Editor's Corner

DISCoveries - Editor's Corner - November 2009

01_krenek I wonder if it is in the very nature of string orchestra music to be lush. A case in point is the otherwise austere music of Austrian 12-tone composer Ernst Krenek (1900-1991). Ernst Kovacic and the Leopoldinum Orchestra of Wroclaw, Poland have just released Symphonic Elegy – Works for String Orchestra (Capriccio 5033), a collection of Krenek’s compositions from the middle years of his long career. Rather than the angular, atonal fare we might expect from a proponent of serial techniques of composition, to my ear the six works included here are all quite warm and lyrical. The earliest work is also the latest, in the form of a 1960s arrangement of the Adagio and Fugue movements of the sixth string quartet dating from 1936. The quartet was written at a time when Krenek was in close contact with Anton Webern, who he considered to be “one of the most important composers of all times: Music of a crystal clear perfection.” While strongly influenced by Webern, that master’s miniature approach is not in evidence here – with movements lasting about 8 minutes each. Krenek left Austria in 1938 and settled in the USA. It was there that he heard of Webern’s death in 1945 (fatally shot by an American soldier in the final days of the war in a tragic case of mistaken identity) and composed the Symphonic Elegy in his memory. The work is marked Allegro and is more of a celebration than a mournful cry. The disc includes two collections of short movements – Seven Easy/Light Pieces and Five Short Pieces for Strings – which are more akin to Webern’s architecture, if not his pointillist aesthetic. The final work is the Sinfonietta a Brasileira written on a visit to Rio de Janeiro in 1952. I found myself expecting to hear something reminiscent of the flamboyant music of Villa-Lobos, but other than a few moments of rhythmic motor activity which the liner notes tell us actually refer back to an earlier period of Krenek’s development rather than folk influences, there is nothing particularly suggestive of South America in this work. These fine performances present a very thorough picture of one aspect of this prolific and rarely heard composer, but although all of the pieces are worthy of note, at nearly 80 minutes I found a bit too much sameness in the CD when taken all at once.

02_alain_lefevre Alain Lefèvre continues to champion the music of André Mathieu with his latest release Concertino & Concertos (Analekta AN 2 9283) which also features music of Shostakovich and Mendelssohn. Mathieu’s concert career began at the age of six and at twelve he premiered his Concertino No. 2 (his Op.13!) with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. That work went on to win the New York Philharmonic Competition which led to Mathieu’s 1942 performance of the Concertino at Carnegie Hall. His star continued to rise throughout the 1940s but then waned. He had a tragically short and troubled life (1929-1968) and at the time of his death his creative triumphs were already long behind him. It is the abovementioned Concertino which opens this disc. The stunning virtuosic three movement work shows a maturity that belies the age of its creator. Lefèvre is accompanied by the London Mozart Players led by Matthias Bamert. The recording also includes brilliant performances of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto (with Paul Archibald, trumpet) - I had forgotten how the early Shostakovich concerto presages the final work in his orchestral oeuvre, Symphony No. 15 and its extensive use of quotation – and Mendelssohn’s rarely heard Double Concerto with the pianist’s brother David Lefèvre on violin. All in all an exhilarating addition to the catalogue.

03_brahms_symkjphonies EMI has just released Brahms – The Symphonies, a 3CD set with Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker (2 67254 2). Brahms’ Symphony No. 1, or as it is affectionately known, “Beethoven’s 10^th”, is one of the pillars of the symphonic repertoire for me and I must confess that repeated listening to it is as far as I have got with this new cycle. While it will likely not replace my “desert island” pick of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic on an old DG digitally recorded LP – I do hope there will be a turntable on that fabled isle - I find Sir Simon’s majestic performance well balanced and well paced. The sound of the orchestra is glorious, captured in its natural habitat of the Philharmonie last October and November. My resolution? One of these days to start at disc two of this set so that I may get past the fabulous first and explore the other three symphonies on offer here.

04_frienly_rich Orchestration is a fine art and a piano piece which has tempted the hand of a number of masterful orchestrators since its creation in 1874 is Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Wikipedia lists some 30 arrangements for orchestra and more than 80 for other forces thus far, and Ontario composer Richard Marsella – AKA Friendly Rich – has just thrown his hat into the ring (Pumpkin Pie Corporation PPCD006). Although I have obviously not heard all of the others, I can’t help thinking that this Looney Tunes-like arrangement for the forces of the Lollipop People (percussion; trombone & euphonium; synthesizer; kazoo; toy piano, piano & harpsichord; bassoon & penny whistle; clarinets; accordion; harp; electric guitar; drums and electric bass) must be among the most unusual. Particularly effective for me is the extensive use of bassoon (Jeffrey Burke), especially in combination with harpsichord (Gregory Oh) and accordion (Kimberley Pritchard). Friendly Rich certainly has an ear for remarkable tone colours and the instrumentation changes substantially from movement to movement. Perhaps the wackiest is the Cum mortuis in lingua mortu with vocalizations by guests Paul Dutton and Christine Duncan. I must confess however that I find the coarse surprise ending of the otherwise effective finale, The Great Gate of Kiev, disconcerting and a little disappointing. Concert Note: You can experience the full force of Friendly Rich’s bizarre interpretation of Pictures at an Exhibition for yourself at the CD launch at the Tranzac Club on Saturday November 7^th.

