Early, Classical and Beyond

Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto No.4
Alain Lefèvre; Orchestre symphonique de Montréal; Kent Nagano
Analekta AN 2 9288

This concerto is at once a reminder of Rachmaninov’s consistent and recognizable musical language. The style of lush orchestral washes led by strings against broad piano chords reminds the listener of familiar passages in the previous concertos. There is, however, a new element of modernity in this work that for Rachmaninov seems to have been a long time in coming.

Pianist Alain Lefèvre is a powerful player. At the keyboard he creates the kind of Lisztian fear that instruments must surely have when they’re about to be shaken to the core. He is an exemplar of the player that the Rachmaninov Fourth needs. Nothing less will do. Lefèvre and Nagano explode out of the starting gate with so much energy that it’s tempting to think your CD player has started the final movement by mistake. They make the perfect team required to navigate Rachmaninov’s new polyrhythms strewn throughout the work. They embrace the numerous harmonic collisions without reservation and offer a highly charged performance that sets the heart racing. In all, this performance can actually be a little disturbing for anyone unaccustomed to hearing Rachmaninov’s dark side so eloquently referenced here by Lefèvre and Nagano.

By contrast, and a well-programmed one it is, Scriabin’s Prometheus draws the OSM into repertoire it does so well. While of the same generation, Scriabin turns Rachmaninov’s flirtations with modernism into a full nuptial embrace. It’s all here, the French school of the early 20th century excited with rich colours on broad canvas and using every potential offered by the piano to gild the orchestral palette.

Berlioz – Symphonie Fantastique
Orchestre de la Francophonie;
Jean-Philippe Tremblay
Analekta AN 2 9998

To my mind, there are few major orchestral works that embody the spirit of early romanticism better than the Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. Completed in 1830, this monumental work was subtitled “Episode in the Life of an Artist,” and tells of a lovesick young musician who attempts to poison himself with opium. The drug doesn’t prove strong enough to cause death, but instead, only creates fantastic visions, all of which are glowingly portrayed throughout the symphony. And who better to interpret this myriad of ever-contrasting moods than the Orchestre de la Francophonie under the direction of Jean-Philippe Tremblay on this new Analekta recording? The Ottawa-and-Montreal-based ensemble was founded in 2001, and since then has gone on to earn an enviable reputation as one of North America’s most vibrant youth orchestras. I’ve asked the question, “Do French musicians best interpret French music?” before, and the question is still open to debate. Nevertheless, in this case it certainly doesn’t hurt, for the OF’s performance is splendid.

From the cautious and hesitant mood of the opening measures, Tremblay demonstrates a full command of the score, coaxing a warm and expressive sound from the orchestra. We can truly feel the despair of the love-stricken young man! The second movement finds our hero at a ball, and the music is appropriately light and graceful. Following the placid “Scene in the Meadows” comes the sinister “March to the Scaffold,” where the talents of the wind and brass sections of the OF are shown to full effect. The exuberant finale  — “Dream of a Witch’s Sabbath” — is all at once grotesque, exhilarating and terrifying. Here, the OF “pulls out all the stops,” bringing the mad frenzy to a rousing conclusion.

This is indeed an exemplary interpretation of a musical landmark — felicitations to Jean-Philippe Tremblay and the OF. Hector would surely have approved!

Music is the Language of the Heart and Soul: Mahler – Symphony No.2
Ricarda Merbeth; Bernarda Fink; Netherlands Radio Choir; Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra; Mariss Jansons
Cmajor 709708

Mahler – Symphony No.2
Christiane Oelze; Sarah Connolly; MDR Rundfunkchor; Berliner
Rundfunkchor; GewandhausChor; Gewandhaus Orchestra, Leipzig;
Riccardo Chailly
Accentus Music ACC10238

The above Blu-ray sets enter a well-populated community of commendable recorded performances that stretch back to c.1923 when Oskar Fried, who had conducted the premier performance in 1905 and to whom Mahler had conveyed all he should know about the work, conducted it for Polydor. Balancing orchestra, soloists and choir was a monumental undertaking in the acoustic era and one wonders how many sets they had hoped to sell, particularly when Mahler’s works were not as deeply admired then. That Polydor not-for-audiophiles recording is available on a 2-CD set from Pearl (CDS 9929).

