Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Many young violinists' debut CDs come and go without making much of a mark, oftentimes less because the performers are untalented as because their repertoire failed to stand out in a crowded field. Another disc of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, or Kreisler has to be truly outstanding to stand out.
Daniel Hope scores on both of these points: he and his collaborators give excellent performances, and he (and, presumably, his teachers, managers, and label executives) chose a program which cannot help but stand out from the pack. The danger in such a program--lesser-known contemporary works--is failing to live up to the technical and interpretive challenges. Hope needn't worry.
A child prodigy, Hope was just 21 when this program was recorded, and he had already had the opportunity to discuss the Schnittke and Takemitsu works with their composers. The performances here are indeed excellent, and Hope has no difficulty distinguishing himself from his peers.
REVIEWS:
International Record Review (3/00, p.77) - "...cannily programmed and thoughtfully executed..."

Unless you are a devotee of Franz Schmidt, you are going to need patience to get anything from this recording. But patience will be rewarded, as there is a great deal of beautiful music here. It is just that the pace of the various musical arguments tends towards the geological. Schmidt was briefly a pupil of Bruckner, and his conception of musical scale owes much to that great predecessor. These quartets also show a fidelity to early musical forms, especially those of baroque counterpoint, which may also call Bruckner to mind.
 
This is music of a later age, the two quartets were written in 1925 and 1929 respectively, so any 19^th century precedents (Brahms is another) are going to be remote. Reger is often cited as a kindred spirit, but this music is much less congested than Reger’s, less angsty. Elgar’s contemporaneous late chamber music would be a better comparison, or Delius perhaps. Schmidt remained a melodist to the end. And why not? Melody is probably his greatest strength. Both of these works, and the first in particular, unfold though long, arching melodies. A motivic structure is sometimes apparent, the falling fifth throughout the first movement of the First Quartet, for example, but development never means fragmentation. Movements tend to venture into remote tonalities as they progress, but the long, linear melodies remain.
 
Unswerving loyalty to formal archetypes is both a strength and a weakness in this music. Both works are long, and the material justifies the duration, but only just. The long melodic lines need space to breathe, of course, but there is a sense of formal functionality about virtually every section. In general, the formal skeleton of the First Quartet is more apparent than that of the Second, where intentions and directions are slightly more veiled. But extended sectional repeats are the rule rather than the exception. In the second movement of the First Quartet, for example, the music moves from a Schubertesque opening to neo-baroque contrapuntal second subject. Both are very elegant, and the stylistic contrast is fascinating, but it is easy to find yourself thinking too hard about these things as the two sections are given lengthy repeats without any added interest.
 
The one structural commitment that Schmidt takes refreshingly lightly is closure. Endings are never abrupt, but none are drawn our either. The third and fourth movements of the Second Quartet both end in satisfyingly efficient ways. The scherzo ending is particularly impressive, the music rapidly drying up and concluding with an ascent through the harmonics on a violin string.
 
The performances by the Franz Schubert Quartett Wien seem very much in the spirit of the music. Melodies are allowed to flow, to meander through development sections, but to conclude with the curt precision of Schmidt’s cadences. Much of the music emphasises the middle register, high cello, low violins and prominent viola. The sound in these sections is rich and satisfying, and the individual identity of each player is never compromised by the narrow tessitura. When the violins play higher, the sound can become a little constricted. The problem may be with the recording, or even with the scoring, but not with the intonation or ensemble, which are excellent throughout.
 
This is a CD of long, substantial works by a composer who seems destined to always command greater respect in his homeland than abroad. My earlier comparison with Elgar – and they do sound very similar – suggests such national distinctions are musically arbitrary, and non-Austrian audiences should find just as much to interest them from this, the work of a composer who is always astute to his craft, occasionally intense, but never concise.
 
