title: If you forget that it was composed fifty years too late, it is charming

text:
From the outset, lake me make it clear that I don't like the music of Jean Françaix. Not that I know it very well, but the little I've heard has given me no incentive to explore more. It's not that Françaix wrote, still at the end of the 20th century (born in 1912, he died in 1997), music that not only was tonal, but stylistically 50 to 70 years passé, harking back to Cocteau and the Groupe des Six: after all, Rodrigo (1901-1999) also composed music that sounded like what Albeniz, Granados and Falla were writing in the 1920s, but nonetheless it was colorful and entertaining. It is that the music of Françaix always sounded to me like it tried so hard at being spirited, light-hearted, insouciant and "French", that it evoked the affected jollity of an old comedian trying hard to makes us laugh with his old, stale antics - and embarrassingly failing. To me Françaix sounds like a sub-par Milhaud - and I don't hold Milhaud's music in very high esteem either.

So, fans of Françaix, dismiss what you are about to read, and my sincerest apologies. Why purchase this disc, might you wonder? Out of a collector's interest, not for the composer, but for the label. Cybelia was a small French label, founded by the violinist Eric Alberti and in activity from the end of the 1970s or early 1980s (LP days) to the early 1990s. In its relatively short existence and among its relatively small catalog the label published some interesting stuff, sometimes more on account of the repertoire rarity than because of its musical quality, but still: like, the premiere recording of Roussel's First Symphony, the first complete cycle of Milhaud's String Quartets, the Quintet of Paul Le Flem and those of Charles Koechlin, the cello sonatas of Guy Ropartz, piano music of Florent Schmitt, Henry Sauguet, Georges Migot and Gabriel Dupont, rare orchestral music of Schmitt and Koechlin, contemporary operas of Marcel Landowski, Charles Chaynes, Renaud Gagneux, and, of course, the recording of the Paris Opera world premiere of Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise under Ozawa, [[ASIN:B00008EYFR Messiaen: Saint Francois D'Assise]]. Not so bad for a small label. The Françaix CD was on sale cheap, so I decided to give it a try. For my defense, I simultaneously bought the most avant-garde among Cybelia's releases, a CD devoted to the Franco-Argentinian composer José Luis Campana, [[ASIN:B000M6UMVO Jose Luis Campana / String Quartet No 2 / My / Imago (Cyberlia)]].

Verdict? Well, I don't dislike it as much as I expected. Sure, it is  backward looking, with the Concerto for two harps sounding almost like an extended Danse Sacrée et Danse Profane of Debussy, and Françaix tries hard at being spirited, jolly and elegantly French.. The pick-up string ensemble called "Orchestre Stringendo" sounds reduced to its bare essentials of 11 players (and with strings written divisi, that means one a part, really) and not tonally very alluring. But there is some fascinating sonic invention in the slow movement of the Guitar Concerto (string ensemble playing harmonics),  and the rest, sure, sounds fluffy, but it isn't without a modicum of charm and zest, with a mildly Spanish flavor in the Guitar concerto but spiced with a French Riviera whimsicality, a possible companion to Rodrigo's own Guitar Concerto (indeed its mate on a competing recording, [[ASIN:B0009Y26Z4 Françaix, Ponce, Rodrigo: Guitar Concertos]]. Incidentally the concerto was written for and premiered by Narciso Yepes, in 1984, although Françaix subsequently, on Yepes' advice, added two movements. The Concerto for two Harps is from 1978 and the two harps make lovely sounds, and the String symphony from 1948 souds, indeed, like a work composed in 1948 by a composer that was turned to the past and not the future, in clinching to the atmosphere of Poulenc and the salons of Madame de Noailles. All this would make excellent film music for a sentimental romance with a happy ending. If you forget that this music was composed fifty years too late, it is charming. So I guess it can remain in my collection as my sample of Jean Françaix.

And a post-script, in all fairness. I had the curiosity to go back to the review in Fanfare September/October 1991. William Zagorski gave the Cybelia CD a glowing welcome. I can't quote his review in toto or I'd be infringing copyright, but this will give a notion: "the performances on this release are a delight - full of rhythmic point, convincing intonation in the face of daunting odds, and infectious energy. Françaix's cheeky, irreverent, and, from time to time, iconoclastic wit is well realized.... The Guitar Concerto is (...) a highly original art work in its own right. Full of droll and inventive instrumental effects and unsettled and unsettling harmonies, I found it an unalloyed pleasure. The Symphonie d'Archets (...) displays Françaix's special affinity for string writing. (...) The whole panoply of bowing attacks become, in Françaix's hands, expressive tools, but often in unsuspected and unpredictable ways. All these works can be seen as pleasant, indeed, gracious entertainments - facile, lightweight, clever and brilliantly crafteed - music of little substance or, in the grand scheme of things, of little moment. This is, however, merely Françaix's cunning illusion. These are all sophisticated and highly diverting pieces. As in Mozart's lightest works, Françaix's highly polished surfaces, in and of themselves, have an uncanny depth."

Zagorsky's review sent me back listening once more to the CD. My own verdict remains unchanged. Now it's your choice.


title: Don Dorsey's Bach is fun

text:
Don Dorsey's Bach is probably not for all tastes, but I find it immensely fun. One, I love transcriptions. They provide a fresh way of listening to the old warhorses. What a transcription does is to offer new, unheard and ear-catching timbral colors, that will rekindle the pleasure of listening to oft-heard pieces - or, because that pleasure doesn't necessarily need to be re-kindled (one never tires of those great compositions), just offer a different kind of pleasure. A transcription is like your wife wearing a new sexy lingerie. It can be garish at times, but what a thrill! I have transcriptions of Bach's Goldbergs for organ, accordion, string trio, string orchestra, overdubbed guitar, two cimbaloms, brass quintet, synthesizer (see my review of [[ASIN:B00000DP5E New Age Bach: The Goldberg Variations]]), jazz piano (see [[ASIN:B000008BLA The Chess Game  Part 1]]), jazz trio ([[ASIN:B00004TD2H Jacques Loussier Trio: Bach's Goldberg Variations]]) - and piano, of course. I'm still missing those for harp and for marimba. I have transcriptions of Vivaldi's Four Seasons for Japanese zithers ([[ASIN:B00008EU1G The Four Seasons, Water Music Suite, Royal Fireworks Suite (New Koto Ensemble of Tokyo)]]), brass quintet ([[ASIN:B0000026EB Vivaldi: The Four Seasons]]), recorder ensemble ([[ASIN:B0000007EY Vivaldi: Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons) - Arranged for Recorders]]). Other than providing lots of fun, some of those transcriptions may even be revelatory. With Bach especially, transcriptions of his keyboard works can serve to bring clarity to his many contrapuntal lines, by providing very contrasting colors to each, where they might become blurred with the relative mono-chromaticism of the harpsichord, organ or piano.

And after all transcribing is deeply rooted in the culture of classical music: that's what Bach did with the violin concertos of Vivaldi, that's what Ravel did with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (in that case they call it "orchestration"), that's what Schoenberg did with Brahms' Piano Quartet, and naturally it is what Stokowski did with so many organ works of Bach. And Liszt went the other way around - transcribing every orchestral piece he could, including Beethoven's symphonies and all the famous operas of his days, for piano. And these are only the most famous examples among a host.

I have no problem with a transcription for synthesizer: it is no different from an orchestration, it substitutes new timbres to the original ones, only those timbres are not those of the customary acoustic instruments, but the often outlandish ones produced by the electronic machine, some emulating the acoustic instruments, some more original and proper to electronics.  Dorsey's orchestration is imaginative and fun, so the surprise and ear-catching factor is fully there, as well as the clarification of Bach's lines (although the timbres chosen for the different voices are usually chosen from the same "family" of sounds). I may have objected years ago to the rock-band drums in the finale of the Italian Concerto, but not anymore, and the "pop-music" treatment of the Chorale "Jesus, Joy of Man Desiring" I still find rather corny, but so much so that it becomes funny, and it isn't offensive either.

In the category of timbres emulating acoustic instruments, the first movement of Dorsey's Italian Concerto sounds like an electronic harpsichord, or a cross-breed between a harpsichord and a Cagean prepared piano, and the second movement mixes the timbres of harpsichord and guitar, which is nice and probably carefully planned as a way of taking the listener into a journey in another world of sounds. In the second category (purely electronic sounds) Dorsey has a few "outer-space" effects (track 13, three-part invention n° 15, is a typical example, and so is the concluding Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring), but in general his timbres in the harpsichord pieces derive indeed from the harpsichord, as much as they might stray from it through various processes of distortion (try track 11, the three-part invention n° 12, which sounds like an electronic accordion, or track 12, two-part invention n° 15, which would be the dance of the robots) and they are definitely keyboard-derive in the precision of their articulation (transcriptions for strings don't produce the same effect). There is also some quasi-flute in track 10 (Two-part invention n° 12), and some quasi musical saw in track 14 (Canons). And in the organ toccata, he begins with timbres emulating the organ, but soon skids out in more electronic sounds, although the anchoring into the various keyboard instruments - be it organ, harpsichord or accordion (and add electric guitar) - is never lost. In fact, if anything, you could reproach Dorsey for being too respectful and close to the original timbres: it could be argued that, as long as you are going to change Bach's timbres with an electronic machine, you might as well go the full way and REALLY change them. But while this consideration opens the possibility of more daring arrangements for synthesizer, I certainly didn't feel anything was amiss while listening.

Add to that that, if Dorsey played those Bach pieces at the piano or harpsichord, these would be excellent interpretations: lively, dynamic, explosive, imbued with a sense of fun. And the drums add to the excitement. But the point is: this is not just your customary harpsichord or piano version with an "electronic seasoning" over the surface. The electronic timbres are integral to the fun and excitement created by Dorsey's interpretations. The Canons on the first eight notes of the Aria ground from the Goldberg variations can be a very stern and boring affair when played on the harpsichord or piano; with Dorsey, they are irresistible.

So the only regret and a major one is the short TT of 46:47. This is simply not enough of such a fun thing, and it leaves me frustrated.


title: sentimentalizing and belittling Chopin

text:
I'm a great fan of transcriptions. They offer a great way to listen to the old warhorses in a new light, and they can be not only hugely entertaining, but sometimes also revelatory... but this pushes my tolerance a little too far. I'm sorry I can't be more positive about this disc, the concept WAS appealing: it is a collection of arrangements of Chopin's piano music made between... 1904 (track 18, "Nocturno" after Chopin's Nocturne op. 9-2, possibly an arrangement of Pauline Viardot, sung here - in Russian - by Maria Michailowa, soprano from the Imperial Opera of Saint Petersburg) and 1947 (track 3, Carmen Carvallaro's Polonaise Fox Trot after the Military Polonaise). There is even a (modern) recording of a music box Minute-Waltz built in Switzerland around 1885 (track 19). So the first half of the last century seems to have been when these transcriptions were in vogue. Then the vogue must have abated.

