TCHAIKOVSKY Swan Lake • Neeme Järvi, cond; James Ehnes (vn); Bergen PO • CHANDOS 5124(2) (2 SACDs: 154:41)

As has been noted in previous reviews of recordings of Tchaikovsky’s “complete” Swan Lake , there may well be as many different versions of the score as there have been productions of it. The problem is that Swan Lake is both the earliest (1875–1876) and the longest of the composer’s three great ballets, and it has had so many cooks adding their own ingredients, removing others, and generally revising the recipe that no one can say for sure what made up the original soufflé.

The generally known and accepted facts are these: The ballet, with original choreography by Julius Reisinger, was staged for the first time in February, 1877 by the Bolshoi Ballet at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater. It was not well received; audience and critics alike felt it was too long and convoluted, its music too heavy, and its libretto, adapted from a story by a German author, an affront to Russian sensibilities. And thus began the tinkering and tampering. By the time the work was revived in 1895 by the Imperial Ballet at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater there was new choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, along with major musical revisions to the score by the Imperial Theater’s conductor and composer, Riccardo Drigo. It should be noted that by the time of the 1895 revival, Tchaikovsky was dead and had no hand in the new performing version. Tchaikovsky and Drigo had worked together previously, but according to accounts, they didn’t agree on much of anything and their relationship was strained.

The upshot of all this is that there is no definitive Swan Lake . It was no longer a ballet by one composer, but rather a group effort; and you know the saying about a camel being a horse designed by a committee. It’s important to bear this in mind when considering the various recordings of Swan Lake that claim to be complete, for the drastic differences in timings cannot be explained by mere tempo differences alone. There have to be other factors involved, such as omission of some movements, cuts to others, and/or reliance on differing versions/editions. Let’s look at the timings of several well-known recordings, sorted in order by duration.

Conductor	Orchestra	Label	Timing
Valery Gergiev	St. Petersburg Mariinsky O	Decca	106.59
Antál Dorati	Minneapolis SO	Mercury	131:41
Felix Slatkin	St. Louis SO	RCA	141:00
Mikhail Pletnev	Russian National O	Ondine	142.52
Dmitri Yablonsky	Russian State SO	Naxos	148:38
Michael Tilson Thomas	London SO	Sony	149:05
Mark Ermler	Royal Opera House O	Conifer	153.03
André Previn	London SO	EMI	153:02
Charles Dutoit	Montréal SO	Decca	153:56
Neeme Järvi	Bergen PO	Chandos	154:41
Wolfgang Sawallisch	Philadelphia O	EMI	158:45

Right off the bat, I need to offer a disclaimer: My personal familiarity with the above-listed recordings is limited to only four of them—Gergiev, Pletnev, Yablonsky, and now this new one by Järvi. Of the four, Gergiev’s version is the worst in terms of the hatchet job it does on the score. Movements are reordered—for example, the act I Waltz has been moved to act III and its ending abridged—and it’s full of egregious cuts—some 40 minutes of music are sacrificed. Gergiev’s Swan Lake is presumptively based on the Mariinsky performing version; i.e., the above-mentioned Drigo edition prepared for the 1895 St. Petersburg revival.

Looking at Pletnev’s timing of 142:52 vs. Yablonsky’s 148:58 and Järvi’s 154:41, it seems pretty obvious that that while tempo differences over the course of two and a half hours could account for the difference of approximately six minutes between Pletnev and Yablonsky and, in turn, between Yablonsky and Järvi, they’re unlikely to be the cause of the approximately 12-minute difference between Pletnev and Järvi.

Upon closer examination of all three recordings, what I found was that Yablonsky and Järvi both include two often dropped numbers from act III, the Pas de deux that was written after the fact specifically for Anna Sobeshchanskaya, and the “Danse Russe,” added specifically for Pelageya Karpakova. Pletnev omits these two additions, as do a number of others. Whether they should be included or not is a rather complex question.

Ballerinas of the day were not much different from their opera diva counterparts in terms of their egos. They had no shame when it came to demanding custom cadenzas to show off their voices or, in the case of danseuses, their fancy footwork and frilly tutus. The story surrounding Sobeshchanskaya and her Pas de deux is especially messy and borders on scandal. Originally picked to dance the lead role of Odette (the Swan) for the 1877 premiere, Sobeshchanskaya was ignominiously dropped from the cast at the last minute when a high-placed government official with whom she’d had a dalliance accused her of having taken expensive jewelry from him and then pawned it when she married a fellow danseur. On the spur of the moment, she was replaced by Pelageya Karpakova. Sobeshchanskaya survived the indignity and went on to dance the title role when the ballet was staged again a month later with no greater success than at its premiere.

