Early, Classical and Beyond

Narratives on Life – music for cello and piano is the latest CD from the Ottawa duo of cellist Joan Harrison and pianist Elaine Keillor (Marquis MAR 81467). The four varied works are connected by the composers’ shared Jewish heritage and are not often heard – indeed, three of the performances here are world premiere recordings.

Srul Irving Glick’s Chagall Suite for Cello and Piano is a three-movement work from 1993 inspired by the Marc Chagall paintings The Cellist, The Lights of the Wedding and The Big Circus. There’s some lovely tone and colour from the cello, although the piano seems to be a bit far back in the balance.

My feeling that the playing was perhaps a bit too subdued was reinforced by the second work, the Sonata for Cello and Piano by the Canadian composer Steven Gellman. Completed in 1994, its third movement finale is titled Scherzo (on a Heavy-Metal rhythm), but while the playing here is more than up to the technical challenges it really seems to need more fire and energy.

The one work I would have thought would be a first recording turned out to be the only one that wasn’t. The musically multi-talented child prodigy Hélène Riese Liebmann was born in Berlin in 1795 and was already having her compositions published by 1813, a quite remarkable achievement in an age when the likes of Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann would have to resort to having their compositions published under the names of their respective brother and husband. The Grand Sonata in B-flat Major for Cello and Piano Op.11 is a very pleasant work and it is very much of its time.

While studying at Yale University Harrison met the son of the American composer Maurice Gardner (1909-2002) whose Sonata for Cello and Piano completes the CD.

Gardner had a long and varied musical career in many commercial spheres, and was finally able to concentrate on non-commercial compositions when he reached his 60s. Harrison’s acquaintance with his son led to her being coached by the composer himself in the playing of this sonata, and it shows: it’s not only the strongest and most assured work on the CD, but also draws the most committed and convincing playing from the performers.

It’s a fine ending to a very interesting CD.

Say what you will about Antonio Vivaldi – and despite the huge popularity of his music, he isn’t everyone’s favourite composer – his voice is unmistakeable. We’ve all heard the old line – that Vivaldi didn’t write 500 concertos but wrote the same concerto 500 times – but the truth is that despite the continuous sequences, circles of fifths, arpeggios, scales and rhythmic patterns that tend to obscure the frequent absence of any real melodic material, there is a delightful freshness and inventiveness and a sense of spontaneity that runs throughout his instrumental music.

The young Spanish ensemble Trio Rodin is featured in a lovely CD of music of their homeland with Enrique Granados Chamber Music with Piano (Ævea Æ16013).

Chamber music was a neglected field in late 19th-century Spain, a situation that Granados addressed in his compositions; his Piano Trio Op.50 was one of two chamber works that he performed on his debut in Madrid’s musical society in 1895. It’s an attractive work that allows all three performers here to showcase their technique, their warm tone and their ensemble skills. For this recording Trio Rodin worked from the autograph manuscript source, apparently only recently identified.

Pianist Jorge Mengotti is joined by cellist Esther García in the three pieces Madrigal, Danza gallega and Trova, all adapted from previous Granados works and all dedicated to Pablo Casals.

The remaining eight tracks on the CD feature violinist Carles Puig. Romanza is a lovely, lyrical miniature that brings sensitive playing from the duo. The Tres preludios are extremely short (less than four minutes in total) but quite effective.

The unfinished Sonata for Violin and Piano completes the disc. It dates from the same period as the Piano Trio, but until fairly recently the beautifully rhapsodic first movement was thought to be all that was completed; Trio Rodin, however, found a completed second movement in the same manuscript source as the Piano Trio, together with very brief opening fragments for an Andante and a Finale; all the material is presented here.

The works here are all finely crafted and beautifully played, with an exceptionally clean recorded sound.

Every now and then a CD comes along that reminds you how easily you can lose track of contemporary composers and their works if your focus is always on the standard repertoire and the established, traditional composers, and how much of real value you can consequently miss.

One such CD is Meanderings, the terrific new solo release from the Israeli violinist Yael Barolsky (negevmusic.wix.com/negevmusic). While Luciano Berio’s name will be familiar to most, the same may not be true for Dai Fujikura (b.1977), a Japanese composer now resident in the UK; the Boston-born Israeli composer Amos Elkana (b.1967); the soloist’s father, Lithuanian Michael Barolsky (1947-2009); and Italian Luca Francesconi (b.1956), although all five composers are represented here by strong, engrossing works.

