title: Not just for the musicology: for pleasure

text:
This 4 CD-set offers a significant compendium and cross-cut of "peasant, bourgeois and courtly" (as the set's subtitle has it) dance music from the Renaissance to the Biedermeier - the latter being the period in Austria that went from the fall of Napoleon in 1815 to the Revolutions of 1848. It collates the full contents of no less than 6 LPs, recorded between 1971 and 1975, by two different ensembles, Ulsamer Collegium under Josef Ulsamer (CDs 1 & 2) and Eduard Melkus Ensemble under Eduard Melkus (CDs 3 & 4):

CD 1 tracks 1-27 are from "Tanzmusik der Renaissance", Dance music of the Renaissance, Archiv 2533 111 (1972, recorded in November 1971), covering the 15th to late 16th centuries (the latest dances by date of publication - if not composition - are those of Jacques/Jacob Paix's 1583 collection of organ tablature-book, CD 1 tracks 22 & 23).

CD 1 tracks 28-42 and CD 2 tracks 1-15 from "Tanzmusik des Frühbarock", Dance music of the early baroque, Archiv 2533 150 (recorded in February 1973), covering the period from about 1570 to 1620.

CD 2 tracks 16-51 from "Tanzmusik des Hochbarock", Dance Music from the High Baroque, Archiv 2533 172 (recorded in February and April 1974), covering the 2nd half of the 17th Century and first half of the 18th.

CD 3 tracks 1-25 from "Tanzmusik des Rokoko", Rococo Dance Music, Archiv 2533 303 (1975), 2nd half of the 18th century, reigns of Louis 15 in France and Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa in Austria, with works of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Rameau, Josef Starzer (1726-1787)

CD 3 tracks 26-31 and CD 4 tracks 1-4, from "Tanzmusik Der Wiener Klassik", Dance Music from the Viennese Classical Era, Archiv 2533 182 (1975), covering the late 18th century and the rise of the Ländler and Contredanse (a Frenchification of the English "country danse"), with works of Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Salieri, Paul/Pavel Wranitzky, Beethoven and a composer hitherto unknown to me, Joseph Eybler (1764-1846).

CD 4 tracks 5-11 from "Wiener Tänze des Biedermeier", Viennese Dances from the Biedermeier Period, Archiv 2533 134 (1972), with dances composed between 1812 and circa 1835 by Beethoven, Michael Pamer whose dates make him fit perfectly between Beethoven and Schubert (1782-1827), Moscheles, Schubert and down to Joseph Lanner the last track and, appropriately, the only one in the group to be born in the 19th century (1801).

Some of this material can be found scattered on other budget collections from DG/Universal (see below), but this set is the one that is the most satisfactory, not only because it gives the full contents of these six LPs, but also because it is the most serious in terms of information and musicology. Where many of the others on budget series have only track listings and name of ensembles but no liner notes and no details, the booklet of this one, besides its extended liner notes reprised from the original LPs (and part of their lavish icononography) gives the complete information about works, sources (many still in manuscript form), dates of publication, instrumentation used, individual performers (featuring lutenist/guitarist Konrad Ragossnig in the Ulsamer Collegium programs). The only two things missing are the first names of the composers and/or original compilers in the Renaissance program (you've got to do some online research to find out that "J. Paix" is Jacques or Jacob, "F. de la Torre", Francisco, etc), and dates and places of recordings (I've found online those for the Ulsamer Collegium programs). At first look it seemed that the English translation of the instruments used is not provided, and especially with those of the Renaissance and early Baroque one may not be entirely familiar with the "Schalmei" or "Pommer" - but it turns out that these translations are indeed given, but with the complete list of performers.

But the set is valuable not only for its musicology: the music is hugely entertaining, vigorous and invigorating, with welcome interludes of more peaceful atmospheres. A special highlight and treat is the variety, from track to track, of instrumentations - many of the scores from the renaissance and baroque eras do not specify any instrumentation, leaving the choice to the performers - together with the vast array of period instruments used (or copies thereof) and, especially with Ulsamer Collegium, their ear-arousing timbral ruggedness and pungency. I don't know how much of that great variety of instrumentation is "authentic" - some musicological sources tend to conclude that these works were played in the Renaissance and Baroque eras with much simpler lineups, but I have no complaint on this ground: I listen to music first for entertainment and pleasure, not for historical reconstruction in itself. If this is not "authentic", in the sense that some of those pieces were never heard at the time played in these specific instrumentations (although all these instruments existed), then change the past. On the other hand the instrumentations of the Eduard Melkus Ensemble are definitely "authentic", using a small lineup of strings and winds as they may have been heard in Vienna in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and not the modern-day symphonic approach.

Listening in a row to 4 times 70+ minutes of dances may be too much of a good thing, but one doesn't HAVE to. I personally have more fascination for the Ulsamer Collegium part of the program, because the dance music from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as illustrated by Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Salieri, Wranicky, Beethoven, Schubert, is much more familiar territory, and arguably a minor side of these composers' output: when you listen to Beethoven, it is not usually for his contredanses or Mödling danses. Still, it remains fascinating to hear the musical styles evolve into these things more famililar to our ears and more present to our culture. It is also amusing to hear that Mozart's first Contredance, CD 4 track 1, is based on the theme from the "non più andrai" aria in Nozze de Figaro (the contredance is in fact a late work of Mozart), and one of Beethoven's own contredances, on a theme from the Finale of the Eroica (track 2 at 4:23); one of Wranitzky's dances in his Quodlibet, track 4, is also the Fandango from Nozze. Gluck's Ballet music for Orfeo, with its flutes over string pizzicati, and Don juan (string pizzicatti) is lovely (both on CD 3 track 29). Wranicky's 10 German Dances (CD 3 track 31) are immensely entertaining, with their use of folk instruments (in the liner notes Melkus explains that he had to go to specialists of old Viennese folk instruments to puzzle out what "bellows", "coffee-grinder", "tin of nails" were exactly), Pan flute, portable organ, chime of bells, metal rods, psaltery, hurdy-gurdy, conjuring wonderful echoes of Papageno. With the Viennese classical era the instrumental ensembles also become audibly larger, familiar instruments appear - the horns in the works of Josef Starzer (CD 3 tracsk 13-21, especially noticeable in 14 and 21) and CPE Bach (tracks 23-25), resounding trumpets in the last dance from Wranicky's Quodlibet (CD 4 track 4), clarinet in Beethoven's Mödling Dances (CD 4 track 6). And in 1818, the Waltz of the obscure Michael Pamer sounds already like a genuine Straus Waltz; one is not surprised to read in the liner notes that, a successful tavern violinist, he was "active in teaching and encouraging the younger generation, to which Joseph Lanner and Johann Stgrauss (the elder) belonged". There is some anticipation of the Strauss waltzes also in Moschelès' German Dances (CD 4 track 7), and Lanner's concluding Hungarian Galop is full stops out, a mixture of Strauss' or Offenbach's dizzying romps and Berlioz' Hungarian March.