But the intrigue didn’t end there. The ballerina made no bones about the fact that she hated both the choreography and the music, and so off she went to St. Petersburg, where she engaged Petipa to choreograph a new Pas de deux for her that would replace the third act’s Grand pas. Petipa complied and choreographed the new number to music, not by Tchaikovsky, but by Ludwig Minkus, the Imperial Ballet’s composer in residence.

When news of this change reached Tchaikovsky, he was miffed; his ego was probably bigger than Sobeshchanskaya’s. How dare she?! He was the composer, and he alone should take credit (or discredit) for the music. After some smoothing of his ruffled feathers, Tchaikovsky agreed to compose the music himself for Petipa’s new Pas de deux , but there was a problem. Tchaikovsky’s new music didn’t synch up with Petipa’s choreography, and Sobeshchanskaya, now back in Moscow, wasn’t about to travel back to St. Petersburg to go through the whole exercise again. She didn’t seem to care much one way or the other about the music, but she was adamant about keeping Petipa’s choreographed number. How exactly Tchaikovsky was prevailed upon to discard his newly composed music and essentially start over, this time following the outlines and rhythmic steps of Minkus’s music is not explained, but that’s what Tchaikovsky did. So, this particular episode apparently had a satisfactory ending for all involved, except, I suspect, for Minkus who surely must have felt put out. The original Grand pas with music by Tchaikovsky was replaced by Sobeshchanskaya’s Pas de deux with music first by Minkus and then by Tchaikovsky.

Based on the foregoing, it would seem that there is every reason to include this number in complete performances of the ballet, yet many conductors, Pletnev among them, don’t. The situation regarding the “Danse Russe” (Russian Dance) is much simpler and appears to be the reverse; it’s one of deletion rather than addition. It was composed for and included in the original 1877 version of the score danced by Karpakova, the premiere’s last-minute substitute for Sobeshchanskaya. The number was then removed for subsequent performances in which Sobeshchanskaya took over the role, for reasons one can easily guess. If two competing sopranos could bitch-slap each other on stage during a production of a Handel opera, there was no telling what professional jealousy might provoke between two rival ballerinas.

This describes only some of the butchery that turned Tchaikovsky’s finely feathered swan into a plucked chicken. It’s well to remember, however, that Swan Lake was not only the composer’s first completed ballet, it was really his first major stage undertaking to survive the ravages of time, even if not entirely intact. He was working on his opera Eugene Onegin at the same time, his first opera to achieve success; and though there had been earlier operatic efforts— The Voyevoda, Undina, The Oprichnik , and Vakula the Smith —they were either destroyed by the composer, recycled, later revised, or didn’t stir much interest at the time. Thus, at 37, Tchaikovsky’s greatest works still lay ahead of him, and he had yet to achieve the self-confidence that fame would bring him to be able to just say no to those who would mess with his music.

Neeme Järvi’s Swan Lake follows his Sleeping Beauty , reviewed in 36:5. I would expect to see a Nutcracker in the near future, perhaps timed to coincide with Christmas (I’m writing this in November 2013). My only objection to Järvi’s Sleeping Beauty was his somewhat business-like approach, which struck me as missing some of the music’s fairy magic. But the Bergen Philharmonic’s polished playing, James Ehnes’s ravishing violin solos, and Chandos’s thrilling multi-channel SACD recording offered much allure.

On relistening to that release, and in listening to this present one, in which Järvi, Ehnes, the Bergen orchestra, and Chandos repeat their earlier accomplishment, it occurred to me that my criticism of Järvi wasn’t entirely fair. There are two ways to conduct a ballet performance for a strictly audio recording. You can approach it as a concert work, in which case you will tend to emphasize the melodic, harmonic, and structural elements of the score, or you can approach it as a suite of dances, in which case you will emphasize the music’s rhythmic and terpsichorean aspects. Järvi falls into the former camp, and there’s nothing wrong in that, as long as he’s not directing a live production of the actual ballet, in which tempo, pacing, and phrasing need to be molded more flexibly to accommodate the movements of the dancers.

