The cello was a vital part of Catalan musical expression in the first half of the 20th century. Pablo Casals as composer and cello virtuoso was its revolutionary force, and his student Gaspar Cassadó joined him in writing superb transcriptions and expressive original works with a strong sense of tradition and national melodic flavour. Casablancas’ Cant per a Frederic Mompou ‘Remembrança’ pays homage to another great friend and colleague, while Enrique Granados’s soulful Madrigal is accompanied by delectable arrangements of piano works with cello such as the Goyescas.

Stellar Moldovan-Israeli violinist Janna Gandelman presents a programme of original violin pieces by Catalan composers alongside transcriptions by luminaries such as Fritz Kreisler and Joseph Szigeti. She is accompanied by the Spanish pianist Laia Martin.

The three colorful works on this world premiere recording are a representative sample of 20th century Catalan music, all of them including popular cobla band instruments such as the timble and the tenora with their bright, piercing reeds, and the flabiol flute with its high tones. Manuel oltra's music is deeply rooted in Catalan tradition, and L'Alimara is a symphonic poem with medieval echoes. Both Juli Garreta's Suite empordanesa and Joan Lluis Moraleda's epic Tirant lo Blanc are considered milestones in Catalonian symphonic music, the latter transporting us to the fights, feasts and chivalric romance of its eponymous hero.

After the resounding success of their first volume of Catalan Wind Music, the Barcelona Symphonic Band and Salvador Brotons return with world premiere recordings of works commissioned from award-winning Catalan composers. Xavier Montsalvatges's colorfully festive 'Music for a Sunday' is followed by Joan Albert Amargos' play on the timbres and dynamic force of wind instruments in Thematic Games. Elisenda Fabregas' dramatic and emotional First Symphony contrasts majestic grandeur with the expressiveness of Catalan song, and Moises Bertran exploits the virtuoso skill of the soloist in his incisive and lyrical 'A Double Bass Fantasy.'

CATALANI Ero e Leandro. Scherzo. Andantino. Contemplazione. Il Mattino “Sinfonia romantica” • Francesco La Vecchia, cond; Roma SO • NAXOS 8.573072 (54:48)


Due to his premature death at age 39 from tuberculosis, Alfredo Catalani (1854–1893) is one of the tragic near misses for musical immortality. In his finals years, after four earlier and promising but flawed efforts, he produced one very creditable opera, Loreley , followed by a stunning masterpiece, La Wally , which unfortunately and unjustly remains known almost solely for a single “hit” aria, “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana.” The quality of his surviving works, and their trajectory toward ever greater excellence, suggest that had he lived a normal lifespan, he might have ranked alongside Verdi and Puccini in the pantheon of operatic masters—at the very least, equal to or ahead of Mascagni, Giordano, Leoncavallo, and similar figures. (Certainly, Toscanini thought so, going to the extreme of naming two of his children after characters from Catalani’s operas.)


Equally unfortunately, the handful of recordings that have been made of his operas and other works have not done them justice, being generally cast with inadequate or over-the-hill singers and provincial orchestras. (The one truly great performance, the 1968 American Opera Society presentation of La Wally with Renata Tebaldi and Carlo Bergonzi, was released on the long defunct Intaglio label; it should be hunted down by anyone who cares about the work.) While this release does not rectify that lamentable situation with respect to Catalani’s operas, the most significant part of his compositional output, it does provide us with solid performances of five of his orchestral compositions. While none of these works is great music, all are at least worth hearing, being typical of their composer and pointing to the genius that would be fully realized in his final stage works.


