RAVEL: LA VALSE, ETC DEBUSSY

A while ago, when commenting on Michael Nyman's "The Piano," I spoke (or pontificated, rather) to some colleagues regarding my dismay over Nyman's 'art.' I mention guilty pleasures on occasion, but a greater potential irrationality of criticism is the personal determination of whether one should praise certain scores or composers for daring to be abstract, or lambaste them for not getting their points across. I have done both, with disliked emphasis on the latter, when listening to Nyman's compositions. It is with "The End of the Affair," performed by the Michael Nyman Orchestra, that I realize I ought to place my views firmly, diplomatically in the middle.

The music really depends on how the listener feels, as opposed to being the sort of film score that alters how he feels. Reliant on the mood and the focus of attention, the score delights as confidently as it bores. It stands precariously on the divide between art and self-importance. Its incessant, top heavy strings play ad nauseam -- will they never end? -- but the themes they play indulge in the attention. It is exceedingly predictable, just as a fair deal of minimalist music is. And compared to the film scores of minimalist Philip Glass it is neither technically brilliant nor dramatically solid. It is challenging primarily to the amplitude of one's attempt to fall in love with its tedium. Cinematic evolution gets thrown out of the window for a beginning, middle, and end that are practically unidentifiable from one another. As I am not a huge supporter of the minimalist music movement I may be missing some key thought, others may see this score far differently, but to my ears it reaches a point of despotic annoyance. Call me unfashionable. Yet I cannot help praising "The End of the Affair" for its abstract grandeur. The scope, though minimal, gets the most out of the repeating elements, and the cues, taken individually as small concert works rather than part of a theatrical whole, become fascinating essays in contemporary classical music. Nyman has an unconventional way with counterpoint (and lack thereof) that is lush and thoroughly amazing, and the themes are memorable and inhabit the soundscape aggressively well. When these ideas stick out from the common backdrop, it is mesmerizing.

What fascinates me most personally is that this is one of the few soundtracks I know of featuring such a strong dichotomy... I am not sure I appreciate it...

-- Jeffrey Wheeler, MusicWeb International

PLA: CATALAN FLUTE MUSIC RAMP

What a wonderful title. The absurdist libretto of Schnittke's opera by the former 'dissident' writer Victor Erofeyev is based on his own short story and is partly a satire on Soviet life under Communism ('Vova' was Lenin's nickname, and Howard Haskin — the creator of the role — was made up to look like the former leader). Clearly, for Schnittke and other post-Soviet artists, there are still scores to setde with the past. Whether that will tell against the opera's long-term success remains to be seen.

At its worst it recalls a superior cabaret act, Schnittke's frequent recourse to parody as part of his 'polystylistic' approach sounding a touch glib. But other moments suggest wider resonances. The opera was premiered in Amsterdam last April, when this recording was made. Rostropovich, who was instrumental in the project from an early stage, conducts a brash but vital performance (he also plays the cello and piano) and the cast enters fully into the spirit of the piece. The sound has a curiously hollow quality.

-- George Hall, BBC Music Magazine

RACHMANINOV: COMPLETE SOLO PIA

Like Ravel's piano originals that he subsequently orchestrated, Rachmaninov's two-piano version of Symphonic Dances sounds like a note-exact replica of the later symphonic score. Essentially the only thing missing is the chance to marvel at the composer's remarkable powers of orchestration. However, in compensation you get the enhanced clarity of textures that allows for fine delineation of all the intricate inner voices, especially as realized by Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman, who beautifully elucidate Rachmaninov's winding, winsome, and wondrous tunes. However, if you're like me, you can't help but pine for the missing percussion in the outer movements, and no piano ever could imitate the snarling brass crescendos that open movement II. Nonetheless, Ax and Bronfman make this Symphonic Dances a refreshingly alternative listening experience--as do Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire, though their faster speeds and self-conscious bravura make their performance more of a virtuoso showcase, something that also can be said for their Suite No. 2 with its breathless Waltz. Ax and Bronfman at least allow you to clearly discern all the notes in their noticeably less-excited rendition. But no need to worry: you get just as caught up in their potent projection of Rachmaninov's lush harmonies.


Later, Ax and Bronfman conjure up a startlingly vivid impression of church bells in the joyfully clangorous finale of the disc-ending Suite No. 1. All of this is faithfully and powerfully rendered by Sony's recording, which leaves adequate space around the instruments to make a cohesive, three-dimensional sound image (though not enough for satisfyingly deep bass). In sum, a gorgeously played and generous program (it would have filled two LPs in the '70s). Recommended for Rachmaninov lovers and piano fans alike.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

The engineers can certainly take a bow for presenting a clean, warm sound from the copy of the Dulcken harpsichord used; there are some gritty roughnesses in Kk193 which may be only on my copy, but from the less pleasant, clangier timbre of the instrument in Kk52 (long and rambling, like an organ voluntary), this may have been recorded at a different session. A rousing hand, anyway, for Gustav Leonhardt. It's true that he's a bit jerky and impetuous in Kk3 (One with falling chromatic lines) and that his rubato in Kk185 may be thought rather much, but once settled into his stride he produces some splendid performances. TI would instance his vitality in the wittily unexpected Kkl84, the brilliant Kk239 (with its suggestion of castanets), his deliciously springheeled Kk209 and the exciting Kk191.

