Gothoni: Der Ochs und sein Hirte (The Bull and Herdsman)

This is the best of me wrote Edward Elgar in 1900 at the end of the manuscript of The Dream of Gerontius. This impressive and modern new recording of Elgar's magnum opus by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon features alongside mezzo-soprano Christine Rice, tenor John Findon and baritone Roderick Williams, singers from five different choirs: Helsinki Music Centre Choir, Cambridge University Symphony Chorus, Dominante, Helsinki Chamber Choir and Alumni of the Choir of Clare College Cambridge.

Includes work(s) by Kaija Saariaho. Ensemble: Kronos Quartet.

A fresh new recording of Jean Sibelius’ early breakthrough work by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under its conductor Hannu Lintu. This recording with two male choirs, the Estonian National Male Choir and the Polytech Choir, brings up the full drama of this gigantic 70-minute work which during Sibelius’ lifetime was often referred to as a “symphony”.

The work tells the story of Kullervo, a tragic hero drawn from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. While a student in Vienna, Sibelius started planning to write a large work that would crystallize the rising Finnish national feeling in music. It was in the cosmopolitan surroundings of Vienna where Sibelius finally discovered the Finnish sound for his orchestral works to follow. Until that moment the art music of his country, even works based on folklore characters such as found in the Kalevala poetry, had been largely influenced and dominated by German Romanticism. For his work Sibelius drew inspiration from traditional Finnish folk music and by studying the Kalevala epic on his own. From the 50 songs of the Kalevala, Sibelius chose passages from the most tragic sections of the work telling the story of Kullervo, an ill-fated young man. With the premiere of this work in Helsinki in 1892, Sibelius became a national hero – and also won the favour of his future father-in-law. Although the work was not performed never again in Sibelius’ lifetime after the following year, the work was a milestone for Sibelius himself in his development as a composer and a symphonist. It was the composer’s first serious attempt in composing a large-scale orchestral work. Kullervo is work by a young composer filled with inspiration, ideas, and drama.

Conductor Hannu Lintu recently won the Gramophone Award and ICMA Award for his recording of the Bartók Violin Concertos together with Christian Tetzlaff and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

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This is one of those programs that adds up to more than the sum of its parts. David Aaron Carpenter plays a sensational viola, and he’s very capably accompanied by Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Helsinki Philharmonic. This would be a very recommendable version of Harold in Italy on its own, even in a quite crowded field. The two central movements have plenty of character and color, and the concluding Orgy of Brigands lacks nothing in fire or excitement. However, there are two specific factors that make this release more than ordinarily interesting. First, Carpenter has restored Berlioz’s original viola part to the first statement of Harold’s main theme. This was presumably a concession to Paganini, who of course wanted a virtuoso piece. It’s no surprise that Paganini wasn’t impressed by this scant minute of barely audible arpeggiation, and that Berlioz replaced it with the more songful, canonic version that we all know and love, but it’s good to hear for a change. Second, and more importantly, Carpenter and Ashkenazy include the work the Paganini wrote for himself instead, and which presumably better represents what he really had in mind. The Sonata per la Gran Viola e Orchestra lasts about thirteen minutes. It consists of an introduction followed by a recitative, a cantabile, and a concluding theme and variations. It is tuneful, splashy, and effectively virtuosic. What stands out particularly, though, is not its obvious bel canto qualities, but the fact that Paganini calls the work a “sonata” in the first place. Many have wondered how he could have asked Berlioz to write a piece for viola at all, given the huge disparity between what Paganini expected and what Berlioz actually produced. We’ll never know exactly what discussions passed between the two men, save that it seems on his own evidence that Paganini was not looking for a typical concerto, but for “something else.” Well, that’s certainly what he got! Harold, of course, offers no opportunity for the soloist to display his virtuoso chops. He’s basically just along for the ride. So it’s good to be able to report that Carpenter isn’t fazed at all by Paganini’s typically ridiculous demands. The work constitutes a fabulous encore to Harold, while the disc-opening Overture to Béatrice et Bénédict makes this release a perfect program for continuous listening. The whole production is excellently engineered, especially when it comes to the tricky issue of balancing the soloist against the larger ensemble. It’s just great when a program is as smartly assembled as it is musically brilliant. -- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Latvian composer Peteris Vasks(b. 1946) has earned much international acclaim through his deeply spiritual works of choral music, symphonies and concertos. Vasks’ list of works also includes several pieces of chamber music. This album by Trio Palladio from Latvia includes Vasks’ works for the piano trio. Trio Palladio is a chamber music ensemble of three established Latvian soloists, avid chamber musicians and acclaimed recording artists Eva Bindere, Kristina Blaumane and Reinis Zarinš. Each of them is the laureate of the Grand Music Award of Latvia, and in 2019 they were nominated for this prestigious award as a trio. Recently the trio had its debut recital at the London Wigmore Hall and the trio’s interpretations have been broadcast live on the BBC Radio 3,as well as the Polish and Latvian radio. Trio Palladio creates conceptual programs with rich variety of classical, romantic and contemporary chamber music, with particular focus on works by Latvian and Baltic composers.