Lyricism is, of course, a given and expected trait when one looks to Italian opera composers of the Romantic and verismo periods and styles. That said, there are distinct approaches to that lyricism. Verdi and his contemporaries represent an earlier stylistic school, in which phrases within arias tend to be more symmetrical and strophically defined, and emotional expression is more Classically poised. Puccini and the verists who came later, by contrast, composed arias whose lines follow more irregular patterns, and where the emotional passion is uninhibited. Catalani falls somewhere between the two. While chronologically he belongs to the verist period, and his melodic lines partake to some degree of their more free-flowing nature, there is a good deal of Classical restraint in his style; inflections are more subtle, and there is none of the sheer gaucherie to which the verists often fell prey. Generally, his music is more introspective, infused with a gentle melancholy and reflectiveness, retaining a certain elegance even in climactic outbursts. Indeed, the greater subtlety of Catalani’s music in comparison to that of his confreres may largely account for its failure to gain a greater foothold in the affections of the opera-going public.


All of the aforementioned traits are on full display in the works presented here. The earliest of them, a brief Andantino dating from about 1871 when the composer was only 17, was one of his first works to be published and attract favorable notice. Composed in rondo form, it shows confident command of that idiom, and the opening musical material is already redolent of the atmospheric music that Catalani would use to invoke the Swiss Alps in La Wally two decades later. The equally brief Scherzo in A from 1878 belies its jocund title, savoring instead of an almost minuet-like decorum. Both works also exist in versions for piano, which are most likely their original guises. The aptly-named Contemplazione , also from 1878, is a more substantial piece (11:35 in this recording); it is a mostly quiet and dream-like nocturne cast broadly in A-B-A form.


The two most formidable works here are separated by the interval of a decade. Il Mattino (Morning), dating from 1874, is one of at least three attempts the youthful composer made at a symphony; the other two are a companion work, La Notte (Night), and a previous Sinfonia from 1872. It opens with a brief slow introduction on the woodwinds before segueing to a somewhat faster allegro section in a still moderate tempo. While the thematic material is unmistakably of an Italianate cast, Catalani here clearly has his eyes set on formal models from north of the Alps, particularly Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms. In this case he struggles, somewhat unsuccessfully, to make grandly weighty musical gestures, which come off as rather commonplace instead, though I have a sense that a considerably more lively tempo would be more apt and could remedy that perception, at least in part.


Ero e Leandro , Catalani’s one attempt at a symphonic poem, followed in 1884. It depicts the ancient Greek myth of the illicit love between the youth Leander of the city of Abados, and Ero (Hero), the vestal virgin priestess of Venus held in a tower in the city of Sestos on the other side of the strait of the Hellespont (Dardanelles). Each night, guided by a lamp suspended by Ero in the tower, Leander swims the strait to join her in nightly ecstasies of love. (Inspired by the myth, Lord Byron replicated this feat and swam the channel in four hours in 1810, an event commemorated first by his subsequent poem and then by an annual swimming event.) One night, as Leander attempts to return home, a storm puts out the lamp, and he loses his way in the waters and drowns. His body washes up on the shore in sight of Ero, who then hurtles herself from the tower to her own death. At age 30, the composer has now arrived at full stylistic maturity. The thematic material, variously depicting the undulations and storms of the sea, the strenuous swimming of Leander, and the amorous passion between him and Ero, is well integrated into a seamless flow of ongoing variations supported by masterly orchestration. Stylistically it also shows the composer charting his own original path; while there is a distant kinship in spirit with the tone poems of Dvo?ák and Tchaikovsky, Catalani is now definitely his own man, setting an example that would later flow into the orchestral works of figures such as Respighi and Casella.


The recordings of the Andantino and Il Mattino are advertised as being world premieres. The other three works were previously issued on a Bongiovanni CD, with performances by Silvano Frontalini and the Warmia National Orchestra (a Polish ensemble) that David Johnson accorded a rather tepid review back in 15:1. Riccardo Muti and the orchestra of La Scala recorded the Scherzo and Contemplazione for Sony in 1998, a disc that Bernard Jacobson endorsed in 22:1; one wishes that Muti had taken on Ero and Leandro as well or instead. There is no question that the members of the Roma Symphony have this idiom in their blood, and play with style and commitment, and they are abetted by recorded sound that is clear and spacious but not overly resonant. My one reservation is that, while I don’t have a basis for comparison, I have a clear sense that the major works on this disc require a firmer, more energetic hand at the podium than Francesco La Vecchia provides. However, unless Muti, Gianandrea Noseda, or a figure of similar stature decides to take this music in hand (how about a disc with Ero and Leandro, Contemplazione , and all three of Catalani’s symphonies?), this is perforce the preferred choice for those who want recordings of the two major works and the Andantino . Recommended to specialists in the narrow niche of Romantic Italian symphonic repertoire.


