Early, Classical and Beyond

Apart from the single-movement Sonatensatz written when he was just 15, Schubert’s works for piano, violin and cello all date from 1827, the year before he died. Two of the three works from that year — the E-Flat Major Piano Trio Op.100 and the single-movement Adagio or Notturno, also in e-flat — are featured on a new CD from Trio Latitude 41 (ELOQUENTIA EL 1129).

The Op.100 is a large, four-movement work that makes an immediate impression and clearly has a great deal of depth. The booklet notes quote Robert Schumann’s 1836 description of the trio as a work that “blazed forth like some enraged meteor,” with an opening movement “inspired by deep indignation as well as boundless longing.” The artists here — Canadian pianist Bernadene Blaha, violinist Livia Sohn and cellist Luigi Piovano — find all this and more in a memorable performance. A finely-nuanced and highly effective performance of the Notturno completes an excellent recital disc. Recorded at the Rolston Recital Hall in the Banff Centre, the balance and ambience are perfect.

The first thing that comes to mind whenever I receive a CD of the Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos is: do we really need yet another recording of these classic works? Well, yes, of course we do: established artists often find something new to say, and all new artists have to measure themselves against these cornerstones of the repertoire. For the young violinist Ray Chen, the choice of these works for his second Sony CD (SONY 88697984102) — his first with orchestra — was easy: he won the Menuhin Competition in 2008 playing the Mendelssohn concerto, and the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 2009 with the Tchaikovsky.

The first words I wrote down while listening to the Tchaikovsky were “relaxed tempo/approach in first movement,” so it was interesting to read “relaxed and peaceful … that is also what Ray Chen demands of his interpretations of the two concertos” in the booklet notes. That’s very much how the works come across, although that certainly shouldn’t be taken to imply any absence of line or a lack of intensity when needed. Chen’s playing is expansive, warm and sympathetic, and he communicates a clear empathy for these works.

The conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is the outstanding Daniel Harding, whose name on a CD virtually guarantees a top-notch accompaniment, and that’s certainly the case here. Great balance and a lovely recorded ambience make for an impressive CD that promises a great future for Chen.

The latest CD in the outstanding Hyperion series The Romantic Violin Concerto is Volume 11. It features the works for violin and orchestra by Max Reger in terrific performances by Tanja Becker-Bender and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin under Lothar Zagrosek (Hyperion CDA67892).

Reger, who was only 43 when he died in 1916, trod a highly individualistic road as a composer. As was the case with Mahler, who had died exactly five years earlier, his main exponents and interpreters left Germany in the 1930s, but, unlike Mahler, his music and reputation failed to gain a foothold on foreign soil after the Second World War.

The Violin Concerto in A Major, Op.101, from 1907, is a simply huge, melodic and immediately accessible work, almost an hour long, and clearly in the post-Brahms tradition. The Two Romances in G Major and D Major, Op.50, written in 1900 and scored for a smaller orchestra than the concerto, were a deliberate attempt to secure more concert performances in the major German cities. Wolfgang Rathert’s excellent booklet notes refer to their “fusion of contrapuntal texture and flowing melody,” which is a pretty good description of Reger’s music in general. They are simply gorgeous works, reminiscent of Brahms and Bruch, and they receive sympathetically beautiful performances by Becker-Bender and Zagrosek.

Reger still tends to be criticized for the complexity and turgidity of his compositions, but it’s really more a case of an overabundance of creative ideas making it difficult for the listener to discern the overall shape and form. It’s quite beautiful writing, however, and if you don’t know any of his music then the three lovely works on this terrific CD offer the perfect opportunity to put that right.

It’s really difficult to know what to say about Silence, on joue! A Time for Us, the new CD from Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà (ANALEKTA AN 2 8733). It’s a collection of movie themes quite clearly aimed at a mass market — and, sure enough, it’s already being enthusiastically played on a certain Toronto FM radio station.