REVIEW:

What I admire most about Peteris Vasks is his deep spirituality. It permeates all of his music, even his early avant-garde compositions. This release features three of his works for piano trio. All three are quintessentially Vasks.

Three of Latvia’s best chamber musicians comprise the Trio Palladio. Their performances of their compatriot’s music plumb the depths of Vasks’ works. The trio plays not just beautifully, but lovingly. And that makes this an album I’ll revisit time and again.

– WTJU-FM (Charlottesville, VA) [Ralph Graves]

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Jorma Hynninen and Paivi Nisula star in this Finish National Opera performance of the Sallinen opera conducted by Mikko Franck and directed by Pekka Milonoff. Also included are interviews with Sallinen, Milonoff, Franck, and Hynninen.

RACHMANINOFF Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom • Sigvards K?ava, cond; Kärlis Rütentäls (ten); Gundrars Dzi?ums (bs); Latvian R Ch • ONDINE 1151 (SACD: 59:06 Text and Translation)


Both of Rachmaninoff’s large-scale a cappella works, the All Night Vigil (Vespers) and The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom , had difficult beginnings. The Vespers (1915), suppressed with all religious music by the Bolshevik after the 1917 revolution, was not recorded until 1965 and then only for Western consumption. The earlier St. Chrysostom Liturgy nearly succumbed to the early controversy it created. Written by Rachmaninoff in July 1910 in a burst of nostalgic enthusiasm, it was inspired by memories of his youthful fascination with the sound of St. Petersburg’s Russian Orthodox choirs. Rachmaninoff captured that remembered sound wonderfully. However, the rich harmonic language of the Liturgy and the almost chromatic progressions in the final choruses were far removed from the approved archaic Church modes. The ecclesiastical authorities acknowledged the work’s serene beauty, but though his setting of the fifth-century liturgy was quite conservative for an early 20th-century composition, they banned the use of the work in Orthodox churches because of its “modernist spirit.” Sections of the work were performed in concert for a while, but Rachmaninoff seems to have done little to support the work and, after the Russian revolution, it, like the Vespers, disappeared.


Liturgy had to wait until 1977 for its first recording, a joint venture between EMI and Balkanton, performed by Mikhil Milkov and the Bulgarian Radio Chorus. Now, thanks to ready availability of parts and score, there are more than a dozen recordings of the work from which to choose, including a number of Russian recordings made after the dissolution of the USSR. Many of these are excellent; this latest may be the best in several ways. The Latvian Radio Choir’s singing is sensuously beautiful: the tone Slavic, but more refined and better blended than some of that provenance. The choir boasts rich-toned basses capable of sustaining the low B? in the Credo. The performance is both devotional and thrillingly dynamic. Pacing is subtly varied to underline the text, often creating, as at the beginning of “In Thy Kingdom,” a breath-catching sense of time suspended. The balances achieved by K?ava and his chorus of 25 are ideal; the exquisite rising of the pure-voiced soprano soloist from the chorus in “We Hymn Thee” is but one of many examples. The pitch and diction are exemplary, whether the voices have been tapered to a mere thread of tone or are ringing in the great dome of the Riga Cathedral. The two liturgical soloists are excellent in their truncated roles. The Latvian Radio recording is stunning, creating a palpable sense of the chorus in a large reverberant space with no loss of focus or clarity.


There will be one point of hesitation for some collectors; as with all single-disc releases of this work, there are cuts. Gone are the chanted litanies with their haunting choral refrains (most of “The Great Litany” and the two “Little Litanies” following sections 2 and 3) as well as two whole sections: No. 7, the “Augmented Litany,” and No. 15, “And to Your Spirit,” with its exultant concluding chorus, “Only One is Holy.” The similarly jubilant “Blessed Is He” is cut from No. 17, and, oddly, the “Glory to the Father” of the final section is cut, leaving the often eliminated “Many Years” to conclude the work. More than a third of the 95-minute Liturgy is gone, most of it the deacon’s and priest’s monodic singing. Those who prefer a concert-like presentation may well prefer the cuts. Those who insist on full versions should look to Milkov and his Bulgarian choir (OP but available from ArkivMusic) and the less authentically Slavic, though glorious, Bruffy/Kansas City Chorale on Nimbus. (The latter has the most potent basses of any recording mentioned.) Given its overall distinction, however, I will not part easily with this gorgeously sung and recorded new release.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames


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How Russian does a choir have to be to pull off Rachmaninov’s choral music? Judging by the myriad versions in the catalogue, especially of his Vespers, the answer from the record labels appears to be that it doesn’t matter very much.