FANFARE: James A. Altena

Tchaikovsky encouraged Georgy L’vovich Catoire to pursue a musical career, remarking that he was ‘gifted with a powerful creative talent’. Catoire’s passion for Wagner was intense and this infused his music with rich chromatic harmonies and sweeping melodies. His works for violin and piano are some of his very finest. The Violin Sonata No. 1 in B minor, Op. 15 is a substantial and compelling piece, full of grandeur and constantly evolving rhythms. Like its successor, the raptly beautiful, single-movement Violin Sonata No. 2 in D major, Op. 20, subtitled Poème, it shows the influence of French Impressionism.

This collection of music from the Caucasus features Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani composers whose works have long deserved a wider hearing.

Although this overview of Cavalli's music is necessarily condensed, it nonetheless succeeds in painting a meaningful picture of both the nature of opera as it was developing in Venice at the time, and the composer's own artistic and compositional talent. Cavalli was of course influenced by Monteverdi, yet he imbued his music with his own individual style, in effect setting the artistic seal on the rest of the seventeenth century. The tales told by these early operas had a lot in common with our soap story-lines. Heroes undergo the unlikeliest of hardships, become involved in unrestrained love affairs, get caught out in embarrassing situations, and so on, only for everything to be rapidly unraveled for an unambiguously happy ending, removing all concerns from the minds of a rapt audience (the operatic star system had not yet established itself at this point). There was a sense of liberation from the purely aural allusiveness of the madrigal form, as well as from the compositional and performance difficulties also associated with it, and an increasing interest in the visual impact of the sets and costumes that were soon to become the norm. Madrigal quartets, quintets and sextets were on their way out, seen as music for an aesthetic elite, to be replaced by the more approachable duets. There is perhaps an analogy to be drawn with our own times, in which the spoken and written word are being replaced by a TV videocracy, whose power is taking hold in the same way as opera did in the seventeenth century. By happy coincidence, however, Cavalli was born at precisely the right time and place, and his genius was translated into intricate, convoluted love stories and impetuous passions and rages expressed with perfect aesthetic and expressive musical symbiosis in masterly passacaglias. The Lament can be seen as a kind of condensed version of this artistic sensibility, an opera in miniature, and is therefore essential to the history of opera (cf. The three Lamenti Barocchi CDs I have recorded with Naxos). This kind of love lyric, in which languor alternates with fury, and invective is followed by immediate repentance ("What have I said? What unhappy ravings are these?") drew inspiration from both historical and contemporary episodes (Lament of the Queen of Sweden, Lament of Cinq-Mars), and then moved on to self-mockery in semi-serious laments (such as the Lament of the Castrato - whose details are indelicate in the extreme but fascinating in historical terms - or that of the Impotent Man).

Early music specialist Federico Maria Sardelli conducts his Modo Antiquo ensemble in this live performance of Cavalli’s Il Xerse – a highly innovative dramma per musica premiered in 1655. Recorded during the the 48th Festival della Valle d’Itria in Martina Franca, Italy, the cast includes the countertenor Carlo Vistoli and soprano Ekaterina Protsenko. A Blu-ray and DVD of this performance were released in June this year on the Dynamic label (DYN-57983 & DYN-37983).

REVIEW:

Francesco Cavalli’s Il Xerxe was first performed in Venice in 1655. The plot essentially consists of the efforts of the Persian Xerxes to win over the beautiful vassal Romilda, who is, however, in love with the king’s brother, Arsamene. The other main characters are also involved in the intrigues: Amastre, the woman already promised to the Persian king, and Adelanta, Romilda’s sister, who would love to see herself on the Thorn.

