FRANCK: PIANO QUINTET, SOLO DE

Saariaho: Maa (Earth)

Enescu, G.: Violin Sonatas Nos. 2 and 3

KARITA MATTILA - KAIPAINEN, ME

Narrated in Finnish - Lasse Pöysti, narrator

V?IN? RAITIO: FANTASIA POETICA

A triumph: the magnum opus of one of the leading Finnish composers in an excellent and committed performance.

REVIEW:

Musically, this issue is a triumph: the magnum opus of one of the leading Finnish composers in an excellent and committed performance, captured in all its intricate detail by a remarkably clear and faithful recording. The Singing Tree is Erik Bergman's only full-length opera and, as fellow-composer Jouni Kaipainen comments in the booklet, is a ''grand synthesis'' of his life's work. Often it sounds like a compendium of the vocal and instrumental techniques that Bergman has developed throughout his long career (he is now 82) melded together by his vibrant and incisive musicianship.

The fable of the princess who may not see her husband's face is common to many cultures: Bo Carpelan's libretto uses a Swedish version but incorporates elements of many other stories, ancient and more modern. Prince Hatt, imprisoned by his mother, the Witch, is set free by a Princess who first communes with him via the song of the Tree of Life, which they both hear in dreams. Unlike many fairy-tale operas, Bergman and Carpelan lay bare the nightmare that exists at the center of all fables; and as if to emphasize that this is not kids' stuff, the happy ending is marred by the blinding of the Princess through the Witch's dying curse.

My only reservation about The Singing Tree concerns dramatic pacing which, like the musical pulse, is unremittingly slow. A sequence of 22 tableaux divided into two acts (plus Prologue, Interlude and Epilogue), there is often insufficient variety between the scenes which makes the opera seem to be jogging on the spot. Individual tableaux are often effective in themselves but many take not very dissimilar routes to achieve common goals. Only two really dramatic moments alter the relief: at the climax of Act One, when the Princess is lured by the Witch to look upon the face of the sleeping Prince, and the final denouement itself when the Witch is destroyed by the power of Light.<br><br>Written in 1986-8, The Singing Tree is exactly coeval with Sallinen's Kullervo, already issued on CD by Ondine (8/92). This speaks volumes for the commitment, industry and musical culture of Finland and puts most other countries to shame. Where, for instance, are recordings of John Buller's Bakxai or Nicola LeFanu's Blood Wedding, Birtwistle's Gawain or Judith Weir's The Vanishing Bridegroom? Without doubt, Finland is the place to be for opera.

-- Gramophone [5/1993]

REVIEW:

On the face of it, it makes good sense to group these three relatively early works by Schnittke together on one disc, and the documentary interest of the issue is enhanced by the fact that both sonatas are dedicated to Mark Lubotsky. The downside is that Schnittke is rarely at his best in these pieces, and the recording allows the piano too great a degree of rather harsh prominence.

The First Sonata (1963), which documents Schnittke's emergence from the cocoon of conformity to a style that owes much to Shostakovich, and its wide range of reference, from serialism to Latin American rhythms, is now less striking than the skill with which Schnittke shapes the third movement's gradually intensifying melodic line. In the Second Sonata (1968), again, it is the growth of continuity out of fragmentation that impresses, giving the single-movement structure a substance it would otherwise lack. Even so, the sonata is more a manifesto of defiance than a fully realized proposal for a new musical order. It is to the credit of both performers that they don't try to oversell the music's aura of iconoclasm, though a recording more favorable to the violin would have done these well-considered accounts greater justice.

Schnittke concocted his Suite in the old style (1972) from various film scores. It would be unduly censorious to complain of the composer's self-indulgence in music as charming as this, and in any case a more sinister note enters the final ''Pantomime''. Here, at least, the authentically alarming later Schnittke briefly stands revealed.

