Early, Classical and Beyond

Bach – Keyboard Works
Hank Knox
EMCCD-7775
earlymusic.com

It took performers like Wanda Landowska — and more recently, William Christie and Kenneth Gilbert — to take the harpsichord out of the museum and put it into the concert hall or the recording studio. Among the instrument’s most recent champions is the Montreal-based performer and pedagogue Hank Knox, whose talents are admirably showcased on this recording on the earlymusic.com label featuring selected works by J.S. Bach.

Early keyboard instruments have been a big part of Knox’s life for many years. He studied harpsichord with Kenneth Gilbert in Paris and also at McGill University, where he currently directs the Early Music program. A founding member of the Arion Ensemble, Knox has also performed, toured and recorded with the Tafelmusik Baroque Ensemble and the Studio musique ancienne de Montréal, and this newest release is further evidence of his deep affinity for music from this period.

What a wonderful program this is! The disc features some of Bach’s most formidable works for solo keyboard, including the Toccata in E minor, the great Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, the Fantasia in C minor and the French Overture BWV831. From the opening chords of the Toccata, it’s clear to the listener that Knox is in full command of this repertoire, the playing confident and self assured. The challenging Chromatic Fantasy — a true “tour de force” among Bach’s solo compositions — displays not only his redoubtable technique, but also a deeply-rooted musicality.

Published in Leipzig in 1735, the Overture in the French Manner was undoubtedly Bach’s way of transferring the French orchestral suite to the keyboard. Knox has no difficulty in conveying the subtle nuances required of the music, from the stately “Ouverture” to the brisk “Echo,” bringing this most satisfying disc to a close.

Haydn – Symphonies 6 & 82;
Violin Concerto in G
Aisslinn Nosky;
Handel and Haydn Society;
Harry Christophers
CORO COR16113
handelandhaydn.org

The energy that emanates from this recent recording is palpable. Now in his fifth season as the artistic director of the venerable Handel and Haydn Society, the multi-talented conductor Harry Christophers brings a wonderfully rustic and open personality to this terrific CD, without losing one iota of elegance and charm.

The cover promises two symphonies and one concerto, but indeed the early Symphony No.6, written in 1761 at the beginning of Haydn’s illustrious career at the court of the Esterhazys, is less a symphony and more a “sinfonia concertante” featuring extensive and virtuosic solo work from many different areas of the orchestra. Christophers leads a brisk, smile-inducing performance of the piece, nicknamed “Le Matin” for its warm and evocative musical “sunrise” and generally perky spirit. Special mention goes to violinist Aisslinn Nosky, flutist Christopher Krueger and bassoonist Andrew Schwartz for their brilliant solo contributions.

Toronto-based Nosky, who has been the concertmaster/leader of the orchestra since 2012, moves front and centre for the Violin Concerto in G. Her trademark tone, technique and sense of abandon are present throughout this delightful and moving performance.

The crowning glory is Christophers’ powerful rendering of the Symphony No.82, written in the mid-1780s for performance in Paris. It’s an endlessly fascinating piece, full of contrast, humour, poignancy, sensuality and grandeur. Christophers and the orchestra give a detailed, lively and majestic performance, reminding us at every turn of Haydn’s inventiveness and wit.

Brahms – Piano Miniatures performed on a Johann Baptist Streicher fortepiano (1851)
Boyd McDonald
Doremi DDR71154/5

Veteran pianist, composer and musicologist Boyd McDonald, now professor emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo has, for the better part of his career, been exploring and performing on period pianos and their ancestors of the last 200 years. A former student of Nadia Boulanger and winner of the Leschetitzky Prize, McDonald is a recognized authority on Brahms’ own instrument made by Johann Streicher in 1851, on which instrument he has now released this set of Brahms miniatures.

While I find his performances are pleasant, the raison d’être of this set is to reveal to modern ears the instrument that Brahms himself used, as did Schumann and others. For historical reasons, this is an important documentation of a chapter in the development of the keyboard instruments. Compared to the modern piano, the sound is slim and percussive and so may not be to everyone’s taste. Heard are Four Ballades, Op.10; Two Rhapsodies, Op.79 and shorter works opp. 76, 116, 117, 118 and 119.

Schubert – Piano Sonatas D664 and D894
Janina Fialkowska
ATMA ACD 22681

These two sonatas are dissimilar works, coming as they do from very different periods in Schubert’s life, albeit only seven years apart. The earlier Sonata in A Major is thoroughly pleasant with familiar echoes of Mozart and Haydn throughout. Altogether, it’s a finely crafted piece with a conventional three-movement structure and competently developed ideas.

While this description sounds bland, the beauty of Fialkowska’s approach is that she actually understands this and refuses to make more of the sonata than it deserves. Instead, she plays each movement with a strict no-nonsense approach leaving aside the over-romanticized interpretations attempted by some other pianists. She finds just the right balance between the technical requirements of the music and the smaller but clearly still-emerging voice of the composer in this musical form.

In the second sonata (G major) Fialkowska acknowledges the more substantial content. Here, Schubert places technical demands in greater service of the music’s development allowing the performer new heights of invention and emotion. The opening movement is huge and Fialkowska plays it with a sustained commitment to holding its thematic ideas together until the triple forte ending.

The succeeding slow movement weaves a tender melody around a more stormy response which Fialkowska never allows to grow out of control. After a light dance movement, she plays through a fourth and final movement that ends quietly with a tasteful sense of anti-climax.

Throughout both sonatas, Fialkowska’s seasoned touch is a tribute to her mature understanding of Schubert’s actual intentions. Fialkowska’s Schubert is the real McCoy.

Strauss – Josephslegende; Love Scene from Feuersnot; Festmarsch
Royal Scottish National Orchestra;
Neeme Järvi
Chandos CHSA 5120

Richard Strauss, reigning overlord of the orchestral tone poem and emerging monarch of the operatic stage at the turn of the century, had been seriously intrigued by the prospect of writing a ballet since 1900, partly because, as he confided to his parents, “One does not have to worry about singers and can storm about in the orchestra.”

In 1912 he witnessed a sensational performance of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Berlin and, through his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the diplomat Count Harry Kessler, arranged a commission from the celebrated troupe. The end result was a gargantuan, 65-minute pantomime (subtitled “Action in One Act”) with an incredibly detailed scenario based on the biblical episode of Joseph’s enslavement at the Egyptian court by Potiphar, updated to the era of the Venetian Renaissance for the sake of sumptuous costuming. The central role of Joseph was designed for the stupendously talented Vaslav Nijinsky, though by the time of the premiere Strauss was disappointed to learn that Diaghilev had dismissed him after a lover’s quarrel and replaced him with Léonide Massine. Strauss himself conceded that while composing the work he felt frustrated with the “boring” piety of the saintly young Joseph and the angel that guards him but even so his score roars to life with his grandly erotic depictions of the suicidal attempts by Potiphar’s wife to seduce the reluctant underage Israelite. Sadly for Strauss and all concerned, the 1914 Parisian premiere was swiftly followed by the onset of the Great War and the ballet fell into obscurity.

Josephslegende demands such an immense orchestra that stagings of the work are quite rare and there are precious few recordings available (notably by Sinopoli and Iván Fischer) for comparison. This compelling new performance by Neeme Järvi, conductor laureate of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, is a welcome addition, plushly recorded by Chandos in a hybrid SACD format. Two brief works, an orchestral excerpt from the early opera Feuersnot and the juvenile Festmarsch Op.1 (composed at the age of 12!) fill out the disc. Though Josephslegende is perhaps not among the composer’s greatest achievements, the sheer orchestral magnificence of this little-known score is immensely captivating.