We welcome your feedback and invite submissions. CDs and comments should be sent to: The WholeNote, 503 – 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4. We also encourage you to visit our website, , where you can find added features including weekly CD giveaways, direct links to performers, composers and record labels, “buy buttons” for on-line shopping and additional and archival reviews.

David Olds

DISCoveries Editor

discoveries@thewholenote.com

DISCoveries Editor's Corner - October 2009

01_dedicated_to_haydn 2009 is the bicentenary of the death of Joseph Haydn and to mark the occasion the Haydn Festival Eisenstadt (seat of Haydn’s patrons the Esterhazy family) commissioned piano trios by 18 composers for the festival’s resident ensemble, the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt. While D2H -Dedicated To Haydn (Capriccio 7020) is described as a “global composition project”, it is in fact quite Euro - and more particularly - Austro-centric, with 6 composers from Austria, 6 more from Europe (U.K., Spain, Belgium, Germany, Hungary and France) and 6 from the rest of the world (China, Japan, U.S.A., South Africa, Argentina and Australia). Canada is included in a peripheral way – South African composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen, who spent a number of years in Toronto as director of Musica Noir, contributed Two Nguni Dances to the collection. As well as geographical spread, there is also a broad spectrum of ages represented here with birth years ranging from 1926 (Betsy Jolas) to 1976 (Gernot Schedlberger). With almost three hours of diverse offerings, this multi-disc set kept me busy for most of the month. The range of styles is vast, from quite conservative works by John Woolrich and Xiaogang Ye to the thoroughly modern from José Maria Sánchez-Verdù, Màrton Illès and Elisabeth Harnik, with plenty of adventures in between. Although there is a dearth of biographical information, each of the pieces does have a note by the composer explaining the (sometimes quite tenuous) link to Haydn. But I also enjoyed listening “blind” as it were, trying to guess how the music related to the master, or which part of the world the composer was from, sometimes with quite erroneous results. For instance I knew there was a piece by an Australian composer, so when I heard something that to my ear was reminiscent of the Aboriginal-inspired music of Peter Sculthorpe I had an “ah ha” moment. It turned into a “ha ha” though when I checked to find I was actually listening to KAGETSU – Etude on the name of Haydn by Yui Kakinuma (Japan). Mind you when I did get to Australian Elena Kats-Chenin’s Calliope Dreaming its repetitive dance-like motifs again sent my thoughts “down under” notwithstanding the fact that all the themes were evidently drawn from Haydn’s “Mourning Symphony” and the composer spent the first half of her life in Uzbekistan. The music that is most obviously reminiscent of Haydn came from two composers known for their humour, American William Bolcom and German Dieter Schnebel. Bolcom’s HAYDN GO SEEK pays homage to some of Haydn’s famous rondos and in the words of the composer intends to “play a constant game of surprise throughout, in as Haydnesque a fashion as I could muster from two centuries remove.” Schnebel is known for his theatrics and in a reverse take on the “Surprise Symphony” the first sounds we hear are the footsteps of the musicians and a few offstage notes as they approach the performance area. What follows is a de-construction of the finale from Haydn’s string quartet “The Joke” (Op.33, No.2) replete with spiccato bowing in the violin, pizzicato from the cello, pointillist piano chording and intermittent hissing and shushing from all concerned. Other tracks of note include Lalo Schifrin’s lush and lilting (and somewhat deceptively titled) Elegy and Meditation and Ah Haydn by Betsy Jolas. This last was of particular interest to me as I had been impressed by several of this French composer’s works in my formative years, but had not encountered any of her music in more than three decades. I was pleased to note that she is still active and that her music has not lost its edge. The Haydn Trio Eisenstadt was founded in 1992 and the current membership has been in place for just over a decade. As well as their residency at the Haydn Festival they have a very busy and successful recording career, with complete recordings of Haydn’s folksong arrangements (18 CDs on the Brilliant label) and the complete piano trios of Haydn, Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven. “Dedicated To Haydn” is their second foray into the realm of the contemporary and quite an extensive one at that. Kudos to all concerned.