Film music is an extremely important area of contemporary composition, of course, and the big names are here in force: John Williams, James Horner, Howard Shore, Erich Korngold, Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota, John Barry. The problem is that there seems to be little of any real substance: of the 20 tracks, 12 are under four minutes in length, and only one exceeds five minutes — just. It’s unrelenting easy listening, with no real “bite” anywhere, although this may well be due to the fact that virtually all of the 15 basic tracks (there are five “bonus” tracks from previous Dubeau CDs) are – hardly surprisingly — transcriptions, adaptations or arrangements.

Tracks include My Heart Will Go On, Over the Rainbow, Smile, the Love Themes from Romeo and Juliet and Cinema Paradiso, and music from The English Patient, Lord of the Rings and Dances with Wolves. The bonus tracks include the “Cavatina” from Stanley Myers’ The Deer Hunter and the main themes from Schindler’s List and The Mission.

Dubeau, clearly a top-notch player, is apparently the only Canadian “classical” musician to have earned two gold records for album sales exceeding 50,000 in one year. This CD will probably do equally well, although one may hopefully be excused for pondering the relationship between quantity and quality, and wondering whether or not Dubeau’s undoubted talents could be put to better use.

Strings Attached continues at www.thewholenote.com with the latest from the New York orchestra The Knights with works by Schubert, Satie and Philip Glass among others.

The Flute King - Music from the Court of Frederick the Great
Emmanuel Pahud
EMI Classics 0 84230 2

The programme of this two-CD set of music from the court of the flute-playing Prussian emperor Frederick the Great provides an intriguing snapshot of a significant time and place in the flute’s repertoire. The first disc features concertos by C.P.E. Bach, Benda, Frederick II himself and his flute teacher Quantz, in which flutist Emmanuel Pahud is accompanied by the geographically appropriate Kammerakademie Potsdam. The playing from everyone involved is pleasant enough, though a sameness of musical character and lack of nuance pervade the performance of these pieces, some of which require extra imaginative “juice” to bring them completely off the page. On the other hand, the inherent dynamic theatricality of CPE Bach’s Concerto in A Minor isn’t exploited well enough.

Disc Two presents us with J.S. Bach’s Musical Offering trio sonata and sonatas by Frederick, his sister Anna Amalia, J.F. Agricola and C.P.E. Bach and here the playing is imbued with greater creativity of spirit. Pahud, perhaps inspired by his colleagues, harpsichordist Trevor Pinnock, cellist Jonathan Manson and violinist Matthew Truscott, plays with increased variety of colour and articulation. J.S. Bach’s inestimable trio sonata receives an affectionate and thoughtful rendition, and of special note are Anna Amalia’s Sonata in F Major and the opening Siciliano of Frederick’s Sonata in B Minor.

Although it’s unfortunate that this recording doesn’t take more of Quantz’s own interpretive advice into account, it’s still a worthy compilation of music from 18th century, flute-focused Potsdam.

Concert Notes: Alison Melville curates and performs in “A Musical Bestiary” featuring vocal and instrumental music about creatures of earth, sea, sky and myth for the Toronto Consort at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre March 23 and 24. Melville is also involved in “The Bird Project” which will be featured in a noon-hour multi-media presentation at Walter Hall, University of Toronto on March 15.

Schubert - Piano Sonatas
Boris Zarankin
Doremi DHR-71153

If the listener didn’t know it before, this CD confirms that Boris Zarankin possesses an ardent empathy with Schubert. From the opening bars of the first movement of the great Sonata in B-Flat Major, marked molto moderato, there is almost a quasi religious awakening and as the music unfolds, further dimensions are revealed that one does not hear in other versions of this familiar work. Well, not quite. Hearing Zarankin conjured up the performance by Valery Afanassiev recorded live at the Lockenhaus Festival in 1986 that has lingered in my memory as an interpretation with the same intense, poetic introversion. However, listening to that performance once again, as attractive as it is, Zarankin is the more poetic, realizing the tragedy of Schubert playing out the last chapter of his life.