That is a shame in many respects, although part of the greatness of this music is its ability to communicate deeply, even when rendered in more Western idioms. However, the Latvian Radio Choir are as close to the source as you could wish for, and this is a reading that ticks all the boxes for authenticity, at least to my Western ears.


One particular problem with the work is its reliance on basses that can get down to, and then sustain, bottom Cs. Fortunately, the Latvian Radio Choir have the bass voices required. I could imagine the basses of a Russian choir dominating more when they hit those low pedals, but the effect here is of a more even balance across the astonishing range of the choir, and overall it is a more musical effect.


The recording is made in very fine SACD audio, although that raises some questions about the role of superior sound in this sort of repertoire. If you visit a cathedral in Russia, and the newly re-built Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow is a great example, you’ll find all manner of arcades and side galleries convoluting the sound. You will often struggle to work out where the choir is, not just because they are obscured from view, but also because the sound comes from all directions, and with an uneven delay that rounds off all the corners.


What role then for superior audio in a choral tradition that values emulsified and imprecise acoustical environments? Well, this recording was made in a Protestant cathedral, the Dome Cathedral in Riga. It is a resonant environment, but the decay is clean. The microphones are set far enough back to give the acoustic an important role in the sound profile, but not so far back that the detail is lost. If I were being pedantic, I might suggest that this acoustic is inauthentic, but given the superior quality of the results, that whole issue fades into irrelevance. For this is a very fine recording indeed. I have only heard the stereo SACD mix, and I have to confess that this is one of the few occasions where I regret not having splashed out on a surround sound setup. But even in stereo, the sound is rich and enveloping.


There are one or two places where the ensemble of the choir is slightly loose. Rachmaninov’s homophonic textures require a very high degree of accuracy, especially at the starts of phrases, and some of those entries are slightly imprecise. On the other hand, there is an impressive variety of texture from the choir. This, perhaps, is a benefit of performance from a non-liturgical choir; many aspects of the recording emulate a liturgical context, but the priority for the performers is the music. And the limited range of textures that the music employs is exploited to the full. An impressive dynamic range too, with some wonderful swells over the course of some of the longer phrases.



Ondine has recently been bought out by Naxos, leading some to worry about the future of SACD on the label. The release of this disc augurs well in that respect, although the recording itself was made long before the takeover, so it may be too early to celebrate. Nevertheless, this is a fine recording, and demonstrates an important and under-appreciated facet of the technology, to create atmosphere and involvement in music where pinpoint precision is less of a concern.


-- Gavin Dixon, MusicWeb International

SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 • Truls Mørk (vc); Vasily Petrenko, cond; Oslo PO • ONDINE 1218-2 (64:59) Live: Oslo 1/30–2/1/2013


These cello concertos are relatively late works, and both were written for Mstislav Rostropovich. The First appeared in 1959, six years after the death of Stalin, at a time when official pressure on the composer had eased––yet Shostakovich never got over the terrors of the 1940s. This is the perfect work to illustrate the position he was in. Soviet authorities at the time of the Cold War were locked into an “anything you can do, we can do better” standoff with the rest of the world, particularly with the USA, so they needed to show off their world-famous composer. For the same reason, they allowed the West access to their greatest musicians, including Rostropovich. All was fine as long as everybody toed the official Communist line, but Soviet officials never really trusted Shostakovich, and rightly so. The concerto quite plainly depicts the cries of a desperate individual (the cello) up against the power of the state (the orchestra). There is no room for compromise on either side. In the cadenza preceding the finale, the cello hopelessly repeats thematic fragments like a soul trapped, while a passage of sour, circus-like music in the final movement sees the protagonist going through his paces with pointless, frenzied zeal. The work is unambiguously autobiographical: Shostakovich introduces himself in the cello’s opening phrases with the repeated DSCH motif, so there is never any doubt who this solo cello is intended to personify.


The Second Cello Concerto was composed in 1966, just prior to Symphony No. 14, a symphonic song cycle in which he set poems on the subject of death. The two works came in the wake of a heart attack. Fittingly, the cello part, while still in opposition to outside forces, now seems more reflective and less inclined to protest (except for parts of the short Allegretto movement). The brief cadenza in this work depicts resignation: quiet desperation and regret rather than defiance, an attitude that would color all of the composer’s subsequent music.