The first ones are in Jazz style - Clement Doucet's Chopiniana from 1927, track 1, after the Military Polonaise and Waltz in C sharp Minor, Hazel Scott's scurrying Waltz in C sharp minor from 1946 - and they are fun, because they are played at the solo piano and retain the leanness of the originals. John Kirby's  jazz orchestra and its dizzying rendition of the Minute Waltz (1939) is still fun and even funny (track 4), but bombast and kitsch start setting in with Carmen Carvallaro's Military Polonaise in 1947 (track 3).

There is, I guess, a certain kitsch charm - the charm of faded, sepia photographs - to Chopin's nocturne with wailing cello sung by a Russian Imperial soprano in 1904, or to Amélita Galli Curci (misspelled Gurci in the liner notes) turning the Minute-Waltz op. 64 into a Rossini aria in 1909, track 17 (none of them is entirely pitch-right in the upper reaches). But it's really when Chopin's themes are used for easy-listening arrangements and crooning singing that I start cringing. And the main bulk of the CD is made of such arrangements: "A Song to Remember" (from the soundtrack of the 1945 King Vidor film, a biopic of Chopin), by Freddie Martin and his orchestra, with Artie Wayne crooning, track 5, Ninon Vallin's coying sentimentalizing of Etude op. 10-3 (appropriately called "intimacy"), track 16, the two arrangements by André Kostelanetz imitating Glazunov, turning Chopin's music into music fit for the New Years ball in Vienna or Saint Petersburg (tracks 6 & 7) and, most egregious of all, the arrangements (by Polish émigré Bronislaw Kaper (misspelled Kasper in the liner notes) used in the Broadway show Polonaise, supposedly very successful in 1945 and 1946 (tracks 8 to 15). Maybe there can be a nostalgia effect on generations old enough to remember what it was to listen to the radio in the 1940s, but it doesn't work on me. All I can say is that it is fascinating to see how arrangers have gone for plunder of the melodies of Chopin (always the same: the Minute-Waltz, the Military and Heroic Polonaises), only to sentimentalize and dwarf his music. The concluding music-box is fascinatingly ghostly - secretly expressing maybe that all these arrangements were meant to dissipate and turn to dust with the passing of time and fashions, while the original music of Chopin will eternally remain.

The label by the way is Frémeaux & Associés, a French label specialized in Jazz reissues and spoken material, and I suppose PID is the American importer. Fine liner notes, but despite a little leaflet inserted in the liner notes boasting a "quality charter" with the claim that "all recordings are transferred and mastered with extreme care, using the most up-to-date technology", the transfers are more than mediocre, with the typical (and unbearable) desiccated quality brought by excess and careless filtering.


title: major interpretations, worth the splash - but not in these pitiful transfers

text:
I tend to be sceptical about the cult around obscure and forgotten fiddlers, whose icon status seems directly dependent on the unavailability or rarity of their recordings - so that no one can actually check on the hear-say. When finally I get to hear them, I am often disappointed: was that all the splash was about? Not so with Julian Sitkovetzky (as spelled here). On the contrary, based on this CD, with him the hype seems not loud enough.

Julian (or Yulian) Sitkovetzky (more often written Sitkovetsky, but I've even seen it spelled Sitkovecky or Sitkoveckij -, the husband of pianist Bella Davidovitch and father of Dimitry Sitkovetsky, was a Russian-Ukrainian virtuoso born in 1925, whose career was tragically cut short when he died of cancer at the age of 33. Monopole's product info is shamefully wanting - other than a 10-line bio we are just told that the recordings date from 1953 and 1954 (but which we are not told) and the sources are not mentioned. From other releases of the same works it appears that Sibelius is from 1953 and Khachaturian 1954. I've reviewed the Khachaturian at length under one of those other releases, by Russian Disc ([[ASIN:B000001LPO Khachaturian Concerto for violin in Dm; Glazunov: Concerto for violin in Am]]. Note that it is NOT the same performance as the one issued by Artek, volume 5 of their [[ASIN:B000GQL8QS Art of Yulian Sitkovetsky]], which is a 1956 live recording conducted by the composer. The Russian Disc/Monopole performance is an interpretation of fabulous drive in the outer movements, and great lyrical intensity in the slow movement. In fact, the reading is very similar to the dedicatee and first performer's, David Oistrakh: his second studio recording, also made in 1954 with the composer leading the Philharmonia Orchestra in the first two movements ([[ASIN:B000002RTZ Composers in Person: Aram Khachaturian Conducts Masquerade / Gayaneh / Violin Concerto]]) and, in the finale, his live recording with Kubelik at the Prag Festival in 1947 (unfortunately in dismal sound, [[ASIN:B0000034DW Concertos - Liszt/Prokofiev/Khachaturian]]), which is even more dashing (in comparison Oistrakh in 1954 sounds gentle and meek). Sitkovetzky's digital virtuosity in that finale is awesome and, like Oistrakh, his incredible forward drive is never at the expense of tonal control. Worth noting is also the fact that he plays the first movement's cadenza complete - a decision rarely exercised, then (Oistrakh played his own concoction) and still now. It is a live recording, but other than various stage noises in the middle movement and the applause at the end, one has no clue - and certainly not in any finger slip or imprecision from Sitkovetzky. As for the orchestral support, if I had been told it was Leningrad under Mravinsky, I would have believed it: the Romanian Radio Orchestra under "Niyazi" (never heard of him. No first name? But Wikipedia does have an entry, showing that his complete name was Niyazi Zulfigar ogli Tagizade Hajibeyov - no wonder Monople, and maybe the conductor himself, dropped it) plays with tremendous drive, energy, precision and snap.

However, the horrendously shrill, harsh and cavernous acoustics of the Monopole transfer simply rule it out. The Russian Disc transfer is also harsh, but with none of the cavernous sonic perspective that sabotages the Monopole issue.

Interpretively, the Sibelius' Violin Concerto belongs to the same league. Although rarely exercised, the coupling of Sibelius' with Khachaturian's Violin Concerto seems to me a very appropriate choice stylistically, not only because of the sweeping lyricism shared by both compositions, but more to the point because of the Sibelian echoes in Khachaturian's finale. Again the source of this recording isn't indicated by Monopole. It is a studio recording that was first published on Supraphon Mono LPM418, reissued by the same company on CD on [[ASIN:B000024XNR Giants of the Violin]]. I don't have that specific reissue, nor the one published by Aulos/Melodiya ([[ASIN:B0009AHKSG Sibelius, Mozart, Saraste, Paganini - The art of Yulian Sitkovetsky Vol. 1]]), but, by an extraordinary stroke of luck, I've just found (and cheap, too!) a rarity reissue, a 1995 CD published by SYD Records, CYD 006, not listed here, no bar code, volume 6 of a series called "The Art of Yulian Sitkovetsky", which seems to be the source from which Artek licenced their own series - but, God knows why (and lamentably) stopping at volume 5. SYD vol. 6 is invaluable for pairing this Sibelius with the live recording of Sitkovetsky's performance of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto given during the final round of the 1955 Queen Elizabeth Competition in which he got 2nd Prize; a famous anecdote in Sitkovetsky's bio is that Menuhin and Oistrakh were among the jury, and Menuhin later claimed that Sitkovetsky should have received the first prize. That anecdote is recounted in every biography of Sitkovetsky, but nobody ever says who the hapless prize winner was: it was the American Berl Senovsky. Well... Sitkovetsky, Senovsky... maybe the secretary just made a typo. Anyway: collectors and fans of the violin, start posting permanent searches on eBay.

I'm bringing this up not just to have said collectors salivate in envy, but point out again at the botched transfer of Monopole. The SYD transfer is clearly direct from tape and sounds just fine. Monopole is from LP, with dim surface noise and harsh violin tone and saturation in the climaxes. The unavailability of this recording in a good transfer is to be lamented. As with Khachaturian, it is a performance of great urgency and considerable dramatic impact, one very close to the model established by Heifetz in his premiere recording with Beecham in 1935 ([[ASIN:B000009J15 Heifetz : Strauss, Sibelius & Prokofiev]] and reiterated by him in his 1959 stereo remake under Walter Hendl, [[ASIN:B0006PV5U8 Sibelius, Prokofiev, Glazunov: Violin Concertos [Hybrid SACD]]]. There is no enjoying the wide and calm Nordic vistas here, the Concerto is taken not as a panorama of haunting and evocative colors (as it has become in the interpretive tradition that developed from the 1960s onwards), but as a vehicle for violent drama (try the "allegro molto" section in the first movement starting at 4:38). Just to give an idea, Heifetz in 1935 took the first movement in 14:08, he was even faster in 1959 and established something of a record at 13:32. Sitkovetsky runs close second at 13:42 (but without the sense of rush sometimes elicited by Heifetz). Hilary Hahn, the most recent recording to have come my way, takes it in 17:10 ([[ASIN:B0011WMWUW Schoenberg Violin Concerto Op.36/Sibelius Violin Concerto Op.47]]). In the finale, Sitkovetzky is even FASTER than Heifetz in 1959 by four seconds - a feat I thought I'd never encounter - but he also has great rhythmic bounce, and although his double-stop scales followed by octave leaps are not entirely in-sync with the orchestra (and until Hahn, positively nobody's were, even Heifetz sounded scrambled here), his harmonic "whistling" at 4:28 is more assured than Heifetz', and perfect, really. Anossov conducts a powerful and urgent orchestral support (Czech Philharmonic).

If I had one (small) reservation, it is that, for all his fiery approach and incredible digital virtuosity, Sitkovetzky lacks perhaps the ultimate degree of expression, one that both Heifetz and Camilla Wicks ([[ASIN:B000HKDB5E Camilla Wicks (violin) plays Sibelius and Valen: Violin Concertos [Biddulph 80218-2]]]), in two widely contrasted approaches from those days, had in loads. Nonetheless this is, to me, one of the great recordings of Sibelius' Violin Concerto, still today.

The three encores with wife Bella Davidovitch and much better sound (source unknown) are not enough ground to purchase this disc, except maybe as a stopgap (even botched sound is better than nothing for interpretations of such magnitude), until you can find the Russian Disc for Khachaturian and any of the three indicated above for the Sibelius.

And a post-script: as I write, the Art vol. 6 Sibelius/Tchaikovsky is not just listed, but actually sold (and not for a huge amount, even with postage and exchange rate, nothing to deter the determined collector) on Amazon.fr and Amazon.uk, ASIN B000EHSK6K.


title: Boulez the other way around

text:
For a long time, Mahler by Boulez was only a tantalizing and frustrating plea by esteemed French critic (in the French magazine Diapason) and Mahler biographer Henry-Louis de La Grange. Invariably, whenever a new recording came out, he'd finish his review, or so it seems, by a comment to the effect that, "yes, it is a fine version, but ah, compared to Boulez whom I heard conduct it live with the BBC or the London Symphony Orchestra in 197 and something, it is nothing".

