Classical Music

SUITE ELEGIAQUE

Classical Music

This is a recoupling made even more desirable than on its original issue by the inclusion of The Specter's Bride, Martinu's retelling of the same story set by Dvorák about a young girl who runs away with her dead lover's ghost, only to be rescued at the last minute from the cemetery by the arrival of dawn. It's a wonderful piece, as fine in its own way as Dvorák's setting, and, at half an hour, much shorter. Including it in this two-disc set makes a perfect program organized around settings of Czech folk poetry, the Dandelion Romance and The Primrose being two much shorter but very charming further examples.

The main attraction, however, is Špalícek, a ballet with songs in which each of the three acts incorporates the telling of a fairy tale, enhanced by plenty of additional dancing and commentary framing the main stories. The music is invariably appealing and rhythmically vivacious, Martinu in his most bubbly folk/neo-classical mode--and if you enjoy the suite (recorded by Mackerras on Conifer) then you will surely find the complete work equally enchanting.

All of the performances here are excellent in every respect. None of the soloists, save bass Richard Novák, are at all well known, but it doesn't matter a bit, while the conductors are veterans who can be counted on to deliver consistently idiomatic and persuasive results. Given the wide variety of forces--from full orchestra with chorus and soloists in The Specter's Bride and Špalícek to solo violin, piano, and a small group of sopranos and altos in The Primrose--the engineering is quite good. A major Martinu release, for sure.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Rescued from the vaults, ArkivMusic reissues a long lost Christmas Treasure! The Musical Christmas Tree from Morton Gould is an orchestral holiday classic. Featuring Holiday standards, this unique release includes many of Morton Gould's own arrangements as well as original compositions written for the holidays, including "Winter" from the Burchfield Gallery and "Skiers Waltz" from the Cinerama Holiday Suite.

Hanson's opera Merry Mount has been something of a speciality for Naxos. The suite from the opera is one of the companions to the First Symphony as recorded by the Nashville Symphony and Kenneth Schermerhorn on 8.559012 (see review) . The whole opera was issued from acetates of the 1934 Serafin-conducted Met broadcasts (see review) in 1998 as part of the Naxos historic opera series. Now Naxos is the host to the digital recording of the Seattle 1996 revival. The suite was also recorded recently by Telarc with Kunzel, by the composer at least twice, by Schwarz and by others. Extracts from the opera were issued on a Mercury LP with the composer conducting; that really should be reissued.

In 1932 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novella ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount’ became the subject of a published poem by Richard Stokes. The poem caught the attention of the Nebraskan composer Howard Hanson who at that time had two distinctively romantic symphonies to his name. He had completed his signature work - Symphony No. 2 Romantic - only two years earlier and suggestions of that work can be heard in the grandiloquent love music of the resulting opera.

In this opera the sensual delights and torments of puritan Pastor Wrestling Bradford are played out against the backdrop of a New England community in the 1600s. A ship arrives from England with a contingent of dissolute Cavaliers. With them is the beautiful Lady Marigold Sandys who becomes the centre of Bradford’s obsession. On Merry Mount, with the maypole at the centre of the open-air dancing ground, Sandys is to be married to Gower Lackland. Bradford intervenes and carries her off. Finally alone with her Bradford unveils his love for Marigold. Lackland appears, there is struggle and Lackland is killed by Bradford. Act II scene 3 is a vision of hell but because this is in the similitude of Bradford’s dream it is an erotic vision in which amid the sensuality he replays his killing of Gower who appears as Lucifer. Bradford wakes as the RedIndians - who have been treated abysmally throughout the opera – sack the village and begin to kill and scalp the setters. The village burns as Bradford and Sandys return. The settlers put the Indians to flight but Bradford, conscious of the condemnation awaiting Marigold and himself, sweeps her up into his arms and strides into the furnace flames of his blazing church – a suitably Puccinian end to a superheated opera.