For those for whom over than 280 minutes of dance music would be too much of a good thing, there are other alternatives:

On a single CD, [[ASIN:B0000057CM Terpsichore: Renaissance and Early Baroque Dance Music]], Archiv 415 294-2 gathers roughly half of the content of Ulsamer Collegium's 1972 Renaissance Dances (13 tracks, corresponding to CD 1 tracks 1, 2, 5, 10-15, 24-27) and the complete 42 minutes from their 1973 Early Baroque Dances. I am not aware of another CD gathering the rest of the Ulsamer Collegium programs.

[[ASIN:B00005RW50 Bauernhochzeit-Tanzmusik Der Wiener Klassik]], on DG's budget series Eloquence, has, together with two symphonies of Leopold Mozart, a sundry selection of 13 from the Eduard Melkus Ensemble programs including the near-complete Classical era part (save Wranicky's Quodlibet), but in haphazard chronological order, starting with the contents of CD 3 tracks 27-31 (Classical era: Haydn, Gluck, Mozart's Landlerische, Wranicky's 10 German Dances), then moving back to Rococo's CD 3 tracks 15, 19, 20 (Starzer), forward to Classical CD 4 tracks 1-3 (Mozart and Beethoven's Contredanses, Salieri's Menuetto), back to Classical CD 3-26 (Eybler), forward to Biedermeier's CD 4-5 (Pamer) & 9 (Schubert).

In turn, the 10 Dances of Starzer, CD 3 tracsk 13-22, served as a complement to Melkus' complete recording of Leopold Mozart's works (adding the Musikaliche Schlittenfahrt) on an earlier Archiv CD, [[ASIN:B000026DU9 Leopold Mozart: Bauernhochzeit; Musikalische Schlittenfahrt, Sinfonia Burlesca / Josef Starzer: 10 Dances]]. I'm not aware of another CD gathering other parts of Melkus' recordings.

Sundry excerpts of the Ulsamer Collegium programs were also used as complements in various collections centered around another great program of Renaissance dances music, this one originally recorded in 1960 by Collegium Terpsichore conducted by Fritz Neumayer on Archiv 14 166 APM (mono), 198 166 SAPM (stereo), "Hochrenaissance" (High Renaissance). See my reviews of [[ASIN:B00004YMTN Dances of the Renaissance]], [[ASIN:B0009ORGK4 Danses de la Renaissance]], [[ASIN:B000026718 Tanzmusik Um 1600]], [[ASIN:B0000247QD Tanzmusik um 1600]] and [[ASIN:B00004Z1AO Renaissance Dance Music]] for more details about that.

But for this set is the one to get for completedness, for musicology, and for pleasure.


title: composing elephants, clouds and snowballs

text:
When you think of "talented young prominent British composer", if you are a little familiar with the contemporary music scene, you'll probably think of Thomas Adès (born 1971).

Add Richard Ayres. Born in 1965 in Cornwall and established in the Netherlands, he bridges the gap between Adès and another "wonderkid" of British contemporary music: George Benjamin (b. 1960). I recently discovered him and his music, through another and more accessible CD, [[ASIN:B0037Q6IOG Noncertos & Others]].

But if I had to define the music and compositional style of those three composers in one adjective, I'd call Benjamin's "sophisticated", Adès" "polished" - and Ayres "unruly", and even "gleefully unruly". If Benjamin is the whizz kid and Adès the good boy, Ayres is the mischievous one.

No. 31 for Trumpet and Ensemble from 1998 (in fact, although for some reason the CD fails to mention it, one in the series of NONcertos written by Ayres, meant to play with the concerto form and turn it upside down by depicting "failure" and "prolonging time before the inevitable - inevitable - we all eventually fail, it's the universal common denominator") starts with the soloist singing or even groaning in the trombone like some distorted Tibetan monk over harp tremolos, a crash of consonant music that could be a shard from Philip Glass, the moaning voice of a woman, a reference (if my ears don't deceive me) to Piaf's song La vie en rose, and it continues with jubilant Ivesian cacophonies, trombone burps, clarinet guffaws, obsessive Varesian repetitions, "Jaws"-like harp ostinatos, whispers, but also moments of agonizing lyricism. The finale sounds like demented ballroom music in a film by Emir Kusturica. But the second movement is a long Elegy to the memory of Alfred Schnittke, which could be music written for the moment of autumnal longing in a romantic film.

What makes the music of Ayres so original, so unique and so fun is that it accepts to be restricted and constricted by no rule. Let me quote extensively the liner notes, because they give much of the relevant information and express much that I feel about Ayres' music: They start with a quote from Ayres himself:

"It feels as if I have shed a number of heavy chains - chains I had put on myself or that had been hung upon me by my environment as cultural baggage. One day alls sorts of supposedly sacred truths seemed to me quite ridiculous: `Thou shalt be original, thou shalt never repeat thyself, thou shalt write no consonances, thou shalt, thou shalt... ' I am now able to employ consonances, dissonances, melodies, textures, elephants, clouds, snowballs or whatever, where and when I want. The only limits on me are the boundaries of my own imagination."

And the notes go on: "Richard Ayres (...) regards himself as one who attends to neglected peculiarities of sound: `I rearrange things that have often been around for a long time. I feel attracted to sounds and musical gestures that many actually banish from their music. It's the awkward, scorned, lost things that concern me'. Whether they be the sounds produced by a brass player trying out various mutes, the hammering tones of a piano tuner or the blubbeing of someone bursting into tears, Ayres does not turn a hair at bending the ear to such acoustic sensations. He places the familiar sounds in an alienating context, right away confronting the listener with a dilemma: is it music or theatre?

Ayres has no reason to worry about the originality of his compositions. After all, originality lies in the way he considers and presents things. In his hands, a chain of dominant seventh chords, the open strings of a violin or an imaginary Tyrolean folk tune sound like uprooted curiosites to be cherished as precious objects. The listener is made to share in Ayres astonishment (and frequently his emotions) regarding the apparently mundane".

No. 8 for Piano Solo from 1991 (Ayres works are titled after their opus numbers, and he's now... in his mid-forties) sounds like an enigmatic and delicate clockwork mechanism. No. 35 (which Ayres calls "Overture for an imaginary opera") for Euphonium, Two Pianos and Timpani (2000) sounds like the jamsession played by Katzenjammer kids on cocaïne. No. 9 (subtitled "MacGowan", after the leader of The Pogues, an Irish folk-punk band who had just left the band due to illness, and conceived as a lamentation) for Celtic Harp, Bagpipes and Violin from 1991 sounds like Scottish/Irish folk musicians on cocaïne; if you are famililar with the sound of the Bagpipe, you know that it can be quite ear-piercing (I personally love it), but this gives the impression of a mixture of that and of a giant mosquitoe. I'd love to hear that at a Festival of Celtic music, it would cause a riot, but second best would be for it to be performed on the occasion of the opening of the new Dutch Parliament building in the presence of Queen Beatrix - and it was. No wonder Ayres was never made a Dutch Lord.

No. 5 for Trumpet and Piano (1991): violently pounding piano playing machine-like ostinati ala George Antheil against snarling trumpet, then hushed piano playing clockwork droplets of music in the upper registers against violent trumpet shouts.

No. 24, NONcerto for trombone (1995), is filled with events - consonant, dissonant, members of the ensemble singing on repetitive tonal harmonies recalling Philip Glass, sardonic marches that could come from Maurizio Kagel, noises of the trumpetits rummaging in a box to find the desired mute, mechanical ostinati evoking George Antheil and Ligeti, and more cacophonies.