-- Gavin Dixon, MusicWeb International

This programme reveals Philip Sawyers as a composer at the height of his powers whose music ranges across a relatively wide spectrum of harmonic intensity, from the very direct and straightforward tonal language of the Fanfare to the twelve-tone pyrotechnics of the Third Symphony. However, regardless of whether we look to the modal harmonies of Songs of Loss and Regret or the multi-layered serial counterpoint of the finale of the Third Symphony, we still find a unifying sense of a strong and individual artistic personality. In his symphonic works, we hear an uncommonly accomplished resultion of some of the aesthetic tensions which have gripped so much music to grow out of the Central European tradition in the generations after Mahler and Schoenberg. Sawyers works with a spectrum of musical materials ranging from diatonic and modal material through to twelve-tone themes with a striking mixture of rigor and imaginative flexibility.

Kenneth Woods, who conducts this recording, writes: “Philosophers and musicians have argued for centuries about whether music is a universal language or a personal one. It seems that it can obviously be either or both, and that there is a huge continuum of language between those musical gestures that are truly universal and those which are almost as personal as a fingerprint. One of the things I find most compelling about Philip’s music is the extent to which it embodies the extremes of both the universal and the personal. As Philip’s output grows and our understanding of his work evolves, we can begin to see that there are musical threads which spill over from one work to the next. In this respect, he is part of a venerable tradition. Sometimes these recurring themes and motifs have profound personal significance, sometimes they are simply, as Philip once said to me of a particular rhythmic motif which appears in the vast majority of his pieces at least once, “very useful.”

When encountering a composer's work for the first time, it's a perfectly natural response to compare it to music we already know. We all do it, and this instinct to relate the new to the familiar can help US begin to understand new musical languages and idioms. However, if we really want to come to grips with new voices, to fully understand what we're hearing and how it's affecting us, it's important to move past reacting to music in terms of what it is like, and to move on to engaging with what it is.

Martin Jones and Adrian Farmer are widely acclaimed musicians, both performing on several Nimbus Records albums. Martin's is a prolific recording artist and has recorded most of the standard works for piano. This new release is the first of two volumes of original compositions and arrangements for piano duo and duet by Camille Saint-Saëns. His music was often described as "having wit and charm".

Classical Music

The present collection of Augusta Read Thomas's works spans 18 years, from 1999 to 2017. It juxtaposes the two sides of Thomas that we've already encountered in previous volumes, the large-scale thinker in the cello concerto Ritual Incantations, the piano trio Klee Musings and the recent string quartet Chi, and the miniaturist in the six other works which on this disc act as satellites to the above-mentioned three larger works. Two sides that, paradoxically, seem to share more similarities than differences. Common to all the works collected here are the sunny, free-wheeling lyricism, luminosity, sense of colour, spontaneity, caprice, playfulness and spirituality which have long been ineradicable characteristics of her nuanced music, all tied up with an irrepressible energy and a sense of irreducible concision no matter how expansive the time frame, of taking all the time in the world to say everything that needs to be said in any given piece, but not a second more than that!

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

"From a seemingly unlikely source comes a project that must be rated a serious contender for record of the year. Charles Bruffy and the Kansas City Chorale...take on Rakhmaninov's sizable Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom with wonderful results. The chorus is everywhere remarkable, especially the basses, who prove fearless in approaching low-lying notes tailor-made for cavernous Russian basses."

-- New York Times

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Another disc of absolutely stunning quality from the Kansas City Chorale and their clearly inspirational conductor Charles Bruffy. I have written elsewhere of the extraordinary control and tonal blend that this choir achieves and those qualities are amply on display here. But to think that technique is a substitute for passion and power would be quite wrong because they are present in abundance too.
 
