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SaleThe Sweetest Songs: Music From The Baldwin Partbooks III / Rees, Contrapunctus
Signum Classics · Feb 2021CD$19.99$9.99 -
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Ballard: Works for Orchestra / Jeter, Fort Smith Symphony
Learn more about this recording on the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast!
Louis Wayne Ballard was the first indigenous North American composer of art music and a highly respected authority on his culture’s musical heritage. Conductor John Jeter and the Forth Smith Symphony continue their Naxos journey of rediscovering neglected American composers in a program of world premiere recordings.
REVIEW:
The conductor John Jeter could be categorized as an angelic force for overlooked American music. Here, he and his Fort Smith Symphony are back for an invaluable hour in the company of the Native American composer Louis Wayne Ballard, whose music has yet to receive substantial interest from record labels.
The first three movements from “Scenes From Indian Life,” written in 1963, have an unassuming playfulness. (The fourth movement, appended in 1994, takes on a graver cast.) But the longer pieces are even more impressive. Selections from Ballard’s ballet “The Four Moons” could pair well with Bernstein’s “Fancy Free” suite. The tone-poem writing of Ballard’s Fantasy Aborigine No. 3, “Kokopelli” could lend an American air to an orchestral program featuring music by Strauss.
The singing wind, brass, and string lines threaded throughout his “Devil’s Promenande” are captivating, too. While the playing here is persuasive as per usual, I also came away from this album hoping to hear Ballard’s music taken up by orchestras far and wide.
-- New York Times (Seth Colter Walls)
Bruckner: Symphony No 3 / Wildner, Westphalia New Po
Wildner's conviction is immediately apparent in the first movement: Listen as he builds the opening's two great climaxes with arresting force, then infuses the following lyrical second subject with an ingratiating warmth. Fine as the first movement is, it's actually the Adagio and Finale that benefit most from Wildner's probing conducting, as both movements sound with a rare formal coherence married to dramatic impact. As a bonus, the first disc of this double set also includes the composer's intermediate version (1876) of the Adagio.
Bruckner's 1889 revision of the symphony is controversial for its sometimes ungainly melding of his early and late styles, as well as for the cuts--reportedly influenced by Franz Schalk--that gouge out large portions of the finale. However, Wildner miraculously smooths out the symphony's rough edges by adopting swift tempos (the first movement now has lost nearly four minutes), streamlined phrasing, and light textures; he also imparts an early-romantic, almost Mendelssohnian feel that makes this last version sound paradoxically like the earliest, contemporaneous with the Second Symphony.
The Westphalia New Philharmonic members perform with the same enthusiasm and expertise they displayed in their recording of the Ninth Symphony. And though the strings still don't match the richness of their world-class competition, the brass project more boldly and surely than before, and the orchestra as a whole cultivates an authentic yet distinctive Bruckner sound. Naxos' recording offers impressive clarity and dynamic range, though the dry hall acoustic doesn't provide much warmth. No matter--the heat generated by Wildner and his players more than compensates. [2/21/2004]
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com
Babel - Schumann, Shaw, Shostakovich / Calidore String Quartet
The desire to explore the innate human drive for communication is the focus of Babel. For this recording the Calidore String Quartet gathered music which transmits ideas by imitating language; its rhythms, cadences and intentions. But it also explores what happens when music substitutes for language. When it fills the void of forbidden speech or even how it carries on when language has been exhausted. The result, a compilation of quartets by Schumann, Shostakovich, and Caroline Shaw, demonstrates the visceral forms of expression that exist at the intersection of music and language. The Calidore String Quartet has been praised by The New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” and the Los Angeles Times for its balance of “intellect and expression.” Recipient of a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, the Calidore String Quartet first made international headlines as winner of the inaugural $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition. The quartet was the first North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, and is currently in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two).
REVIEW:
The Schumann comes across beautifully, with plenty of tender, intimate inner dialogue and a fine feeling for Schumann’s left-field attitude to conventional form. Maybe there could be more subversive humour, but it’s still refreshing to hear this marvellous, still under-appreciated music treated with such understanding and obvious affection.