Each of these new videos presents a performance that will satisfy the most ardent and jaded critic. Both orchestras are at home with the score and the soloists in each are well-matched. Of course, the vocal mavens may have their personal opinions about the choice of soloists but, to these ears, there are no good reasons for any petty or insignificant objections. There are no complaints about the state-of-the-art video production in either version and the audio is equally matched in presence and detail.

I watched the Jansons first and heard a very romantic performance, indicating that the conductor is comfortable with the score and views the work as belonging to its past and not as a portent of things to come.

I may not have felt this so acutely had I not, soon after, played the Chailly version. There is a real sense of hearing something new and exciting … from unexpected, subtle instrumental inflections and phrasing to the just perceptible spaces between phrases. The musicians are caught up in the excitement and significance of their parts, often playing like they have their feet in ice-water. The last movement and the closing pages are devastating. Repeated viewings have not dampened my enthusiasm for the Chailly in any way.

The Concertgebouw disc includes a 50+ minute videography of Jansons entitled Music is the Language of the Heart and Soul. There is a companion Blu-ray disc of the Eighth Symphony from the 2011 Mahler Festival in Leipzig that I have put off playing until the “right” time.

Still Sound
Bruce Levingston
Sono Luminus DSL-92148

Exquisite colours and haunting cadences highlight the remarkable solo performances of American pianist Bruce Levingston in Still Sound.

Levingston is powerful in his well thought out performances of Chopin, Satie and Schubert. He has a firm grasp of technique and style here. However, he is most striking when performing more contemporary works. Arvo Pärt’s popular Für Alina and Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka are breathtaking in their bell-like charm and quality of attention to the spaces between the notes.

Levingston is also a champion of American composers. Augusta Gross is a fine composer in the contemporary American style and is featured in five tracks. Memorable is her polyphonic writing in Reflections on Air which is intricately captured by Levingston’s gentle performance. William Bolcom’s New York Lights is a solo piano version based on an aria from his opera A View from the Bridge. Bolcom’s clever use of a multitude of American musical styles makes this an accessible yet modern work. Unfortunately, Levingston is suddenly a bit too bangy and percussive in the climatic, louder section, though he retreats back to his mature musical touch for the end of the work.

Levingston is to be applauded for his choice of programming. This is a collection of reflective, personal music with which to enjoy, contemplate and unwind.

Time Transcending (Oehms Classics OC 832) is the first solo recital disc of the Australian-born violinist Daniel Dodds, and it’s quite stunning. The works range from Bach through Paganini, Ysaÿe and Ernst to 20th century works by Rochberg, Berio, Bram and Messiaen. You’ll find better — or, at least, more nuanced — versions of the great Chaconne from Bach’s Partita in D Minor, but you’d be hard pushed to find anything anywhere to match the playing on the rest of the CD. There are terrific performances of Ysaÿe’s Sonata No.3, Ballade, and Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIII from 1976, followed by a stunning Caprice No.24 from the Paganini Op.1. The American composer George Rochberg published 50 Caprice Variations on this particular piece in 1970, and 12 of them are here, played with a quite startling range of tone, colour and special effects. The Etude VI by H. W. Ernst is his famous 1864 set of variations on The Last Rose of Summer, and a work of almost ridiculous technical difficulty — but apparently not for Daniel Dodds.

The phenomenal playing continues in Swiss composer Thuring Bram’s Uhrwerk (Clockwork), written in 1976; Dodds is called on to play a dazzling array of effects — thumps, harmonics, bow scrapings, left-hand pizzicato and more — in an engrossing piece that treats the violin, in the composer’s words, as “a sophisticated percussion instrument.”

Dodds is joined by pianist Tomasz Trzebiatowski for the final track, Messiaen’s Louange a l’immortalité de Jesus, the final movement from his Quatuor pour le fin du temps. The beautifully sustained long, high melodic line brings a breathtaking CD to a serene close.

We’re not exactly overwhelmed with viola concertos, so I was delighted to receive the latest CD by the marvellous young American violist David Aaron Carpenter, which features world premiere recordings of three Viola Concertos by Joseph Martin Kraus (ONDINE ODE 1193-2). Kraus, a German composer who spent most of his working life in Sweden, was an exact contemporary of Mozart, born in the same year and dying just 12 months after Mozart’s death. Until just a few years ago, however, these works were mistakenly attributed to his friend and compatriot, Roman Hoffstetter.