But your chief plaudits, please, for the composer, whose irrepressibly mercurial imagination is still insufficiently appreciated by dull commentators who woffle that this genius "never ventures from his binary-form scheme for any of his single-movement sonatas", though, it is reluctantly admitted, "he does evolve various modifications of the form". Like, I suppose, Kk227, which in fact has two entirely unrelated halves, one in 2/4 and the other in 3/8! (Presentation gets this wrong too, saying that there are "frequent changes of beat" in it.)

-- Gramophone [4/1980]

This beautiful disc juxtaposes the work of two composers whose names are frequently placed together for their combination of minimalist and early music elements as well as their Orthodox spirituality. Estonian Arvo Pärt has the sparer style, elements pared down to the most basic chords, notes alternated like bells against a quiet, static background, while Englishman Tavener is the more outwardly ecstatic, using winding, chant-influenced melodies to achieve a kind of rapture.
Andrew Parrott's Taverner Choir, famed for their performances of early music, gives oustanding performances of these modern works with ancient roots, providing the perfect, clear, non-vibrato sound for the Pärt, while also delivering the more tremulous expression needed for the Tavener. A highlight of the program is the seldom-heard 'Canticle of the Mother of God' by Tavener, an early piece that actually employs serial methods yet clearly points in the direction of his later music.

Real Wagnerian sopranos are rare, but Jane Eaglen has the deep, rich soprano, as well as the stamina it takes, to be a Brünnhilde. Here she is, off the rock and away from the opera stage, presented in a veritable iron-woman triathlon of late romantic song cycles, all of which tax the human voice to its limits, merely asking it to float and soar above a large orchestra and still sound angelic. While Richard Strauss's 'Four Last Songs' is the ultimate example, Wagner's own 'Wesendonk Lieder' is the prototype for this subgenre of evoked sunsets and dreams: indeed, the desire to make time and season stand still in a nether world between sleep, dreaming and waking is common to nearly every song in all three cycles. The 'Seven Early Songs' of Alban Berg makes a perfect discmate, especially for the Strauss, as it similarly stretches tonality in every beautiful direction without attempting to leave it. These are songs of impossible longing, and they require nearly impossible musicianship to carry off, but Eaglen and conductor Donald Runnicles, with flowing tempos and carefully judged balances, bring you into the reverie and don't let go.

RACHMANINOV: COMPLETE SOLO PIA

ORLANDO DI LASSO: LAGRIME DI S

BACH: BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS VO

THE TRIUMPH OF THE PIANO is a release from National Public Radio that briefly covers the history of piano music through music from "Bach to Bartok." With so many performances to select from for such a collection, it's no doubt that the choices are outstanding. Beginning with two pieces for the harpsichord by Couperin and Bach respectively, the piano takes over through pieces of the classical and romantic eras, and twentieth century, with something by almost every piano composer of importance.
The performer list is equally impressive on this intelligent collection: Emmanuel Ax, André Watts, Glenn Gould, and more. Particular standouts include Brahms' Intermezzo Op. 119 played by Rudolf Serkin in a 1979 recording, the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 from a 1961 recording by Robert Casadesus, and "Liebesbotschaft" by Schubert/Liszt played by Arcadi Volodos. In other words, this is not only a short history of the piano repertoire, but of pianists who have recorded as well. Aficionados of the piano will find this to be an invaluable recording in its unique collection of pieces, as well as its fantastic assembly of artistry on one disc.

Persuasive performances that exhibit the true essence of the old trumpet.

From the opening strains of Stradella's wonderfully invigorating Sonata for solo trumpet (placed midway between a richly scored accompaniment of two string choirs), it is immediately apparent how the limitations of the natural trumpet provide it with the freedom to produce its own special range of tonal characteristics. This is the canvas Steele-Perkins has been championing for years: the scope in colour, articulation and subtle timbral nuance which characterize 'natural' trumpet playing at its most honest—in other words without all the modern paraphernalia which may make the instrument easier to play but destroys the capacity for expressive variety.

This is, then, a notable release, not least because there are so few current recordings of this type for solo natural trumpet (let alone for the slide trumpet whose mellow tones grace the Handel selection of 'airs' at the end of the disc). Steele-Perkins figured prominently on a Hyperion disc entitled ''Italian Baroque Trumpet Music'' recorded in 1987, though this latest project reveals more of the fibrous quality of the natural trumpet, sounding especially wholesome on David Edwards's copy of a 1667 instrument by Simon Beale of London. The accompaniment, too, is altogether more cultivated and immediate from Tafelmusik. A comparison of the Stradella sonata (the only work common to both discs) shows a greater resonance in the earlier recording but less vitality overall, and also less of a distinction between the two string groups.

Of the other works, the Biber sonatas are a joy (again, Steele-Perkins has already recorded them for Hyperion—1/86, nla—but the same observations apply here as with Stradella) and the Telemann Concerto for trumpet and two oboes is a paragon of homogeneity between instruments, which in their original form have more in common than is usually supposed. John Thiessen makes a fine impression as the co-principal in the two-trumpet works and there is a pleasing blend here too. The work described as Albinoni's Concerto for trumpet and three oboes is spurious (published erroneously as such by Sikorski in 1966) and sounds remarkably German to my ears. 'Attrib.' at the very least, please. A tiny gripe in an otherwise excellent release. I am not aware of a solo recording at present which exhibits so persuasively or musically the true essence of the old trumpet.

-- Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Gramophone [4/1995]

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