So of course, one waited for Boulez to record Mahler like the Jews await the Messiah or the muslims awaited for Muhammad to receive the revelation. Needless to say, when it finally happened, with his cycle for DG, it was slightly disappointing. Some of it was great, some of it was plain, and some of it was even downright wrong-headed (I'll substantiate that in my review of Boulez' 7th, whenever I write it). Also, by then, much Mahlerian water had flown under the listeners' bridges, a whole new generation of Mahler conductors had emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s, Levine, Abbado, Inbal, Tennstedt, Bertini, Rattle, Sinopoli, Chailly, and the older generation was revisiting Mahler, with Bernstein in particular embarking upon his second cycle for DG. So what Boulez had to say wasn't as novel, original and indispensable is it may have seemed to de La Grange when he heard it live two or three decades before.

But that is making the bold assumption that Boulez in the 1990s performed Mahler as he had in the late 1960s and 1970s. In fact, on the evidence of this live concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1968, it is striking the extent to which he didn't (note that the Hunt CD for which a customer has uploaded cover photos is another performance, from 1970).  So the concert is interesting for giving us a chance to hear Boulez' Mahler as Henry-Louis de La Grange might have heard it, and pined for it. The sound is acceptable given that it is an aircheck, the brass and the tutti are clear and present, but there is a kind of soft rattle around the string tone. There are various sonic and execution glitches, but the audience is remarkably inaudible, except at the end of the movements. Clearly this is not to be taken as anything competitive with the studio recordings of then and now. But as a documentation of Boulez's Mahler in the late 1960s, it'll do.

Interpretively, it is indeed, for its vintage, a very personal and original approach. Boulez' funeral march opens in a deliberate manner and with a burdened gait that had no precedent in the studio (although Scherchen had conducted it in concert in Philadelphia in 1964 in a very similar way, [[ASIN:B00005QAZ4 Symphony 5]]). To give an idea, Boulez reaches the fast section in 5:53. Walter, in the 1947 premiere recording, had taken 4:41 ([[ASIN:B0013AYUC0 Mahler: Symphony No. 5]]), and Bernstein, in New York in 1963, 5:09 ([[ASIN:B0000029XH Mahler: Symphony No. 5]]). And it is not just a question of tempo, but also the tolling weight that Boulez invests in the regular marching rhythm. Interestingly, a year later, in 1969, Barbirolli made a famous studio recording ([[ASIN:B00000GCAF Mahler: Symphony No. 5 ~ Barbirolli]]) that was very similar in its opening pace (5:50), and Bernstein, in his 1987 remake with the Vienna Philharmonic ([[ASIN:B000001G9F Mahler: Symphony No. 5]]) went even further - e.g. slower: 6:15. On the other hand, when he finally made it in the studio, in 1996 ([[ASIN:B000001GYK Mahler: Symphony No. 5]]), almost thirty years later, Boulez reverted to a more "normal" pace (5:16).

But bringing off the first movement is not just a matter of choosing an opening tempo: it is also about the tempo relationship with the "fast" section, and whether one favors stong contrast or a sense of organic unity. There Boulez remains unique by adopting a very, almost excruciatingly even, slow tempo, slower even than Walter's, one that doesn't allow for very much of Mahler's "leidenschaftlich" (passionately) and "wild" (no translation needed) to unfold, but that is at least very consistent with his opening one. Still, Boulez establishes strong contrast, but through dynamics (it really erupts fortissimo) rather than speed, and the passage is certainly vehement, if not passionate. Returns the opening tempo, and Boulez' final section, at 11:00, starts beautifully, with ghostly strings, although the downside is that the more passionate surge that follows remains very pedestrian, and the great "klagend" climax at 12:27 misfires entirely: no impact, wrong balances, flutes and no brass.

The second movement displays the same strong interpretive personality. There, Boulez plays the maximum contrast of tempo, launching in not only with the "grösster Vehemenz" (greatest vehemence) asked by Mahler, but even with a fury verging on frenzy, with brass biting like enraged pitbulls. But then comes the slow section with its reminiscence of the first movement, and there, in keeping with his first movement tempi, Boulez adopts a very held-back pace. It is in fact Scherchen that he comes closest to here (in his 1953 studio recording for Westminster, [[ASIN:B000063DSE Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C Sharp Minor]]). In these slow passages, as in the first movement, Boulez dangerously treads the line between deliberate and sluggish - and determinedly crosses it at the "più mosso subito" at 7:47. I guess you can call it "più mosso" (literally: more moving), in view of what preceded it, but still, more "mosso" than very slow still doesn't make it "mosso". Here it sounds like one of those deliberately clumsy Ländlers so typical of Mahler. Well at least it is original, if not altogether convincing.

In all these choices of tempo, and especially his taste for the strong contrasts, one can question Boulez' sense of architecture and organic development, but nowhere more than when returns the theme of the first movement's fast section, at 9:47 (measure 392), where Boulez is now (because of his adoption of a very fast opening tempo of the second movement, of which this section is a continuation) MUCH faster than in the first movement.

In keeping with furious approach to the second movement, Boulez plays the Scherzo's wild fury and sardonic grimace rather than its playful charm, an approach that I like very much although many, including the esteemed Mahler critic on Musicweb-international Tony Duggan, might find cause to object. Duggan contends, with some justification, that the Scherzo shouldn't be the continuation of the second movement, but a bridge between the "negative" of the first part and the "positive" of the third part. Still, as convincing as Duggan's argument may seem intellectually, emotionally there is great thrill in Boulez' approach, and sometimes, in music, emotion must take precedence over intellect.

Although the effect is more furious with Boulez, it is interesting that, timing-wise, his Scherzo should be so close to Bruno Walter's (B 15:22, W 15:10) - and Walter is to this day the fastest Scherzo ever recorded, among more than 170 versions -  because, in the Adagietto again, it is to Walter that Boulez comes closest (B 7:35, W 7:42). This means that it is one of those very flowing versions, true to Mahler's original conception (according to his early champion Willem Mengelberg) of the Adagietto as a tender and passionate declaration of love to Alma and not the (equally beautiful) "Death in Venice" meditation on the passing of things that it became under later conductors, starting (in the studio) with Bernstein in 1963 (11:00) and continuing... with Boulez himself in his studio recording (10:56).

Like his second and third movements, Boulez' finale is all thrill and excitement. It starts like Walter's, which is brisk but not as brisk as Bernstein in 1963. But very soon Boulez whips it up to even higher voltage and hardly ever lets go, to the point that it sounds a bit too inflexible at times, with little concern for Mahler's "grazioso" passages. In the end Boulez tosses it off in 13:22 (to Bernstein's 13:43 and Walter's 14:08), which makes it one of the fastest finales ever recorded. The impression is of joy ("Allegro giocoso" is Mahler's indication, together with "frisch", lively) almost verging at times on a kind of breathless urgency and even grim fury - the mischievous joy of a Till Eulenspiegel, maybe.

I don't know if this is what Henry-Louis de la Grange heard in the late 1960s or 1970s, but if it is I can understand - embellishments of memory helping - why he would have raved about it. Nobody had conducted Mahler's 5th like that before - and I doubt that anybody did since; Boulez certainly didn't thirty years later. About everything is disputable in this performance: Boulez' choice of tempi, his tempi relationship and his sense of architectural coherence. But one thing can't be disputed: it is a strong interpretive personality that is at play here, one for which I can see only Hermann Scherchen as a precedent (even Mitropoulos was more disciplined), in the readiness to sacrifice architectural coherence to the thrill, excitement and heat of the music. Boulez has the reputation of being a technically precise, "intellectual" but "cold" and "emotionally detached" conductor. Well, in 1968, it was the other way around.


title: 1963: the spirit was there

text:
Just listen to the very beginning, the opening trumpet solo, and how "tight" his triplets are. Here Mahler instructs: "the upbeat triplets of this theme must always be played somewhat fleetingly (quasi accel.) in the manner of a military fanfare". With Bernstein they sound not so much like triplets (even fleeting and quasi accel.) as like a repeated-note appoggiatura. There's no telling if this is what Mahler had in mind, but it certainly lends much bite to the enunciation. It may be a small detail, but it shows the care and attention to details that went into this interpretation. Right after, on the first orchestral triplets, at 0:41, because that particular phrasing lenghtens the duration of the two beats of silence between the triplets, the music develops a great sense of "fatum": music for marching to the guillotine. None of this had ever been done before, at least on record. We tend to forget, but these were the days of the early pioneers. Incredible to think - today when Peter Fülöp's stupendous and indispensable [[ASIN:0525940189 Mahler Discography]] lists, as of April 2010, 176 different recordings, DVDs included - that Bernstein's recording, made on January 7, 1963 and the third installment in his complete Mahler cycle after the 4th and the 3rd, was only the fourth studio recording of the composition, after those of Bruno Walter (1947, [[ASIN:B0013AYUC0 Mahler: Symphony No. 5]]), Hermann Scherchen on Westminster (1953, [[ASIN:B000063DSE Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C Sharp Minor]]) and Rudolf Schwarz for Everest (1958, [[ASIN:B0000023H3 Mahler: Symphony No. 5 ~ Schwarz]]). That same year Erich Leinsdorf, recently appointed music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, would record another version, one very different in conception (except in the scherzo) and much closer to Walter's - but in RCA's great stereo sonics ([[ASIN:B000003F1A Symphony 5]]).

Although they come under much flak in the reviews under the Bernstein Century reissue (see [[ASIN:B0000029XH Mahler: Symphony No. 5]]), the Columbia sonics afforded to Bernstein were also excellent, very detailed, a bit muffled maybe in all the CD incarnations before the the new "Carnegie Hall" remastering and remixing from the original masters, [[ASIN:B001TIQT98 Mahler:  Complete Symphonies (Carnegie Hall Presents)]], although, in the 5th, I don't find that it has improved as much upon the previous remastering for the Bernstein Century reissue (which is what I had), as it did with the 9th Symphony (see my review of [[ASIN:B00000C298 Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (Bernstein Century)]]). It is louder, which gives the impression of more presence and affords more clarity of hearing but also exposes a strange static noise in some of the soft passages of the first movement (at 2:55 for instance - but it was already there in the Bernstein Century reissue, though not as perceptible), and a perceptible swish at the beginning of the Adagietto. But it is also clearer, and the new Carnegie Hall box of the complete symphonies is what the amateur of Bernstein's Mahler must now go for.