In both sonatas Boris Zarankin is in a class of his own, fully justifying his venturing into such frequently charted repertoire. Zarankin has his own ideas about playing these sonatas but I sense that they are also Schubert’s.

These recordings were made last August in Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto and engineered by Clive Allen who is responsible for the eminently truthful and dynamic, wide-range sound.

Bruckner - Symphony No.4
London Symphony Orchestra; Bernard Haitink
LSO Live LSO0716

Bruckner - Symphony No.4
Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal; Yannick Nézet-Séguin
ATMA ACD2 2667

This is Bernard Haitink’s third commercial recording of Bruckner’s popular Symphony No.4, in this instance using the Nowak edition of the score and culled from a pair of live performances from June 2011. The London Symphony Orchestra is unquestionably an outstanding ensemble with an exceptionally impressive string section, seated here in the European style with the violins divided right and left and the double basses to the left rear. The orchestra responds adroitly to the stolid octogenarian Haitink, a celebrated master of elucidating the ofttimes shambolic structure of Bruckner’s symphonies. Ultimately, however, all this excellence is undermined by the problematic acoustics of London’s Barbican Centre. The resplendent string tone is noticeably recessed and the sound-stage, though wide, lacks depth. Some tremendous brass playing, particularly from the closely-miked horn section, offers considerable recompense however.

No such problems mar the lively sound of Nézet-Séguin’s conventionally seated Métropolitain string ensemble, though they are a comparatively lean and slightly underpowered force compared to the LSO ensemble, with two fewer players in each section. The response from the judiciously balanced full orchestra is consistently precise, electric and blessed with a contagious enthusiasm and attention to dynamic shading that renders even the most meandering passages of Bruckner’s rambling discourse riveting. The performance utilizes the 1936 Haas edition in splendid studio sound recorded at Québec’s Église Saint-Ferdinand. Some may consider Nézet-Séguin’s overtly theatrical approach rather over-the-top in the Scherzo movement, where he drives his forces into a Berliozian frenzy, but for my money this is one of those rare Bruckner performances that commands my complete attention. The clear winner? The home team!

The Canadian violinist Lara St. John, by her own admission, never managed to really connect with the Bach Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord; somehow, she says, she “never thought they quite clicked,” either with harpsichord or modern piano accompaniment. Several years ago, when St. John was staying in Berlin with Marie-Pierre Langlamet, the principal harpist of the Berlin Philharmonic since 1993, the two read through some Bach sonatas. It was, says St. John, “a revelation.” Bach Sonatas, her new CD with Langlamet on her own Ancalagon label (ANC 139) is the result, and it is, indeed, a revelation. The switch from harpsichord to harp is obviously the major factor here. There might be very little dynamic range on the keyboard instrument, but it’s scarcely any bigger on the harp. Moreover, the crisp, precise incision of the note attack on the harpsichord is replaced by a softer, gentler and more luminous sound on the harp, especially in the bass lines of the lower register. This completely changes the nature of the accompaniment, and poses significant questions for the violinist: straightforward, by-the-numbers playing, especially in the faster contrapuntal passages, simply won’t work anymore. St. John, however, has the perfect answer, playing not only with unerring accuracy but also with a wonderfully expressive sensitivity, almost as if thoughtfully probing and exploring the music rather than simply presenting it. It’s intelligent and nuance-filled music-making of the highest level, and matched for both nuance and sensitivity by Langlamet.

This is by no means a complete set of the six sonatas. The performers chose sonatas where the keyboard part could be played as written (and the harpsichord parts for these works were fully written out, and not just a figured bass part) with no need for transcription for the harp. Two violin sonatas – No.1 in B Minor BWV1014 and No.3 in E Major BWV1016 – are here, together with the Flute Sonatas in G Minor BWV1020 (possibly not written by Bach) and in B Minor BWV1030, and the Siciliana from the Flute Sonata in E-Flat Major BWV1031.

Beautifully recorded in Berlin, the result is a supremely satisfying CD that presents these works in a quite different light.