This kind of pop-psych analysis of Shostakovich’s music is frowned upon in some quarters, but is inescapable when faced with a recording like this one. Mørk identifies completely with the cello-as-individual approach, as anyone who has seen and heard him live in the First Concerto will attest. He attacks both works with every fiber of his being, to coin a cliché, precisely conveying each emotional nuance of the score. The personal nature of his performance is emphasized here by a close-up recording: We hear both soloist and orchestra from the conductor’s point of view, literally “in your face.” Petrenko’s Shostakovich has been much praised, and he elicits thoroughly committed playing from the soloists and sections of the orchestra. At the very opening of the First Concerto, where the cello’s DSCH phrases are answered by repeated chords in the winds, I thought their response was a fraction slower each time than the tempo set by Mørk, or at least not as decisively delivered. From then on the orchestral support is unswerving, with exceptionally strong work from the first horn.


The Norwegian cellist has recorded both concertos before. His previous disc was made in 1995 for Virgin, where he was accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mariss Jansons. (Ironically, Jansons was then Chief Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic.) That earlier recording has a more straightforward balance, with the orchestra set back, allowing Mørk’s cello to dominate. His interpretation does not seem to have changed substantially over 18 years––he was magnificent then, too––but the current recording brings greater immediacy. The London orchestra strikes me as tighter in ensemble but less emotionally involved. The earlier disc is nevertheless extremely fine. I would also recommend hearing the larger-than-life, Romantically inclined rendition of both concertos on DG by Misha Maisky (with the London Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas)––especially moving in the Second––and it goes without saying that Rostropovich in any of his recordings is in a class of his own.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

This new release by the award-winning Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu is dedicated to the music of Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918–1970), a leading figure in the music of post-Second World War Germany. This album includes a rendering of the composer’s magnificent violin concerto featuring star violinist Leila Josefowicz, orchestral score Photoptosis, as well as the first album recording of Die Soldaten Vocal Symphony based on an opera that is widely considered as one of the greatest German operas of the 20th century. Zimmermann wrote his Die Soldaten opera, one of his keyworks, during the 1950s and 60s. The premiere of the opera was cancelled, and upon hearing the claim that the opera would be ‘impossible’ to perform, the composer adapted parts of the opera into a 40-minute vocal symphony suitable for concert performance. This work, filled with power and drama, is much more than a description of the apocalypse of modern war, and deserves its rightful place alongside the operas of Alban Berg. Zimmerman’s Violin Concerto is a relatively early work in the composer’s oeuvre. It was premiered in 1950 but has suffered much neglect. The influence of Schoenberg, Hindemith, Bartók, Stravinsky and Prokofiev are visible in this work which we might consider to manifest echoes of war. Photoptosis (1968), ‘Incidence of Light’, is among Zimmermann’s final orchestral pieces. Inspired by a painting created by Yves Klein for the Gelsenkirchen music theatre, this work includes quotations by Scriabin, Beethoven, Bach, and Wagner, among others. Yet, this “Prélude”, as described by the composer, is not a collage, but a study in orchestral sonority and light. Recordings by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu on Ondine have gathered excellent reviews in the international press. Two of their recordings were nominated for Gramophone Awards in 2018.

2017 marks the centenary of Finland’s independence. This new release encompasses works by native composers from 1917 to the present, and reflects the flourishing talent, artistry and experimentation of Finland’s classical music scene. These compositions are imbued with the beauty and isolation of the Finnish landscape, while capturing the nuance and personality of each composer. This anthology features Finnish artists from the Ondine catalogue, including some of the most prestigious orchestras, singers and instrumentalists of the country.

Okay, the Ballade for Harp and String Orchestra technically isn't a concerto, but who's counting? Rautavaara's concertos are arguably more consistent and representative than his symphonies. The First Piano Concerto, the earliest work here, exudes the sort of spiky Finno-Russian neoclassicism that we find in Englund and Shostakovich, but from the Second Piano Concerto on Rautavaara is very much his own man, and every one of these pieces, even the relatively gnarly concertos for organ and double bass, are well worth getting to know. Several strike me as flat-out masterpieces, including the Second and Third Piano Concertos, the Violin Concerto, the Harp Concerto, and of course Cantus Arcticus for taped birds and orchestra.

Furthermore, the performances are all first rate, from Ralf Gothóni and Vladimir Ashkenazy in the piano concertos, to Elmar Oliveira, Richard Stolzman, and Patrick Gallois in the concertos for violin, clarinet, and flute, respectively. The orchestral accompaniments leave nothing to be desired either, and the engineering is uniformly excellent. All of these works have appeared previously in Ondine's Rautavaara edition where many have been reviewed in detail at CT.com, but coupling them this way makes an ideal introduction to the composer and his special sound world. I just hope this set, which inevitably has a retrospective feel to it, doesn't mean that Rautavaara will not continue to produce symphonic works and concertos despite the ill-health he has suffered recently. By all means, indulge!

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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