Conductor Roland Kluttig seems to be the great champion of the music of Ayres - he's also the one conducting on that NMC CD referred to above. TT 71:44.

According to his online catalog at Schott's, there are two more NONcertos of Ayres to be recorded: No. 30 for orchestra, cello and high soprano and No. 40 for oboe. Other works for orchestra or ensemble include No. 43 "(Glorious)", No. 44 Diary Pieces, No. 46 Twenty-three thoughts about Robert Walser.

No. 42, In the Alps, has been recorded, [[ASIN:907077819X IN THE ALPS]] and it's my next buy. It is subtitled "an animated concert" and is classified among Ayres' "Works for Solo Voice with Orchestra or Instruments" - the composer himself calls it "a melodrama". His latest work is No. 45, Peter Pan, an opera: the story of a kid who never grew up.

Put Richard Ayres on your map.


title: There are now better options for the same program, unless you can find the CD very cheap

text:
The bulk of this CD, 23 tracks (tracks 11 to 33) is made by a program recorded in 1960 by Collegium Terpsichore conducted by Fritz Neumeyer, originally on Archiv 14 166 APM mono, 198 166 SAPM stereo, "Hochrenaissance" (High Renaissance): 6 dances from Michael Praetorius' collection "Terpsichore" (1612), 5 tracks of lady-named Gaillards by Erasmus Widmann, from his 1613 collection Musikalischer Tugendspiegel (Sophia & Anna, Clara, Magdalena, Agatha, Regina), and three Suites from Johann Hermann Schein's "Banchetto Musicale" from 1617(12 tracks). According to an article by Peter Holman published in the Viola da Gamba Society Journal in 2012 and available online, it was the first recording to draw attention on Praetorius' collection. It may have been a little far-fetched to call the second decade of the 17th century "Renaissance", even qualified by a "high", but let's pass over that detail.

It is completed by seven tracks from another album, recorded by Ulsamer Collegium led by Josef Ulsamer and published in 1973, "Tanzmusik des Frühbarock", Dance music of the early baroque, Archiv 2533 150 (with dances from about 1570 to 1620), making the title of this CD, "Dance music around 1600", much more appropriate. That album had 30 tracks in all. Reprised on the CD are the Galliarde De Monsieur Wustron, Galliarde De La Guerre and Reprinse by Michael Praetorius, and Valentin Haussmann's Tantz, Paduan, Galliard and Catkanei.

The music is great, vigorous and invigorating, the musicians seem to be enjoying themselves tremendously and so do we, and a few tracks of more reflexive music bring a welcome variety. A special highlight is also the the great timbral variety brought from track to track by different instrumental combinations. Although played on period instruuments or copies, these instrumental combinations may not be "authentic" as understood by present day musicology and in fact more diverse than those used at the time and in the circumstances, but so what? They are hugely entertaining, and if not authentic, then change the past! I've listened to the few dances from Michael Praetorius' collection "Terpsichore" following on the score (available online from the International Music Scores Library Project), and it is simply wonderful how these guy turn mere notes into infectious music, the merriment and imagination in the playing, the instrumentation, the repeats. I hear no significant sonic difference between the 1960 recording and the one from 1973.

That said, unless you are very limited financially and/or do NOT want too much of a good thing, this CD wouldn't seem to be the one to choose to listen to those recordings. First of all, DG has later reissued the same program, augmented of six more tracks from the Ulsamer Collegium's 1973 album, and four more tracks from a recording of them published in 1974, "Tanzmusik des Hochbarock", Archiv 2533 172, which makes a significantly better offer than this one. That augmented reissue appears under two different titles (both questionable in view of their actual content, but I'm just playing the pedant here), [[ASIN:B0000247QD Tanzmusik um 1600]] (despite the identity of titles with this one, it IS an augmented version) and [[ASIN:B00004Z1AO Renaissance Dance Music]]. See my reviews for more details.

But even that may not be enough. As fine as it is to have the complete 1960 program of Collegium Terpsichore, it is frustrating to have only tidbits from Ulsamer Collegium.

So a better option might be a twofer from DG Panorama, [[ASIN:B00004YMTN Dances of the Renaissance]], which has the 1960 Collegium Terpsichore program plus the full contents of two albums by Ulsamer Collegium, the one from 1973 mentioned above and one published the year before, "Tanzmusik der Renaissance", Dance music of the Renaissance, originally on Archiv 2533 111.

Note that the first half of that twofer, e.g. the complete Collegium Terpsichore and the first 12 tracks of the 1972 Collegium Ulsamer Renaissance album are on [[ASIN:B0009ORGK4 Danses de la Renaissance]], a CD from French DG's budget series "collection du millénaire", which makes it a possible alternative to the augmented reissue of this one, substituting excerpts from the 1972 recording to the excerpts of the 1973 and 1974 albums.

The label Boston Skyline also reissued the 1960 Collegium Terpsichore program, but completed with only a stingy selection, amounting to less than 10 minutes, from Ulsamer Collegium's 1972 (one track) and 1973 (six tracks) albums: [[ASIN:B000001UO0 Dance Music of the High Renaissance]]. It also sells pretty expensive at the time of writing.

But even the twofer from DG still leaves aside the 1974 album of Ulsamer Collegium. So yet another option is to buy Archiv's [[ASIN:B000025U5A Tanzmusik From the Renaissance to the Biedermeier]], a 4-CD set gathering, on the first two CDs, the full contents of those three LPs (including the 1974 Tanzmusik des Hochbarock). The rest is a program of 18th and early-19th Century Dances by the Eduard Melkus Ensemble, completing the survey from the Renaissance to the so-called Austrian "Biedermeier" period.

A cheaper option for those solely interested by Ulsamer Collegium is [[ASIN:B0000057CM Terpsichore: Renaissance and Early Baroque Dance Music]] on Archiv 415 294-2, which gathers roughly half of the content of Ulsamer Collegium's 1972 Renaissance Dances and the complete 42 minutes from their 1973 Early Baroque Dances.

But where does that leave the 1960 Collegium Terpsichore program? Well, it could be right here, depending on price. The diehard completist will want to complement the Archiv 4-CD set with the cheapest CD featuring the complete recording of Collegium Terpsichore. So compare the prices of the various options mentioned above, and you may find out that this one is competitive. At the time of writing it is... on Amazon Germany and Amazon uk.


title: The facts, the music (and the music is lovely), and the price per minute

text:
As winning as is the music - more on this hereafter - the presentation and track listing of this CD by the label IMP is inacceptable. Just the track titles, but no indication of composers - the liner notes let you suppose that all these Renaissance dances are excerpted from "Orchésographie", the famous compilation of Renaissance dances of Thoinot Arbeau, but further research shows that they aren't. Three different ensemble of performers are involved, but no clear indication of the source(s) of the recordings, although the booklet clearly indicates that this is not an original IMP production, but the reissue of recordings made in 1960 (those involving Collegium Terpsichore), 1970 (the guitar-percussion duet of Siegfried Behrend & Siegried Fink), 1972 (half of those with the Ulsamer Ensemble) and 1973 (the other half), and from the indication that "copyright is owned by Polydor International GmbH Hamburg", you can deduce that these recordings originate from Deutsche Gramophon or its Archiv label for early music.

