First Prize Winner of the 2003 Walter W. Naumburg Foundation' Violin Competition and the 2000 Hannover International Violin Competition, Frank Huang has now embarked on a major career as a violin virtuoso.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Originally a horn player in the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra, Hiroshi Ohguri was the leading composer of Osaka, a city with it's own special culture and spoken language very different in character from that of Tokyo.

Classical Music

The fact that I am going to move quickly over Kentucky Spring and the Fifth Symphony in order to discuss Roy Harris' Violin Concerto in some detail does not mean that these are in any way unworthy or inferior works. The former is a lovely pastoral sketch dating from exactly the same period as Copland's more famous Appalachian Spring and so forms an interesting contrast to that great work, while the symphony (written in 1942) is an impressively cogent wartime work with a powerful central funeral march surrounded by a vigorous opening and an emotionally ambivalent close that manages at last a typically emphatic final triumph. Both are well performed and recorded (Kentucky Spring in very clear mono, the Symphony in very good 1965 stereo).

But Harris' Violin Concerto (1949) is a genuine masterpiece that the composer didn't live to hear performed, which is why this 1985 premiere recording by Gregory Fulkerson (who also gave the first public rendering of the work in 1984) is so important. The reason the piece wasn't performed earlier is sad: it was commissioned for Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster Joseph Gingold, but when it came time for the premiere the parts were full of mistakes that could not be corrected in time, and so the performance was cancelled, and that was that--a sorry fate for such an impressive and truly individual piece that shows the composer working at the very top of his form. For my money, this is a far more impressive piece than, say, Barber's delightful and deservedly popular concerto, and it strikes me as standing an excellent chance of making a strong impression in concert.

Harris has a reputation today of being a somewhat "simplistic" composer, both in terms of his resolutely optimistic musical philosophy as well as his orchestral technique. It's very interesting to see how such a composer, known for his stentorian brass writing and heavy-duty percussion, adapts to the problem of accompanying a solo violin. The answer: He does it with extraordinary finesse. Harris structures his concerto in four linked sections, a sort of gigantic "theme and variations" lasting nearly half an hour. In the beginning, after a whirlwind opening, the violin spins out a seemingly endless melody, gently accompanied by the orchestra. A lengthy and vigorous allegro of markedly dance-like character follows, proceeding to an extended cadenza.

From this point on the music returns to its original slow tempo, but as the orchestra gathers the various melodic strands together the solo embroiders the texture with ever more elaborate and ornamental variations, reaching the sort of lyrical ecstasy typical of, say, Tippett's most complex string textures (as perhaps in the Corelli Variations or Second Symphony). It's difficult to describe the luminous orchestration and exalted tone that Harris achieves, without (I should add) any roof-raising brass or thudding bass drum volleys. There's really nothing like it in the entire modern violin repertoire, and for something similar you would have to go back in time to the wilder inspirations of Biber and the early German Baroque violin school.

Gregory Fulkerson plays every note as though he understands the music's greatness (the closing pages are especially stunning), and he's very well accompanied by Lawrence Leighton Smith and the Louisville Orchestra. The recording offers perfect balances between orchestra and solo, though much of the credit also belongs to the composer for fashioning such a sophisticated and apt accompaniment. The rating, then, applies to this work (though as I said the rest is very good too), and while it's always dangerous to give the highest accolades to a single performance of a work with no performance tradition, its importance is such that the music truly deserves the strongest possible advocacy. [6/28/2003]

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Born in Chelyabinsk in 1973, Lera Auerbach defected from the former Soviet Union to the United States while still in her teens, and she has since garnered much attention as both pianist and composer, notably in her recent work with Gidon Kremer. Written in 1999, Auerbach's 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano amply showcase her stylistic leanings and wide emotional range. Clearly, she's imbibed from the Shostakovich/Schnittke watering hole, as we hear in the frequent sparse textures in extreme registers, petulant dynamic shifts, obsessive pedal points, and caustic, folk-oriented tunes. Auerbach also has figured out what makes Astor Piazzolla tick, and manages to personalize his sultry harmonic idiom.

The most interesting moments occur when the composer's original voice pushes her influences out of the way, as in the sudden, unexpected violin cadenza that immediately follows Prelude No. 15's unrelenting dance. This leads to a threnody that gradually dematerializes into a high-register mist, and before you know it, Prelude No. 16 is over. The Postlude and solo violin piece also typify the ease with which Auerbach communicates her ideas. Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe push their collective virtuosity sky-high. Such big playing requires the larger-than-life engineering BIS provides. Not only do I want to hear more of Auerbach's music, but I also hope BIS plans to take advantage of her wonderful piano playing on future releases. Enthusiastically recommended.
--Jed Distler , ClassicsToday.com

Szymanowski: Violin and Piano Works

REVIEW:

This is not only one of the best sounding violin and orchestra recordings ever made, but the entire concept is so smart, so well executed, and so thoughtfully planned that even if it were not so musically stupendous it still would be worthy of your attention. As it is, this is one of those rare productions in which absolutely everything goes right. Consider, for example, the problems attendant upon releasing yet another recording of the Brahms Concerto. You have a small independent label with excellent musical credentials but limited resources, a soloist of great musical gifts (Rachel Barton's previous discs have all been top-notch) but who isn't a "big name", and a work that virtually every other violinist with access to a microphone has recorded, sometimes more than once. Given the fact that on musical evidence Barton's Brahms certainly deserves to be heard, what's a label to do?