So Bernstein installs a fine sense of burden in that funeral procession first movement ("wie ein Kondukt" inscribes Mahler at the top), without, as he would later, in his 1987 remake for DG with the Vienna Philharmonic, resorting to dragged out tempi ([[ASIN:B000001G9F Mahler: Symphony No. 5]]). Later though, others, including himself, would find more depths of expression in the "gehaltener" moments, where Bernstein 1 hardly holds back (at 1:08 and 2:57), and likewise in the movement's final section, at 9:36. But his sense of architecture in the first movement is perfect, with a fast section that is not too fast and doesn't play up the contrast of tempo but keeps a sense of organic relation. The trumpet plays there with great vehemence (I had it in my memory, and even in notes that I wrote a few years ago, that it was too raw in tone - I don't think so any more: I now find it appropriately vehement), but the strings lack a touch of frenzy - small detail. At 6:07 Bernstein resorts to the old Bruno Walter gimmick - a big slowdown where Mahler indicates only "molto espressivo" (measure 203) - which I find artificial and not necessary, but again this is a small detail in the overall picture. The Newyorkers play with the required vehemence in the second movement, although Bernstein takes it at a slightly pedestrian opening tempo that prevents it from being really furious and truly incandescent, as it was that same year under Leinsdorf. And just compare the very beginning of both versions: muddy, ill-defined celli and double-basses with Bernstein (they don't even seem to be playing the attack entirely together), clarity and bite of Leinsdorf's (playing staccato). Sometimes the details do make a difference. Fortunately the New York brass amply make up for it and soon the movement develops to great sweep and passion. The tempo shifts are perfectly well judged and the slower sections, with their reminiscences of the first movement, develop great atmosphere.

In the scherzo, where Walter was uniquely urgent and Mitropoulos urgent and grim (in a famous January 1960 concert with the New York Philharmonic, [[ASIN:B000009CO7 Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, & 10 - Unfinished]]) - options that I find entirely valid -, Bernstein finds a perfect mix of the charming and the scorching, the latter thanks to vehement strings ("wild" in Mahler's indication on their frequent eighth-note runs) and pungent brass and woodwinds. I can't start describing the careful attention to all the instrumental details, the phrasing of the many sf, fp, staccato marks, that contribute so much to the movement's instrumental character. Do the waltzes (at 2:30 and 6:45) lack a touch of simplicity? Bernstein certainly fusses over them more than Walter, Schwarz or Leinsdorf, but he also fills them with much character. A deeply-felt Adagietto, running at 11 minutes, and one that is truly historical for being the first, at least among studio versions (it is in fact very close to Mitropoulos' live 1960 concert) to inaugurate the "slow" approach to that movement. Until then Scherchen had been the most spacious, and he clocked at 9:10, Leinsdorf was at 8:30, Schwarz at 7:30 and Walter at 7:42. Bernstein's approach may not be true to the composer's (Mahler is said to have conducted it at around 8 minutes) and the notion (set forth by Mengelberg, supposedly from direct conversations with Mahler) that the Adagietto is in fact a tender and passionate declaration of love to Alma; but when straying from the composer's intentions, great interpreters are in fact revelatory.

And Bernstein tops it off with a brilliant finale, filled with urgency and enthusiasm, with Bernstein evidently ready to sacrifice graciousness (as at 1:56, measure 100, "grazioso") to drive.

I've listened to this recording a few years ago in this reissue, and taken notes, and I've listened again in the Carnegie Hall remastering, and I find that my impressions and analyses have remained exactly the same (except for the trumpet's tone). I read the negative or lukewarm reviews under the Bernstein Century entry and I don't know what they are talking about. I am confident that my listening was at least as careful and precise as theirs. In fact, none are specific, none give exact reference to score or timing to let one check exactly what it is they are hearing - except for the opening solo trumpet. OK, there are two miniscule wobbles during the solo, and by zeroing on that (if that is indeed what the negative reviewers are zeroing upon), they miss entirely what is so unique about that solo - this is not missing the forest for the tree, but the Amazonia for the splinter! And it is NOT the sonics. Certainly, the Carnegie remastering is revelatory, but everything that I hear there, I heard already a few years ago with the Bernstein Century reissue.

I've also gone back to some of the early reviews, to try and understand what that negative reputation is about and where it came from. In that respect, the Gramophone July 1964 review, by no other than Deryck Cooke, is particularly interesting. Cooke starts with apparent praise for Bernstein ("Right from the start it is obvious that Bernstein is striving for an absolutely faithful presentation of Mahier's musical thought, by adhering exactly, not just to what Mahler has written, but also to all the unwritten implications of his style") and he points to the phrasing of the opening trumpet triplets that also struck my ear. He then goes on to compare Bernstein and Walter, noting that "Bernstein is technically right, and Walter technically wrong", e.g. inobservant of those many details. But then comes the stab in the back: "Why is it, then, that one so warms to Bruno Walter's record of the Fifth Symphony, while Bernstein's ultimately leaves one cold? I think the answer is this. Given that Walter's approach to Mahler underplays the nervous element, it is nevertheless a spontaneous and deeply-felt approach of a great conductor, which reflects Mahler's music through a more stable and balanced temperament; whereas Bernstein's approach, even if it concerns itself with the nervous element in the music, seems to do so with the conscious and careful calculation of a less than great conductor who is no nearer to the nerve-ridden Mahler in his inmost self than Bruno Walter is. Everything seems conscientiously applied from the outside-- though it may be, of course, that Bernstein does have some strong affinity with Mahier's neurotic self, but is not yet able to convey it spontaneously owing to an insufficiently expert technique. Whatever the reason, the effect is to bring into Mahier's music a completely alien element--frigidity".

To call Bernstein "a less than great conductor" and one "not yet able to convey [his conception] spontaneously owing to an insufficiently expert technique", was, even in 1963, hardly perceptive on the part of Cooke. More exceptionable still is to be so vague in his denunciation of Bernstein's alledged "conscious and careful calculation"; so, observing minutely the score is "conscious and careful calculation" and even "frigidity", whereas gliding over those details (which is what you can understand of Cooke's description of Walter) is "spontaneous and deeply-felt". Conductors, why the heck to you spend so much time looking at those details and trying to realize them?

What is obvious to me is that Cooke was so used to Bruno Walter's recording (after all, it had been the only one available since 1947, other than Scherchen's from 1953, but Scherchen was a maverick, with an all-too personal approach to be a true contender, and Schwarz' hadn't yet come out in Great Britain) that he was put off by Bernstein's - not because it was bad, not because it was "self-conscious and over-calculated", but simply because it was different from what he had grown accustomed to.

And there was the 11-minute Adagietto, of course. For listeners grown on Walter's 7:42 or even Scherchen's 9:10, it was obvious that Bernstein's was going to sound "badly laboured, owing to the excessive attention paid to the great number of hairpins and crescendo-pianos scattered about the score" and that they would feel that "each note is handled so carefully and awkwardly that all flow ceases", concluding that "the movement, as rendered like this, gives an impression, not of nervous tension, but of pedantry". Now that Bernstein has become "middle-of-the-road" here, it's hard even to imagine what Cooke was talking about.

Bernstein's 1963 Mahler 5th is a remarkably balanced version. Not (except in the finale) urgent as Walter's or urgent and high-strung as Leinsdorf's, not favoring strong, even brutal contrasts of tempi as Scherchen's, not laid-back as Schwarz', but striking a perfect balance between all these approaches. It has the true feel of a classic. I can imagine versions more crisply and precisely played in some details, better recorded and with more vivid instrumental presence, and I can imagine some plumbing for even deeper expression. But alreay in 1963 the spririt is there.

The same version can be found for MUCH cheaper under various entries on this website.


title: Nothing further from "Death in Venice"

text:
Nothing could have been wider off the mark than subtitling this reissue of Maurice Abravanel's Mahler 5th, "Death in Venice", in reference to the 1971 Visconti film and its use in the soundtrack of the Adagietto from the 5th, and with the hope, one surmises, of selling it to a crowd (?) of amateurs of cinema but ignorant in music (and who would that be?). The Visconti film (but in justice it was a trend that had appeared before it) established the notion of an Agagietto expressing a meditation or lament on death and the passing of things, which led to Adagiettos conducted in the range of 11 to 12 minutes or more (at 15:10 the record is held by Hermann Scherchen, live in Philadelphia in 1964, [[ASIN:B00005QAZ4 Symphony 5]]). Interestingly, the version recorded for the Visconti film, by Franco Mannino conducted the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, was only 9:28... But in Mahler's original conception it didn't express that at all: it was a tender and passionate declaration of love and love song to Alma. The early pionneers, Mengelberg (1926, [[ASIN:B000088DTZ Mengelberg: Wagner; R. Strauss; Mahler]]) and Bruno Walter (in his premiere complete recording of the symphony from 1947, [[ASIN:B000002A7J Mahler: Symphony No.5]]) took it respectively in a little over 7 minutes, and 7:42.

And, at 8:06, Abravanel is in that league. Other than that, this version, recorded in 1974 and part of Abravanel/Vanguard's complete cycle, is the holder of many records. After Walter's, it is the fastest/shortest of all the discography (which, as of April 2010 and by the great Mahler discographer Peter Fülöp's count, numbered a phenomenal 173 complete recordings, [[ASIN:0525940189 Mahler Discography]]), and the fastest in the first two movements. How does it sound? Sometimes urgent, great in the finale (Mahler's "Allegro giocoso" and "frisch" / lively markings are very welcoming to a fast tempo), oftentimes rushed to the point of being under-characterized. For all the details on this, see my review under the disc's main entry, [[ASIN:B0000023B4 Symphony 5]].


title: Unsurpassed interpretations, still today, 50 years later

text:
It is cause for rejoicing that this disc should be available individually, outside of Sony's mammoth 22-CD Stravinsky edition (of which it is volume 5). These remain, still today, almost half a century after they were recorded, versions that have rarely been equaled, let alone surpassed

What makes them such great recordings? Three factors: Stravinsky the conductor; the sonics; the soloists.

About Stravinsky: I know there is that notion in some circles that Stravinsky was a bad conductor. I think it is confusing two issues. I will make no pronouncement on Stravinsky's conducting skills in live performance, I'd need to hear more live recordings (the premiere performance of The Rake's Progress in 1951 does have its faulty moments). And how the studio recordings were made, who prepared the orchestras (common wisdom is that it was Robert Craft), how many takes and splices they required, is as uninteresting to me as what happens in the kitchen of a great chef. What we have and what we hear are the recordings, and it is those that I listen to, not to any "reputation".

And Stravinsky obviously not only has a clear and authoritative view of what he wishes to obtain (and one of the surprises is his great freedom regarding the composer's tempos indications - see next paragraph)  - he obtains it. Rarely have these works been played with such biting articulation, pungent instrumental character, clarity of counterpoint, true to their Concerto Grosso inspiration in which each accompaniment line is as important as the soloist's.

Of interest I find is that Stravinsky the interpreter is not always consistent in his choice of tempos: the motive of the introduction of the Concerto's first movement's recurs around the end of the finale, at figure 86 (3:23), first introduced by the piano than picked up by the orchestra. Tempo and metronome indication are exactly the same for both: Largo, 48 quarter-notes per minute for the first and 96 eighth-notes for the last. Of course, interpreters rarely respect the composer's metronome marks, and even Stravinsky the conductor rarely follows the metronome marks of Stravinsky the composer; here, he takes the intro at 40-41 rather than his indicated 48, and nobody takes it as fast as the score instructs: even Stravinsky's early champion Ernest Ansermet (with Magaloff in 1955, recording now available in Decca's Ansermet-Stravinsky box, [[ASIN:B00005ND3M Stravinsky: Ballets; Stage Works; Orchestral Works [Box Set]]]) is at 43-44. Still, whatever the tempo conductor and pianist choose, you'd expect them to be at least consistent in their tempo relationships, and take the theme when in recurs in the finale at the same tempo as the intro: and so do Bishop and Davis (40-41), Olbertz-Neumann (37-38). Crossley-Salonen come close (42-43 and 40-41). But Stravinsky is wide off: 40-41 and then a slow 35-36. But the same is true with Magaloff-Ansermet (43-44 and 37) and Beroff-Ozawa (35-36 and 29-30), while Mustonen-Ashkenazy are in a category of their own by taking the section in the finale faster than in the intro, 51-52 to 39-40 ([[ASIN:B00000E57M Stravinsky: Piano Concerto; Ebony Concerto; Capriccio; Movements]]). Expressivity at the expense of inner logic. Not surprising from Ozawa and maybe not of Ashkenazy, but unexpected of Stravinsky or Ansermet, and raising fascinating questions for any would-be intepreter!