Berio’s Sequenza VIII from 1976 is at the heart of the album for Barolsky, who credits its character and technical demands as leading to, and influencing the selection of, the other works on the CD. The ease and comfort with which she negotiates a really challenging piece more than bear out her statement that it is a piece she has loved and performed for many years.

Fujikura’s 2010 composition Fluid Calligraphy for violin and optional video (the latter obviously not included here, but viewable in a complete performance on daifujikura.com) is an attempt to recreate the principles of Japanese calligraphy by using the bow as the equivalent of the calligrapher’s brush. Although it encompasses a wide range of technical effects it remains a very accessible work.

Elkana’s Reflections for violin and electronics was written for Barolsky in 2014 and is dedicated to her. A computer records the solo violin, but only at specific points in the solo part, and plays the recordings back through four speakers positioned beside the player. The result is a multi-layered collage of voices where distinguishing between the live and recorded playing becomes virtually impossible at times; only the first appearance of new material clearly identifies the live soloist. It’s extremely effective, with mixes of high and low registers, pizzicato and arco sections and fast and slow tempi, with a beautiful quasi-chordal section at the end.

Michael Barolsky’s Prana (the Sanskrit word for life force) for violin and tape from 1977 fuses the composer’s melodic lines with fragments from the Bach D Minor Allemande (in slow tempo) against a background of electronic sounds invoking nature.

Francesconi’s 1991 composition Riti neurali for violin and ensemble is a live recording with the Israel Contemporary Players under Ilan Volkov. Subtitled Third Study on Memory, it was inspired by the composer’s fascination with a particular theory on the function of memory.

Barolsky’s playing is simply outstanding throughout a CD that is a significant addition to the contemporary solo violin discography.

Lutenist Žak Ozmo explores the music of Vincenzo Galilei on The Well-Tempered Lute Tones I-IV, another excellent CD from Hyperion (CDA68017).

Galilei was a respected member of the Camerata, an influential group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals active in Florence in the late 1500s. The music here is taken from his Il Primo Libro d’intavolatura di liuto (1584), written for a six-course lute and which Ozmo, in the outstanding booklet notes, calls the first substantial musical collection to champion the versatility of a well-tempered tuning system, demonstrating the lute’s ability to transpose pieces to any of the 12 degrees of an equally tempered scale. Ozmo explains in fascinating detail the philosophical, interpretational and technical challenges that the work presents – which he says push both the player and the instrument to their limits – as well as the questions that need to be answered in order to perform it.

The technical challenges are clearly handled well, although the playing seems a bit dry and tight at times, no doubt due to the fact that in order to play the pieces on each step of the scale, the index finger of the left hand needs to be kept flat on the fingerboard after the first step. Anyone who has ever tried playing classical guitar with a permanent full barre chord will know what that entails!

Still, this is a fascinating CD that will doubtless more than repay repeated listening.

There’s another series of the Beethoven Complete String Quartets making its way through these remarkable works, this time by the Quartetto di Cremona on the audite label (92.684). The first volume was issued in March 2013.

I haven’t heard any of the previous releases, but if the new Volume V Super Audio CD is anything to go by, then I’ve really been missing something. There’s only one quartet on this issue – No.15, the String Quartet in A Minor Op.132 – but the ensemble is joined by the outstanding Lawrence Dutton on viola for the early String Quintet in C Major Op.29.

This Italian quartet has been around for ten years now, and much is made of their training with the Quartetto Italiano’s Piero Farulli and the Alban Berg Quartet’s Hatto Beyerle; the resulting mix of an intuitive, emotional approach to the music with the classical German-Austrian focus on form and structure. Their playing here certainly bears that out, with a fine sense of shape and form never compromising the warmth and spontaneity of the playing.

Three further volumes are planned to complete the series of eight regular-priced CDs. How this set will fare in a fiercely competitive field where 2CD issues and box sets are the norm remains to be seen, but the performances themselves will more than hold their own, I’m sure.