Concert Note: The Lindsay Concert Foundation’s Kawartha Concerts Series presents Lara St. John and Marie-Pierre Langlamet in music of Bach, Saint-Saëns, Debussy and Fauré at Glenn Crombie Theatre, Fleming College in Lindsay on March 4.

The two-CD set The Soviet Experience Volume 1 is the first in a series on Chicago’s excellent Cedille label devoted to String Quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich and his Contemporaries (Cedille CDR 90000 127). I can think of few quartets that are as immediately recognizable as those of Shostakovich, and of no music that is more imbued with personal pain and a sense of utter resignation, together with a heart-breaking sense of nostalgia for better days, now long gone. Listening to his music often seems like eavesdropping on a private and intimate conversation. The Pacifica Quartet performed the complete Shostakovich cycle in five Chicago concerts over a four-month period in 2010/11 as part of The Soviet Arts Experience, a 16-month-long project showcasing artists who worked in the old Soviet Union, and they have obviously developed a deep understanding of these works. The four quartets Nos. 5 to 8 are included on this first volume and the Pacifica members are terrific throughout, scaling the heights of the music as convincingly as they plumb the depths. The overwhelmingly autobiographical – and achingly personal – Quartet No.8 Op.110 is particularly effective.

Nikolai Miaskovsky was 25 years older than Shostakovich, but was also included in the notorious 1948 Zhdanov decree that accused many of the Soviet Union’s leading composers of “formalism.” He was 36 when the 1917 Revolution took place, and, as the excellent booklet notes by William Hussey point out, was the only major Soviet composer who was also a member of the pre-Revolution generation of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. His String Quartet No.13 in A Minor was written in 1950, not long before his death, and – not surprisingly, given the circumstances – in a fairly conservative style. If it has nowhere near the personal depth of the Shostakovich quartets, it’s still a fine work and receives an equally fine performance here.

Presumably, the complete cycle will be made available on CD before too long. If this first volume is anything to go by, it will be a significant addition to the Shostakovich catalogue.

French Impressions is the title of the latest CD from Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk (Sony Classical 88697 82026 2). At first sight, it seems slightly misleading, as the Ravel sonata is the only Impressionist work on the disc; the other two works are the Violin Sonata No.1 of Camille Saint-Saëns and the Sonata in A Major of César Franck. On first hearing, however, the title makes more sense. These are all works that invite flashy virtuosity, but although the virtuosity is clearly present the “flash” is absent; instead, the technical assurance is combined with an expressiveness and a musical maturity that presents all three works in a thoughtful, illuminating manner. The clue to this approach lies in the informal but very informative booklet notes, where Jeremy Denk considers what makes French music French: “sounds that float, hover, harmony like a scent, a perfume evaporating into air.” Add his comments about light and color, and it becomes clear that the performers are concerned more with impressions here than with virtuosity. The Saint-Saëns sonata is the one with the dazzling finale full of cascading octave runs, and while Bell might not be quite as hair-raising as James Ehnes in this movement, it’s perfectly balanced with the rest of the sonata. The Franck, so familiar as to easily risk becoming stale in the wrong hands, is beautifully judged, with some particularly outstanding piano playing from Denk, and the Ravel is a delight from start to finish. Bell plays brilliantly and intelligently, with a great tone and lovely phrasing, but never a hint of virtuosity for its own sake; Denk is simply stunning at the piano. The balance and recorded sound are excellent.

There is a startling mixture of compositional styles on American Music, the new CD from the French ensemble Quatuor Diotima that features string quartets by Steve Reich, Samuel Barber and George Crumb (naïve V 5272). Reich’s Different Trains for string quartet and tape, from 1988, was inspired by the childhood railway journeys he made with his governess between 1939 and 1942. Struck by how different the circumstances and experience would have been for a Jew riding on trains in Europe at that time, he conceived a work that combined a pre-recording of the quartet with train sounds from the period and with snippets of the recorded voices of his old governess and survivors of the Holocaust.

