Zemlinsky, A. Von: Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano in D M

PROKOFIEV: PIANO SONATA 5 & 6

Prokofiev, S.: Symphony No. 2 / Summer Night / Autumnal Sket

SCHUBERT: ADAGIO & RONDO, PIAN

REVIEW:

Sergiu Comissiona has long been admired for his all-round musical sympathies. Sadly, he has not been a regular visitor to Britain in recent years, preferring to devote himself to those orchestras where he holds a position, most notably the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. He has long been an initiator of stimulating musical projects; while Music Director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, he commissioned fanfares from 30 of America's leading composers. In 1990, to mark the 125th anniversary of Sibelius's birth, he persuaded the Helsinki Philharmonic to commission eight composers from all round the world to write a short piece each as a tribute to Finland's national composer.

Not surprisingly, some of the pieces are more successful than others. However, the project complete, all the pieces have been released on disc by Comissiona and his committed orchestra. They start with a lively—and presumably authentic—account of the master's En saga. This music must surely be coursing through the veins of all Finnish musicians. A delightful and undemanding piece by Thea Musgrave leads the tributes with deliberate echoes of Sibelius's music. This is followed by Ciacona by Einar Englund: a traditionally-based piece by a composer who knew and was encouraged and supported by Sibelius. Then comes an atmospheric piece by the Japanese composer, Joji Yuasa, and an exhilarating work by the young Finnish composer, Erkki-Sven Tuur. The American composer, Tobias Picker, describes his brief tribute as a conversation between Sibelius, Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Wilfred Josephs's piece is rather static while Marius Constant has composed a beautiful score with a real feel for colour and texture. The collection ends with a big piece, despite its brevity, from Poul Ruders again containing allusions to the music of Sibelius.

Although this is a commemorative disc which will be a must for the admirers and devotees of Sibelius's music, it will also be of interest to those with a taste for the less demanding byways of new music.

-- Gramophone [4/1992]

Selections recorded in April and May 1991.

Hynninen is a strong interpreter, and his partnership with Ralf Gothoni is a formidable one. Together they explore the full dynamic and expressive range, while avoiding anything that might seem a mere performer's tour de force. The third song in the Lieder um den Tod cycle is a good example of their strength in restraint (which, perhaps one should add, has not always been their apparent policy). This is a dialogue between Death and a drunkard: Death asks the questions, the drunk replies with the tippler's invariable ''health'' (''Dein Wohl'')... Hynninen makes Death a traveler, at first an almost casual acquaintance who might well pass by, and the drunk, though tipsy, is less of a caricature. In the other songs...Hynninen brings weariness and pallor into his voice, which can still ring out with exciting power and vigor when the need arises... The recording is clear and well-balanced.

-- Gramophone [11/1992]

Where Tubin's name is recognised at all it is because of his work as a symphonist. After all there are two recorded cycles of the eleven symphonies: Järvi (BIS) and Volmer (Alba). Those recordings have done and continue to do stalwart service in putting Estonia and Tubin ‘on the map’. That said, we must not forget that in the Soviet 1950s and 1960s Järvi also recorded symphonies 2 and 6 and they have been reissued in all their rawness on a single Forte label CD (nla).

One of a pair of operas – the other being The Parson of Reigi (Reigi õpetaja) also recorded by Ondine and reissued by ArkivMusic - Barbara von Tisenhusen was written in the years between the Ninth and Tenth symphonies. It was staged in Tartu in 1969. The libretto is by Jaan Kross after a story by the Finnish author Aino Kallas (1878-1956). Kallas had a number of her novels set for the operatic stage and early on in the 1940s several were the subject of operas by the grievously overlooked Finnish composer Tauno Pylkkänen – dubbed the Finnish Puccini. The Tubin operas are much later but both are based on Kallas’s writings. Having fled to Sweden in the 1940s Tubin benefited from the gradual political thaw and returned to Estonia for occasional visits during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1967 Arne Mikk, a producer of the National Opera Theatre "Estonia", invited Tubin to write an opera on Barbara von Tisenhusen. It was written quickly and was first performed at the National Opera Theatre in 1969 with the composer and his wife in attendance. It was a great success and was then performed more than fifty times in Estonia.

Barbara recounts the tragic story of the young Barbara von Tisenhusen, born in the Castle of Rannu, in Livland in 1533. She is the daughter of “the highly honoured and greatly feared nobleman Reinhold von Tisenhusen and his most virtuous wife Anna von Sawhere”.