Like many contemporary pieces, Caroline Shaw’s Three Essays comes with a detailed programme, but it’s perfectly possible to enjoy it just as abstract music: playful, heartfelt, exuberant and always surprising enough to hold the attention. The playing is as strong and persuasive here as in the Schumann.
As for the Shostakovich, the overall conception is very impressive, each of the linked movements growing out of the previous one with a powerful sense of inevitability. The control of the two/three-in-a-bar rhythmic games in the finale is particularly well brought off. Where it’s slightly weaker – strange, given the disc’s declared intentions – is in that urgent, impassioned directness that characterises the finest Shostakovich quartet performances. Expressive and shapely as they are, the solo lines don’t sound as though they’re burning, aching to confide in you.
This is quality quartet playing, sympathetically recorded, but in the Shostakovich it just falls a couple of inches short of excellent.
-- BBC Music Magazine
Weinberg: Complete Violin Sonatas, Vol. 3 / Csányi-Wills, Kalnits
If Mieczyslaw Weinberg had lived for another decade or so after his death in 1996, he would have seen his status change from poorly known outlier to general acceptance as one of the major twentieth-century composers. His violin works have likewise been recognized as major additions to the repertoire. Since Yuri Kalnits and Michael Csányi-Wills began what will be a four-volume survey of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s music for violin and piano, other musicians have discovered and recorded many of these masterworks, but on its completion this cycle will still be the first to record all of Weinberg’s works for solo violin and violin and piano.
REVIEW:
The most ingratiating music comes right at the start, with the first movement Allegro moderato of the Violin Sonata No.3 from 1947. Its four minutes begin with a lyrical theme of varying phrase lengths which the players keep flowing as it were “in one breath”. The fugato style second subject is a perkier counterweight and the sonata form progression is coherently delivered, and the lowish emotional temperature feels just right as there are two movements each twice the length of this one to come. The Andantino is cooler still, and David Fanning’s booklet note informs us that the additional phrase for that marking molto rubato and all other expression marks were removed by Weinberg, so that the players could find their own way of presenting the flexibility he wanted. He could certainly trust this pair whose interpretation makes much of the movement sound questing and improvisatory.
The Allegretto cantabile finale has clear Shostakovich chamber music echoes, as Fanning mentions, specifically the klezmer elements. In fact, in his book on Weinberg, Fanning cites this work of being “one of the comparatively few…that bear out the criticism that (Weinberg) occasionally sought shelter in the shadow of Shostakovich” and mentions “near-literal borrowings”. Nonetheless most of it is still quite individual, not least the slow violin cadenza that closes the work, in which Yuri Kalnits is very commanding.
The other violin and piano sonata here, Weinberg’s sixth and last, was discovered only in 2007, twenty years after the composer’s death, and given the opus number 136bis. Its fifteen-minute single movement, on the template Moderato - Allegro – Moderato – Allegro, opens with a long violin solo. David Fanning notes its similarity to the bell theme in the finale of Rachmaninov’s First Suite for Two Pianos, and although bells often resound in Russian music from Boris Godunov to Stravinsky’s late Requiem Canticles, not many are found in a violin solo! The piano does not enter until two minutes in, and then has its own long solo at the end of this opening Moderato. This is almost texture as three-part form – solo violin, piano and violin duo, then solo piano. Whether playing together or alone, Kalnits and Csanyi-Wills hold the attention throughout this spare and haunting piece.
Arguably the most important work on the disc is the one-movement Sonata No. 3 for Solo Violin from 1979, dedicated to Weinberg’s father. Its nearly twenty-four minute continuous span make for a demanding listen, but Kalnits’s excellent performance makes a persuasive case.
-- MusicWeb International
STEPPING OUT (JUSTIN TIME ESSENTIALS COLLECTION)
The Sweetest Songs: Music From The Baldwin Partbooks III / Rees, Contrapunctus
The richest single source of Tudor polyphony, preserving almost 170 works many of which survive nowhere else, is a set of manuscript partbooks copied between about 1575 and 1581 by John Baldwin, a lay clerk at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. This album is the third and final installment in a series of recordings by Contrapunctus exploring contrasting aspects of this remarkable treasure house of sacred music covering much of the sixteenth century. Owen Rees is both performer and scholar, his scholarship consistently informing his performances. Through his extensive work as a choral director, he has brought to the concert hall and recording studio substantial repertories of magnificent Renaissance and Baroque music, including many previously unknown or little-known works from Portugal and Spain. His interpretations of these repertories have been acclaimed as ‘rare examples of scholarship and musicianship combining to result in performances that are both impressive and immediately attractive to the listener’, and he has been described as ‘one of the most energetic and persuasive voices’ in this field.