No wonder the subject appealed so strongly to Hanson. Harking back to the First Symphony the mood is brooding and fiercely devotional. This couples well with the Old Testament ferocity of the words. Early on in the first act the choral writing ascends to typically long-breathed nobility which is wonderfully contrasted with baritonal string writing. The Sibelian element is also present. Listen to the Pohjolan harp underpinning at 7:20 on tr. 2 for the women's voices. Attenmd also to the stertorous stentor of the horns on tr. 3 1:23. Schwarz gives Hanson's opera the dolcissima it clamantly demands and receives from orchestra and chorus, from Bradford and from the delightfully named Plentiful Tewke. Listen to Flanigan’s limning of the melodic pulse in tr. 7 when she is alone with Zeller’s Bradford. The rapturous romantic cantilena of Bradford and Lady Marigold Sandys in tr. 12 is positively symphonic in its stride. The hymnal and romantic meet in tense adversity - sacred and profane. It’s a potent mix. This contributes to the Mussorgskian glowering choral grandeur of end of act I. It is excitable and noble writing in line with Ireland’s These Things Shall Be and Hanson’s own masterwork Lament of Beowulf. At the end of each Act – thankfully not each scene - we are reminded by the applause that this is a recording of a live event. There is the occasional and rare cough as at start of tr. 4. CD1. In Act II we encounter playful zephyrs with these breezy gestures developing into a full-blown Borodin-like climax preceded by jazzy syncopations. The clapping rhythmic song rises to Prince Igor abandon. The Merry Mount scene of the wedding of Lady Marigold and Gower is carefully set but the Puritans enter and brutally end the merrymaking. The innocent maypole dances will be familiar if you know The Merry Mount suite from its many versions. Bradford's dream includes the most atmospheric of the music. In tr. 11 aggressively edgy rhythmic material is emphasised and accented by the brass with more ruthlessness than lilt - more hysteria than loving kindness. This is the Hanson equivalent of Night on the Bare Mountain. Scene 2 of Act III has it all: the brutality of the Indian attack and its repulse. The villagers turn against Lady Marigold and superstitiously blame her for the destruction. Bradford is tormented by passion and guilt and the music echoes this in climactic Puccinian ascent as he strides with the hapless Lady Marigold into the flames of the church.

Presentational issues: The two discs are in a single width case. Sadly there is no libretto. There's no Naxos site for downloading the libretto. We do get Keith Anderson's meticulously detailed synopsis which is pretty good. This keys in with the detailed tracking - 12 for CD1 and 19 for CD2.

It is a surprise it has not made more headway in opera houses. As it is it remains in the same category as Sessions Montezuma. Sure it is weakened by an excessive number of characters and generally by its jejune rocking horse name. However Hanson's singing and lyrical impulse is heard at full stretch in this opera. This splendidly representative red-blooded recording should win the work new admirers.

-- Rob Barnett, Musicweb International, June 2007

Classical Music

Martinu's Second Piano Quintet dates from 1944, the same time as the Third and Fourth Symphonies, and if you love those works you'll be thrilled by this quintet, which sounds just like them albeit scored for smaller forces. Right from the dreamy opening Martinu's personal blend of impressionistic harmony and sweetly lyrical, syncopated melody makes the work instantly recognizable, and unforgettable. The Adagio second movement must number among his finest in any medium, while the finale, with its alternations of quick and slow tempos and unsettled emotional climate, anticipates that of the Fifth Symphony. In short, this is a great work, certainly one of the best piano quintets of the 20th century (not that there are all that many worth noting).

The Piano Quintet No. 1 dates from 1933, when Martinu was living in Paris and turning out a delightful stream of neo-classical and neo-baroque works. Although recognizably music by the composer of the Second Quintet, the treatment of material is quite different. The strings tend to operate as a unit, opposed by the full harmony of the piano, while the toccata-like rhythms and more acerbic, less lyrical thematic material are all characteristic traits of Martinu's early maturity. If anything these observations are even more true of the quirky and highly entertaining two-movement Sonata for Two Violins and Piano of a year earlier.