Of course, it is not Stravinsky who conducts the 1966 recording of Capriccio, but his assistant Robert Craft under his supervision. Is that why the first movement is taken at a tight and nervous tempo which brings it an unexpected flavor of rage, but leaves aside the music's elegance and geniality, much in evidence in Magaloff and Ansermet's recording? Other than that, the interpretation is as authoritative as the two other concertos.

And then, the sonics. Columbia's recordings for Stravinsky were simply stupendous. Every orchestral detail can be heard with vividness and great instrumental character, like on few other recordings. Those vivid sonics are an essential parameter of a good Stravinsky recording, as the exultation of hearing these works comes in great measure from Stravinsky's marvelous instrumental imagination. Beroff-Ozawa from 1971 ([[ASIN:B000002SBN Stravinsky: Piano Works - Michel Béroff (2 CD Box Set) (EMI)]]) and even Crossley-Salonen from 1988 ([[ASIN:B00000DSDI Stravinsky:Works for Piano & Orchestra]]) and Mustonen-Ashkenazy (see link above) in the three concertante works for piano are simply not in the same sonic league.

And the soloists. I long thought of Philippe Entremont as a hack pianist, based on the rehearsal excerpts that are now included in vol. 4 of the Stravinsky Edition, in which he smears egg over his face by seeming unable to understand the syncopation that Stravinsky demands of him. Entirely wrong, in fact: he was then a formidable pianist, and hardly anybody has played these works before and since with such massive power, muscular staccato, left-hand presence (essential in the Bach-inspired works) and forward drive, but also a unique sense of poetry, as in the solo passage at the end of the first cadenza in the middle movement of the Piano Concerto, starting at 3:09, where his dreamy, wistful softness is a wonderfully imaginative touch. Do I want to be very finicky? In the first bars of that same movement, he doesn't perfectly clarify the lines of Stravinsky's 3-stave piano writing (Walter Olbertz, an unexpected great recording from East-Germany, fares better here, [[ASIN:B00002569K Stravinsky: Piano Concerto; Concerto Dumbarton Oaks; Suites Nos. 1 & 2; Piano Pieces]]).

Stravinsky's earlier recording of the Violin Concerto, made in 1935 with premiere performer Samuel Dushkin, is an irreplaceable testimony made a mere four years after the composition's premiere, with the work still fresh and new, but, while it has great virtues, it is also flawed, by both the soloist's and the orchestra's (and perhaps the conductor's) technical limitations. But this remake with Stern is, again, unsurpassed, and has rarely been simply equalled. Truth is, Stern is not entirely faultless - I find his intonation in the two middle movements (Aria I & II) not entirely precise, and I wouldn't stake my hand that he's really playing the double stops at 1:26 in the first movement - but these small blemishes are of no importance in view of the real heroes of this recording: again, Stravinsky the conductor, the Columbia Symphony Orchestra and the sonic engineers. This is possibly, still today, the most vividly present, snappy, pungent orchestral support ever to have been recorded in this work. There are so many examples I could give of minute details of orchestration that come out with unique character, snap, bite, color and imagination that it would be extremely tedious. And the piece truly appears as the concerto grosso it was meant to be, with witty interplay between the violinist and the various soloists from the orchestra. This conductor sure had an in-depth understanding of what exactly this composer wanted. Every bar, every note, every mark of articulation, dynamic and phrasing has been carefully considered, none is left unheeded.

Not that there haven't been other recordings that did measure up to Stravinsky's: to limit myself to the LP era, Bishop-Davis in the Concerto ([[ASIN:B00000IX8M Stephen Kovacevich 2]]), the unexpected East-Germans Olbertz-Neumann (in the Concerto, see link above) and Rösel-Kegel (in the Capriccio, [[ASIN:B0000035OA Strawinsky: Pulcinella Suite; Chant du Rossignol; Capriccio]]), Oistrakh-Haitink ([[ASIN:B00000E50O Mozart Violin Concerto 1 / Stravinsky Violin Concerto - Oistrakh, Haitink]]), Grumiaux-Bour ([[ASIN:B00000E3TN Berg / Stravinsky: Violin Concerto - Grumiaux, Markevitch, Bour]]) and Chung-Previn ([[ASIN:B0000041V4 Prokofiev: Violin Concertos 1 & 2; Stravinsky: Violin Concerto]]) in the Violin Concerto. But add to Stravinsky's interpretive and sonic excellence the consideration that this CD provides, of all the competition, the most convenient access to his output in concertante form. Missing is only the Ebony Concerto (available on volume 7 on the Stravinsky Edition) - but that's not really a concerto, although the clarinet player always gets top billing, but more a Concerto Grosso: the interventions of the clarinet are very few, and they are always embedded into the ensemble's texture. Ashkenazy does add the Ebony Concerto to the three works for piano & orchestra, but not the Violin Concerto; Crossley-Salonen also have the three works for piano and orchestra, but substitute the Symphony for Wind Instruments to the Violin Concerto (see links above).

If you are a Stravinsky fan, don't miss this.


title: An "Old Man's" view of Mahler's 9th - but an old man still full of punch

text:
Bruno Walter had a special legitimacy in this work, Mahler's last completed symphony. He was, when the symphony was composed (between the summer of 1908 and the winter of 1909/10) Mahler's favorite disciple, there were long exchanges of correspondence between them, and finally he premiered the work, after Mahler's death, on June 26, 1912. He also made its premiere recording, live with the Vienna Philharmonic, in 1938 ([[ASIN:B000002S0R Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 9 In D Major (Great Recordings of the Century)]]).

So there is a direct line between Walter and the composer, although I wouldn't push the argument too far. Henry-Louis de la Grange, in his mammoth Mahler biography, doesn't record that there were any discussions between them on the score as there was with Das Lied von der Erde, and although there are reasons to argue that Walter's 1938 recorded is indeed closer than any subsequent recording to what the symphony might have been under the composer's own baton (mainly, the very swift tempos in the outer movements, and the fiery intensity that results), that recording was made almost thirty years after any (undocumented) conversation that may have occurred between the two men at the time of the work's composition, and a quarter century after Walter premiered it in 1912. And this stereo remake, made in January 1961 (Walter's last recording session was made on March 31 of the same year, and he died on February 17 of 1962), is even further removed. It also shows a significant change in Walter's approach to the piece.

Critics have been split over the respective merits of this remake and Walter's premiere recording of the 9th, while usually recognizing the virtues of both. On the other hand, I remember hearing an interview of Zubin Mehta, who had been present at the 1961 recording sessions, disparaging it, on account of the fact that, for financial reasons, Columbia/CBS had pathetically afforded Walter only half of the necessary strings (searching on the net to substantiate my claim about Mehta's comments, I see that they are reproduced, in very much the same words as I had heard, on universal's website. He adds that the members of the Columbia SO sight-read, and chides the critics for praising to such an extent a version that was the result, according to him, of mere sight-reading. See the comments section for the link). Well, whatever the process, Mehta must not have listened to the results.

Certainly, the 1938 version is a major musical statement, and one that is entirely unique in its approach, paralleled in its brisk tempos and fiery intensity by no subsequent version (only Scherchen, in a recording made for the Austrian radio in 1950 but published only in 1990, pushed the Walter approach to the point almost of caricature. See my review of [[ASIN:B0000059BJ Mahler: Symphony  No. 9]]). But its constricted sonics are a big limitation, especially in the first movement with its intricate contrapuntal writing, much of which gets lost (horns and woodwinds especially). Now jump 23 years. Half the necessary strings, Zubin? I don't hear that in the least. What I hear, thanks to the great stereo sonics (Bernstein's four years later on the same label were not as good, [[ASIN:B00000C298 Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (Bernstein Century)]]) is not only power when needed, but also great clarity and transparency of every string line (essential especially in the first movement, with its antiphonal writing for first and second violins), and great pungency and instrumental character in the brass and woodwinds. But Walter's 1961 version isn't only outstanding sonically, it is also an account that deserves to be acknowledged musically.

What one hears immediately in the first movement is, in the way the violin phrases are molded, the expression of Walter's unique goodness and lovingness. But Walter isn't just loving and mellow, mind you. Listen how the brass crash in at 19:33 in the first movement "mit höchster Gewalt" (measure 314), "with the strongest force" (or violence): it is devastating. Common critical wisdom is that, due to its pick up nature, the so-called Columbia Symphony Orchestra was no match to the New York Philharmonic with which Walter had done his first recordings for Columbia, in the 1940s and 1950s. With my ears only to judge (and not any reverence to an orchestra's stature, or any knowledge of what went on during the recording process), I couldn't agree less: I've often found the 1950s New Yorkers to be a sloppy band, lacking crispness and ensemble, and the Columbia SO appears here as in other recordings of Walter as a virtuoso ensemble, playing with precision, snap and vigor, abetted by the great sonics. Sight-reading, Zubin? Many orchestras couldn't play like that even after 10 rehearsals.

Is anything missing? Yes, Walter underplays the contrasts of tempo in the first movement, keeping everything too much in an allegro moderato tempo. "Etwas frisher" (somewhat brisker) at 5:45, "fliessend" (flowing) at 6:05, "allegro" at 6:59: these hardly register, the allegro risoluto "mit Wut" (with fury) at 11:37 is hardly risoluto and furious, the "Leidenschaftlich" passage at 13:35 could have been more passionate and animated. This is too invariably deliberate. I doubt however that any of this has to do with "sight-reading", but rather with Walter's old age, frailty and approaching death. Not so much a case of the body not able any more to convey what the mind conceived (as perhaps Klemperer in his final time), but a mind turned unresponsive to these brusque Mahlerian shifts and surges of passion. But Walter's "suddenly very measured and held-back" at 8:38 (measure 130), which he perceptibly holds back, has great character, and overall his orchestra's instrumental pungency makes up to a large extent for his relative lack of drive.