Bach: Keyboard Works / Jacob Katsnelson
BACH Suite in a, BWV 818a. Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother, BWV 992. 3-Part Sinfonias, BWV 787–801. Prelude and Fugue in b, BWV 544 (arr. Liszt) • Jacob Katsnelson (pn) • QUARTZ 2084 (59:40)
At first I couldn’t place him, but I knew that somewhere I’d met Jacob Katsnelson before. Then it hit me. He was the pianist who accompanied Maxim Rysanov in a couple of numbers on a two-disc Onyx set of Brahms’s chamber works in viola transcriptions, reviewed in Fanfare 32: 5. Frankly, my focus was so centered on Rysanov that I didn’t pay much attention to Katsnelson at the time.
He was born in Moscow in 1976, entered the Moscow Conservatory in 1993, and since 2001 has taught at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He has soloed throughout Russia, as well as in Austria, Germany, Spain, and France, done the competition thing, won prizes, participated in festivals, and yada yada. By now it’s an old and familiar story: Gifted youngster enters conservatory, wows competition judges and talent scout, lands recording contract, and makes it big on the international concert scene.
Sometimes, the big splash dissipates in receding ripples on the pond; other times, not. I can’t say what will happen with Katsnelson in the long term; I can only register my reaction to his playing in the here and now, and that reaction is overwhelmingly positive. This is one of the most satisfying Bach recitals on piano to come my way in a long time.
To begin with, as I’ve made clear in the past, when I listen to Bach on piano, I don’t want the artist to apologize for the instrument by playing it as if it were a harpsichord. There’s no hint of that with Katsnelson. He uses the full range of the piano’s dynamic, sustaining, and expressive potential. And his instrument, amusingly credited in the booklet as “a regular piano”—I presume to distinguish it from a fortepiano—is a concert grand, model E-272, from Bayreuth maker Steingraeber & Son, a magnificent specimen if I may say so.
Further research on the company’s website reveals a number of interesting details and specifications about this new instrument: “Unique features include the unusual shape of the sound-reflecting rims, the combined star-shaped and half-timbered braces, and the ‘incredibly agreeable’ (Cyprien Katsaris) touch. The most uncommon feature, however, is the shape of the soundboard in the treble. The resonating space was newly reconstructed, based on the classical relationship between [short] string length and resonating space. Steingraeber strings have 27 percent less wood mass to penetrate than comparable instruments by other piano builders! The result is a tone that is present and singing, even in softer passages.”
The part about softer passages is true. Katsnelson’s pianissimos diminuendo to a whisper. But there’s no compromise in fullness of tone, resonance, or raw power. The recording, made in 2009 at the Steingraeber studio, could serve as a standard against which recorded reproduction of piano sound is measured. Intimate, as in a private music room, yet acoustically alive and vibrant, every subtlety of the instrument’s complex palette is captured and projected with amazing lifelike presence. It stands to reason, of course, that a piano manufacturing firm would design and engineer a perfect acoustic space in which to conduct painstaking measurements and tests of its products. This is the high-tech world of attaching scopes and computers to the sounding board and of analyzing streams of ones and zeros. In this case, it worked wonders.
All would be for naught, of course, if Katsnelson didn’t know his way around Bach, but he does. There are some performance idiosyncrasies, like the tendency to roll chords at cadences, that purists may find objectionable, but in general Katsnelson’s approach is not of the romantic persuasion. He avoids grand ritards and other sins of exaggerated point-making. He does, however, as noted, make full use of the piano’s dynamic range and sustaining power, which means that he crescendos and decrescendos and applies pedals where it makes musical sense to do so. The result is a transparency of voicing that allows every strand of Bach’s counterpoint to be heard with pellucid precision.