First, secure the services of a world-class orchestra under a fine conductor (Carlos Kalmar, music director of the Oregon Symphony and Chicago's Grant Park Festival, fills that bill nicely). Amazing, isn't it, that when major labels are screaming about how they can't afford to record major American orchestras Cedille has found the resources to do just that? Second, instead of simply offering the Brahms, you find an interesting coupling. And let's not kid ourselves: Joseph Joachim's Hungarian Concerto isn't just an "interesting coupling"; it is the Holy Grail of Romantic violin concertos, a work so lengthy (47-plus minutes, about the same as the Elgar concerto), so difficult, yet so deliberately symphonic and, in a sense, anti-virtuoso in conception that it has never once received even a merely adequate recording. Take that coupling, play it to a fare-thee-well (demonstrating once and for all that the work is indeed a brilliant and neglected masterpiece), and then toss in an equally fine Brahms Concerto, all offered at a two-for-one price. If that isn't a recipe for success, then nothing is.

Indeed, Joachim's youthful Hungarian Concerto is so beautiful and full of life, its Gypsy-tinged melodies so entrancing, that only its inordinate difficulty accounts for its rarity. In concert it would be a show-stopper, and Rachel Barton has its full measure. The heavily symphonic first movement requires the soloist to engage in genuine chamber-music dialog with the orchestra, especially the principal winds. Joachim's orchestration must stand with the finest ever achieved in a concerto; there are no dead spots and no balance problems as long as the soloist has the taste and musicianship to know when to cede the spotlight and when to take command.

Take the remarkable cadenza as a typical example: there's no barnstorming sawing and scraping, but instead a densely flowing river of lyricism joined now and then by solo flute and oboe. It's one of the most purely gorgeous passages ever written for the violin, and Barton plays it for all it's worth (and finishes up with some devastating descending chromatic octaves that actually sound like musical notes and not a rusty hinge).

The slow movement features another very attractive principal theme, and when it returns at the movement's conclusion in the cellos, decorated by garlands of ornamentation from the soloist, the result sounds like some lost work of Dvorák at his most melodically characterful. Barton's electrifying attack on the finale, a dazzling "Rondo from hell" with a whiplash perpetual motion principal subject, sets the seal on this remarkable performance. Her double-stops (and there are tons of them: check out from 2:30 into the movement) are as sweetly tuned and richly voiced as her legato is smooth and her sense of rhythm acute. Even after this long work I wouldn't be surprised if you went right back and played the finale over again. It's that much fun.

The word that most succinctly sums up Barton's Brahms is "aristocratic". Among recent recordings, she plays Milstein to Hilary Hahn's Heifetz. The timings are identical to Perlman and Giulini's celebrated performance with this same orchestra, but for my money Barton achieves an even finer balance between poise and virtuosity (and shows far greater dynamic sensitivity, especially in the finale). With opening-movement tempos relaxed but never slack, Barton's warm, round sound allows her to really dig into the music where necessary (witness that famous fanfare-like motive, or Joachim's first-movement cadenza)--but she never emits a raw or unlovely note. The second movement, with a gorgeous oboe solo at the start, is just heavenly, and the finale reveals plenty of high-spirited energy but also numerous delightfully phrased touches in its various episodes. At the very end Barton and conductor Kalmar produce a wind-down coda simply perfect in its timing and wit. She even includes her own eminently musical and enjoyable cadenza on a separate track. Simply jump ahead when the orchestra stops (the balance of the coda is also included, so you don't have to skip backward to get the ending).

As noted above, the sonics are sensational. The opening of the Brahms, with dark-hued strings answered by the winds like a gleam of sun breaking through the clouds, will take your breath away. Although Barton deserves much of the credit for emitting such attractive sounds, it certainly helps that Cedille's engineers capture her shining tone with nary a trace of shrillness, even in the highest positions. Barton herself writes an excellent set of notes (surely indebted to Tovey in discussing the Joachim, but none the worse for that), and to put the icing on the cake she plays a 1742 Guarneri "del Gesu" violin, the "ex-Soldat", selected by Brahms himself for his friend and colleague, violin virtuoso Marie Soldat. Recordings don't get any better than this. Rachel Barton, conductor Carlos Kalmar, and Cedille deserve your enthusiastic support for putting this project together and executing it with such perfectionist zeal and consummate musicianship. There's also a lesson here that the whole industry should take to heart: Where there's a will, there's a way, and it's OK to make fewer recordings, especially if you make great ones. Astounding!

--David Hurwitz

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

BENDA, F.: Violin Concerto / BENDA, J. A.: Viola Concerto

Classical Music

MAZZAFERRATA: Primo libro delle Sonate a 2 violini (Il)