I can’t say absolutely that this is the most authoritatively complete Swan Lake on record, though in taking up the original 1877 score and including additional material supplied by Tchaikovsky himself for subsequent performances, Järvi gives us a version that’s certainly more complete than are a number of others. What I can say is that of the four recordings of the score with which I’m familiar, Järvi’s would now be my first choice, and taking all other factors into account—superb playing by the Bergen Philharmonic, James Ehnes’s beguiling solo violin contributions, and a killer recording—I’d extrapolate from this that Järvi’s Swan Lake is now the one to have.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

SAINT-SAËNS Samson et Dalila: Bacchanale. Le Rouet d’Omphale. Phaëton. Danse macabre. La Jeunesse d’Hercule. Suite algérienne: Marche militaire française. La Princesse jaune: Overture. Une nuit à Lisbonne. Spartacus. Marche du couronnement • Neeme Järvi, cond; Royal Scottish Nat’l O • CHANDOS 5104 (SACD: 77:40)


Here in spectacular multichannel surround sound is a brand-new recording of all four Saint-Saëns tone poems plus a stewpot of shorter orchestral works, some of them popular favorites, others, less widely known.


Over the course of five years, between 1872 and 1877, Saint-Saëns composed four tone poems, three of them drawn from Greek mythology: Le Rouet d’Omphale, Phaëton , and La Jeunesse d’Hercule . The fourth, though third in order of composition, and most famous is Danse macabre , a romantic horror that trades Greek gods for gamboling ghouls.


Omphale’s Spinning Wheel is often said to be the very first French tone poem, though note author Roger Nichols points out that Franck beat Saint-Saëns to the punch by almost a quarter of a century with his symphonic poem Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne of 1848. According to Saint-Saëns’s own preface to the score, the subject of the story is feminine seduction and the triumphant struggle of weakness against strength. To atone for a murder Hercules is ordered by the goddess Hera to serve as a slave to the Lydian Queen, Omphale. Nichols spares the reader the more indelicate description of the emasculated and feminized Hercules kneeling and spinning at the Queen’s feet clad in women’s clothing. In light of Saint-Saëns’s fetish for hosting lavish parties dressed in drag, one has to wonder if the legend of Hercules and Omphale didn’t hold some special fascination for him.


Phaëton , Saint-Saëns’s second tone poem, flirts with the subject of father-son relationships and the sometimes tragic consequences that result when the boy grows old enough to challenge the paternal authority figure. Phaëton , son of Helios the sun god, seeks to prove his manhood by piloting the sun chariot across the heavens. So, in effect, he takes the family Ford out for a spin. But he’s not yet the man he thinks he is. Losing control of the chariot’s horses, he draws the sun too close to the earth. To prevent the solar express from crashing and wreaking further catastrophe, Zeus strikes it with a thunderbolt, incinerating the vehicle and killing Phaëton in the process. A sidebar to the story is that the chariot’s near-miss trajectory across the Sahara scorched the land and explains why the Ethiopians are black.


Next we have Saint-Saëns’s answer to Berlioz’s witches, Mussorgsky’s demons, and Liszt’s diableries, the Danse macabre . But leave it to Saint-Saëns to paint his portrait of the dancing dead, to paraphrase Ogden Nash’s verse, as skeletons in the museum hall gathering at midnight for a ball. The scordatura-tuned violin, xylophone, contorted Dies irae , and android-like rhythmic repetitions caused quite a stir, prompting Debussy, one of Saint-Saëns’s most outspoken critics, to declare years later that the piece gave him hope that Saint-Saëns was a very great composer after all.


The three foregoing tone poems are among Saint-Saëns’s more frequently heard and recorded works and, in fact, a number of recordings, some more recent than others, have included two of them in one combination or another on the same disc. Less often does one find all three, and only one other recording I’m familiar with—a composite Saint-Saëns collection assembled from one or more other releases featuring Charles Dutoit leading the Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic orchestras—includes the composer’s fourth and final tone poem as well. Having stripped Hercules of his manhood in Omphale’s Spinning Wheel , Saint-Saëns rehabilitates him in La Jeunesse d’Hercule . Both dramatically and musically, the work is the weakest of the four, which no doubt explains its poor showing in the listings. The story, if it can be called that, involves no action but is rather a depiction of the young hero’s internal philosophical struggle in choosing between a life of pleasure-seeking and a life of virtue. He chooses the latter. It has been noted that the Lisztian tone poem model was a strong influence on Saint-Saëns’s score.


The remaining pieces that fill out the disc are, in some cases quite well known, like the Bacchanal from the composer’s opera Samson et Dalila and the Marche militaire française , which comes from the Suite algérienne . Other pieces are not well known at all but are hardly insubstantial. The Spartacus overture, for example, is a 13-minute score that was written in 1863 but remained unpublished until 1900. It’s a stand-alone grand concert overture that contains some of Saint-Saëns’s most dramatically urgent music.