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone [4/1994]

REVIEW:

Alex Ross's enthusiastic review will have appeared by the time the reader sees this. Why a recent release of music by a still-young contemporary in so prestigious a place? Because Kaija Saariaho is a composer of remarkable originality and quality three of whose works, and splendid examples they are, appear beautifully performed on a technically superb CD. Can recording serve a better cause? (One tries besides, and belatedly, to dilute the harm a since-departed reviewer inflicted. His snide remarks looked, from where I sat, like vandalism. My editor talked me into withdrawing a "Critics' Corner" objection. I should have held out.) Another reason for this CHOF follow-up looks through a side door to San Diego. I review in this issue an excellent CRI CD, entitled Sonor Ensemble. Rand Steiger's new-music group operates out of the University of California at San Diego, whose music department has grown in less than three decades to world prominence. For example, the British composer Brian Ferneyhough, whom I mention specifically because he was at one time Saariaho's mentor, has been teaching there since 1987. The plot thickens: the two orchestral pieces, Du cristal and ... à la fumée, the composer's first efforts on this scale, came about as a result of a year's stay at San Diego. Nymphéa too has a West Coast connection in that the San Francisco-based Kronos requested its creation.

Producer-engineer Joseph Magee brings us one of the better-sounding orchestral recordings I've lately heard. (The reader requires a good, wide-range sound system to fully savor its pleasures.) Saariaho's orchestral sonorities, reflecting her unique investigations into electronically generated sound, strike me as remarkably fine tone-paintings, all the more remarkable for their being the composer's first large-scale essays for other than computer-assisted ensemble. As to Nymphéa, the string quartet with electronics, the focal point is now IRCAM in Paris, which has long since proved a force in new directions in acoustic-electronic combinations and the computer's unstoppable, unpredictable role. None of this is to suggest, on the one hand, that Saariaho is destined to stand on the pantheon's highest pedestal—she may or may not—or, on the other, that one somehow hedges his bet in honoring a recording of a young modern's music in less than terms absolute ecstasy. Rather, I salute both an ideal application of recording's role and a powerful talent.

-- Mike Silverton, Fanfare

Bartok: Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion - Bergman: Boreal

EVERGREEN LOVE SONGS JORMA HY

TRACK LISTING:

1 Leroy Anderson Tanssiaisten kaunotar (3:01)
Belle of the Ball

2 Franz Doelle Sireenien aikaan (3:01) Wenn der weisse Flieder wieder blüht

3 Cole Porter You Do Something to Me (2:05)
musikaalista Fifty Million Frenchmen

4 Cole Porter Just One of Those Things (2:00)
musikaalista Jubilee

5 Gerhard Winkler Tanssi ja laula (2:45)
Tanze und Sing!

6 Rauno Lehtinen Tom Tom Tom (2:21)

7 Karl Gotz Tanssin sun kanssasi aamuun (2:53)
Tanze mit mir in den Morgen

8 Othmar Klose - Rudolf Lukesch Violetta (3:08)

9 G. H. Matos Rodriguez La Cum pars ita (2:43)

10 Julio C. Sanders Adios muchachos (2:27)

11 Jay Livingstone - Ray Evans Silver Bells (2:29)

12 Archibald Joyce Dreaming (Unelma) (4:28)

13 Leroy Anderson Blue Tango (Sininen Tango) (2:49)

14 Sikerma venalaisia tangoja (5:44)
Oskar Strok Tummat silmat (Tshornyje glaza)
Venalainen kansansav. Mustat silmat (Otshi tshornyje)
Tuntematon Ogonjok (Pieni valo)
Nikolai Bogoslovski Tumma yo (Tjomnaja notsh)
Isaak Dunajevski Sydan (Serdtse)

15 Unto Mononen Satumaa (3:19)

16 Henry Mancini Intermezzo nro 2 (2:06)

17 Nacio Herb Brown Laulavat sadepisarat (3:42)

18 Ross Parker - H. Charles We'll Meet Again (3:41)

19 Sikerma suomalaisia valsseja (4:41)
Ruotsalainen kansansav. Kulkurin valssi
Georg Malmsten Leila
Georg Malmsten Lemmen liekki leimahtaa
Kullervo Linna Kultainen nuoruus

20 Raimond Valgre Saarenmaan valssi (2:40)

21 Evert Taube Calle Schewenin valssi (3:24)

22 Les Reed ja Barry Mason;Eberhard Storch Viimeinen valssi; Nakemiin (4:33)

Haydn: Symphonies 92 (Oxford) & 99

SIBELIUS: COMPLETE WORKS FOR M

Selections recorded October-November, 1991.