Well, online research (remember the world before the invention of the Internet? You were simply left without knowing... but you gained a lot of time as well) has yielded that this is a straight reissue of an LP first issued in 1973 on DG's budget series "Privilege", DG 2538 348, "Non-Stop Dancing 1600", in the exact order of its tracks. The same program was also issued (apparently in 1974) as Archiv 2533 184, "Golden Dance Hits of 1600" , with tracks 14 and 15 inverted. Fortunately some websites do give the complete list of composers. So here it is, in the track order of DG/IMP:

1. Giorgio Mainerio: Schiarazula Marazula (Ulsamer Collegium = UC, 1973)
2. Pierre Francisque Caroubel: Courante (UC, 1973)
3. Caroubel: Volte (UC, 1973)
4 Caroubel: Courante (UC, 1973)
5. Caroubel: Volte (UC, 1973)
6. Anonymous: Istampita Ghaetta (UC, 1972)
7. Anonymous: Saltarello (UC, 1972)
8. Hans Neusiedler: Welscher Tanz Waschanesa/Hupfauff (UC, 1972)
9. Johann Ambrosio Dalza: Calata ala Spagnola (wrongly attributed to Siefried Behrend, guitar & Siefried Fink, percussion, in fact Konrad Ragossnig and Siegfried Fink from UC, 1972, see below)
10. Anonymous, published by Pierre Attaingnant: Basse Danse La Magdalena (UC, 1972)
11. Anonymous: Lamento Di Tristano/Rotta (UC, 1972)
12. Anonymous, published by Adrian Le Roy: Branle De Bourgogne (UC, 1972)
13. Giorgio Mainerio: Ungarescha - Saltarello (UC, 1973)
14. Tielman Susato: Ronde (UC, 1972)
15. Johann Hermann Schein: Allemande-Tripla (Suite 3 In A) (Collegium Terpsichore = CT, 1960)
16. Valentin Haussmann: Tantz (UC, 1973)
17. Haussmann: Gailliard (UC, 1973)
18. Haussmann: Catkanei (UC, 1973)
19. Claude Gervaise: Branle de Bourgogne (UC, 1972)
20. Gervaise: Branle de Champagne (UC, 1972)
21. Pierre Phalèse: Reprise/Galliard (UC, 1972)
22. Michael Praetorius: Gavotte (CT, 1960)
23. Praetorius: Spagnoletta (CT, 1960)
24. Praetorius: La Bourrée (CT, 1960)
25. Erasmus Widmann: Magdalena (CT, 1960)
26. Widmann Agatha (CT, 1960)
27. Widmann Regina (CT, 1960)
28. wrongly attributed to Siegfried Behrend, in fact Anonymous: Tanz Im Aicholdinger Schloss, see below (Siefried Behrend, guitar & Siefried Fink, percussion = B-F, 1970)
29. Behrend/Anonymous: Eichstatter Hofmulhtanz (B-F, 1970)
30. Behrend/Anonymous: Riedenburger Tanz (B-F, 1970)
31. Anonymous: Italiana (B-F, 1970)
32. Luis Milan: Pavan (B-F, 1970)
33. Cesare Negri: Balleto (B-F, 1970)
34. Praetorius: Galliarde De Monsieur Wustron (UC, 1973)
35. Praetorius: Galliarde De La Guerre (UC, 1973)
36. Praetorius: Reprinse (UC, 1973)

...which means that only ten tracks, those of Praetorius and Caroubel, are really "Dances from Terpsichore", the famous compilation of dances by Michael Praetorius published in 1613.

But, as the recording dates indicate, this program was in turn a partial compilation of previously released LPs. So, off to further research.

The 1960 program by Collegium Terpsichore was originally on Archiv 14 166 APM mono (1960), 198 166 SAPM (stereo 1965), "Hochrenaissance" (High Renaissance). Out of its 23 tracks, 7 are on the CD.

The Behren-Fink program for guitar and percussion was originally on DG 2530 034 "Guitar and Percussion" (1970) (and the LP is sold here, [[ASIN:B00MKI3E7G Guitar & Percussion]]) where it turns out that the two pieces ascribed to guitarist Behrend himself (tracks 29 & 30) were apparently not composed by Behren but anonymous pieces from the part of the program subtitled "Medieval Dances for Guitar and Percussion". Also, track 9, the piece for lute and percussion, attributed to the Behrend-Fink duet, is in fact not at all on that LP and is not played by Behrend, but by Konrad Ragossning (however the percussionist is Fink indeed) and appears on the 1972 LP from Ulsamer Collegium hereafter. Ultimately, 6 tracks from the LP's 15 of Medieval and Renaissance music (three tracks, running 23 minutes and making up the main of Side B, were contemporary works) are on the CD.

The tracks by Ulsamer Collegium come then from two different LPs:

Tanzmusik der Renaissance, Dance music of the Renaissance, Archiv 2533 111 (1972) featured 27 tracks, of which 11 are reprised on the CD.

Tanzmusik des Frühbarock, Dance music of the early baroque, Archiv 2533 150 (1973): 12 tracks are on the CD out of the LP's 30.

If Amazon lets me, I'll provide in the comments section links to the great website three dabya dot discogs dot com where all the details of these LPs are listed.

***********************************************************

So, with the facts now sorted out, how's the music? It's great and other than the faulty presentation, this CD affords 52 minutes of unalloyed enjoyment. The music is vigorous and invigorating, the musicians seem to be enjoying themselves tremendously and so do we, and a few tracks of more reflexive music bring a welcome variety. A special highlight is also the the great timbral variety brought from track to track by different instrumental combinations. Although played on period instruuments or copies, these instrumental combinations may not be "authentic" as understood by present day musicology and in fact more diverse than those used at the time and in the circumstances, but so what? They are hugely entertaining, and if not authentic, then change the past! I hear no significant sonic difference between the four recitals, it all sounds great (although the volume is cut at a slightly lower level than the "official" DG CD reissues, and sounds a tad more muffled; but that's only perceptible comparatively).

So the only frustration is that so much of the four original LPs has been left out of the CD compilation. In fact, more research shows that more of these early LPs has been reissued to CD on other labels. It's a complicated situation, but I think I've sorted it out.

[[ASIN:B00004YMTN Dances of the Renaissance]] on DG Panorama (2 CDs) reissues the full Collegium Terpsichore program of 1960 and the full Ulsamer Collegium 1972 Renaissance and 1973 Baroque programs. So this one is really attractive - except that it leaves out a third album recorde by Ulsamer Collegium in 1974, of which more anon. But if this is the one you are going to buy, hurry up, it's still relatively cheap here on Amazon.com, it's much more expensive now in Europe.

[[ASIN:B0009ORGK4 Danses de la Renaissance]] on French DG's budget series Collection du millénaire, reissues the contents of CD 1 from the previous twofer, e.g. the full Collegium Terpsichore program, and half of the 1972 Ulsamer Collegium 1972 Renaissance program (the 12 first tracks, to side B track 3 of the original LP).

[[ASIN:B0000057CM Terpsichore: Renaissance and Early Baroque Dance Music]] on Archiv 415 294-2 gathers roughly half of the content of Ulsamer Collegium's 1972 Renaissance Dances (13 tracks out of the LP's 27, A 1, 2, 5, B1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 15, 16, 17, 18) and the complete 42 minutes from their 1973 Early Baroque Dances.