There are two solo concertos, in e-flat major and c major, and a double concerto for viola and cello (although really viola with cello obbligato) in which Carpenter is joined by Riitta Pesola. All three works were probably written around the time that Kraus moved to Sweden in 1778; not surprisingly, there are stylistic similarities with both Mozart and Haydn — who, apparently, named Mozart and Kraus as the only two geniuses he knew — but all three works are full of melodic and harmonic surprises.

Carpenter’s playing is superb: warm and rich across the entire range, and wonderfully expressive. He also directs the Tapiola Sinfonietta, an orchestra which has the Viennese music of this period as part of its core repertoire as is clear from their perfectly-judged accompaniment.

The Chinese guitarist Xuefei Yang, who is currently based in the UK, presents her own transcriptions and arrangements of three Bach Concertos on her latest CD (EMI Classics 6 79018 2) with the Elias String Quartet. The two solo Violin Concertos, in a minor and e major, are here, as well as the Harpsichord Concerto in D Minor BWV1052, which is believed to be based on a now-lost violin concerto.

Yang found the solo parts in the violin concertos to be perfectly playable on the guitar, but the real masterstroke here is her arrangement of the orchestral accompaniment for string quartet, thus ensuring that the guitar’s softer voice can always be heard. Her playing is clean, precise and beautifully shaped, and the balance with the quartet is excellent throughout.

Yang was drawn to the violin concertos by the guitar transcriptions of Bach’s solo violin sonatas and partitas, and this disc includes the Sonata in G Minor, transcribed by her to a minor. Nothing seems to be lost in the transcription; indeed, many sections sound smoother than in the violin original. The Prelude in C Major from the Well-Tempered Clavier, again transcribed by Yang to a major, and played on a seven-string guitar, and the Air on the G String complete an excellent and generous — almost 80 minutes — CD.

Carolyn Huebl (violin) and Mark Wait (piano) are the performers on a new Naxos CD of Stravinsky Works for Violin and Piano (8.570985). All of Stravinsky’s works for this combination were the result of his partnership with violinist Samuel Dushkin, with whom he toured throughout the 1930s, and this disc features the three most substantial pieces: the Suite italienne and the Divertimento, both arranged by the composer and Dushkin; and Stravinsky’s only original work for the medium, the Duo Concertant.

Mark Wait certainly has the credentials for these works, having recorded Stravinsky’s solo piano music for Robert Craft’s series of the complete works of Stravinsky some 20 years ago.

The performances here are solid and carefully considered if not spectacular, and tend to be a bit pedestrian at times. They were recorded at the Blair School of Music in Nashville’s Vanderbilt University, where both performers are on the faculty.

The low Naxos price makes this a decent buy, but if you’re seriously interested in Stravinsky’s music for violin and piano then for an even lower per-disc price you can buy the excellent Newton Classics 2-CD reissue set of the complete works by Isabelle van Keulen and Olli Mustonen that I reviewed last October. Their interpretations tend to be a bit “spikier” and capture the Stravinsky character more fully. There is also a Hyperion two-CD budget-price set with Anthony Marwood and Thomas Adès that I have not heard, but that should be well worth tracking down.

Volume 12 of the outstanding British series The Romantic Violin Concerto (Hyperion CDA67878) features the first two Violin Concertos of Henri Vieuxtemps in lovely performances by Chloë Hanslip and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins.

The Concerto No.1 in E Major was actually written after the Concerto No.2 in F-sharp Minor, but the numbering follows the order in which they were published. The E major is a huge work, running over 40 minutes, and with a first movement that is longer than many full concertos. Written when Vieuxtemps was 20, it feels a bit episodic at times – perhaps not surprisingly, given its size – but is full of lovely moments. The F-sharp minor concerto pre-dates the E major by four years, and understandably shows signs of immaturity as a composer; the booklet notes correctly comment that it “makes more of a classical impression than a romantic one” with the influence of Mozart and Beethoven in evidence. The real forgotten gem here, though, is the Greeting to America Op.56, written for Vieuxtemps’ concert tour of the USA in 1843-44. It’s a fantasia on both The Star-Spangled Banner and Yankee Doodle for violin and orchestra, and brings another terrific Hyperion CD to a rousing close. Hanslip is in great form throughout, and given excellent support by Brabbins and the orchestra. The recording quality, as you would expect from this label, is exemplary.