The Martinu Quartet, already acclaimed for its performances on Naxos of its eponymous composer's works for that medium, finds a worthy partner in pianist Karol Kosárek. The performances are uniformly excellent, full of energy but never timbrally crude (as with The Lindsay Quartet on ASV). There is very little competition in this music: the ASV release aside, the most noteworthy previous release comes from an old Denon/Supraphon recording of the Second Quintet featuring the Smetana Quartet. The coupling (Three Madrigals) is much less generous than what Naxos offers here, making this extremely well-recorded release essential for chamber music collectors and Martinu fans alike.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com



MARTIN? Piano Quintets: No. 1; No. 2. Sonata for Two Violins and Piano • Karel Košárek (pn); Martin? Qrt • NAXOS 557861 (58:33)


The piano quintet is a challenging medium. Setting aside Schubert’s “Trout” and Hummel’s op. 84 (both of which use violin, viola, cello, and double bass instead of string quartet with piano), the Romantic quintets most frequently encountered in concerts today are those by Schumann, Dvo?ák, Franck, and Brahms. One comes across the Saint-Saëns, Elgar, Fauré, and Dohnányi quintets less often. The Brahms piece, published as both a quintet and a sonata for two pianos, provides an interesting illustration of the problem posed by the medium. Does the composer use the ensemble in a sort of mini-concerto, playing off piano and quartet against one another, à la Brahms, or does he attempt a more cohesive integration of the ensemble, achieved with such brilliance by Franck? Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet excepted, relatively few 20th-century essays for the medium have caught on. This new recording of pianist Karel Košárek and the Martin? Quartet (violinists Lubomir Havlák and Petr Mate?ják, violist Jan Jíša, and cellist Jitka Vlašanková) makes a compelling case for admitting Bohuslav Martin?’s two piano quintets into the fold.


The first piano quintet, composed in Paris in 1933, is a life-affirming work of bold contours and bright colors. In terms of ensemble, it is closer to the Brahmsian concerto-like model. The first movement’s robust musical argument is set out here with great conviction. Košárek and the Martin? portray the alternately wistful and anguished Andante with elegance and sympathy. Tricky rhythmical figurations in the harmonically luminous allegretto Scherzo are superbly negotiated. The quartet manages the pungent dissonances that usher in the fourth and final movement with sure intonation and great effect.


Blacklisted by the Nazis, Martin? and his wife immigrated to the US in 1941. Three years later, he composed the Second Piano Quintet, replete with coloristic elements of Bohemian folklore that might suggest the composer’s longing for home. Fluttering trills and tremolandos in the strings and piano lend the strange and beautiful Adagio an ethereal air. Throughout, Martin? accomplishes the Franckian ideal of perfectly integrated ensemble. My sense is that this Quintet plumbs greater depths than the Parisian work, though it is certainly equally appealing.


The neo-Baroque Sonata for Two Violins and Piano comes as a light-hearted affair in the wake of the substantial quintets. The second of its two Allegro movements is prefaced with an odd and fascinating Andante, beautifully played by Havlák and Mate?ják. The excellent pianist Karel Košárek here demonstrates that his expertise as an accompanist equals his strength as the protagonist in the more elaborate quintets.


Writing in the late 1970s, the Austrian musicologist Othmar Wessely called Martin? “a curiously elusive artist,” noting the speed with which he composed his vast output, combined with his aversion to revision. Though a great deal of his music is available, much of it recorded by artists from the former Czechoslovakia, I suspect that a definitive assessment of his work is yet to come. Few would probably argue that Martin?’s achievement approaches the eloquent mastery of his older contemporaries, Janá?ek and Bartók. But at its best, Martin?’s music can be original, compelling, and very beautiful. Karel Košárek and the Martin? Quartet were recorded in a studio of the Czech Radio in Prague in June 2005. The technical values are high, and the ambient acoustic well suited to both the material and the players. Recommended.


FANFARE: Patrick Rucker

PAVLOVA Symphony No 5. Elegy for Piano and Strings • Vladimir Ziva, cond; Andrei Korobeinikov (pn); Moscow Tchaikovsky RS0 • NAXOS 8.570369 (52:04)


Alla Pavlova is a Russian-trained composer and musicologist who has lived in New York since 1990. Recordings of her previous four symphonies, as well as the suite from her ballet, Sulamith have been released by Naxos, some reviewed in these pages (see, for instance, Fanfare 29:6, pp. 174–175). This disc combines her most recent symphony with a shorter work, originally conceived as film music.