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Janina Fialkowska’s new recording of Schubert – Piano Sonata No.7; Four Impromptus (ATMA ACD2 2699) is an example of familiar repertoire rethought, reconsidered and reinvented. Nothing has been turned on its head nor has Schubert been over-examined for missed content. The genius of his ideas lies in both their lyric value and in the exquisite nature of his supporting accompaniments. What Fialkowska has done is to redraw the emotional map that guides her playing through Schubert’s straightforward material. She plays the Impromptu No.2 in A-flat Major Op.142 D935 as if it were something sacred. The opening idea is delivered in utter simplicity and the middle section rises to a speed and intensity not often heard. This pulls the work’s emotional poles further apart and gives greater impact to the quiet ending. The other three impromptus, too, are wonderfully recast.

The Piano Sonata No.7 in E -flat Major Op.122 D568 benefits from a release of tempo strictures in the second and third movements. Fialkowska gives Schubert’s simple ideas an airy freedom that feels so completely right. She is, as ever, the mature interpreter we have come to admire.

Concert Note: On April 1 and 2 Janina Fialkowska performs Chopin’s Concerto in F Minor with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony at the Centre in the Square.

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Piano Sonata No. 7 in E-Flat Major, Op. 122, D. 568 - II. Andante molto

Impromptu No. 3 in B-Flat Major

Impromptu No. 4 in F Minor

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It’s always a pleasure to hear a new recording from Angela Hewitt, regardless of the repertoire. Early 2016 saw the release of Domenico Scarlatti – Sonatas (Hyperion CDA67613), her first project with this material and one which she hopes to pursue more. In her liner notes, Hewitt makes reference to the scholarly debate over whether the sonatas were originally intended to be paired or not. She has, nevertheless, chosen to devise her own groupings, to the sonatas’ best advantage.

Playing her long-favoured Fazioli, Hewitt delivers a flawless technical performance with clarity never sacrificed to speed. Scarlatti’s sonata structures are simple enough to navigate and one might expect that in the course of 16 such works a certain amount of predictability would set in. But this never happens as Hewitt gives the main idea of each sonata a completely fresh approach. She also never misses a contrapuntal opportunity, and plenty abound throughout. Her ornaments and figures are perfect. She is also completely at ease using whatever technical advantage the modern piano offers to this older repertoire, whether dynamic or colouristic. The Sonata in G Minor Kk8 is an excellent example of this as is the Sonata in F Minor Kk69.

The final track is a bit of surprise as Hewitt’s choice of tempo is notably slower than most often heard. This turns the Sonata in E Major Kk380 into a far more thoughtful and even slightly melancholy utterance than we expect. We look forward to her next set of Scarlatti sonatas.

Concert Note: On April 13, 14 and 16, Angela Hewitt performs two piano concertos by Bach with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The program also features Symphony No.8 by Shostakovich, conducted by Peter Oundjian.

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In her latest disc Hélène Grimaud – Water (Deutsche Grammophon CD 00289 479 3426), pianist Hélène Grimaud draws from the well of repertoire using water as its inspiration. Nearly every composer has written something depicting an aspect of water whether vast or minute. Her choices of works were guided by a live performance project incorporating art, music and architecture. Set in a New York armoury drill hall carefully flooded for added effect, the performance reflected her environmental concerns around the treatment of water as one of humanity’s most precious resources.

Grimaud immerses herself completely in the nature of the water theme. Aided by the cavernous acoustic of the armoury, she captures all the fluidness and sparkling images created by her chosen composers. Liszt’s Les Jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este is among the best tracks for its articulate shimmer in the upper registers. The Takemitsu Rain Tree Sketch II is beautiful for its deeply haunting reserve and Fauré’s Barcarolle flows with unbound rhythmic freedom throughout. The best track is, however, Debussy’s La Cathédrale engloutie. Here Grimaud evokes an architectural grandness and solemnity so appropriate to the composer’s image for the piece.

The recording produced at the art installation is combined with seven electro-acoustic compositions by Nitin Sawhney that act as transitions between her eight piano pieces. The contemporary works serve effectively as transitions between the traditional repertoire and are, in fact, titled as such, Transition 1, 2, etc. They alternate seamlessly from one track to the next and make for a truly fascinating listen.

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It’s hard to imagine the mindset that a pianist must adopt to undertake an extensive project like Valentina Lisitsa plays Philip Glass (Decca 478 8079 DH2). This two-disc set contains nine selections from The Hours and other films like Mishima and The Truman Show. Lisitsa also plays the Metamorphosis I-V and the half-hour long How Now.