Among those 13 tracks from the Renaissance program, nine are shared with the IMP disc (IMP's tracks 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, Archiv's tracks 1, 3, 6, 7, 9-13), four are not (Archiv's tracks 2, 4, 5, 8), and the IMP CD has two that are not on the Archiv CD, A3 Anonymous: Istampita Ghaetta (track 6), and B10 Anonymous/Attaingnant Branle de Bourgogne alone (track 12).

[[ASIN:B00004Z1AO Renaissance Dance Music]] and [[ASIN:B0000247QD Tanzmusik um 1600]] have the same program, e.g. the complete 1960 Collegium Terpsichore program (23 tracks), 13 tracks from the 1973 "Frühbarcock" program (A1-3 Mainerio, 11, 13, 14 Caroubel, B9-11 Praetorius, B12-15 Haussmann) and four more tracks from another album of Ulsamer Collegium from 1974,Tanzmusik des Hochbarock, Archiv 2533 172.

[[ASIN:B000025U5A Tanzmusik From the Renaissance to the Biedermeier]], a 4-CD set, gathers, on the first two CDs, the full contents of the three LPs of the Ulsamer Collegium, including the 1974 Tanzmusik des Hochbarock. The rest is a program of 18th and 19th Century Dances by the Eduard Melkus Ensemble.

[[ASIN:B000001UO0 Dance Music of the High Renaissance]] on Boston Skyline also has the complete 1960 program of Collegium Terpsichore plus six tracks from the 1973 Ulsamer Collegium Frühbarock program (A7 Molinaro, 12 & 13 Caroubel, B9-11 Praetorius) and one from 1972 (Branle de Bourgogne, which makes it either B10 or B16).

So: these open up a lot of possibilities. My choice: the 4 CD compilation with the three complete recitals of Ulsamer Collegium, completed by any (the cheapest) of those that have the 1960 recital. My four stars for this one only reflect the fact that there are better options for the same music elsewhere, and also the poor presentation by IMP, and the relatively short timing of 50+ minutes (although in terms of time per dollar you won't beat this). The music itself is worth five stars.


title: A tribute to the Great Organ of the Methuen Memorial Musical Hall

text:
If, by the title, you thought that the disc was devoted to various sets of Variations on the patriotic song "America" ("My Country 'Tis of Thee") - or on "God Save the Queen", the British national anthem, since it is the same melody - you're wrong: it is indeed the famous composition of Ives - supposedly written when he was 16, and already quite Ivesian in its daringness - that gives its title to the disc, but there are no other compositions on the same theme. And if you thought you were going to be offered a program of American compositions for organ, not quite. Sure, Sousa's Stars and Stripes (in an uncredited arrangement for organ) and Dudley Buck's Variations on The Last Rose of Summer qualify, but not the pieces of Saint-Saens (Danse Macabre in an arrangement by Edwin Lemare), Guilmant (French), Bossi (Italian) and Lemare (English).

In fact, the recital is a tribute to the great organ of the Methuen Memorial Music Hall, formerly the great organ of the Boston Musical Hall. The liner notes give a detailed account of the genesis of the organ, originally commissioned by Jabez Baxter Upham, president of the Boston Music Hall Association, built by a German firm and inaugurated in the Boston Music Hall in 1863. But with the establishment of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1881 the Bostonians found other musical pleasures and in 1884 the organ was removed from the hall and placed in storage. In 1897 it was auctioned to Edward Francis Searles of Methuen, Massachussets, who had a new home built for the organ. It is still there. The organ was restored in 1947.

So what Simon Preston offers here is the kind of recital that could have been heard "on an organ recital programme performed in a secular concert hall during the latter part of the nineteenth century". Ives? Good luck for hearing Ives in such a setting and such a time, but no complaint. But the foreign composers featured all had some kind of relation with the United States, at least by giving recitals and concert tours there. Enrico Bossi even died on his way back from such a tour, in 1924, due to a killing schedule, no doubt, and Lemare settled in the US for the second half of his 70-year life (he died in Hollywood), where he became very famous for his organ transcriptions of the symphonic repertoire (see [[ASIN:B004WGJ338 Wagner Organ Transcriptions By Edwin Enry Lemare]]).

So the recital is worth what its compositions are worth. Ives' Variations are great, making the Variations of Dudley Buck sound boringly dignified and conservative in comparison, and Lemare's original Andantino, sentimentally saccharine. Saint-Saens' Danse macabre is entertaining in any form, Enrico Bossi's Etude symphonique op. 78 is a powerful piece. Clocking 22 minutes, the First Sonata of Guilmant is the "big" piece of the recital; it has its moments, and the grandiose and powerful Finale is the best of those, and the slow movement, an affecting "Pastorale", is well-deserving of its title, with its gently swaying ternary rhythm and reed-like sonorities. The liner notes are thorough on the instrument, but minimal on the works themselves, and don't even mention that Guilmant's First Sonata first took the form of a fully-fledged Symphony for organ and orchestra (once performed by Koussevitzky in the 1930s), dedicated "in respectful tribute" to Leopold, King of the Belgians - the one famous for plundering Congo through forced labor for his private use.

I'm not an organ specialist and can't give an informed opinion about Simon Preston's interpretations. Following with the score (available online from the International Music Scores Library Project), I have no qualms with his playing of the Guilmant Sonata. I'm not sure what edition of Ives Variations he plays, there is a passage between 2:34 and 3:08, after the first variation, that is not on the score available from IMSLP, maybe an extemporization. His tempos in the variations do not always conform to those indicated by the score - variation II at 3:09 is played more as an adagio than as the indicated andante, and that's never a good choice as it draws out the music and makes it sound somewhat too solemn and spineless, and variation III at 5:00 is more an moderato than the prescribed adagio, but that works well.

TT 66:32.


title: The incidental music from Ramuntcho is the prize

text:
Pierné is one of those small masters of early 20th Century French music, a great orchestrator, not an innovator. Sometimes he did rise above the occasion, and I've waxed lyrical about his Ballet Cydalise et le Chèvrepied, which seems indebted to Ravel's Daphnis & Chloé (Pierné had premiered the First Suite of Ravel's ballet) but isn't vastly inferior to its model ([[ASIN:B000059THM Pierne: Cydalise et le chevre-pied- Complete Ballet]]).

The incidental music to the play Ramuntcho was known mainly from its Overture, recorded in 1976 by Jean-Baptiste Mari leading Orchestre de Paris for EMI ([[ASIN:B000005GPY Cydalise & Chevre-Pied]]), before what Bis boasts to be a world premiere recording of the two Suites (although Pierné himself had recorded the Overture and three movements in the 78rpm era). The Suites derive from the music composed by Pierné in 1908 for the play adapted from the novel of Pierre Loti, very successful in its days (1897). The music is lovely, rarely profound, alternating the upbeat liveliness of Basque-inspired themes and a more melancholy and lyrical mood, somewhere between Bizet (track 2, Le Jardin de Gracieuse, The Garden of Gracious, evokes the Entracte from Bizet's Carmen) and the pastoral Vaughan Williams (nowhere more than in track 6, The Convent), with whiffs of Ravel. Only does track 3, The Room of Franchita, unfold a more sombre atmosphere, somewhat reminiscent of the ascent from the vaults in Debussy's Pelleas. Philharmonie de Lorraine under Jacques Houtmann plays with the desired tonal refinement.