For lack of a better term, I’d describe Katsnelson’s tempos as temperate. Fast movements are set within sane ranges of the metronome’s upper regions, an indication that Katnelson is not interested in promoting himself as a virtuosic marvel at the expense of Bach. And slow movements are not pondered and pestered to the point of prostration, an indication that Katnelson does not approach Bach with an attitude of affected reverence that can come across as so much pious posturing. No, Katsnelson’s Bach is refreshingly straightforward and superbly executed. This gets a very strong recommendation.
FANFARE: Jerry Dubins
MERCURY MASTERS: THE MONO RECORDINGS
Eberl: Piano Sonata Op. 27; Variations / Marie-luise Hinrichs
EBERL Piano Sonata in g, op. 27 . 12 Variations in D. 10 Variations in E? • Marie-Luise Hinrichs (pn) • CPO 7776052 (53:27)
Present-day appreciation of the music of the prolific Viennese composer Anton Eberl (1765–1807) probably lags behind our awareness of his friendship and musical association with Mozart, and, for a time, his public rivalry with Beethoven. Eberl’s Symphony in E? was favorably compared by at least one Vienna critic to the “Eroica,” which was composed around the same time, and premiered on the same concert.
Eberl’s Grand Sonata in G Minor, op. 27, was published in 1805, a few months prior to Beethoven’s “Waldstein,” and dedicated to Cherubini. It’s an ambitious work whose first movement sounds almost nothing like Mozart‘s keyboard music—though its key and dramatic mood show the influence of the 40th Symphony—and not essentially like Beethoven’s, though each movement’s large dimensions may reflect his influence. Rather, the sonata’s textures, which are thicker than Mozart’s, along with its frequent, quick changes between major and minor, and its overall lyrical impulse, remind me a great deal of Schubert’s early piano sonatas, which it predates, as well as the more harmonically experimental passages in some of Dussek’s. In fact, it’s a better piece than the sonatas that Schubert composed before 1817, operating on a grander scale, and holding consistent interest throughout its three movements. The second movement operates like an early Beethoven slow movement, with florid lines that look toward Weber. The work’s high quality is maintained in its third movement, a large form, one of whose motives echoes the Haydn B-Minor Sonata, but whose sweep looks forward to Mendelssohn, with a dose of Beethovenian humor at the close. This is not to say that the music feels derivative. Repeated hearing of the piece has increased my respect for it, and especially in the first movement, Eberl is a composer with something of emotional import to impart, in a voice that’s his own.
The Variations recorded here are a set of 12 in D, based on an appealing theme by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, the Arietta Freudin sanfter Herzenstriebe , and a set of 10 in E? based on a similarly good-natured theme by the Singspiel composer Ignaz Umlauf, Zu Steffen sprach im Traume , the latter set supposedly held in great esteem by Mozart, and attributed to him many early editions. Here Eberl’s assured keyboard writing might be mistaken for Beethoven’s in many of his early variation sets. Eberl’s variations stick close to the original themes. The music is cheerful, workmanlike, but not terribly interesting. (Come to think of it, that description fits most of Haydn’s keyboard variations, excepting the F-Minor set, the majority of Mozart’s, and Beethoven’s, before he began to experiment with thematic transformation.)
The advocacy of a pianist who plays as well as Marie-Luise Hinrichs is just what is needed to elevate a second-rank composer like Eberl into the category of one whose music should be heard. Her playing is flexible, sensitive, tasteful, and persuasive in every way. She has the ability to communicate warmth of feeling, and if there are other Eberl works that are on the same high level as the G-Minor Sonata, I would enjoy hearing her play them. There’s a 3-CD set of Eberl’s keyboard music that includes the G-Minor Sonata, played by John Khouri on Music and Arts, the recorded sound of whose fortepiano does the music no favors. CPO provides Hinrichs’s modern instrument with flattering sound.