The same is true with the two, fast, loud and rambunctious middle movements: Walter may have been an old, weakened man nearing death when this recording was made, but the Ländler and Rondo-Burleske amply compensate in power, vigor and extraordinary instrumental pungency what they loose in sheer forward drive, in an approach strikingly close to Horenstein's in his 1952 recording for Vox ([[ASIN:B000001KC5 Mahler: Symphony 9 and Kindertotenlieder / Norman Foster / Jascha Horenstein (2 CDs)]]). In fact, Walter's conception of the Ländler hasn't changed much since 1938, just a little more expansive and lacking a measure of savagery at 7:19 (measure 261) with the return of the tempo II ("but a little faster than the first time", indicates Mahler, and Walter doesn't observe) and again at 12:24 (measure 423), but the sonics are incomparably better than his own in 1938 and Horenstein's in 1952, and again the orchestra compensates for the occasional lack of drive with a lot of pungency. While still favoring a very laid-back and easy-going view of the opening section and Tempo I (Barbirolli in 1964, [[ASIN:B000002S10 Mahler: Symphony No. 9]], and Bernstein in 1965 provided a valid alternative, with a considerably brisker Tempo I, less good-natured and more exultant), Walter has a better grasp than in 1938 of the tricky tempo change from tempo III to tempo I at 6:04 (measure 230), but he still doesn't do anything of the "fliessend" (flowing) at 7:03 (measure 256) - a small detail that counts for nothing in view of the movement's charm and irresistible instrumental character, which no other version in the 1960s has equalled (only Klemperer came close): just listen to the earthy and clumsy ("schwerfällig") vigor of the 2nd violins upon their first entry at 0:19, and the extraordinary pungency of the saucy ("keck") horn immediately after (0:27). In the Rondo-Burleske Walter's conception HAS changed significantly compared to 1938, now going less for sheer forward drive (and his observance of Mahler's double acceleration in the finale is very minimal), but again he amply makes up with the power, the vigor, the instrumental character, the extraordinary intensity. What a din! Walter (like Bernstein after him) doesn't exactly observe Mahler's score when applying Mahler's required slow down at the movement's B section ("etwas gehalten", somewhat held back  right at its entry at 6:23 (announced by violin tremolos and flute fluttertongues, measure 347) rather than eight measures later as prescribed.

Walter's 1961 finale may have added a few minutes to his earlier recording (21:02 to 18:06), it is still, by any previous and subsequent standard, a brisk and flowing approach (compare to Horenstein's 25:11 in 1952 or Bernstein's 22:55 in 1965, to say nothing of Levine's extreme 29:48 in 1979, [[ASIN:B00000E682 Mahler: Symphony No. 9]]). But it is a tribute to Mahler's genius that I have rarely heard a recording here, be it the extremes of Walter 1938 or Levine 1979, that didn't convey the scorching intensity of the music, evidently not so much a function of tempo (slow or fast) as of intensity of bowing (Mahler instructs the strings to play with "grosser ton", big tone), of a sense of desolation in the more sparsely orchestrated passages, of  the conductor's ability to bring devastating power to the climaxes. In that respect, I find Walter wanting only at 12:27 (measure 107), when the strings re-enter at full blast, in a more flowing tempo, after a long passage of bareness conveying the sense of an Abschied (farewell) to the world. The ensuing climax, at 13:25 (measure 118), with the horns and trumpets playing bells up, is as blistering as anyone's, but again Walter lets the intensity sag on the long held, fff string chords at 13:45 (measure 122).

This may not be, now, fifty years later, among the best versions of Mahler's 9th that you can get, but it is still an excellent version with which nobody will go wrong or get a distorted view of the composition, and it remains one of the essential milestones in the history of the symphony's recordings, a long list that list begins with (but is not limited to) Walter 1938, Horenstein 1952, the neglected Leopold Ludwig in 1959 ([[ASIN:B0000023HN Symphony 9]]), Barbirolli and Kondrashin ([[ASIN:B000XYI8NE Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 9 in D Major]]) in 1964, Bernstein in 1965.


title: Some coarse playing from Russia, but an interpretation of unique, passionate intensity

text:
I didn't expect this. Sure, I knew what a great conductor Kondrashin had been, and I knew that he had been one of the main champions of the cause of Mahler in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, in a vastly hostile environment, despite Shostakovich's admiration for and inspiration from Mahler's symphonic output. But then, Mahler's 9th, in the early 1960s, was still amply unchartered territory even in the West - there had been less than a handful of recordings in 1964, when this one was made: Walter's pioneering 1938 live recording from Vienna ([[ASIN:B000002S0R Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 9 In D Major (Great Recordings of the Century)]]), Horenstein's mono version for Vox in 1952 ([[ASIN:B000001KC5 Mahler: Symphony 9 and Kindertotenlieder / Norman Foster / Jascha Horenstein (2 CDs)]], an LP premiere), Leopold Ludwig's unjustly underestimated first stereo version for Everest in 1960 ([[ASIN:B0000023HN Symphony 9]]), and then Walter's much admired stereo remake from 1961 ([[ASIN:B000002A7K Mahler: Symphony No. 9 & Rehearsal]]). Barbirolli's (also much admired) EMI recording with the Berlin Philharmonic came out in that same year 1964 ([[ASIN:B000002S10 Mahler: Symphony No. 9]]), and Bernstein's first go was the year after ([[ASIN:B00000C298 Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (Bernstein Century)]]). So if the 9th was still being discovered by conductors, orchestras and audiences alike in the West, what could it have been behind the iron curtain?

So I expected Kondrashin's reading to be superficial, gliding on the surface but showing little understanding of the sound-world and psychological landscape of Mahler's last completed symphony. Well, defying all my expectations, Kondrashin shows no trace of tentativeness or glib superficiality. I'm not sure his interpretation will be recognized by the Mahlerites as displaying a "true Mahlerian style", whatever that is (I don't think Mahlerites agree between them on what the "true Mahlerian style" really is, and anyway I'm not sure that what they view as the true Mahlerian style - whatever it is - would have been recognized by Mahler as his own), but it is certainly entirely committed, and uniquely passionate.

Sure, this is unmistakably a Russian orchestra, and it would be easy to be put off by the opening horns, terribly metallic when playing with stops and comically wobbly when not, and by the general coarseness and lack of refinement of the strings. But it is worth getting over these "provincialisms". The opening violin phrases, which can be sung with so much lyrical warmth and even tenderness (Giulini, [[ASIN:B000026EYE Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 9 - Carlo Maria Giulini / Chicago Symphony Orchestra]]), are here dispatched rather indifferently. But what ensues is a first movement of great passion rather than of funeral gloom. Tempo is comparatively swift and comes closest to Walter's 1938 version. The rise of intensity leading to the first climax at 2:51 (measure 46) is obtained not - as with Barbirolli, another very passionate version - by a perceptible acceleration of tempo (Mahler indicates none), but only by an intensification of dynamics, especially from strings and brass: this is exactly how it should be. Kondrashin then accelerates to a very swift "Allegro" tempo on the big "military" climax at 6:02 with its resounding fanfares before the sudden return of Tempo 1, but he gets there progressively, without calling attention on the speed up.

From there on, however, like Barbirolli, he sets the stage for strong contrasts of tempo. His slow sections establish a mesmerizing sense of ominous stasis, like the "plötzlich sehr mässig und zurückhaltend" passage ("suddenly very measured and held-back") at 7:20/measure 130, or the one starting at 12:44 measure 243 with a slow-motion, sneering military fanfare, as if played by the fallen soldiers themselves, leading to the ghostly "schattenhaft/shadowy" section at 13:30 measure 254, and likewise again at 16:41 (measure 321, "gehalten"/"held back"), conveying the impression of a snarling funeral procession where the dead would be invisibly dancing around the living. Conversely, when Kondrashin gets a chance to press on the gas pedal, he goes for it. Take for instance at 9:37, on the "allmählich fliessender" (progressively more flowing, measure 168) introducing one of those military brass fanfares, on which he very perceptibly presses forward, leading to a passage to be played "mit Wut (furiously) - allegro risoluto" (9:48, measure 174), where, within those 10+ seconds, Kondrashin has worked up his orchestra to a truly "wütend", furious and almost suffocating condition. Same thing at 11:05/measure 211, when erupts a "leidenschaftlich" (passionately) violin outburst, or again "etwas fliessend" (somewhat flowing), at 15:01/measure 279. All this generates white-heat intensity and tremendous dramatic tension, that can be compared only to Walter in 1938, but now in vivid sound. And that the movement's overall timing, 24:45, comes so close to Walter's (which, at 24:40, in view of everything that was to follow, is almost shockingly fast) is even slightly misleading, as Kondrashin is much more prone than Walter in 1938 to adopt very slow tempos in the movement's slow-moving sections, which means that his fast ones are more furiously fast.

Kondrashin also has a great sense of instrumental color, and (unlike for instance Barbirolli, in a reading that remains a great one, in spite of THAT shortcoming), he never shies before the snarling brass, never smoothes out the edges. The horns may be very Russian-wobbly at the beginning, but later the sonorous solo horn brings great romantic warmth to his solos (such as after 8:38, measure 151). And if, in the finale, that solo horn sounds too loud at 2:19 and again at 5:51, one must keep in mind that Mahler wrote there "stark hervortretend", "strongly standing out" (measures 17 and 49). Those colors may not be always entirely Mahlerian - in the climaxes of the first movement the glaring trumpet seems right out of Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy (try 15:14 and after, measure 284), but, as objectionable as it may be, it does lend those climaxes a great and agonizing dramatic impact. The "deep bells" Kondrashin uses at 17:36 (measure 337) seem to have more high than really low frequencies and consequently don't sound so deep, but they irresistibly evoke memories of Mussorgsky and orthodox processions.

Another good surprise are the fine sonics, even glaring in some of the brassy outbursts, but letting you hear with entire clarity not only every string line (essential in the outer movements, with their highly elaborate string counterpoint), but also Kondrashin's care at getting the instrumental balances right. I didn't expect that either of 1964 Melodiya. I can't begin to mention all the great ear-catching instrumental details that jump at the Mahlerite's ear, so I'll limit myself to just two, taken at the very beginning of the symphony: in the aftermath of the first climax, at 2:51, the textures are still thick, with strings playing forte, and there is an accompanying figure played by third and fourth horns, in staccato eighth-notes, doubling the tremolos and staccato eighth-notes of violas and cellos. Because they merely underpin the lower strings, the horns are usually not really heard. They are here, played really staccato, and they have great character.

A little after the return of the Tempo 1, past the great climax with military fanfares (measure 108, 6:02), Mahler installs a funeral march rhythm in which he develops and combines the various themes stated in cell-form at the beginning of the symphony, and one of them (intoned at the beginning by resounding harp) is now picked up by tolling timpani, underpinned by pizzicato double-basses and cellos. Just listen to the double basses, at 6:46 (playing in fact not pizz but arco - maybe Kondrashin was using the corrupt 1912 edition and not the revised one): they don't "play", they bite.