The Piano Concerto from 1886 on the other hand consists of two big, loud, bombastic movements in the manner of Rachmaninoff (with, in the first, sentimental interludes where the orchestra is reduced to mere harmonic filling, and some moments of sardonic playfulness in the Finale) framing a tarantella-like Scherzo full of playful and insouciant flufiness redolent of the Paris Opera and even Ballet. I haven't heard the alternative versions of Marylène Dosse on Vox ([[ASIN:B000001K4E French Piano Concertos]]), Alain Raës on Solstice ([[ASIN:B00008FRDL Pierne: Concerto De Piano / Piano Concerto Op 12 / Ramuntcho / Fantaisie-Ballet / Suite de Bouton-D'Or]]) and Jean-Eflam Bavouzet on Chandos (also with the Two Suites from Ramuntcho plus a few other tidbits, [[ASIN:B004DEKOYG Pierne: Piano Concerto / Suites 1 & 2]]) - and I'm not so tempted to buy them - but following with the score (the International Music Scores Library Project has the piano reduction), Achatz and Houtman seem entirely up to the task, and the very resonant acoustics aren't too much of an problem.

This here is the reissue by Musical Heritage Society of a recording originally produced and released by BIS, [[ASIN:B0000016DY Pierne: Ramuntcho Suites 1 & 2; Piano Concerto in C Minor]]. I have the original version. There the liner notes were okay on the generalities about Pierné, but entirely silent on the two work featured on the CD, not even providing their year of composition, and to top it all BIS got the opus number of the Piano Concerto wrong - and MHS lazily copied them: they said op. 42 when it is in fact op. 12. Their "World Premiere Recording" indication seems to pertain to both works, but only three out of the seven numbers from Ramuntcho are truly so. TT 57:26.


title: splendid French Renaissance a cappella choral music

text:
Guillaume Boni: obscure French Renaissance composer, c. 1530 to c. 1594, from an era that is not the most familiar in the history of music in France, a contemporary of Antoine de Bertrand, Guillaume Costeley, Claude Le Jeune, Paschal de l'Estocart, four decades after the more famous generation of Janequin and Sermisy, and 20 years older then Eustache du Caurroy.

Boni made most of his career in Toulouse, in a era when French centralism was much less pronounced than it became a century later, but his music was known in the courtly circles of Paris, following a visit of King Charles IX (reign 1560-1574) in Toulouse in 1565. According to the informative liner notes by musicologist and conductor Jean-Pierre Ouvrard, Boni is known above all for his polyphonic compositions based on the Sonnets of Ronsard, first published in 1576. The 18 motets gathered here are drawn from his "Primus Liber Modulorum", his collection of 24 motets and his opus 1, from 1573. And I love it when I read that two copies "are entirely preserved in the National Library of Madrid and in the Library of Upsala University": now this is really being a scholar!

Thanks then to Ouvrard, Musica Nova and Adda for making this available. This is fine Renaissance a cappella choral music, sometimes daring harmonically, well sung so far as I can judge without any interpretive comparison, a little monotonous maybe in the course of its 70 minutes but no complaint about that, that will appeal to all amateurs of Renaissance choral music, Ockeghem, Josquin, Brumel, Gombert, Taverner, Tallis, Palestrina, Lassus and the likes. Ouvrard is a specialist of Boni, and a modern edition of the Motets was published in 2000 in a "Collection Jean-Pierre Ouvrard" published by the Centre de Musique Ancienne de Tours in 2000, edition Jeanice Brooks. There is also an erudite article about Boni on French Wikipedia (not translated to English unfortunately - when I have time I should to it) and I wouldn't be surprised if Ouvrard himself had authored it.

This Boni disc was recorded in November 1991 at the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud in coproduction between Musica Nova and Adda - the latter an interesting label with a vast and eclectic catalog that was in operation in the 1980s (LP era) to the mid-1990s. It has now become pretty rare, but you can find it occasionally on eBay. There's another entry for it here, [[ASIN:B00RG3ZGV2 Guillaume Boni: Motets 1573]]. It's the same disc as the one listed here: it comes with two label numbers, MN 8 and AD 184, as shown by the back cover photo published under the other entry.


title: Guerrero, the other great 16th Century Spanish composer

text:
Nice to see this one listed on Amazon, and even sold. It is a rare French issue from 1990, a co-production between Musica Nova and the French indie Adda, and interesting label in existence in the 1980s and early 1990s. Very informative liner notes too by musicologist and conductor Jean-Pierre Ouvrard, in French, English and even Spanish. The original version is a bit irritating because Ouvrard pedantically has his quotes of original sources in Spanish with no translation, but that fortunately is taken care of in the English translation by R. Siegel.

So Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599) is the third great Spanish composer of the 16th century, beside his teacher Cristobal de Morales and his contemporary Tomas-Luis da Victoria. Of the three, Guerrero is notable for having made all is career in Spain (Seville) rather than in Rome, although he was much traveled, with two long stays in Rome (1581-82 and 1588) and a famous travel to the Holy Land in 1589, which he recounted in a book published in Seville in 1590 and reprinted many times. His works were also published in Venice, Paris, Rome and Flanders rather than in Spain, which shows his international standing. Two cornets are also credited, but if they are there at all (the precise tracks in which they play aren't given) they are so undistinguishable from the vocal line that they could have been done without.

Guerrero's output also had much success in the New World, where his works were known even before those of Morales and Victoria, and still sung at the Cathedral in Lima in the mid-19th century.

Here offered is a program of 72 minutes of his choral works, opening with the Missa de la Batalla Escoutez after Janequin's [the English translation spells it with two Ns, one wonders why] famous Chanson de la Guerre (say the liner notes; it is better known I think as La Bataille or La Bataille de Marignan) from 1528. The song had been so successful that there developed a tradition of "parodies" - no comical or spoofing intent I believe, "parodias", later known as "pasticcio", were just compositions based on themes from other compositions. Victoria wrote one of the most famous such parodies after Janequin's song, his boisterous Missa Pro Victoria. No such boisterousness with Guerrero, but it is a beautifully contrapuntal work. The rest of the program is a choice of 12 Motets drawn from collections published between 1555 and 1597. Some are highly elaborate, written for up to 12 parts in three choirs (Duo Seraphim, track 10). Connoisseurs of Victoria and Morales and 16th Century choral polyphony will be in familiar territory here, and Guerrero's works are not inferior to the best of the era.