FANFARE: Paul Orgel
Boccherini: String Quartets Op 32 No 3-6 /Quartetto Borciani
This delightful disc presents absolutely first-rate performances of chamber music that deserves to be much better known. There are two reasons that Boccherini's music hasn't worn as well as Haydn's or Mozart's. First, his prevailing mode of gentle graciousness precludes the kind of emotional depth and drama that the two Viennese masters routinely write into their instrumental music. Second (and related to the first point), Boccherini writes marvelously varied expositions--witness the C major (Op. 32 No. 4) quartet's opening Allegro bizzarro--but uneventful developments. In short, his music isn't as well sustained or as purposeful as Haydn's or Mozart's, but it's also not as lengthy or ambitious, so within its given parameters there's some wonderful writing, and the Quartetto Borciani plays these quartets for all they're worth. In particular, they characterize the opening movements with as much gusto as the music can take. Even the initial Allegro comodo of the tepidly genial G minor quartet (Op. 32 No. 5) moves purposefully forward, while the same work's final Capriccio ad libitum captures the players (and the composer) in full fantastic flight. By contrast, slow movements are marvelously sustained and possess a genuinely Italianate singing tone--as in the heavenly and impressively large-scale Adagio from the D major quartet (Op. 32 No. 3). In sum, you won't easily hear a more persuasive case being made for this music, and Naxos' sonics are top-drawer. Come and explore! --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
Dvořák: Der Jakobiner / Albrecht, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln
REVIEW:
Orfeo's ongoing series of major Dvorák operas and choral works constitutes a genuinely important contribution to the history of recordings, and I hope that it will continue as successfully as it has to this point. There is no other way to get fully acceptable, modern performances of masterworks such as Vanda, or St. Ludmila, and this new recording of The Jacobin, the first in many decades, may be the best of all. There's no other opera quite like it. As a comedy with serious elements, you really would have to go back to Mozart to find anything similar, even though the rustic village setting and plot remain very different from anything that you would have found in an 18th-century setting.
The story is simple, but quite moving. Count Harasov has disowned his only son Bohus as a result of his pro-revolutionary (French) sympathies, which have been exaggerated and distorted by the presciently-named Adolf, the count's nephew and now his presumptive heir. With the death of his wife the count wishes to retire and leave Adolf in charge, along with his pompous henchman, the Burgomaster Filip, who has his sights set on the lively and luscious Terinka, daughter of the village music master Benda. Terinka wanted to marry Jirí, a young hothead and (not incidentally) Benda's prized tenor. Into this situation step Bohus and his French wife Julia, refugees who in fact have a price on their heads arising from their opposition to the atrocities committed in the name of the Revolution.
The ultimate reconciliation between father and son is the primary theme of the opera, but it also has important sub-themes: love of one's country, the love of Benda for his daughter, the conflict between generations, the triumph of egalitarian ideals, and everyone's love of music. It is in fact music, in the form of the dead countess' lullaby sung by Julia to the embittered count, that brings about the happy ending. There's also a brilliant set-piece rehearsal (at the beginning of Act 2) of a homage cantata composed by Benda. It's fabulous. All of the characters, save for the evil Adolph, are fully fleshed out human beings, and the music follows the twists and turns of the plot with the sure hand of a master. The distribution of voices also is very effective: Filip is a bass; the Count, Bohus, and Adolph are baritones; Jirí and Benda are tenors, while Julia and Terinka are sopranos. This makes for some wonderful ensemble writing both with and without the chorus. It is simply impossible to listen to this piece and not conclude that Dvorák was as fine a composer of opera as he was at just about everything else that he touched.
With only a single (but excellent) previous recording available on Supraphon, there's not much competition in this piece, but this newcomer is every bit as fine as its predecessor. Among the women, Andrea Danková's Julia stands out for her beautiful tone and the conviction she brings to her Act 3 confrontation with the count, also very well sung by Christoph Stephinger. Marcin Bronikowski brings virility and intelligence to his portrait of Bohus, and his singing (along with Danková) of the big Act 2 duet "We have wandered in foreign lands" is both moving and impassioned. Michal Lehotsky and Lívia Ághová make a lively pair of young lovers, and Peter Mikulás makes Filip sound aptly bombastic without hamming it up too much.