Countertenor Carlo Vistoli sings the title role with a warm and round, well-managed voice, which also convincingly conveys the character of the fickle figure. With her powerful voice, Gaia Petrone succeeds in interpreting Arsamene in a vocally worthy and credible manner. Ekaterina Protsenko sings a very attractive Amastre, and Caterina Lippo is also convincing as Romilda. The other roles are satisfactorily cast as well. Frederico Maria Sardelli leads the excellent Orchestra Barocca Modo Antiquo in a spirited, flowing and energetic performance.

-- Pizzicato

Classical Music

Marco Antonio Cavazzoni- private harpsichordist to the Duchess of Urbino and Pope Leo X, friend of Titian and Bembo- composed some of the most important milestones in the history of instrumental music. They were published in Venice by Vercellese (1523), the second edition of Italian keyboard music after that of Andrea Antico. Usually assigned to the organ, they are restored here to the harpsichord where they originally belonged, as explained in an online essay by Glen Wilson. Contemporary examples further illustrate the fascinating development of Cavazzoni’s major form, the ricercar. The project celebrates the 500th anniversary of the harpsichord on the cover ( the world’s oldest), which was owned by Leo X and undoubtedly played on by Cavazzoni.

Another day dawns and another guitar competition prizewinner emerges. Will there be room for them all in the upper echelons of the musical world? I doubt it, but the young Mexican, Cecilio Perera—winner of the 2011 Michele Pittaluga Guitar Competition—has already created a career as performer and teacher, presently holding the post of professor at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. The disc opens with a breathless account of Ponce’s Preludio and he seems to enjoy presenting himself with considerable demands in terms of agility, the Gigue taken at a tempo a long way from the intended dance. I would have equally liked a little more of the ‘moderato’ indication in the opening Allegro of the Ponce’s First Sonata. Yet present him with the extreme difficulties of Leo Brouwer’s Sonata, and musically he seems to relax, the many ‘effects’ the work calls for created in the most varied musical colours. It is a piece already well represented in the Naxos catalogue, but this is the performance I would want, the unhurried central Saraband de Scriabin quite magical. More comfortable tempos continue in the world premiere recording of Julio Cesar Oliva’s Tangomania. Though composed in 2011, and taking its inspiration from Piazzolla, it is in a purely tonal style from a much earlier era, the third section having a particularly catchy tune. Vincent Emilio Sojo’s Five Pieces from Venezuela are charming miniatures, while Ponce’s equally engaging Tres Canciones populares mexicanas make for a happy conclusion. Audible left hand shifts are few; the playing technically flawless, and the Canadian team have produced another of their top-flight recordings.

-- David Denton, Naxos [9/2012]

CELEBRATE THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

Alfred Cellier was a contemporary of Arthur Sullivan as a Chapel Royal chorister, and would later conduct several Gilbert and Sullivan productions. With its rural tale of disguise and romantic scheming, its jaunty tunes, lively characters and farcical comedy, Cellier’s light opera, Dorothy, has been almost entirely forgotten today. It had the longest run of any 19th-century piece of musical theatre, seeing off The Mikado and Ruddigore, and became such a popular hit in its day that the box office profits were able to fund the building of the Lyric Theatre on London’s Shaftsbury Avenue. The work is receiving on this release its world premiere recording, presented by The Victorian Opera.

David Gompper is an award-winning composer and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020. His luminously orchestrated and expressive works have attracted admiration throughout the US, Europe and beyond. Opening with relentless energy, the second movement of the Cello Concerto is spectral and dreamlike, while the Double Bass Concerto explores the light effects of a solar eclipse, using the soloist to suggest shadows, auras and glimpses of sound. A partner work to Sunburst (8.559835), the multi-layered Moonburst reflects the transformational imagery of nocturnal sounds and perceptions. David Gompperhas lived and worked professionally as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer in New York, San Diego, London, Nigeria, Michigan, Texas and Iowa. In 2002-03 Gompper was in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching, performing and conducting at the Moscow Conservatory. In 2009 he received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, and a Fromm Commission in 2013. Gompper's compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Merkin Halls (New York), Wigmore Hall (London), the Konzerthaus (Vienna) and the Bolshoi and Rachmaninov Halls (Moscow Conservatory).