In the notes accompanying the CD, Pavlova describes her symphony, written in 2005–06, as having a “spiritual program.” The first movement expresses her personal feelings about life; the second is a meditation on a white lotus flower; the third suggests a startled return to the mundane; the fourth is a prayer; and the fifth is a realization that life is a path toward God. The crux of the musical argument in this 47-minute work is largely delegated to the strings. With the exception of occasional solos, the winds play a largely supportive and ornamental role. Horns are the only brass instruments employed and the percussion writing is discreet. The second and third movements feature extended violin solos of great sensual beauty, superbly performed here by Mikhail Shestakov.


Pavlova’s musical language is firmly grounded in tonality with, not surprisingly, certain unmistakable Russian characteristics, especially in terms of melodic inflection. Her sensitive and beautiful orchestration evokes a sense of vastness reminiscent of Sibelius or late Mahler. Nevertheless, Pavlova speaks with an original voice. She draws in the listener with the gentlest of means—no demands, nothing flashy or jarring. Her harmonic syntax would be perfectly suitable within a symphony written at the turn of the 20th century, or even earlier. Her rhythmical procedures are the subtlest imaginable, yet there’s always a strong sense of forward momentum. From the first hearing this music unfolds perfectly comprehensibly, if never predictably. But despite its disarming accessibility, this music strikes me as far from simplistic. The symphony’s dream-like textures, achieved with the utmost economy of means, traverse a vast terrain of emotional states. Pavlova’s compelling discourse, direct and unaffected, ends up being quite moving, even if it’s difficult to explain exactly why.


Rounding out the disc is Pavlova’s Elegy for piano and orchestra, which originated as title music for a 1998 film, The American Healys . Andrei Korobeinikov is the capable pianist in this most unobtrusive of obbligato parts.


The recording was made in June 2006 in a studio of the Russian State TV & Radio Company and seems to capture all the sonorous delicacy of Pavlova’s music perfectly. The excellent Vladimir Ziva conducts the Tchaikovsky SO of Moscow Radio with great sympathy and conviction. An excellent recording of unconventional and curiously fascinating music. Recommended.


FANFARE: Patrick Rucker

Shostakovich’s Fourth presents the elements that were to burst upon the Soviet scene in his next symphony, but without the Fifth’s tidier, simpler form, emotional unity, and morally uplifting finale to act as a buffer between the composer and the Composer’s Union. The enormous first movement alone, lasting nearly a half-an-hour in performance, offers both delicately spectral and crudely overblown waltzes, lyrical recitatives of intense beauty, parodies of ceremonial marches and polkas, learned counterpoint, violently dissonant climaxes, gentle solos, and brass riding the percussion like the Czar’s galloping army carving down a field of peaceful protestors without mercy. This is Shostakovich come into his own full, focused symphonic power for the first time, and reveling in it.

To complaints of sectionalism, both in the first and final movements, Boreyko’s reply might well be, “Your point?” He doesn’t downplay any of it. Instead, he uses its often dissociative blocks of content to deliberately create juxtapositions that shock, moments of quiet melancholy followed by instrumental screams or taunts. It’s as if he were shouting (with Shostakovich) at the audience to pay closer attention, to consider each panel in the triptych of brutality, mockery, and sullenness that he’s placed upon display. When the time is right, nothing is held back, and this becomes among the most uninhibited of available Fourths. At other moments, Boreyko reminds me occasionally of Jansons (Avie 2096) in the silken beauty he coaxes from the Stuttgart strings. But where Jansons makes that sound an end in itself, this conductor uses it to better conjure those points of relative emotional stability that Shostakovich repeatedly creates, and quickly destroys.