Although far from rare in the CD catalogues now, Rachmaninov’s two great settings of the Russian Liturgy; the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom Op.31 and the All-night Vigil Op.37 still come as something of a surprise to listeners brought up on Brief-Encounter Piano Concertos. Both these settings are big pieces; the work currently under review running to over an hour and a half. As an opus it sits with Isle of the Dead and the Piano Concerto No.3 before and the first sets of Piano Preludes and Études-Tableaux afterwards. So this can be seen as being central in a period of great musical fertility. I am far from being expert on the subtleties of the way in which the Russian liturgy is set. But from my position of textual ignorance this is quite glorious. Other recordings I have heard have always been performed by Eastern European choirs recorded in cavernous basilicas where the great booming resonance adds to the religious theatricality implicit in the music. Prior to listening to this recording I have to admit that I wondered if a small professional choir from the Midwest United States would be able to emulate this sound-world. I need not have worried – again I cannot speak about how idiomatic their Russian pronunciation is – but the fervour and ecstatic quality to the singing is all I could have hoped for. Normally, the choir consists of just 24 voices split into four even groups. Wisely I think, for this recording, they have drafted in an additional three bass voices as well as having the extensive Protodeacon solos taken by Father Andre Papkov who is a long-time expert in the music of the Russian Orthodox Church. Also, the three recordings I have heard by the choir have each been made in a different Kansas Church. It sounds as if the present venue for this recording has been chosen to mimic the longer resonance mentioned above. Whether that is a function of the venue or the engineering or both I think it is a wise choice and one that works very well. My other concern was the scale of the choir. The composition was conceived with the Moscow Synodal Choir in mind. This comprised 50 boys and 30 men – not far off three times the size of the choir here and significantly with no women’s voices. I am sure that for some the all-male choir would be authentically essential but when the upper parts are sung with the purity and sheer tonal beauty as they are here it’s a trade-off I am happy to make. Also, there is no lack of power when the music requires.
 
I find it very hard to select movements let alone moments in this performance that are highlights – the inspiration and execution run at a high level throughout. One thought I would share is the brilliance with which the choir adapt their internal balance between sections. Take the very opening of the first disc, over the calls to prayer from the Deacon and Celebrant the choir intone ‘Lord have mercy’ – Papkov’s sepulchral bass is supremely evocative but it is the blend of the main choir that amazes me every time I return to it. It grows from the lower lines – a prayer gradually ascending from the depths of darkness and doubt. As the higher voices are gradually added there is a glorious unfurling and widening of the choral range yet nothing is forced there is a natural evolution that is hypnotically compelling. Or try the second movement Bless the Lord, O My Soul. Here it is the alto line which carries the melody initially. The way the sopranos create a halo of light around the lead line and the bass provides the firmest and deepest of supports is breathtaking. The engineering and production by Nimbus’s unnamed team is exemplary – the atmosphere for this kind of work perfectly captured and the voices of the soloists placed ideally within the main choral group. The resonance of the St. John’s Centre in Kansas is clearly present without blurring detail. Part of the theatricality of this music is when great waves of choral exalting wash and blur over the succeeding wave – try 1:30 into the Little Liturgy (track 3) and you will hear what I mean.
 
It is not a mode of listening to music that I often promote – but this is such a life-enhancing, spirit-lifting disc that listened to in the quiet of an evening in a room with the lights turned down it is heaven on earth as far as I am concerned. I have been listening to a sequence of Nimbus discs recently and it has struck me how consistently high their production and presentation values are. A case in point with this disc; a superbly performed disc of fascinating repertoire, supported by discreetly excellent engineering. But this is aided and supported by presentation that includes a really excellent essay by Vladimir Morosan who is an expert on Rachmaninov’s sacred choral music. I am sure I am not alone in finding that part of the whole home-listening experience is having a good detailed liner-note to read to complement the performance. Now here I’m getting into rather more retentive issues; I do like the fact that Nimbus print their booklets on high quality paper! I know it does not really matter a jot but I appreciate it! A tiny quirk though; I wonder why the text was given in English only? A transliteration at least would have helped the non-Russian-speaking listener keep a closer track on where exactly we were in the liturgy at any given moment.
 
There are several fine other recordings available but this pair of discs will grace any collection. For those with an interest in sacred music or just choral singing of the very highest order this is a most beautiful if not essential recording.
 
-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International