Channel Classics gives us under-appreciated stellar talents in violinist Rachel Podger and cellist Peter Wispelwey, and Naxos offers parallels in violinist Michiko Kamiya and cellist Vytautas Sondeckis in it's Laureate series. Sondeckis serves up a 60-minute box of assortment from eastern Europe here, with expressive vibrato and the solid technical skills one might expect from the son of a distinguished cellist and student of David Geringas, himself a renowned cellist who ably conducts the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra in this recording. Much of the music is familiar: Tchaikovsky's Melody, Nocturne, and Andante Cantabile, Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee and Serenade, and Rachmaninoff's Vocalise. Other pieces are less well-known, works by Davidov, Dvarionas and Taneyev, and a lush Shostakovich adagio arranged for cello and string orchestra by Atovmyan.

Ignacio Cervantes is a key figure of Latin American piano music. As the cultural and national identity of his native Cuba gained strength through the 19th century, the genres of danza and contradanza became a fixture of the island’s dance and concert halls, providing a bridge between different sections of society. Cervantes’s pieces, which display a similar swing and verve to Scott Joplin’s ubiquitous Rags, synthesize Cuban local humour and colour with the Romantic aesthetic of Chopin. Their titles range from the poignant Adiós a Cuba, to the laughter of La carcajada.

It seems that every Chabrier collection differs slightly in one or two details, and this excellent offering is no exception. The Bourrée fantasque, which wasn't orchestrated by Chabrier in any case, is omitted, but in exchange we get an extremely rare and very beautiful Lamento for English horn and orchestra. Conductor Hervé Niquet and his Monte Carlo orchestra know this music well and play it with real affection, style, and sparkle. Right from the opening bars of España, you can tell that this is going to be a delightful recording: perfect tempo, excellent orchestral balances (the all-important harp clearly audible yet not artificially close), and the kind of rhythmic swagger that spells confidence without a hint of bombast. Next to Niquet and Co., Gardiner's Vienna recording for Deutsche Grammophon, highly praised in some quarters, sounds tight-fisted and grim. Chabrier is a much more important composer than many people realize. Mahler, who was a big fan, called España "the origin of modern music." This inexpensive disc offers a perfect opportunity to discover what he meant. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Taking it's name from Jennifer Higdon' Short Stories, this album explores stylistically diverse music showcasing the saxophone quartet' immense expressive potential.

Each of Steven Gerber' works is 'an important addition to music... it's sense of evolution from previous generations welcome at a time when change seems to have become a virtue in itself'. Whether meditating on Gershwin' music or classic folk.

Ned Rorem' clarity of emotional expression is perfectly suited to the 'breathy gold' of the flute.

Born in 1938 into a musical family, John Harbison studied at Harvard, and with Roger Sessions at Princeton. He is one of America's most accomplished musicians, with four symphonies, three operas and a Pulitzer Prize-winning cantata to his credit.