This is vivacious music. Crudely speaking it is in the style of a Baltic Puccini out of Prokofiev which frankly is not how I would characterise his sombre and often strife-torn symphonies. The sense of movement here and of character vivacity is striking and makes an immediately engaging impression. The first scene of the first act (tr. 1) at times sounds like the attic scene-play from Bohème although that crashing ‘ratatat’ ending does recall the symphonies. After an unpromisingly glum fugal-academic entry the women's choral voices ring out bell-like, sounding like a sort of Carmina Kullervo. The second scene ends inventively with a discord pregnant with tension. Along the way we get an ecstatically exciting love duet between Tisenhusen and Jurgen. The Second Act conveys the impression of poison and rumour in music constantly in flight - irritable and tetchy and the impression grows of a Baltic Tosca, Cavaradossi and Scarpia. Along the way we are ushered into sepulchral depths with the deep resonance of a tolling bell (tr. 5). A psychological overlay is always there - never mere illustration. The second disc begins with music that is gripping, pecked, jabbed and thumped out. The music takes on a flying motion with singing over the top redolent a little of the choral-orchestral Sibelius. Tubin's orchestral scoring in this opera is never drab and the microphone placement for this recording ensures that details are assertively captured. It ends in a well sustained glisteningly tense skein of sound with skeletal noises and macabre little trudging figures. It suggests to me an evocation of magical northern night skies. Inventive burnished tonal textures abound and glow with strange and tragic colours. A very satisfying opera. No wonder it is rated as Estonia’s best opera.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO 8 D

Piano Recital: Raekallio, Matti - LISZT, F. / FRIEDMAN, I. /

REVIEW:

Although Eduard Tubin is best known for his symphonies (all ten are available on BIS), he also wrote a number of stage works, the ballet Kratt, and two operas, Barbara von Tisenhusen and The Parson of Reigi, both of which have been produced in Estonia in recent years. The Parson of Reigi comes from 1971, that is to say, between the Ninth and Tenth Symphonies and is a relatively short work lasting just over an hour and 20 minutes. It is based on a novel by the Finnishborn Aino KaIlas (1878-1956) whose plot can be briefly summarized.

The setting is a desolate fishing-village, Reigi in seventeenth-century Estonia, then ruled by Sweden. In the first scene the parson Paavali Lempelius awaits the arrival from Stockholm of a new deacon, Jonas Kempe, whose interest in his wife Catharina rapidly becomes evident, as does hers in him. By the third scene Catharina confides her passion for Kempe to her maid Viiu, and by this time Lempelius's suspicions have become aroused. It subsequently emerges that Kempe's banishment from Stockholm was prompted by a similar affair. Their love becomes public knowledge and after angry scenes, they flee. Under Swedish law of the period, adultery was a capital offence and the last two scenes take place in Tallinn, where the lovers are taken after their capture and where they meet their end—to tumultuous bell tolling!

Tubin's music depicts the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small household to excellent effect, and his portrayal of nature scenes (the departing fishermen at dawn) and the evocation of the white nights of summer in the third scene are full of imagination. Moreover, the characterization of both the major and minor roles is far more vivid than one might expect from a composer predominantly symphonic in temperament and outlook. This impression is aided by the excellent performances of the three principals. There is variety of pace and Tubin succeeds in involving the listener in what is, after all, a very simple dramatic situation. Of course he had stage experience before the war, when he was in charge of music at the Vanemuine Theatre in Tallinn.

If the singing is of a high standard, the orchestra of the Estonia Opera is little more than adequate. However, readers who like, say, Sallinen's operas will find this music just as rewarding, and in some respects more substantial.

The Requiem for Fallen Soldiers was begun in 1950, some time before the Sixth Symphony. However, in the middle of the second movement Tubin suddenly put the work on one side, returning to it after almost 30 years, in the late 1970s.

The texts by the Estonian poet Henrik Visnapuucome from the period of the Estonian war of independence after the First World War. There are two soloists, contralto (or in this case a mezzosoprano), baritone and male chorus. (The mezzo here has, I'm afraid, quite a wide vibrato.) The instrumental forces are merely an organ, piano, drums, timpani and trumpet so that the overall impression is dark and sombre. The whole piece is powerfully austere and impressive. The Estonian National Male Choir are stronger than their rivals from Lund on BIS, and although that version has an inspired contribution in the final Largo from Hakan Hardenberger, this present account makes the more satisfying overall impression.

-- Gramophone [1/1993]

Debussy, C.: Premiere Rapsodie / Tiensuu, J.: Puro / Kaipain

MUSIC IN HELSINKI CATHEDRAL

One of the most beautiful of records; if the repertoire appeals it will be pretty useless to await a better performance or production of it than this.

REVIEW:

One of the most beautiful of records; if the repertoire appeals it will be pretty useless to await a better performance or production of it than this.

There are tenors who not only could but would scream any guitarist into inaudibility. Ian Partridge is not one of them, indeed I would never hope to hear a gentler, more affecting style applied to the repertoire concerned. I was not familiar with the Finnish guitarist Jukka Savijoki, but I know now that he is among the most sensitive of accompanists, as well as a soloist of great skill, style and artistry.

Much of the record's program is indeed written for solo guitar, exploited with great skill by Britten and a little less expectedly, but no less convincingly, by Lennox Berkeley. The combined skills of both performers and writers (whether composing or arranging) offer continuous delight to any listener who is not positively antipathetic to the repertoire concerned. Or perhaps even if he is, but is prepared to be won over by the shared magic of the combined performers and composers.

The magic is conveyed by a faultless recording and helped along by a most informative booklet. The spelling of the ''dear'' who was shot is, I believe, quite correct: not the animal, but the loved human, in a sense that survives, still, in the now rather dated usage ''my dear''.

-- Gramophone [1/1993]

TCHAIKOVSKY: SEASONS, ETC GRI