Notes and Editorial Reviews
This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
3251560.az_MARTIN_Polyptyque_1_Passacaille.html
MARTIN
Polyptyque.
1
Passacaille. Harpsichord Concerto
•
Jac van Steen, cond; Willi Zimmermann (vn);
1
Rudolf Scheidegger (hpd); Winterthur Collegium
•
MDG 901 1539 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 60:32)
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This may be the first candidate for next year’s Want List. The more of Frank Martin’s music I have experienced over a period of some 40 years, the more profoundly it has spoken to me. Martin, a Swiss composer (1890–1974), had a unique and deeply personal musical style. It combined Schoenberg’s 12-tone method with tonality, and it combined rhythmic incisiveness and toughness with a seemingly contradictory flowing lyricism. How he blended these opposites into a cohesive and communicative music whole is the secret of his genius. There is one other recording currently available of
Polyptyque
, but I have not heard it and had not encountered the piece before. It is scored for violin and two small string orchestras, and was written for Yehudi Menuhin and Edmond de Stoutz and his Zurich Chamber Orchestra in 1973 shortly before the composer’s death.
Polyptyque
is religiously inspired (as was much of Martin’s work), based on a set of small panels by Duccio representing episodes of the Passion. The work contains some of Martin’s most lyrically beautiful and meditative music, along with contrasting episodes with a wide variety of tensions and, to use Martin’s own word, frictions. Martin’s own program notes for the piece are included with this CD, and the performance is absolutely shimmering. This is a major find, and I recommend it with complete, unreserved enthusiasm.
The Passacaglia (given in French by the composer as “Passacaille”) was composed in 1944 for organ solo, and arranged by Martin in 1952 for string orchestra. He gets some remarkably organ-like sonorities out of a string orchestra. The composer himself points to the obvious influence of Bach’s C-Minor Passacaglia for organ. This is not, for me, as strong a work as
Polyptyque
, though it is still effective and engaging.
The Harpschord Concerto is, like
Polyptyque
, a vital, engaging, and highly varied work. One of Martin’s most famous pieces is his Symphonie concertante for harpsichord, piano, harp, and strings. Here, he focuses his attention on the brittle, metallic nature (again to use his term) of the harpsichord against a chamber orchestra. The nature of this music is very different from
Polyptyque
. Where that piece was meditative and spiritual, this is spiky and witty, although not without its beauties as well.
All of the performances are excellent. The soloists and orchestra execute the music well, and nothing sounds like an under-rehearsed reading. They all seem into the music and determined to communicate its value to the listener. The recorded sound is extremely natural and warm when heard in two-channel stereo. The accompanying notes are extremely helpful. All in all, a real winner.
FANFARE: Henry Fogel
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Works on This Recording
1.
Passacaglia for Organ by Frank Martin
Conductor:
Jac Van Steen
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Winterthur Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1944; Switzerland
2.
Polyptyque "6 images de la Passion du Christ" by Frank Martin
Performer:
Willi Zimmermann (Violin)
Conductor:
Jac Van Steen
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Winterthur Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1972-1973; Switzerland
3.
Concerto for Harpsichord by Frank Martin
Performer:
Rudolf Scheidegger (Harpsichord)
Conductor:
Jac Van Steen
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Winterthur Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1952; Switzerland
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