Reservations about Kondrashin's first movement include the two solo violins at 14:27 (measure 263 & 264), not very "zart" (tender), and given the tornadoes that preceded them, Kondrashin's two big crashing climaxes at 10:41 (measure 202) and 16:21 (measure 314) are a bit underpowered and lacking violence, especially the second one (but there, the ensuing timpani blows are blasting). Nonetheless, despite the wobbly horns, glaring trumpet, coarse strings, the overriding impression is that of unique passion and white-heat intensity. What the 9th "talks about" is anybody's guess and feeling, but many commentators have opined that, like "Das Lied", it is about "Abschied" (farewell, leave-taking) and acceptance of the passing of things. If so, what Kondrashin seems to express in this first movement is that any acceptance is first opposed by violent, passionate and conflict-laden refusal.

In the Ländler Kondrashin's choice of tempi strike me as very true to of Mahler's indications and his tricky tempo relationships, and conveying much character. His Tempo I is halfway between Ludwig (fast) and Walter (slow), just a little more held back than Barbirolli and Bernstein, managing to capture both the sense of bonhomie of Walter and of merriment of Bernstein. His Tempo II doesn't rush (observant of Mahler's indication "POCO più mosso) but is very vigorous, and the slower Tempo III establishes the necessary contrast with the return of Tempo I. But more important than these choices of tempo is the great bite and saucy instrumental character of the Moscow players.

Fury and defiance ("sehr trotzig" is Mahler's character indication) are the name of Kondrashin's Rondo-Burleske, thanks to a brisk tempo (true to Mahler's "Allegro assai" indication, and closer to Walter 1938 than to Walter's more deliberate pace in 1961), and also to his glaring brass, much in situation here, and saucy woodwinds. Some listeners may find Kondrashin's middle section somewhat lacking in "Empfindung" (feeling) because hardly relaxing the tempo to let the phrases fully sing, but then Mahler wrote here "etwas gehalten" (somewhat held back) and, like Walter in 1938 and Leopold Ludwig in 1959, Kondrashin conveys the intense lyricism through dynamics rather than (like Bernstein in 1965) constantly fiddling with tempo. The movement's final presto (11:26) has the required drive and din, although, in view of what happened before, one feels that the Moscow orchestra had the reserve to be whipped to even more hectic frenzy.

By present standards, clocking at 21:49 Kondrashin's finale is a brisk one, somewhere between Walter's in 1961 (21:02) and Barbirolli's, Bernstein's (both 22:55) or Solti's (22:53) - but way behind Walter in 1938 (18:06), and, to put things in perspective, all these versions are races compared to the extreme of Levine in 1979 (29:49). Not that it matters. The heart-wrenching emotion of that movement derives not from tempo (slow or fast), but from the intensity of string bowing (Mahler instructs them to play in "grosser Ton"), the agonized cries of despair of the brass, the sense of gloom of the bassoon and contra-bassoon, the floating, expressionless cantabile of the violins and woodwinds that makes you hold your breath ("ohne Empfindung", Mahler instructs, which in context means without "expression" rather than "feeling"). Kondrashin has all that, and, as in the first movement, his swift tempi, together with the density of his orchestral textures, convey a harrowing passionate intensity.

This is definitely not a 9th for all tastes, and those whose sole standard of music-making is the refinement of the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonic will no doubt raise eyebrows. No, this is often coarse, and sometimes gaudy. But in passionate intensity it has little peers. It is certainly not to be recommended as a first version, and even less as a sole version. But serious Mahlerites should not pass it by.


title: not this transfer

text: The Everest label, noted, in the early stereo LP days, for its state-of-the-art Hi-Fi status and its recordings made on 35 mm film, has had a complex and chequered history that is too long to recount here. But one thing is sure: if you want Everest reissues on CD, you need to go to the original batch under the Everest label (released in the mid-1990s), not to these nth generation transfers from Bescol. And, for reasons stated in my review of the Everest's CD reissue ([[ASIN:B0000023HN Symphony 9]]), this version of Mahler's 9th by Leopold Ludwig is very much worth knowing.


title: The unique voice of Isang Yun

text:
I was sent back to the music of Isang Yun by the Concerto for Violin of his younger compatriot, the Korean Unsunk Chin ([[ASIN:B001H5GK42 Unsuk Chin: Violin Concerto / Rocaná]]). Chin displays fascinating sonic invention and intense lyricism - but it sounded strangely familiar. Some of the high-pitched violin effects she uses I thought I'd heard before in Isayng Yun's Violin Concerto. It turns out after all that those gestures that seemed familiar did not so much come from Yun's Violin Concerto, as from Salvatore Sciarrino's mesmerizing Capricci for solo violin: [[ASIN:B000004CEO Salvatore Sciarrino: Caprices for Violin / Un'Immagine d'Arpocrate]]. Well, no matter, since my confusion did give me the welcome opportunity to return to the music of Yun.

Isang Yun (1917-1995) seems to be suffering the fate of many composers when they die - especially when they are stylistically independent composers, rather than leaders or members of a compositional "school" (the French André Jolivet and the Spanish/French Maurice Ohana here come to mind): he tends to be forgotten.

Well, I hope it doesn't last too long, because Yun was one of the greatest and most original composers of the second half of the 20th Century, especially in his later years when he abandoned the most stringent strictures of avant-garde music and let his lyrical vein and the inspiration of Chinese and Korean Court music take over. When I started posting reviews on Amazon, in 2006, one of the things I hoped I'd do was to review his complete recorded output (I had most of it). Well, five years later, things appear not to have gone that way: too many new CDs entering my collection to grant the time to go back to the old ones. So I am happy that Chin's Violin Concerto gave me the opportunity to start fulfilling my own promise to myself.

I see that Camerata has recently reissued their Yun collection on a 9-CD series titled "The Art of Isang Yun" (but strangely volumes I and II seem listed nowhere), and have done some reshuffling on the occasion. It first came out in 11 volumes of a series called "Compositions of Ysang Yun", between 1987 and 1997 (the last volume wasn't numbered as part of the series and was only titled "Last works of Isang Yun"), and this is how I have them. The present issue, 32CM-22, is part of that original batch, volume 5. In the original series, the pairings were rarely entirely consistent, mixing orchestral and chamber, and various performers, and this one is a good case in point. The reissued series is genre-centered, with orchestral works (including the missing first two volumes), concertos, chamber. Consequently, the Concerto has been sent to [[ASIN:B003OB5WE6 Art of Isang Yun 5]] - Concerto II, with the Concertos for Clarinet and flute, and the Sonata to [[ASIN:B003OB5WX2 The Art of Isang Yun vol. 8: Chamber Music III]]. For the links to the complete Camerata series, old and new, and the correspondances between both, see the comments section. One advantage of the reissue series was also that, stacking the contents of the original eleven CDs on only nine, each offered more generous timings. The two discs on which these two compositions have been dispatched total 73 and 76 minutes. Nonetheless, at nearly 60-minutes, this one was one of the most generous of the original series, and is nothing to complain about.

The Cello Concerto, written in 1975/6 for Siegried Palm who plays it here, is a powerful, angry work, with vehement utterances from the cello interrupted or underpinned by violent orchestral outbursts, with some poetic, bird-like woodwind trilling - a typical Yun gesture - buried deep in the texture. The Concerto does go through more appeased moments, although always an underlying tension and sense of pent-up menace. Other typical gestures of Yun are the quarter tone string glissandos you can hear between 4 and 7:00, or the delicately tinkering bells over high-pitch string tremolos at 11:40 announcing a new outburst, or again the ghostly tapestry of string glissandos at 23:30.

Siegfried Palm is the works dedicatee ("In Friendship") and premiere performer, so his recording (made six months after the 1976 premiere in Royan) carries a unique aura of authority. There's been a new recording of it, made in 2001 by Jens Peter Maintz and Stefan Asbury on Capriccio ([[ASIN:B001UUNB9Q Isang Yun]]). There is little to choose between both recordings, and the 2001 sonics do not radically tip the scales in favor of the new one. In fact, the cello is given a more forward placement in 1976, which makes no great difference in the numerous solo passages but affords it greater presence in the tutti, where Maintz' instrument is more embedded into the orchestra. But Maintz has a fuller tone than Palm, especially in his pizzicati (as in the long passage starting at 4:22 - 4:18 with Palm) On the other hand, other than the flutes, slightly more vivid with Camerata (and they always have an important role with Yun), Asbury's Deutsches Symphonie-Orchestra of Berlin has more presence, with better stereo separation of 1st and 2nd violins with Asbury (important in the soft passage at 4:37/4:33), more vivid and impactful timpani (for instance in the violent outbursts at 8:10/8:13 and after), more color in the mysterious tinkering of glockenspiel and celesta at 11:24/11:43. But these are minute details that require careful comparative listening.

The Sonata for oboe, harp and viola from 1979 was also written for the performers who play it here, Heinz and Ursula Holliger (joined by violist Hirofumi Fukai), in a vivid recording made in 1980, less than a year after the premiere. It is a very typical Yun composition in that the three instruments are associated with characters and the piece conveys a loose underlying story (another such piece is Images for flute, oboe, violin and cello, found on Compositions-4, [[ASIN:B000001ZHT Double Concerto / Images]], and  now on Art-8 where it is paired with the Sonata, see link above). Here, the  oboe, symbolizing (as in Images) the "male Yang-principle", wooing the harp-female-Yin;  we are not told what the viola is supposed to be, but playing by ear he certainly sounds like the second suitor. Not that the "story" really matters, but still, as in and perhaps even more even than in Images, you can hear that the instruments are the actors of that ballet and that their melodic lines are their actions and trajectories, and those chamber pieces of Yun can really be called instrumental theatre. The music is very busy and full of ear-catching events, glissandos, trills, pizzicati, quarter-tone slides, harmonics, col legno, flutter tonguing; there is even, at one point in the middle movement, a change from oboe to the sweeter oboe d'amore while the harpist weaves a silk shawl between the strings to make the tone harder - but frankly, even having read about it, I couldn't hear the difference (I think it happens at 17:59, but I wouldn't stake my hand on it). Yet, despite some moments in the slow movement that are quite sensuous and even pretty at times, the music isn't as seductive as in Images. There may be too much theatre and conflict, and not enough of those uniquely mesmerizing melodies and sonic inventions of Yun that are so much in evidence in the other piece. The Sonata is in three movements, none are cued here, tentatively I think the slow movement starts at 9:44 and the finale at 24:22.