On a trip to Portugal in 1880, Saint-Saëns dashed off a one-act comic opera with a title that would no doubt offend today’s politically correct sensibilities, La Princesse jaune , about a Japanese princess transplanted through opera magic to the Netherlands. The Lisbon audience apparently loved it, and back in Paris the Opéra-Comique gave four performances of it before the curtain came down on it for good. I note a single recording of the work listed by ArkivMusic, a 1996 live performance from Lugano. Heard here is the six-minute overture to the opera, which provides a taste of what Saint-Saëns must have thought Japanese music sounded like. Don’t expect Puccini.


During the same visit that produced La Princesse jaune , Saint-Saëns scribbled out the three-and-a-half-minute musical watercolor Une nuit à Lisbonne , which he dedicated to Portuguese King Luiz.


The story behind the Marche du couronnement put me in mind of Thomas Beecham’s plaint about British orchestras employing so many third-rate conductors when there were so many second-rate English ones to choose from. Which raises the question, why would the Brits choose a French composer, Saint-Saëns, to write a march for the coronation of Edward VII? Apparently, they didn’t. Saint-Saëns took it entirely upon himself to compose the piece, which, according to the program note, caused a flurry of diplomatic activity at the ambassadorial level between the two countries. For the march, Saint-Saëns borrowed a tune from his opera Henry VIII . If you shouldn’t expect Puccini in Saint-Saëns’s La Princesse jaune , don’t expect Elgar in his Coronation March.


This is mainly a fun disc, but a useful one as well in gathering together all four of Saint-Saëns’s tone poems, plus a generous selection of some of his less familiar orchestral works. It’s also distinguished by outstanding playing from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra brilliantly led by veteran conductor Neeme Järvi, and as an added bonus, it’s recorded in stunning multichannel sound. Enthusiastically recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

The Silk Road connecting China with Europe since ancient times has always been a medium of cultural exchange between East and West – reflected here in a trio of works - Alexander Borodin’s well-known “In The Steppes of Central Asia”, Ferruccio Busoni’s “Turandot Suite” and the 1955 orchestral suite “Silk Road” by the Japanese composer Ikuma Dan (1924-2001). A prolific scorer of films, Dan left behind a considerable body of work besides, including symphonies, operas and chamber music. For this Coviello CD, the Swiss ‘argovia philharmonic’ is led by its current Music Director Douglas Bostock.

Classical Music

Connoisseurs of historical performances will certainly know the famous photograph taken at a reception in Berlin in 1929, showing conductors Bruno Walter, Arturo Toscanini, Erich Kleiber, Otto Klemperer, and Wilhelm Furtwangler. Kleiber was the youngest of these esteemed maestros, and today remains perhaps the least known of them. This situation is doubtless due in part to the fact that of the five, he by far had the smallest recorded legacy and certainly the fewest appearances in the US. These circumstances should not however, lead us to underestimate Kleiber, who in 1923, became the youngest Generalmusikdirector in Germany, at that country's premiere opera house, the Berlin Staatsoper. He had a falling out with Nazi leaders and left Berlin in 1935, becoming a wanderer and guesting at various European venues. He settled with his family in Chile in 1940, conducting mainly at the Teatro Colon during the war, as well as in Havana. When hostilities ended, he did not immediately return to Europe as might be expected. He did however, accept an invitation to lead the NBC Symphony in four concerts in February-March 1946. Toscanini appreciated his music making and Kleiber was invited back for another quartet of concerts presented in this CD set, which contains a broad cross-section of his symphonic repertory favorites.

Classical Music

Classical Music

World Premiere Recording During his own lifetime, Sammartini was considered to be one of the most talented composers of his generation. John Hawkins wrote in 1776: "His singularities can only be ascribed to that boldness and self-possession which are ever the concomitants of genius." He ranked Sammartini's concertos and overtures at the same level as those of Arcangelo Corelli and Francesco Geminiani - and even held them in higher esteem than Georg Frideric Handel's. Yet, through an inexplicable twist of history, Sammartini has remained an unknown quantity for the general public. Les Muffatti have made a careful selection from among the plethora of Sammartini's masterworks in order to fully reflect their quality. They hope that this world-première recording of works in Sammartini's widely varying styles can do justice to this genius, and share the ensemble's enthusiasm for this unjustly underrated composer.

V3: KAKHIDZE LEGACY

WENN IS RAACHERMANNL NABELT

WERKE IN ORCHESTRIERUNGEN DURC

After a "sublime" (BBC Music) complete set of Schubert’s violin sonatas with Piers Lane, Tasmin Little joins Martin Roscoe in this recording of the complete violin sonatas by Beethoven.