If I have a criticism, it is that the Scherzo is too deadpan. The coarse sarcasm of the winds and brass are taken straight, and the dissonances in the subsequent string fugue are slightly downplayed. The conductor builds an impressive climax to the movement, but he clearly views it as an emotional intermission between two lengthy, harrowing events. While sympathetic to the need to interject some ray of hope into the proceedings, I don’t find that this treatment works especially well. In the coda to the third movement, certainly; and Boreyko makes something powerful out of the side glance Shostakovich takes there at Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. But the Scherzo requires something darker and more incisive, in my opinion.

The rest of the album is given over to a short three-movement orchestral suite drawn from the composer’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. It is described on the jewel box cover as the world premiere recording of the original version, but nowhere inside is this discussed; and it’s the same suite present on Deutsche Grammophon 650702, issued last year. I find these three tiny excerpts tell us far less about the work than the lengthier conductor-arranged suites of Conlon and Runnicles. Still, as filler goes, they make light-hearted listening. Boreyko makes more of the score’s spikiness than Thomas Sanderling, and the Stuttgart RSO runs rings around the Russian PO.

Despite my expressed reservations, Boreyko’s Fourth moves in among my favorites. There it joins Kondrashin/Moscow PO, Rozhdestvensky/Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, and Sinaisky/BBC PO, all currently out of print. I find it slightly superior to Gergiev/Kirov Orchestra (Philips 470 842), where momentum trumps detail, but these are matters of personal taste. Both treatments are in excellent sound, and either will do for the modern Shostakovich collector looking for a first-rate performance of this fascinating work.

-- Barry Brenesal, FANFARE [11/2007]

When I read the word “Siesta,” I picture a recumbent Mexican wearing a multicolored serape snoozing under his extravagantly brimmed sombrero. For Lars Hannibal, however, a siesta offers a break from work which doesn’t have to be spent sleeping. Instead, it’s a good time to listen to music. You certainly wouldn’t want to doze through this CD, as even in the familiar pieces the recorder’s woody rusticity shines a new light on the old tunes. Piazzolla’s Histoire du tango—a four-movement suite chronicling the evolution of tango in Argentina—expresses itself with humor, melancholy, and in the last movement, irony. Joan Albert Amargòs’s Tango català has a Spanish title, but I hear Brazil in its mood, melody, and harmony. After the guitar sets the scene, the recorder joins in, substituting for a sultry singer in a work “having the quiet sadness of many a Jazz ballad” (from Leo Black’s notes). Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Sonatina is the work of a classicist in love with Spain; Ravel’s Pièce en forme de habanera sways to its endlessly seductive rhythm; and Entr’acte, Ibert’s swirling mini-travelogue, recalls the old cliché that some of the best Spanish music is by French composers. Three works by Villa-Lobos close the recital: Modinha (literally, little song), a lyrical, syncopated melody; Distribução de flores, a haunting tune (especially when played by the tenor recorder), with an unmistakable South American Indian sound; and the Cantilena from the well-loved Bachianas brasileiras No. 5. The recorder and guitar probably won’t displace the voice and cellos of the original in listeners’ affections, but the melody is as beautiful as ever, even if the recorder sometimes sounds a bit shrill. Overall, a very enjoyable disc that introduced me to some unfamiliar music while providing a fresh look at some perennials.

FANFARE: Robert Schulslaper

Braithwaite’s engaging Holst proves well worth the wait

Nicholas Braithwaite’s effervescent 1980 account of the winsome Suite de ballet sounded stunning on black disc and continues to do so on silver (Decca’s peerless Kenneth Wilkinson was the balance engineer; the sumptuous acoustic is that of Kingsway Hall). All else is new to the catalogue. The three suites were set down in Watford Town Hall during summer 1993, while the Walt Whitman Overture was taped in the same venue in January 1988. The mind boggles at how performances and recordings of such superior quality can have remained mothballed for so long.

Holst composed the Overture and Suite de ballet during 1899 while on tour as repetiteur and trombonist with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. In neither will you glimpse any vestige of the mature composer (the overture doffs its hat to Brahms) but both parade a host of felicities and are given with palpable dedication here. Gordon Jacob made these skilful and sympathetic orchestrations of Holst’s two military-band suites in 1940 and 1945 (with No 2 renamed the Hampshire Suite – the majority of the folksongs it quotes hail from that county). Under Boult, No 1’s March bowls along with the greater unbuttoned panache, but there’s not much in it.