It's probably a better choice to go to the Art reissues, volume 5 for the concertos and volume 8 for the chamber music pieces. There, Riul and Piri are tough nuts, but Images is a great piece. If you don't want to be a Yun completist, then adding to Art-5 (Concertos for cello, flute and clarinet), Compositions-4 where Images is paired with the Double Concerto for oboe and harp, is also a good choice, and one that will entail no duplication. Note that the same disc as here can be found under [[ASIN:B0000061V3 Isang Yun - Concerto for Violoncello & Orchestra / Sonata for Oboe, Harp and Viola]].


title: the missing link between Scarlatti and Haydn, and one of the best-kept secrets of classical music

text:
The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Cimarosa are still today one of the best-kept secrets of classical music. While pianists have made part of their standard repertoire the sonatas of Scarlatti, Haydn and Mozart, they have ignored those of Cimarosa, and the recordings are very scanty, and never by prominent pianists. It is not arbitrarily that I mention Scarlatti, Haydn and Mozart. Cimarosa  1749-1801) was the near-exact contemporary of Mozart, and shares with him an unfortunately early death (he had just turned 51). Unlike Mozart, he is mainly remembered for his operas, and first and foremost his popular Il Matrimonio Segreto (The Secret Marriage). Yet his keyboard sonatas are little gems. In many ways, they are the missing link between Scarlatti and Haydn. Formally, you can say that they are backward-looking, harking back the model of the one-movement sonata brought to its apex by Scarlatti. They also share with Scarlatti's the sparkling verve, the explosive digital virtuosity. But, stylistically and emotionally, they are closer to the world of Haydn in many ways, or maybe to the finales of Mozart's operas. Also, don't infer that they are only sparkle and digital prowess. The slower ones often have a wistfulness that makes them opera arias in miniature, and one of them (Mamou's track 29) even evoked the 13th variation in Bach's Goldbergs. I rank them as high as those of Scarlatti, Haydn and Mozart, miles above, say, Clementi's or Galuppi's (for the latter see my review of [[ASIN:B001F0K022 Piano Sonatas]]). Now that major pianists, like Murray Perahia or Alexandre Tharaud, are starting to tackle Haendel ([[ASIN:B0000029UB Handel/Scarlatti: Murray Perahia Plays Handel & Scarlatti]]), Couperin ([[ASIN:B000MG1YCK Alexandre Tharaud plays Couperin ~ tic, toc, choc]]) and Rameau ([[ASIN:B00005QAGJ Alexandre Tharaud plays Rameau]]), it is ample time that they discover Cimarosa.

I've waxed enthusiastic about the collection of 62 sonatas recorded circa 1993 by Monica Crudeli on an Arcobaleno 2-CD set, which has the immense advantage of being (or at least claiming to be, but more about this anon) the complete sonatas ([[ASIN:B000027QXY Domenico Cimarosa: Complete Sonatas]]). The Tunisian Roberte Mamou (how many other Tunisian pianists are there?) recorded this collection of 32 in 1980, and I wanted to complement my Crudeli set and compare. Crudeli published a revised edition with the small Italian publisher Carish. I do not have it but - bless them again - the International Music Scores Library Project offers two previous publications for download, a Polish edition of 20 sonatas and a Russian edition of 12 more. This may have been what Mamou had access to, since 31 of the 32 sonatas she plays are included (the odd sonata out is track 28, the so-called "Perfidia", for which I haven't been able to find a downloadable score). All those she plays are on Crudeli's set, of course. One puzzling thing, though, is that the Polish score includes a sonata, No. 12, which neither Crudeli nor Mamou plays. Since Crudeli boasts being the complete sonatas, I wonder if it was established that this one is NOT by Cimarosa after all. But then, Cimarosa's Wikipedia entry mentions 88 sonatas for harpsichord or fortepiano. Incidentally, the "Perfidia" sonata is on Crudeli's CD 1 track 6.

Anyway, it took quite some work to establish the correspondence between the CDs and the Polish and Russian scores, since none of the track listings refer to those editions' ordering, and the track listings are not comparable with each other, Mamou's being listed by tempo indications ("allegro giusto" - sometimes not in-sync with those of the scores) and Crudeli's by reference to two earlier publications, Boghen's and Vitale's. It did help that Mamou's ordering followed at least the three books of Boghen's edition. Anyway, for those who'd want to download the scores from IMSLP, here is the correspondence for Mamou (for Crudeli, see my review of her recording):

12 sonatas, No. 1: track 12, 2/3, 3/31, 4/19, 5/29, 6/8, 7/9, 8/15, 9/18, 10/17, 11/10, 12/7

20 sonatas 1/4, 2/26, 3/6, 4/22, 5/2, 6/25, 7/14, 8/13, 9/11, 10/5, 11/27, 13/23, 14/32, 15/24, 16/16, 17/1, 18/20, 19/21, 20/30.

In this review I will then refer to the sonatas as, for instance, 12-1/12, meaning 12 sonatas No. 1, Mamou's track 12. My references to Crudeli will be CD and track, as 1/2 or 2/5.

What Crudeli and Mamou have in common is that they don't play the sonatas in the order in which they were published, but reconstruct, so to speak, self contained classical sonatas following the fast-slow-fast pattern - a welcome choice, as it provides for more diversity.

On comparison, it turns out that the merits are equally divided between the two pianists. Crudeli is much better at the marcato than at the cantabile, with a harder and more percussive tone, lacking interiority and feeling in the slower sonatas, making Mamou's softer and more wistful approach usually decidedly preferable there (like 20-2/26, 20-3/6, 20-4/22, 20-5/2, 20-8/13, 20-13/23, the andantino first section of 20-18/20 - the Russian collection of twelve contains mostly fast sonatas).  I also find Mamou's faster tempos in those slower movements very welcome: it takes away the sentimentality, and the irresistible little clockwork passages come out much better (as in 20-5/2 at 1:10). In the allegretto 20-3/6, the Spanish flavor, the short whiffs of Soler's Fandango go entirely lost with Crudeli (Crudeli's track 2/2). Crudeli's hard touch doesn't sit well with her slower tempos anyway; the 2:39 minutes of 20-8/13 have irresistible charm with Mamou, their 4:08 sound frankly ponderous and outstay their welcome with Crudeli (CD 2/30).  Even when Mamou adopts a slower tempo, as in the Siciliano (20-13/23, Crudeli's 1/5), her softer and dreamier touch works better than Crudeli's more percussive one. Crudeli's staccato in 12-5 (the one that evokes Bach's 13th Goldberg variation, Crudeli's track 1/9, Mamou's 29) and 20-16 (Crudeli's track 2/34, Mamou's 16) are fine, though.

On the other hand Crudeli is usually MUCH preferable in the fast sonatas, with more dazzling virtuosity, light-fingers and sparkling verve than Mamou (especially in 12-1/12, 12-3/31, 12-6/8, 12-10/17, 12-11/10, 12-12/7, 20-1/4, 20-6/25, 20-9/11, 20-11/27, 20-14/32, 20-15/24, 20-17/1, 20-19/21, 20-20/30), to the point even that Mamou doesn't really do justice to some of them: 20-15 is stately where its repeated staccato notes should sparkle, 20-19 sounds with Crudeli  like the explosive finale of a Mozart opera (Crudeli's track 1/1), and with Mamou as that conducted by Klemperer on one of his drowsy days, and with un-prescribed and abrupt tempo changes in the middle to make it easier for the fingers. In 12-11/10, many of Mamou's grace notes and trills go almost un-noticed, but all the verve and wits come precisely from those grace notes and trills.  Her "Perfidia" sonata (track 28) starts well but unlike Crudeli (track 6) she doesn't maintain a steady tempo throughout and thus loses some of the dazzling pyrotechnics along the way. Sometimes, as in 12-3/31, 12-6/8, 12-10/17, the more gentle approach may elicit a certain charm, but just turn to Crudeli to hear how much more Mozartean sparkle she has (tracks 1/10, 2/6, 2/29). Also, where repeats are indicated, Mamou doesn't take them (1-8/15, 12-2/3, 20-7/14, 20-14/32, 20-15/24, 20-19/21 - and in the latter case, it is better than she doesn't, because at her stately tempo it would have seemed interminable). One exception to the general rule is 12-4/19, which, for once, Mamou plays with more coruscating drive than Crudeli (Crudeli's track 2/33). She is also just fine in the second and fast section of 20-18/20.

Ultimately, despite her shortcomings in the slower sonatas, Crudeli's set remains the first option, because it offers 30 more sonatas (of equal quality) and because of its irresistible verve in the faster ones (and those out-number the slower ones that are preferable with Mamou). But Mamou is a welcome complement, especially in the slow movements. TT is 60 minutes, no complaint here. I haven't yet heard the collections of Victor Sangiorgio on Naxos ([[ASIN:B001QUL728 Cimarosa: Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 1]]) and Donatella Failoni on Hungaroton ([[ASIN:B000009J3F 31 Sonatas / Songs Without Words]]). But whatever version you listen to, bottom line is: can you imagine a life without the sonatas of Scarlatti? Well, if you haven't yet heard the sonatas of Cimarosa, that's the kind of life you've been living thus far.

Now I need to get in touch somehow with Alexandre Tharaud and make him aware of Cimarosa.

attachment_type: IMAGE


title: The reissue of another superb rediscovery by Concerto Köln - early romantic music of great sweep

text: This is one of the numerous entries (and, as I write, not the cheapest either!) for the reissue by Brilliant Classics, the "other" very-budget label (Naxos being the first one) from the Netherlands, of a CD first published by Archiv Produktion in 2004, listed here and still selling very cheap at the time of writing: [[ASIN:B00016OYNW Johann Wilhelm Wilms: Symphonien Nos. 6 & 7]]. I've posted a detailed review thereunder. Johann Wilhelm Wilms was born in 1772 near Cologne - which makes him Beethoven's junior by two years - but (like Bonn-born Beethoven with Vienna) at the age of 19 took the bold decision to establish in Amsterdam, where he spent the rest of his life. He died in 1847, which makes him a near-contemporary by death of Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and Chopin (1810-1849). In other words, he witnessed the advent and blossoming of the early romantic style in music, and his two last symphonies bear witness of it. Composed respectively in 1820 and 1837 (which dates the latter seven years after Berlioz' Fantastique and Mendelssohn's Reformation, four years after the Italian), they are milestones on the path leading from Spohr to Schumann, really, works of great sweep, melodic invention, orchestral splendor, representative perhaps of a time of stylistic transition (of which Spohr, Raff and maybe even Schumann in his symphonies would be other champions) but no less appealing because of that. Endless gratitude to Concerto Köln for offering this invaluable discovery.


text: This is one of the numerous entries for the reissue by Brilliant Classics, the "other" very-budget label (Naxos being the first one) from the Netherlands, of a CD first published by Archiv Produktion in 2004, listed here and still selling very cheap at the time of writing: [[ASIN:B00016OYNW Johann Wilhelm Wilms: Symphonien Nos. 6 & 7]]. I've posted a detailed review thereunder. Johann Wilhelm Wilms was born in 1772 near Cologne - which makes him Beethoven's junior by two years - but (like Bonn-born Beethoven with Vienna) at the age of 19 took the bold decision to establish in Amsterdam, where he spent the rest of his life. He died in 1847, which makes him a near-contemporary by death of Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and Chopin (1810-1849). In other words, he witnessed the advent and blossoming of the early romantic style in music, and his two last symphonies bear witness of it. Composed respectively in 1820 and 1837 (which dates the latter seven years after Berlioz' Fantastique and Mendelssohn's Reformation, four years after the Italian), they are milestones on the path leading from Spohr to Schumann, really, works of great sweep, melodic invention, orchestral splendor, representative perhaps of a time of stylistic transition (of which Spohr, Raff and maybe even Schumann in his symphonies would be other champions) but no less appealing because of that. Endless gratitude to Concerto Köln for offering this invaluable discovery.