I don't have any other recording for comparison, but the singers from Ensemble Jacques Moderne under Ouvrard's direction seem to sing beautifully. They are usually underpinned by a very discreet harp accompaniment (sounding very much like a lute), and by organ and bassoon in the Ave Maria from 1555 counterpointing the bass vocal line (track 8), which Ouvrard admits is mere conjecture, based on the fact that Guerrero himself played and taught cornet, harp and organ, and that bandas of wind instruments are know to have been used in certain liturgical ceremonies in Seville.


title: Not always the best Malipiero, and flawed live recordings

text:
I have greatly enjoyed recently the Symphonies of Malipiero, published in the mid-1990s by Marco Polo, which I found to be often compositions of striking originality (see my reviews of [[ASIN:B00000461K Gian Francesco Malipiero: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4; Sinfonia del mare]], [[ASIN:B000004635 Gian Francesco Malipiero: Symphonies Nos. 5, 6, 8 & 11]], [[ASIN:B000024OFY Malipiero: Symphony No.7/Sinfonia in un tempo/Sinfonia per Antigenida]] and [[ASIN:B000004636 Malipiero: Symphonies No. 9 dell'ahime, No. 10 Atropo, Sinfonia dello Zodiaco]]), so I decided to investigate the present 2-CD set. The Dialoghi were composed between 1955 and 1957 and involve various instrumental groupings, from two pianos (Dialogo 2) and voice and two piano (Dialogo 3) to Concerto for Two Pianos (Dialogo 7) and Chamber Orchestra (Dialogo 1). The order of numbering does not exactly replicate the order of composition, which apparently followed a rising order of instrumental forces, from two pianos to large orchestra. The Dialogues are not all of concertante nature (only 5, 6 and 7 are real concertos, e.g. pitting a soloist against an orchestra, respectively the viola, harpsichord and two pianos) but as their title implies they all involve some kind of dialogue, either between instruments or between voice and instruments - sometimes it is even, apparently, a dialogue between Malipiero and others: fellow composer Manuel de Falla (Dialogo 1) or the Medieval Italian poet Iacopone da Todi (Dialogo 3).

According to the liner notes, although some individual Dialogues have been recorded before, this is the first recording of the complete cycle. In fact these are live recordings, made on the occasion of a Malipiero festival in October 1999. Sonic quality is variable (the sonic relation between the two pianos in Dialogo 3 seems very artificial, as if it were a re-recording, and I don't think the composer intended the two instruments to be tuned micro-tonally, but that is how they sound here; the two-pianos in the Dialogo 7 for two pianos & orchestra sound more distant than the orchestra, and at 2:27 there is a short patch where the strings seem to be playing outside the hall), there are coughs and various extraneous noises (soloists breathing, score pages turning, even a child shouting at 8:18 into the 8th Dialogue, the Death of Socrates - a burst of emotion, no doubt), and the strings would have done well with a lot more rehearsals, just to learn to play on the same pitch together.

Despite the Dialoghi's date of composition, I find that some of them smack very much of the Twenties. The 1st Dialogue, for small orchestra, is dedicated to the memory of Manuel de Falla and pieces like El Retablo de Maese Pedro or the Harpsichord Concerto can come to mind. The mood is mostly brooding, with flights into a more neo-classical rhythmic vigor, and the textures are sparse, chamber-like, often dominated by the high-pitched woodwinds (piccolo, oboe), with the presence of the piano playing as basso instrument, giving it all the aspect of a Concerto Grosso. Yet, although it is Dialogo 1 for small orchestra that bears a dedication to Falla, if you want to hear a remake of Falla's Cembalo Concerto, try Malipiero's 6th Dialogue, itself a Harpsichord Concerto. And if you want to hear a remake of Satie's "La Mort de Socrates", try Dialogue 8 - which bears the same title, but in Italian. It has the same kind of sternness, greyness, bland recitative-like vocal writing. Baritone Cappelluti doesn't command a great variety of colors either, and sounds strained in some of the climaxes. But there are a few touches of orchestral color here and there that are very much Malipiero's own. The same speech-like blandness pervades Dialogo 3 for Soprano and two Pianos on poems by da Todi, and Lucia Naviglio sings with an unflattering voice. Dialogo 4 is a Wind Quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn & bassoon) and it has the perky sauciness one associates with, say, similar works of Janacek - but, it must be said, without Janacek's unique personality.

There is something in the Dialogo 7 for 2 pianos & Orchestra which reminds me of the music that George Antheil, the self-styled "Bad Boy of Music", wrote in the twenties - a willingness to pound, the dogged ostinatos, the boisterousness of the finale. But the backward placement of the two pianos and strings' approximate intonation does hamper some of the enjoyment. There is also something very Stravinskian in the way Dialogo 2 for two pianos begin - snappily pounding chords, off-beat rhythms, it is the universe of the Concerto for Two Solo Pianos. On the other hand, the chromatic writing of the second movement is vaguely evocative of Scriabin or of the American "mystics" such as Dane Rudhyar - add to that the placement and tuning problems mentioned above, and you could also be in Ivan Wyshnegradsky's quarter-tone music.

Dialogo 5 is a Viola Concerto, reminiscent maybe of Hindemith's Kammermusik 5 due to the chamber-like character of the orchestra, but without the German composer's lively motorism. It is brooding, austere, lyrical. One of its nicest features is, indeed, its concertante nature, its constant chamber-like dialogue between viola and other solo instruments. But it lacks the touch of individuality that makes the greatest pieces in the form stand out - Bartok's Viola Concerto, Hindemith Kammermusiken for instance. Violist Simonide Braconi plays with fine tone.

The liner notes are very Italian - long on general considerations and fluffy twaddle, short of facts: you've really got to read carefully if you want to know the dates of composition, and nothing is said about circumstances. Each work gets only one cue point - meaning that the inside movements are not cued. TT is an acceptable 1 hour 52.

In the end, this is for the serious Malipiero listener only. Others should be advised to try the Symphonies or the String Quartets first.

There's another entry for the same set: [[ASIN:B00007K2BN I Dialoghi]], so check it out for the best price.


title: Paganini other than the Caprices

text:
Paganini: the Caprices opus 1 and Violin Concerto opus 6 and that's it? This CD, from the early years of the medium and the short-lived French indie Adda, is a useful reminder that Paganini's output wasn't limited to those two violinistic wharhorses. The two collections presented here - Sonatas opus 2 and opus 3 - are original for being accompanied not by the piano, but by the guitar; and as the liner notes point out, Paganini taught himself to be a guitar virtuoso as well.

That said, the works are nothing substantial, and even, in the opus 2 collection, quite vacuous. They are all, in fact, short sonatinas in two movements, always following the slow-fast pattern, rather than fully-fledged sonatas. Paganini may have been a guitar virtuoso, but if so he didn't write these for himself to play the accompanying part: the guitar is limited to a boringly simplistic harmonic plunk plunk; only in Sonata No. 5 op. 3, track 12, does it boast a short melodic dialogue with the violin. The musical inspiration in opus 2 is vapid, opus 3 is a little more elaborate and enjoyable, especially in the fast finales, both in its musical inspiration and technical invention (with Paganini, both often go together), including a drum-like accompaniment by hitting on the guitar's soundboard in the Allegretto of op. 4-3, track 11.

