine. Alternating between austere splendour, great rhythmic suppleness and soaring lines, the work is an aural depiction of rural life by the river and the majestic cathedral in Cologne, and one that dares to reflect tensions between Classical form and Romantic innovation. So too does Symphony No 4, cast in four seamless movements that show Schumann’s masterly command of interrelated material and of symphonic unity.

Goethe’s Faust exerted a powerful influence on Romantic composers, offering Robert Schumann a number of unforgettable scenes drawn mainly from the mystical second part of the epic poem which he incorporated into this immensely moving large-scale cantata. Opening with the first love scene between Gretchen and Faust and concluding with the climactic scene of Faust’s redemption, Schumann created a sweeping panorama of dramatic episodes with Mephistopheles’ trickery ultimately overcome as legions of celestial beings bear Faust’s soul to heaven.

SCHUMANN Romances and Ballads: i, op. 67; ii, op. 75; iii, op. 145; iv, op. 146. Romances: i, op. 69; ii, op. 91 • Marc Michael De Smet, cond; AQUARIUS • NAXOS 8.570456 (72:46)


All 32 of the pieces presented on this release date from 1849—one of the often-troubled composer’s most productive periods—and were composed for the Dresden choirs that Schumann took over from Hiller on the latter’s departure for Düsseldorf in 1847. A fair number of them appear individually in various compilations available on the current market; but this disc appears to be the first and only presentation of the entire corpus.


On the whole, the results are well up to the best current choral standards. The ensemble blends quite well and displays considerable agility in the jauntier pieces. The echo effects in “Im Walde” are especially well brought off, as are the solo-quartet sections featured in several numbers. The recording acoustic has a touch of satisfying reverberation, but far from so much as to spoil the ensemble’s excellent diction.


The programming order presents a touch of welcome imagination too. The mixed-choir works are organized into four sets, the women’s choir numbers into two; and the latter are interspersed among the former, creating a more varied listening experience than would be the case otherwise. As with some other recent Naxos releases, texts and translations are eschewed in favor of a reference to these materials on the label’s Web site. One (at least this one) would of course prefer to have them directly at hand; but Keith Anderson’s typically generous annotations do include brief summaries of each text.


FANFARE: James Carson

SCHUMANN, R.: Intermezzi, Op. 4 / Impromptus, Op. 5 / 3 Roma

Given the popularity of Schumann’s A-Minor Piano Concerto, I’d be willing to wager there are readers out there who have amassed recordings of it in double-digit numbers. If you are one of them, you may already have this one in an earlier incarnation, for the performances on this disc are not new. The concerto comes from a 1988 Budapest production; the Introduction and Allegro appassionato, from a 1992 Belgian production; and the Introduction and Allegro, from a 1996 Polish production.

The current release, however, can be recommended for joining this trilogy of Schumann’s concerted works for piano and orchestra on a single disc. In fact, it is the identical program I praised to the heavens in a review of an MDG DVD-A with Christian Zacharias. If you heeded my advice and acquired that disc, the present Naxos recording, and all others, for that matter, are superfluous. Nonetheless, Jenö Jandó, who has become a well-known Naxos commodity, is a very fine pianist whose playing here is technically flawless and interpretively orthodox. Translation? You can’t go wrong.

One minor editorial correction: the note states that Schumann’s two single-movement concert pieces for piano and orchestra, coupled here with the concerto, are his only other works for this combination. Not so. In 1839, he wrote a Konzertsatz in D Minor for piano and orchestra that predates the works on this program. There is a recording of it on a Koch International Classics CD.

Jerry Dubins, FANFARE

Despite his love of the cello’s rich sonority and immense lyrical expressivity, Robert Schumann composed few works for that instrument, a situation frequently rectified, as here, by effective arrangements. Unfailingly eloquent and characterful, these works are admired by musicians and music lovers alike. Less well known, yet among her most successful compositions, are Clara Schumann’s exquisite Romances. A pupil of Rostropovich and winner of the First Prize and Gold Medal at the Third Tchaikovsky International Competition, Karine Georgian enjoys an international career as a performer and teacher. Dutch pianist Jan Willem Nelleke’s exceptional qualities as a duo partner have been widely recognised.

Includes work(s) by Franz Joseph Haydn, Georg Philipp Telemann. Ensembles: American Horn Quartet, Sinfonia Varsovia.
Includes work(s) for hrn and orch by George Frideric Handel. Ensembles: American Horn Quartet, Sinfonia Varsovia.