02_haydn_quartets The Capriccio label mentioned above is distributed by Naxos and it is to the Naxos catalogue that I tend to turn when I find a glaring hole in my collection. For instance although I have several dozen Haydn string quartets, when I wanted to listen to “The Joke” as referenced by Dieter Schnebel I found I did not have a recording. As I suspected it was easy to track it down. Haydn’s “Russian” String Quartets Op.33 are available in fine performances by the Kodàly Quartet on two CDs (Naxos 8.550788 & 8.550789) and once again I was able to fill in a gap in my collection without breaking the bank. It is not just the affordable prices and good to very good performances that make the Naxos line attractive to me, but even more important is the fact that their ever-expanding and ever-more adventurous catalogue is already complete when it comes to the standard repertoire and that everything stays in the catalogue and remains readily available. It is no wonder that Naxos has become the most successful purveyor of classical music of our time.

Editors Corner - October 2009

This month I have the pleasure of welcoming two new members of the DISCoveries team, free-lance writer Michael Schwartz who is an Early Music aficionado, and well known Toronto Jazz commentator Geoff Chapman. Mr. Schwartz has chosen an oboe-centric recording of music from the court of Frederick the Great for his maiden voyage and Mr. Chapman takes us on a tour of recent piano-based jazz releases. This latter is a theme repeated in our Classical reviews as well, with four solo piano discs and a collection of pretty much the entire standard repertoire of the Piano Quartet. But for me, September has turned out to be the Month of the Piano Trio.

2009 is the bicentenary of the death of Joseph Haydn and to mark the occasion the Haydn Festival Eisenstadt (seat of Haydn’s patrons the Esterhazy family) commissioned piano trios by 18 composers for the festival’s resident ensemble, the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt. While Dedicated To Haydn (Capriccio 7020) is described as a “global composition project”, it is in fact quite Euro - and more particularly - Austro-centric, with 6 composers from Austria, 6 more from Europe (U.K., Spain, Belgium, Germany, Hungary and France) and 6 from the rest of the world (China, Japan, U.S.A., South Africa, Argentina and Australia). Canada is included in a peripheral way – South African composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen, who spent a number of years in Toronto as director of Musica Noir, contributed Two Nguni Dances to the collection. As well as geographical spread, there is also a broad spectrum of ages represented here with birth years ranging from 1926 (Betsy Jolas) to 1976 (Gernot Schedlberger).

With almost three hours of diverse offerings, this multi-disc set kept me busy for most of the month. The range of styles is vast, from quite conservative works by John Woolrich and Xiaogang Ye to the thoroughly modern from José Maria Sánchez-Verdù, Màrton Illès and Elisabeth Harnik, with plenty of adventures in between. Although there is a dearth of biographical information, each of the pieces does have a note by the composer explaining the (sometimes quite tenuous) link to Haydn. But I also enjoyed listening “blind” as it were, trying to guess how the music related to the master, or which part of the world the composer was from, sometimes with quite erroneous results. For instance I knew there was a piece by an Australian composer, so when I heard something that to my ear was reminiscent of the Aboriginal-inspired music of Peter Sculthorpe I had an “ah ha” moment. It turned into a “ha ha” though when I checked to find I was actually listening to KAGETSU – Etude on the name of Haydn by Yui Kakinuma (Japan). Mind you when I did get to Australian Elena Kats-Chenin’s Calliope Dreaming its repetitive dance-like motifs again sent my thoughts “down under” notwithstanding the fact that all the themes were evidently drawn from Haydn’s “Mourning Symphony” and the composer spent the first half of her life in Uzbekistan. The music that is most obviously reminiscent of Haydn came from two composers known for their humour, American William Bolcom and German Dieter Schnebel. Bolcom’s HAYDN GO SEEK pays homage to some of Haydn’s famous rondos and in the words of the composer intends to “play a constant game of surprise throughout, in as Haydnesque a fashion as I could muster from two centuries remove.” Schnebel is known for his theatrics and in a reverse take on the “Surprise Symphony” the first sounds we hear are the footsteps of the musicians and a few offstage notes as they approach the performance area. What follows is a de-construction of the finale from Haydn’s string quartet “The Joke” (Op.33, No.2) replete with spiccato bowing in the violin, pizzicato from the cello, pointillist piano chording and intermittent hissing and shushing from all concerned. Other tracks of note include Lalo Schifrin’s lush and lilting (and somewhat deceptively titled) Elegy and Meditation and Ah Haydn by Betsy Jolas. This last was of particular interest to me as I had been impressed by several of this French composer’s works in my formative years, but had not encountered any of her music in more than three decades. I was pleased to note that she is still active and that her music has not lost its edge.

The Haydn Trio Eisenstadt was founded in 1992 and the current membership has been in place for just over a decade. As well as their residency at the Haydn Festival they have a very busy and successful recording career, with complete recordings of Haydn’s folksong arrangements (18 CDs on the Brilliant label) and the complete piano trios of Haydn, Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven. “Dedicated To Haydn” is their second foray into the realm of the contemporary and quite an extensive one at that. Kudos to all concerned.

We welcome your feedback and invite submissions. CDs and comments should be sent to: The WholeNote, 503 – 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4.