Sparrows was written in 1979 for the Twentieth Century Consort. The text consists of fifteen haiku by the eighteenth-century Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa. Instead of reproducing the aesthetic of the haiku, with it's sharply outlined images, Schwantner's music absorbs the meaning and character of these naturalistic and universalist images and expresses them in a comprehensively lyrical musical form. He thus creates a series of what might be called dream-stages. These stages reach from exuberant harmonies, harsh dissonance, effusiveness finally to gentle hope. Schwantner draws freely from fully varied stylistic precursors to represent the poetic imagery. Reminiscences of Renaissance dances and baroque polyphony can be heard. By the process of reconciling contrasting musical styles with the continuity of the work, Schwantner successfully makes these styles his own. The wide range of atmospheres and colors is created by a setting whose acoustical possibilities are used in a most profound and creative way. The voice is supported by three instrumental groups, woodwind, strings (tuned a semitone lower, to add a particular fullness to the whole ensemble), and a combination of piano, harp and percussion. The sound of the percussion is strengthened by the strings, which strike the crotales or antique cymbals with their bows, evoking an otherworldly sound to accompany The River of Heaven. The instrumentalists must also sing at various key points in the whole work. This chorus element accompanies the references to sparrows at the beginning and end of the text. On the first occasion this exotic effect produces a mysterious atmosphere of threatening danger, while at the end this effect is particularly intimate, touching and even soothing. Soaring was written in 1986 and is a short, highly virtuosic high-wire act for flute and piano. In accordance with the title, Schwantner follows his favourite practice, fanning out chords that give this and many other pieces their sweeping character. The piano begins with an intense introductory gesture that articulates the harmonic element engaged throughout the work. Following the piano's opening, the flute enters with a series of declamatory phrases that interact continually with the piano in a dialogue. The two instruments form a continuous musical thread, with the flute forcefully projecting it's voice, while the piano provides a supportive backdrop. The materials here later formed the basis of a larger more extended work, A Play of Shadows (1990), a fantasy for flute and chamber orchestra. Distant Runes and Incantations was written in 1984 as a kind of piano concerto with full orchestra. In 1987 Schwantner arranged it for chamber ensemble. This version is scored for solo piano, flute (also piccolo and alto flute), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), percussion and string quartet. The title of the work is taken from a verse of an independent poem that provides a poetic support for the music. Schwantner explains that this is a procedure that he has used in various pieces, as, for example, in the orchestral Aftertones of Infinity (1978) and Music of Amber (1981). Although the work is not particularly programmatic in conception, the poem provided a source of extra-musical imagery continued throughout the development of the work, fitting with and forming the composer's musical ideas. The music consists of a single extended movement in which the piano weaves continual threads through the texture. The piano has the principal responsibility for the presentation of simple musical elements, sharing, mixing and uniting these elements with other instruments. Two Poems of Aguedo Pizarro were written in July and August 1980, the third of five works composed for the American soprano Lucy Shelton. The work was first performed by her and pianist Margot Garrett on 25 November 1980 in Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York City. The texts are taken from a bilingual collection of poems under the title Sombraventa-dora / Shadowinnower by the American poet Aguedo Pizarro. While the original poems were written in Spanish, the work uses an English translation by a friend of the poet, Barbara Stoller Miller. The surrealist images and magical poetic landscapes that the poems evoke reflect, the composer tells us, the vocal quality that he found most bewitching in Lucy Shelton's singing, and the result was an attempt to bring together these two irresistible worlds. The two songs are very different. Shadowinnower is a rather aggressive, harmonically tense song, consisting of various small sections. Here there are minor-third sounds that also play a large part in Music of Amber, both works often using the same musical material. The special feature of the first song is (apart from the pipe, performed by the singer and pianist in two places) is the very effective introduction of four crotales, played by the singer as she sings, a very unusual demand. Black Anemones, the second song, offers a great contrast with the dramatic and complex first song. On the one hand is the vocal line melodious, singable and catchy, while the work is harmonically based on fifth overtones, as in two lyrical passages in Sparrows. The result is a work of a tender, very romantic, nostalgic, even ecstatic character. Music of Amber, written for the New York Music Ensemble in February 1981, is scored for flute, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), violin, cello, piano and percussion. The first performance was on 10 April 1981 at the Civic Center in Chicago. In the same year the work won first prize in the chamber music category at the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. The first movement, with the subtitle Wind Willow Whisper, was originally commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Da Capo Chamber Players and was performed by them in March 1980 at the Alice Tully Hall. Because of the relatively short duration of the movement a second movement was written and the first movement was enlarged by the extension of the percussion part. The second movement, with the subtitle Sanctuary, provides a formal counterbalance, and at the same time reveals and develops further musical material from the first movement. The work is dedicated to the American patron Paul Fromm. There is a short poem before each of the two movements.