Incidentally, Volume 8 of this series features Vieuxtemps’ concertos nos.4 and 5 (the “famous” one) in performances by Viviane Hagner and the same orchestral team.

In last year’s summer edition of this column I reviewed a short CD of the Concierto Latino by the Israeli violinist/composer Ittai Shapira. The same recording has now turned up on a full-length disc of Shapira: Violin Concertos, coupled with The Old Man and the Sea and the solo violin piece Caprice Habañera (Champs Hill CHRCD032).

The Old Man and the Sea was inspired by, and based on, Ernest Hemingway’s short novel of the same name; the idea came to Shapira, coincidentally, when he was in Florida for the US premiere of his Concierto Latino. Hemingway wrote his novel in Cuba, and it is the influence of Cuban music that is the common link between the three works on this disc.

The writing throughout both major works is accessible and highly idiomatic, although it is difficult to determine a truly individualistic voice; it tends to be music that keeps reminding you of something else. The Concierto Latino seems to be the stronger work on re-hearing, but that may well be due to the therapeutic nature of its composition, Shapira having written it in the aftermath of being the victim of a gang attack in New York City in January 2005. The Caprice Habañera is a short virtuosic solo encore piece with some innovative technical challenges.

The three works were all recorded on different dates, and the two concertos with different partners: the London Serenata under Krzysztof Chorzelski accompanies the Concierto Latino, and Neil Thomson conducts the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in the Hemingway-inspired work, recorded this past January.

The conductor Marin Alsop, who is also a fine violinist, founded the ensemble String Fever with a group of top New York instrumental friends in 1981, partly to try to break down some of the classical boundaries, and partly just to have some fun as string players. Naxos has issued It Don’t Mean A Thing, an album of tracks recorded in 1983 and 1997 that shows just what they got up to when they weren’t on their “serious” gigs (8.572834).

It’s an odd offering from several aspects. For a start, it’s not clear if the group is even still in existence: in the sparse booklet notes Alsop refers to the group in the past tense, thanking those “who played in String Fever over the years” and citing the “many adventures over our 20 year career together,” all of which suggests that the ensemble ceased performing about 11 years ago. Secondly, despite the cavalcade of great standards from the likes of Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Dave Brubeck, Benny Goodman, Harry Warren and Richard Rodgers, the album really falls between two stools. There’s much more of an attempt at originality here than in the Angèle Dubeau CD of movie hits last month, but it’s less of a success precisely because of that fact. The heart and soul of jazz is improvisation, but however good the players are you can’t really have a number of first violins all improvising at the same time. The answer? Jazz-style “arrangements” that are written out and fully notated. The problem? The moment the notes are written down, they lose all sense of spontaneity and hence aren’t either straight renditions or true jazz performances. Classically-trained players are always going to maintain respect for the written note, but in jazz and swing music it’s not how it’s written, but how it’s played that is the crucial element. If you have any trouble appreciating this, then just listen to the numerous albums Stephane Grappelli made with Yehudi Menuhin, where Grappelli, with his inimitable invention allied to his impeccable technique, plays Menuhin – with his written-out parts – out of the studio, down the road, around the corner and completely out of sight.

There are some decent arrangements here, and some really good playing, but even with the addition of a trap drum set and also an electric bass on some tracks, the overwhelming impression is of classical players having fun, but also having problems really letting loose.

I’m not sure what market Naxos has in mind for this release, or for the subsequent volume of original material from 1991, Fever Pitch (8.5722835); they categorize it as “contemporary jazz” in their catalogue, but with the most recent tracks already 15 years old it’s not really either.

And, of course, when today’s players like Judy Kang can shred electric violin with Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball tour, cross-over playing is not such a ground-breaking concept any more.

Strings Attached continues at thewholenote.com with works for baroque guitar performed by David Russell, violin and piano by Stravinsky performed by Carolyn Huebl and Mark Wait, early violin concertos of Vieuxtemps featuring Chloë Hanslip, Cuban-inspired concertos composed and performed by Israeli violinist Ittai Shapira and some jazzy offerings from Marin Alsop’s all-star ensemble String Fever.