Conventionally, one imagines a performer mapping out thematic structure and development, and attending to such concerns as articulation and phrasing. But in Glass’ world these things can have far less significance and a performer may look elsewhere to prepare.

Glass describes himself as a composer of “music with repeating structures” and it’s this device that predominates throughout the repertoire in this set. Lisitsa takes an approach that respects the important patterns of Glass’ work but leaves her enough expressive room to use speed and dynamics to shape the music. This is most evident in How Now and Wichita Vortex Sutra. The experience of playing this often hypnotic music is challenging. Lisitsa reaches successfully for the other worldliness of Glass’ minimalist voice. She never loses herself in it because she understands that the immersive experience of Glass’ music is best reserved for the listener.

Concert Note: Valentina Lisitsa performs at Koerner Hall at 3pm on April 10. The program will include Scriabin, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.

We tend to have set notions of the personalities that shaped the music of most historical periods. While the names of those who dominate obscure the lesser, we sometimes find, in the shadows, new material that helps us understand an age in a richer way. And so it is with the music of Daniel Steibelt and a new recording by Howard Shelley that presents three of his piano concertos in Stiebelt (Hyperion CDA68104).

Born to German/French parents, Steibelt was a contemporary of Mozart and Beethoven. He built his career as a pianist and composer in France and England at the turn of the 19th century. He is reported to have famously challenged Beethoven to a piano duel and forever lived with the humiliation of that ill-conceived contest. Steibelt’s music shows his remarkable keyboard facility with extended runs and complex ornamentation. Although his work shows him to have been a fine tunesmith, he is judged to have been much less competent at thematic development.

Pianist and conductor Howard Shelley performs the Piano Concertos Nos. 3, 5 and 7 with the Ulster Orchestra. Shelley’s playing is graceful and delivers the full value of Steibelt’s decorative tunes, many of them finely crafted and memorable, especially the Scottish folk melodies in the slow movements. The orchestra is superbly balanced with the piano, and while conducted from the keyboard, their performance is unerringly intimate with the soloist. The recording is a welcome document of a deserving, if lesser known, composer.

Lauded by critics as the finest fortepiano performer of our time, Kristian Bezuidenhout has issued another installment in his ambitious Mozart recording project, Mozart Keyboard Music Vols. 8 & 9 (Harmonia Mundi HMU 907532.33). Bezuidenhout plays a fortepiano built in 2009, copied from a Viennese Walter & Sohn of 1805. The instrument is tuned to A 430 and set in unequal temperament. This has the effect of reducing the instrument’s resonance in keys not part of C Major’s harmonic overtone series, like D and F. This is hardly noticeable since the fortepiano has, overall, characteristically less resonance than our modern pianos.

These two volumes are well programmed with plenty of contrasting pieces that make listening through their entirety highly enjoyable. The familiar Sonata in C Major K545 opens the set and is striking for the degree of clarity and articulation Bezuidenhout is able to express at this keyboard. He plays the Gigue in G Major K574 with an incisive angularity applied to both the rhythmic patterns and the intervallic leaps that must have delighted Mozart in writing them. He also includes three sets of variations and a couple of fragments completed by Mozart scholar Robert Levin.

Bezuidenhout is a dynamic player not shy about digging into the instrument forcefully to generate a fortissimo. He’s equally adept at key touch so light that some notes seem to disappear on first hearing. A quick replay confirms their presence but only at the softest levels.

The two-disc set contains selected works from 1774 to 1790 and, like the rest of the series, is not chronological.

In Search of Chopin
A film by Phil Grabsky
Seventh Art Productions SEV182

Traditionally, the lives of classical composers haven’t fared all that well on film. We have only to think back to Miloš Forman’s acclaimed Amadeus which, in the opinion of many music lovers, left something to be desired in its portrayal of Mozart as a childish jokester who also happened to be a musical genius. And certain biographies currently posted online seem questionable in quality. In Search of Chopin is something very different, a sensitive documentary by Phil Grabsky on the Seventh Art label and the fourth in his series of DVDs focusing on the lives of great composers.