Daqun Jia: Chamber Works

Ruperto Chapi composed theatrical and chamber music, opera and symphonic pieces, including the two early works on this disc. Originally composed in 1873 as a suite for military band, Fantasia morisca was revised six years later for full orchestra.

Hallowe’en (about 1914) ‘is but a take-off of a Halloween party and bonfire - the elfishness of the little boys throwing wood on the fire, etc. etc...’ To illustrate the growing bonfire, the strings enter progressively, in different keys, with oddly-placed accents. The ending is a take-off of ‘a regular coda from a proper opera, heard down the street from the bandstand’. From the technical point of view, Ives considered Hallowe’en one of his best compositions.

The vocal selections convey something of the wealth of his 175-odd songs, for which Ives wrote many of the texts. Joel Sachs and Cheryl Seltzer direct performances in this thrilling chamber program, also including Five Take-Offs, Three Quarter-tone Pieces, and Sunrise.

REVIEW:

The opening song-group, very well sung, begins lyrically with The Housatonic at Stockbridge, but at its climax the piano accompaniment goes wild; the following Soliloquy explodes similarly, and the dissonant, untamed accompaniment continues its conflict to underline On the Antipodes. Sunrise (Ives’s final song) initially brings relative peace and an Elysian violin solo but still has an agitated climax. In the brief Remembrance (of the composer’s father), the cello enters too, to create a simple eulogy in which the violin persists. In Aeschylus and Sophocles the wildness erupts into frenzy at the words ‘Accursed be the race’, but the anger subsides for the final ‘Farewell’, and the last word is with the cello.

The first of the instrumental pieces, The Gong on the Hook and Ladder, pictures the annual parade of the neighbourhood Fire Company. Hallowe’en is a busy, dissonant Scherzo (the strings playing in different keys), suggesting the growing flames of the bonfire, with children running round it. In Re Con Moto et al. brings the most ferocious dissonance of all ‘to stretch ear muscles’, as Ives suggested. The piano pieces, Five Take-offs (implying improvisatory freedom, but in fact highly organized), were published as recently as 1991, and would make a stimulating centrepiece for any modern piano recital. The untamed, feral Jumping Frog has an underlying boldly controlled cantus firmus. Then, astonishingly, Song without (Good) Words is quite beautiful—very romantic, but with wrong notes—and Scene Episode begins in much the same mood of emotional serenity, which is not quite sustained. Bad Resolutions and Good WAN! Opens with a hymn but once more, characteristically, the peace is boldly interrupted.

The Three Quarter-Tone Pieces are aurally the most fascinating of all, more remarkably so as they are very listenable. Originally written in 1924 for a double keyboard microtonal piano, they are now usually played as a simultaneous piano duo, using two pianos, tuned a microtone apart. They really do ‘tweak the ear muscles’, the first bell-like, the second in wild ragtime, and the third boldly fantasizing on America ’tis of thee or God save the Queen (according to your nationality).

All in all, this makes a fine, characteristic anthology, splendidly realized...In many of the pieces Ives’s habit of including a phrase or two of deliberate banality amid the wildness adds piquancy, well caught in these performances from the New York-based group, Continuum. The instrumental piece Hallowe’en has a bass drum entry that takes you terrifyingly by surprise, helped by the vivid recording. The Take-offs (an expression Ives used as meaning improvisation) are simpler but just as original.