In all, Beethoven wrote ten sonatas for piano and violin, and seems not to have entertained ideas for other works in this genre. All but one may be regarded as early works: only Op. 96, in G major, which was composed almost a decade after the last of the other nine, does not fall into this category. As a group, then, the violin sonatas do not offer a conspectus of Beethoven’s stylistic development such as we find in the string quartets, piano sonatas, symphonies, and even cello sonatas. But each work is a masterpiece in its own right, original, full of vitality, idiomatic for both the pianist and violinist who are equal-ranking participants in the ensemble, and executed with consummate compositional skill.

Reviews:

One is very much aware of two distinct personalities, each with plenty to say about this music. There's even a sense of friendly rivalry - and all to the good. Little's expressive style is generous and extrovert, Roscoe's at times more inward looking…this is an impressive achievement, and beautifully recorded.

– BBC Music Magazine

Little and Roscoe come across as being very attuned to one another. The particular brand of fantasy in the Kreutzer suits them particularly well, and from its Bachian solo-violin opening onwards there's a real fire to the first movement.

– Gramophone

DER ERSTE STREICH

STYLUS PHANTASTICUS

Francis Poulenc said ?in 1954, 'Music buffs believe that the greatest living conductor is Toscanini, musicians know that it is Hans Rosbaud.' This 'live' studio recording from 1951 is a new addition to the Rosbaud discography, released for the first time on ICA Classics. It has been regarded by a number of German musicologists as a truly legendary performance.

CELLO CTO

Mozart: Serenades Nos. 11-12

Rachmaninov was, by his own account, Svetlanov's favorite composer. This new live recording of his Symphony No.2 from the Royal Festival Hall in 1993 with the Philharmonia Orchestra has never been issued before. The recording is in excellent stereo and Svetlanov was at his most exciting when caught live as opposed to working under studio conditions. This is a riveting performance.

Besides her Cherubino in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, Frederica von Stade also enjoyed repeated successes in Salzburg with her song recitals. In 1986, accompanied by Martin Katz, she offered a programme that knew no boundaries, ranging from the florid poesy of settings by Fauré and Strauss to Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer, the moderate American Modernism of Charles Ives, Copland and Pasatieri, then to Canteloube's French folk song adaptations. Schoenberg's early cabaret songs served to round off the evening in ebullient fashion.

These are outstanding performances, as good or better than the composer's own. Edward Gardner tears into the Four Sea Interludes with uninhibited excitement. It's great to hear the high violins and flutes in "Dawn" swooping and soaring like the gulls that they're supposed to be evoking. "Sunday Morning" has an infectious bounce, while "Moonlight" casts a rapt stillness abruptly shattered by perhaps the most vicious storm on disc. It's one of those versions you will listen to and say, "Finally, that's the way it should go!"

The suite from Gloriana is still a comparative rarity, which is a pity, as the music really is first-rate Britten. But then, so is the opera; why anyone cares that it flopped at its premiere is beyond me (the Queen allegedly was not amused, as if her opinion matters). The Lute Song is very nicely sung by Robert Murray, but the version for oboe rather than voice strikes me as more appropriate within the context of the symphonic suite as a whole. Granted, Britten used Peter Pears, but that was an opportunity for him to give his partner something to do while on tour.

Finally, there's the Cello Symphony: a tough, somewhat gnarly work that receives a performance every bit as fine as Britten/Rostropovich, which still remains the benchmark version. Paul Watkins and Gardner somehow make music out of the low, grotty opening, pacing the movement as unerringly as did Britten himself. The finale works its way up to a wonderfully life-affirming conclusion, and Watkins does a wonderful job with the lengthy preceding cadenza. In short, this release is a major entry in the Britten discography, and the sonics are every bit the equal of the interpretations.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Gra?yna Bacewicz is a Polish twentieth-century composer of the first magnitude, but she escaped lasting fame. Her String Quartets and Violin Concertos are the go-to works; the Cello Concertos are “Bacewicz 201.” The lyrical themes and melodies, rhythmic propulsion and memorable phrases of the neo-romantic 1951 concerto give the Shostakovich concertos a run for their money. The second work (1961) is starker, sparser, with pointillist touches of orchestral color to the cello part, driven by an unrelenting inner pulse. It’s a kind of orchestral cello sonata, discordant and angular, but winning, given time and willingness. The 1943 Overture, with fading hints of Parisian neoclassicism, makes a perfect curtain-raiser.

– Jens F. Laurson, Listen

Classical Music

V 27: MUSICA CLAROMONTANA