Through the use of exquisite photography, a well-delivered narration by Juliet Stevenson and readings by David Dawson of selected correspondence, In Search of Chopin takes the viewer on a 39-year journey, from the composer’s beginnings in Żelazowa Wola, Poland, to his untimely demise in France in 1849. Commentaries from those connected with the Chopin Institute in Warsaw and from musicologist Jeremy Siepmann further add to this compelling biography and from the beginning, I was struck by a wonderful sense of intimacy. The viewer becomes a privileged visitor to the rooms where Chopin lived and created – in Warsaw, in Vienna, at Nohant and his city of exile, Paris.

Yet the film is more than a mere life story; indeed, it views the composer through his music more than most documentaries do. Interviews with renowned pianists such as Ronald Brautigam, Lars Vogt, Daniel Barenboim and Leif Ove Andsnes shed light on the composer’s output in new and revealing ways. Furthermore, the numerous musical examples seem particularly generous in length while those performed by Nelson Goerner, Kevin Kenner and Janusz Olejniczak in concert on an early Erard instrument with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century provide the viewer with a sound very close to what Chopin would have heard during his lifetime.

Adept editing and attractive bonus features further add to the appeal of this exemplary biography, a worthy tribute to the “poet of the piano.” Highly recommended.

Mendelssohn – A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Hebrides Overture; Fair Melusine Overture
Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Radio Choir; Thomas Dausgaard
BIS Hybrid SACD 2166

Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg on February 3, 1809, and a no more prophetic name than Felix (Latin for “happy”) could have been given him if his music tells the tale. His ebullient Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written when he was 17 and was followed 17 years later by more miniatures to comprise a suite of Incidental Music. That he chose to compose these extra pieces populated by those same scampering fairies of the Overture was brilliant.

The Incidental Music is composed of the Overture that sets the stage and introduces the cast, followed by 13 pieces including the Scherzo, Nocturne, Intermezzo, Wedding March and other delights.

Dausgaard’s tempi may feel slightly headlong, with an impetuosity that imbues a breathtaking expectancy even when we know the score well. This is a performance that has the listener leaning forward so as not to miss a single, unexpected nuance. Constant re-evaluation of textures in almost every chord is different in weight and balance from what we are used to, keeping us alert for what is to come. We can see those fairies being as disruptive as they are in Shakespeare.

The uniquely mid-nineteenth-century quality of the score is brought out with extremely precise orchestral execution, transparent and articulate, adding a zing unlike any others. This is pure Mendelssohn and, for me, exemplary.

Similarly, the two familiar overtures are meticulously prepared, drawing even a blasé listener into these interpretative revelations and performance bench marks.

Concert Note: On April 9 and 10 the Toronto Symphony Orchestra presents “A Midsummer Night’s Dream & More” featuring Mendelssohn’s incidental music, Handel’s Harp Concerto, Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries under the baton of James Feddeck in his TSO debut. 

Miroirs: Dutilleux; Liszt
Jonas Vitaud
NoMadMusic NMM028 (nomadmusic.fr)

Miroirs is a solo piano album of Romantic and 20th-century repertoire by French pianist Jonas Vitaud that stems, in part, from his work with Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013) at the Cordes-sur-Ciel festival in 2004.

The CD immediately transports us into harmonically adventurous worlds with Liszt’s Angelus, Klavierstück, Valse oubliée, Nuages gris and Dutilleux’s three Preludes: D’ombre et de silence, Sur un même accord, Le jeu des contraires (1973-1988). However, Vitaud has changed the order of the pieces and interjects a Dutilleux prelude between each of Liszt’s four late compositions. His rationale is to show parallels between the works written by these two very different composers, with Vitaud describing Liszt as a prolific virtuoso and Dutilleux as “a composer of the night.” The reordering may be confusing for a listener who is not following along with the liner notes, however Vitaud consistently conveys an acute awareness of harmonic colour and masterfully presents works that are not performed as often as they should be.

The album gradually leads to Liszt’s virtuoso Mephisto Waltz before closing with Dutilleux’s musically and technically complex Piano Sonata Op.1 (1948). Dutilleux consciously defied classification and rejected a number of 20th-century compositional idioms while expanding elements of the Impressionist tradition. Many of his compositions are refined and deeply moving, such as the Choral et variations, the final movement in the piano sonata, which Vitaud delivers superbly. Particularly impressive is Vitaud’s ability to convey strength without harshness even in the most technically difficult passages, resulting in an innovative and beautifully performed CD, released to coincide with Dutilleux’s centenary.