-- Penguin Guide

BÉRIOT 12 Scènes ou Caprices, op. 109. 9 Studies. Prélude ou Improvisation, op. posth • Bella Hristova (vn) • NAXOS 8.572267 (68:02)


With the recent rash of recordings of his works, by now the music of Charles-Auguste de Bériot should have become almost as familiar to collectors as it has been to violinists, both teachers and students. Although probably few pupils work through his Méthode (1858) at the beginning of their academic careers, they encounter his concertos halfway through, and if they’ve persisted, study his 60 concert studies as a sort of gateway, beside Dont’s op. 35 and Gaviniès’s Matinées , to the transcendental technical studies of Paganini and Ernst. Unlike Dont’s more patterned études, however, Bériot’s take the form of character pieces: even the simple melodies and scales in the Méthode recall music for the salon more vividly than music for the studio.


From the outset, it’s clear that Bériot cut the Douze Scènes ou Caprices from the same cloth. The opening study, “La séparation,” begins almost as bleakly and hauntingly as does Sibelius’s Violin Concerto and includes a buzzing middle section in double-stops that draws upon the violin’s less familiar timbral regions as effectively as do some of Bartók’s duos. At least Bella Hristova plays the study that way, taking maximum advantage of the rich and dramatic possibilities for characterization it offers. If No. 2, “La polka,” doesn’t attain the same level of portraiture, it exceeds the First Study in brilliance and complexity, and Hristova proves herself more than equal to its demands. No. 3, “Le lézard,” brings snaky (lizard-like) chromatic lines, while No. 4 (“Le départ”) frames passagework with a lament. No. 5, “La fougue,” contains a mix of scalar and arpeggiated lines that climb chromatically in the middle section, punctuated by explosions of double-stops. No. 10, “Marche russe,” may not sound particularly Slavic, but it relies on the usual stock characters to carry its drama forward.


The Nine Studies, while not bearing titles (except for the last, written “in imitation of the old masters”), also express severally a range of moods that should qualify them for parlor performance, even if the first four remain as intensely patterned as the 60 Concert Studies (the Fifth, Melody, the Sixth, “Gulnare,” and the Seventh, March, offer more developed character studies). The posthumous Prélude ou Improvisation , written, as the notes state, largely without bar lines, might, except for its length (nine minutes and then some), be welcome in an occasional appearance on the concert stage in place of, say, Kreisler’s Recitativo e Scherzo.


Bruce R. Schueneman’s insert notes point out the similarity of Bériot’s arsenal to Paganini’s; and a cursory examination of the scores may perhaps make them seem more similar than they appear upon closer examination: in Bériot’s studies, the difficulties have all been wrought in conformity with positions achievable by a normal hand, while Paganini’s notoriously require the skill of a contortionist. Nevertheless, Bériot tailors these difficulties to his intended performers, and both the easiest and the most difficult of his works (and some, especially the studies, reach a very high level of difficulty) make a brilliant, thoroughly violinistic effect. Marc Pincherle likened Vivaldi to Kreisler in writing music that achieved a maximum of brilliance with a minimum of effort; he might have included Bériot.


Bella Hristova’s consistently elegant and richly characterized performances camouflage the difficulty of these studies, though they seem to reach at least the level of the 60 Concert Studies. The engineers captured the tonal splendor of her 1655 Nicolò Amati in St. John Chrysostom Church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, on February 12–15, 2009. Collectors of all kinds should find this compilation uncommonly interesting; but to violinists, it should be irresistible. It would be sad to learn that Hristova didn’t choose to record this repertoire only because a contract to do so had been offered and didn’t feel as sympathetic to the composer as she seems. In any case, strongly recommended.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

The ancient origins of the modern cello came from India and the Far East, arriving in Europe through Arab trade routes. By the time of the instrument’s advanced construction in the mid-18th century, the greater volume of sound and versatility that could be achieved contributed to its development both as a solo and an ensemble instrument. People often cite the cello as their favorite string instrument on account of its similarity to the human voice, the warmth of tone, the dramatic quality of the upper register and the instrument’s directness of communication. All of these unique qualities are represented by the works in this essential collection.

Charpentier, M.-A.: Sacred Music, Vol. 4

Charpentier, M.-A.: Messe de Minuit pour Noel / Te Deum