Gerd Albrecht leads the entire cast, choirs, and orchestra in as vital and persuasive an account of the score as did his counterpart on Supraphon, Jirí Pinkas, and he has much better sonics and the excellent Cologne Radio Orchestra at his disposal. The libretto includes a full English translation and excellent notes. The only problem I can see is that at three CDs, this is an expensive set. Lasting two and a half hours, the work just barely fits on two discs, which is how Supraphon presents it (the timings are virtually identical in comparison), but the quality of the results here justifies the premium price. After all, until the rest of the world wakes up to just how great this work is and starts producing it as often as we see Rusalka, we're not exactly spoiled for choice, and I feel confident that you will fall in love with the music and play it often. So go ahead: treat yourself. This is what recordings are for.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com (10/10)
The Wagner Edition
Beethoven: Symphonies, Vol. 1 / Uys, Schoeman
| SOMM Recordings announces the launch of a major six-volume series of Franz Xaver Scharwenka’s transcriptions of Beethoven Symphonies featuring the label debut of the Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman Piano Duo. Formed in 2010, the Duo began their in-concert exploration of Scharwenka’s four-hand Beethoven transcriptions in 2015 and now bring that experience to disc for the first time. Volume 1 includes the premiere recording of Scharwenka’s piano duet transcription of Symphony No.3, the ever-popular Eroica, and Debussy’s two-piano arrangement of Robert Schumann’s Six Studies in Canonic Form. As Robert Matthew-Walker’s booklet notes reveal, Scharwenka had a direct line to Beethoven, having been taught by Franz Kullak, who was tutored by Carl Czerny whose own teacher, in turn, had been Beethoven himself. A composer of no mean stature in his own right, Scharwenka’s transcriptions were once widely admired, making masterpiece symphonies available to every home with a piano. Possessing, says Matthew-Walker, “significant qualities which are often overlooked today”, his Eroica transcription receives ardent, eloquently persuasive championing by Schoeman and Uys. Scharwenka wasn’t alone in exploiting new developments in piano technology. Robert Schumann’s Six Studies in Canonic Form made use of the then novel ‘pedal-piano’ (a standard piano with an additional bass pedal-board) even as he was looking back stylistically towards his idol, Bach. Debussy’s arrangement for two pianos adroitly accommodates Schumann’s original to “rescue this fine music from the obscurity of the pedal-piano repertoire.” Born in Cape Town and a Royal Academy of Music Associate, Tessa Uys has an impressive reputation as a concert and broadcasting performer, appearing at major venues throughout the world. Her multi-prize-winning South African compatriot Ben Schoeman also has a busy international profile and is currently a senior lecturer in piano and musicology at the University of Pretoria. |
BAROQUE BOHEMIA & BEYOND VIII (STAMIC RICHTER)
Lloyd: The Piano Works, Solo & Duo
Libera Nos - The Cry Of The Oppressed / Rees, Contrapunctus
This recording explores the musical 'cries of the oppressed' from opposite ends of Europe, which include some of the most powerful works composed in England and Portugal during this period by Byrd, Tallis, de Monte and Cardoso. The highlight perhaps is the first recording of a newly reconstructed vocal work by Thomas Tallis, 'Libera nos'. This has long been thought to be an instrumental work, and has been recorded as such, but there's persuasive historical evidence for us to be confident that this is in fact a choral setting of the antiphon 'Libera nos', and it is performed here with the relevant text restored to the five vocal parts.
RITE OF SPRING
Works for Violin & Piano
American Classics - Barber: Choral Music
SIR EDWARD ELGAR: VIOLIN CONCERTO. PIANO CONCERTO
Debussy: Orchestral Works / Cambreling, Southwest German Radio Symphony
This album presents two major orchestral works by Claude Debussy – Images and La Mer – alongside the delightful Danses for harp and orchestra. The French conductor Sylvain Cambreling highlights all the charm of these colorful scores. French-born conductor Sylvain Cambreling is a musician with big ideas. A thought-provoking, colorful and dramatic artist, he has a flair for grabbing the attention of audiences, yet his originality is rooted in thorough knowledge of musicology. As the Chief Conductor of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, and Principal Guest Conductor of Klangforum Wien, he has offered ample proof of his gifts for imaginative programme-planning and persuasive championship of contemporary music.