The Davidsb�ndlert�nze, Opus 6, and the Fantasiest�cke, Opus 12, both belong to the year 1837. Wieck had insisted that Clara should not see Schumann and that letters should be returned. The latter, despairing of success in his pursuit of Clara, turned to drink and conduct that his landlady, at least, found reprehensible. At one point he sought revenge on Clara by publishing a satire mocking both her and a young man who had been brought in by her father to give her singing lessons. He dedicated his Fantasiest�cke, written between 22nd May and 4th July, to an attractive eighteen-year-old Scottish pianist, Robena Laidlaw. It was Clara who brought about a reconciliation through an intermediary so that August saw her pledged to him and in September they were able to meet again. The Davidsb�ndlert�nze were written in the late summer and early autumn of 1837, after this reconciliation. The first dance opens with a quotation from a Mazurka by Clara Wieck and is varied in mood, attributed to both Florestan and Eusebius. The second piece is attributed to the latter and the third, marked With Humour, to Florestan, the author of the fourth, marked Impatient. The simple fifth piece is in the mood of Eusebius, while the sixth, in stormier mood, reverts to Florestan. The opening arpeggiated chords of the seventh piece reintroduce Eusebius, followed by a brusque Florestan. The last piece of the first book, marked Lively, carries an additional explanation: Hierauf schlo� Florestan und es zuckte ihm schmerzlich um die Lippen (Hereupon Florestan stopped and his lips quivered sadly). Florestan opens the second set of nine pieces in ballad measure, with a whimsical third piece framing a simple second for Eusebius. The fourth has room for both moods, with the gently singing filth for Eusebius. Both are together again in the sixth piece as they appear to be in the seventh, with it's contrasting slower Trio section, which leads at once to the eighth piece, Wie aus der Ferne (As from the Distance). For the final dance Schumann adds the explanation: Ganz zum �berfluss meinte Eusebius noch Folgendes; dabei sprach aberviel Seligkeit aus seinen Augen (Eusebius considered the following quite superfluous; but at the same time he expressed much happiness with his eyes). The last piece adds a gentle C major conclusion to the work. Benjamin Frith the young British pianist Benjamin Frith has had a distinguished career. A pupil of Fanny Waterman, he won, at the age of fourteen, the British National Concerto Competition, followed by the award of the Mozart Memorial Prize and joint top prize in 1986 in the Italian Busoni International Piano Competition and in 1989 a Gold Medal and First prize in the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition. Benjamin Frith enjoys a busy international career, with engagements in the United States and throughout Europe as a soloist and recitalist, with festival appearances at Sheffield, Aldeburgh, Harrogate, Kuhmo, Bolzano, Savannah, Pasadena and Hong Kong and an Edinburgh Festival debut in 1992. His recordings include a highly praised performance of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations on the ASV label and for Naxos a release of piano music by Schumann, followed by the two Mendelssohn Piano Concertos and the Third Piano Concerto of Rachmaninov.

Chamber music occupies the largest part of Camillo Schumann' extensive compositional output, his admiration of Brahms, Liszt and Rachmaninov evident at every turn.

Schumann’s love of the cello, which developed when he learned the instrument as a young man, is expressed most fully in his ‘Cello Concerto in A minor.’ It is a work marked by freshness of spirit and singing lyricism and stands as a rich example of mid-19th-century Romanticism. The series of characterful small pieces that include ‘Funf Stucke im Volkston’ reveals Schumann’s joy in the cello’s unique lyrical capabilities. The ‘Drei Romanzen’ and the ‘Intermezzo’ from the ‘F-A-E Sonata’ are presented here in new arrangements for cello and piano by Gabriel Schwabe. Gabriel Schwabe has established himself among the leading cellists of his generation. He is a laureate of numerous national and international competitions, including the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann and the Concours Rostropovich in Paris. As a soloist he has worked with orchestras such as the Philharmonia Orchestra, the NDR Radiophilharmonie, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Malmo and Norrkoping Symphony Orchestras and the Royal Northern Sinfonia. He plays a rare Italian instrument made in Brescia (c. 1600).

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REVIEW:

With just the necessary amount of vibrato, Gabriel Schwabe's cello, dating from around 1600, sings eloquently for him. The score of the concerto’s central section contains much sadness; without any undue haste, he generates an appropriate sense of triumphant brilliance as the work ends.

Schwabe and pianist Nicholas Rimmer give a particularly fast and vibrant account of the Allegro, in the Adagio and Allegro. It is a similarly outgoing performance of the Fantasiestucke that acts as a foil to the moments of beauty in the Three Romances; the five Volkston vividly characterised and contrasted, while the arrangement of the Intermezzo has simply taken the solo part down by an octave.

The catalogue is certainly not short of recordings of the Concerto, but this coupling is unusual and most enjoyable.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Schumann, R.: Kinderszenen / Papillons / Carnaval

The three works on this recording are collections of short pieces, strung together and forming a cohesive whole—a form which Schumann himself invented, developed and brought to perfection. Davidsbündlertänze (Dances of the League of David) was written after Schumann’s engagement to Clara Wieck, to whom he wrote, ‘If I have ever been happy at the piano, it was when I was composing these.’ Papillons (Butterflies) is the work of a youthful, unfettered imagination, and Carnaval is one of his most popular pieces, a display of both technique and emotion. Boris Giltburg, who took first prize at the 2013 Queen Elisabeth Competition, is one of today’s most exciting young pianists, lauded for his ‘massive and engulfing technique, supporting interpretations that glow with warmth and poetic commitment’ (Gramophone).