Commissioned as a test piece for the 1928 National Brass Band Festival, A Moorside Suite has long been a personal favourite (don’t deprive yourself of hearing the Grimethorpe Colliery Band’s unforgettable 1977 Decca recording, 3/86 – nla). Jacob’s affectionate reworking followed in 1952, and Braithwaite and the LPO relish its many deft touches. (On two copies I’ve tried there’s a tiny electronic-sounding blip at 3'04" in the haunting central Nocturne.) Attractively presented (the lucid and detailed booklet-essay is, curiously, uncredited), this release makes consistently enjoyable listening.

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone [5/2007]

Not too many listeners are Dybbuk admirers, and even Bernstein's supporters find this music less interesting than much else that he wrote. The fact that the music resorts to some dodecaphonic and numerological compositional techniques isn't a point in its favor, though in actual sonority it's entirely characteristic of Bernstein, and at this late date it's easy to hear that his personality inhabits every bar. If there's a problem with the piece, it likely stems from the fact that the overall impression it makes is a bit glum, lacking in that special snap that makes his best work so memorable. Certainly the supernatural subject is a dark one, and it calls forth plenty of eerie, atmospheric scoring; but the actual musical material seems stretched thinly over the work's 45 minutes (48, if you're the composer). Bernstein recorded the complete work for Sony, but broke it up into a pair of suites for his DG remakes. I do prefer the original; the music is what it is, and over time it has grown on me--and might well do so for you too.


Fancy Free of course is delightful, and often recorded, but this performance holds its own with the best--and I frankly prefer Andrew Mogrelia to the composer in Dybbuk. He's just that much livelier, and the Nashville Symphony sounds as inside the idiom as the New York Philharmonic of several decades' past. This newcomer also is better recorded than Bernstein's performances either on Sony or DG, and the excellent version of "Hot Stuff" that opens Fancy Free also is a plus. If you're a Bernstein fan, you will certainly want this.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Although it's played and recorded frequently, there is a genuine difference between a decent performance of Rodeo and a really excellent one such as we have here. This difference can be summed up in two words: rhythm and tempo. When it comes to rhythm, it's not merely a question of hitting the syncopations in the opening movement and concluding Hoedown, but of being both accurate and relaxed enough to let the music swing. This is a quality that Bernstein's performances always had, and JoAnn Falletta understands it too. This gives the music both the necessary verve in the outer sections and real balletic grace in the two inner ones, reminding us that we are, after all, hearing a story told through physical movement.


When it comes to tempo, the issue is at once simpler and less impressionistic. In Buckaroo Holiday, speeds have to be quick enough to prevent the music from breaking up into discrete, detached bits. Once again, Falletta & Co. come through with flying colors. The music never sounds mechanical, disconnected, or excessively "Stravinskian". Copland disliked excessive sentimentality, but his music is never dry (the rich, warm, but clear sonics also help in this department). And what turns out to be a successful recipe for Rodeo works just as well in all of the other pieces here. Prairie Journal (a.k.a. Music for Radio) is one of the least known of Copland's "Westerns", but it's every bit as enjoyable as the three great ballets, and this is as fine a performance as you will hear anywhere. Letter from Home is an exercise in nostalgia that never turns overly sweet.


Best of all, perhaps, is The Red Pony, one of the great film scores of all time, and a glorious work that for some reason seldom gets played live. Copland's invention is of exceptionally high quality throughout, and once again you can hear from the unusual freshness of the opening bars how effortlessly Falletta and the Buffalo players get into the spirit of the music. There are so many delightful moments, from the raucous Circus Music to the unforgettable Walk to the Bunkhouse, a piece that has become the very essence of musical Americana. Finally, it's great to see one of the very popular pieces, like Rodeo, coupled with some less ubiquitous examples of Copland's genius. A wonderful disc! [10/20/2006]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com