The three movements are “America – Before the War,” “Europe – During the War,” and “After the War,” but while Reich’s minimalist-driven style successfully creates a sense of mechanical perpetual motion, and while the instrumental doubling of the vocal scraps is very effective, I couldn’t help feeling that the middle movement failed to create an emotional centre for the work. For a middle movement that not only serves as the focal point of the work but also assumes a life of its own, you need look no further than Barber’s String Quartet in B Minor Op.11; the Molto adagio second movement became one of the most popular and widely-performed pieces of all time when the composer transcribed it as his Adagio for Strings. It’s certainly interesting to hear it in its original form and context, especially when the performance is as sensitive and as understated as it is here. It’s impossible to imagine any work farther away from the Barber than Crumb’s Black Angels for electric quartet, and what a startlingly original and stunning soundscape it is! Written in 1970 and subtitled 13 Images from the Dark Land, it requires the performers to use extended playing techniques as well as to play other instruments (glass rods, crystal glasses, maracas, tam-tams) and occasionally to use their own voices. The thirteen short sections are divided into three movements: I. Departure; II. Absence; and III. Return. The booklet notes call it “a deathly ceremonial, a sort of black mass,” and there are constant musical references to Death, Hell (the Dark Land) and the Devil throughout the work. The quartet’s construction is apparently governed by numerology – in particular the numbers 7 and 13 – but Crumb has increasingly played down their significance since 1970. It’s a simply astonishing work, complex and difficult enough to make any objective review of the performance – in comparison, say, to the Kronos Quartet’s performance – almost impossible, and certainly irrelevant. Suffice it to say that it’s a stunning aural and musical experience.

Robert Schumann, more than any other composer, chose to concentrate on one particular form of composition at a time. 1842 was devoted to chamber music, and his three String Quartets, Op. 41 were written in a matter of eight weeks in the middle of the year, after he had spent several months studying the quartets of Haydn, Mozart and – in particular – Beethoven. The influence of the latter is easy to hear, but the voice that really leaps out at you on a new CD from the Doric String Quartet (Chandos CHAN 10692) is that of Mendelssohn, to whom the quartets were dedicated on their publication in 1848. These are top-notch performances in all respects, but the Doric Quartet is particularly outstanding in the Mendelssohn-like scherzo movements, where their articulation, ensemble playing and dynamics in the scurrying passages are simply superb. There’s some rather obtrusive breathing in the slower movements, but not enough to detract from a terrific CD.

Naxos has added another excellent CD to its already outstanding catalogue of contemporary string quartets with the Wieniawski Quartet’s performances of the String Quartets Nos. 9, 11 and 12 by Polish composer Krzysztof Meyer (Naxos 8.572656). Meyer, born in 1943, was a student of Penderecki and is a recognized authority on the life and works of Shostakovich. There is more than a hint of the Soviet composer in Meyer’s quartets, but there is also no doubting that there is a highly competent and individual craftsman at work here. Meyer’s ongoing series of string quartets currently stands at 12 works and covers 42 years, from 1963 to 2005. Quartet No.9 dates from 1990 and No.11 from 2001. All three works on this CD are quite different in form: No.9 is in five movements; No.11 is a single-movement work; No.12 is nine mostly short movements joined together in a manner similar to Beethoven’s Quartet in C-Sharp Minor Op.131. Meyer employs a range of compositional techniques, but you’re never aware of them; these quartets are always accessible, engrossing and highly effective. It would be difficult to imagine more suitable interpreters of these works than the all-Polish Wieniawski Quartet, who have been together for 15 years. Their playing is exemplary in all respects. They have already recorded Quartets Nos. 5, 6 and 8 for Naxos (8.570776). “Intensely dramatic and eloquent,” says the jewel case blurb in describing these works and they are exactly that. The recorded sound is excellent, the booklet notes adequate but somewhat technical in nature. At the bargain Naxos price, these discs are a terrific buy.