Guitarist Ghirardi has nothing much to do. Maryvonne Le Dizes was back then the solo violinist of Boulez' Ensemble Intercontemporain, after winning the International American Competition in 1983 (upon which she recorded a recital of contemporary violin music for New World Records, [[ASIN:B0000030G7 Hidden Sparks]]), which is a long way from Paganini: but in 1962 she had been the first female first prize winner of the famed Paganini competition of Genoa. She acquits herself well. But for a similar program, but more rewarding musically and filled with way more charm, better go to Paganini's Quartets with guitar op. 4, [[ASIN:B000E3UF6C Paganini: Tre Gran Quartetti Op. 4 for Violin, Viola, Cello & Guitar]]


title: Charming arrangements of Scarlatti Sonatas, somewhere between Vivaldi and Stravinsky's Pulcinellla

text:
Charming orchestrations of Scarlatti Sonatas by pianist, composer and conductor Robert Groslot. In the short liner notes he explains that, ever since, at the age of 10, he heard Horowitz play one of them on TV, he "heard" the Scarlatti Sonatas orchestrally and was always disappointed when hearing them, and even playing them at the piano or harpsichord. The 16 selected here (Groslot orchestrated 20 in all) are all very popular ones among Scarlatti's sizeable output, that will be familiar to the ear of any music lover with a few Scarlatti CDs in his collection. Groslot gives them all nicknames according to their expressive characteristics, "The Trumpet", "Hunt", etc - and, like Vivaldi, one per season. Note that Vanguard misattributes one of them: the one Groslot christens "La Caccia", track 3, is not RV 96 but RV 159 - both are indeed very similar, hunt sonatas in triple meter. Sometimes the orchestrations make them sound like works Vivaldi would have composed. But although Groslot kept them all in the original keys and "stayed as near to the original as possible", not trying "to transform the music - like Stravinsky and Webern in their Bach-transcriptions (and Casella in his Scarlattis)", the mere effect of the modern orchestration - definitely NOT the kind Vivaldi would have used - makes them sound very much in the style of Stravinsky's Pulcinella (I suppose that this is what Groslot had in mind when he refers to Stravinsky's "Bach-transcriptions", because I think the only Bach transcription proper that Stravinksy did was the Canonic variations on the Christmas hymn "Vom himmel hoch" BWV 769, transcribed for chorus & orchestra).

CD published in 1991, Vanguard 08 7004 71, and now a rarity, barcode 3351477004716 for those who'd want to fish for it online. The Vanguard catalog was distributed in Europe by an Arcade Entertainment company, and they published their own productions under the label, which ultimately led to a lawsuit with Vanguard's original founder and holder of the distribution rights in the US, Seymour Solomon, who charged them of squandering the brand reputation. Well - not always (I don't know the results of the lawsuit, but Solomon died in 2002, and the Vanguard catalog was acquired by Artemis Records of New York). The same program was reissued in 1994 by Vanguard Netherlands, 99031, barcode 3351472990311, also listed here, [[ASIN:B000025486 Il Novecento Plays Scarlatti: Sonata Fantasia]]. BTW, the same producer, Vanguard of the Netherlands, also published another wonderful recital of Scarlatti Sonatas played on the accordion by Mie Mikki, Vanguard 99193, barcode 3351470991938, [[ASIN:B0000245GN Scarlatti;Sonatas]], and the same Groslot published another charming CD in a similar vein, with orchestrations of piano pieces of Tchaikovsky, Vanguard 99030, barcode 3351472990304, [[ASIN:B000025485 Il Novecento plays Tchaikovsky The Seasons]].

Last thing to note: Vanguard – Netherlands later published a very similar program of arrangements of Scarlatti Sonatas, for saxophone quartet, by the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, with four overlaps with this one, also issued under the Challenge Classics label: [[ASIN:B000026CVY Scarlatti;Sonatas]] or [[ASIN:B00008MLVO Sonatas for Saxophone Quartet]].


title: Fafchamps combines his models (Crumb, Xenakis, Ligeti, Lutoslawski) to a very convincing whole

text:
This comes as a great surprise. I knew the Belgian Jean-Luc Fafchamps as a pianist of contemporary music - I have a CD with him playing Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories (not his 2010 re-make for Sub Rosa of the 1991 revised edition, [[ASIN:B004JUTICS Triadic Memories]], but the previous one from 1990, not listed here) - but not as a composer, and he is certainly not noted today as a significant one. This disc was on offer cheap from an eBay seller from whom I had made other purchases, the label, Subrosa, is something of a niche-collector's rarity, so I decided to give it a try.

Clearly, in his "Quartet for Two Pianos" (and five pianists, some playing directly the strings), Fafchamps has assimilated the lessons of Crumb: it opens with what sounds like a typical Crumb-technique, single tones produced by depressing the key while simultaneously pressing on the string, all in the piano's lower register and with a long decay time of each resonance. Atmospheric and spooky. But in the course of its five movements (succeeding without break, and regrettably not individually cued), the composition seems to go through a variety of contemporary styles, the limping rhythms and poly-tonality of Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (at circa 6 minutes), Nancarrow's demented, super-human polyrhythmic boogie-woogies (7:36 and 11:25), Messiaen's forbidding voice of God in Visions de l'Amen or Vingt Regards (circa 9:00). Not that it gives the impression of an eclectic hodgepodge, the music is inventive and intriguing enough to dispel any such impression.

Dyna Miques for two pianos is even longer. It starts in a pointillistic manner and stages processes of accumulation and piling of notes and dynamics, then their decrease and "effacement". At its loudest it pounds violently and impressively - the impact live must be awesome. It reminded me of Steven Martland's "Drill", also for two pianos ([[ASIN:B000003ELU Drill & Babi Yar]]), and of the extraordinary piano sonatas of Galina Ustvolskaya.

The String Octet - or rather, double String Quartet, pitting two quartets against each other - is also hugely atmospheric, starting with eery hushed tones played on harmonics, and opposing those to Xenakis-like, violently abrasive explosions with bows digging deep into the strings (starting at 2:29). Again it is easy to see where Fafchamps comes from - Crumb, Xenakis, Ligeti and Lutoslawski - but you can imagine worse models, and he combines these influences to a very convincing whole. The stereo separation between the two string quartets could have been more pronounced.

Unless you write a short, wordless vocalize like Rachmaninoff or Ravel, there's probably nothing more difficult than writing for the solo voice. Of course, Berio masterfully succeeded in his Sequenza for Cathy Berberian, and so did the French-Greek Georges Aperghis in his wonderfully inventive Recitations ([[ASIN:B00004WKJ1 Georges Aperghis: Récitations]]). But Berio Sequenza is, if I recall, wordless, and Aperghis uses texts mainly for their phonetic value. In his short "Der Einsame" (9 minutes), Fafchamps sets a poem of Rilke. The piece is beautiful, slow-moving as if in slowed down motion, with stooping and despondent melodic inflections, the song a spectre might want to sing, the ghost of a dead woman humming to herself. Martine Kivits, for whom it was written, sings it with great naturalness but a strong French accent.

The disc's presentation is trendy, and I don't know if some of the liner-notes high-browed wordiness in the presentation of the works must be assigned to the translation or the originals. Anyway, it is not what Fafchamps has to say about the compositional processes (it is presumably him who wrote the presentations), which is not always clearly comprehensible or easy to realte to what you are actually hear, that counts, but what you hear. I've liked that so much that I immediately ordered another Subrosa CD of Fafchamps, "[[ASIN:B0002YK0W2 Melencholia Si...]]". There another entry for this same CD, [[ASIN:B00004TH0L Attrition]].


title: New Age Vivaldi from the old age of the music workstation

text:
This is, basically, an arrangement of Vivaldi's Four Seasons for flute (Pierre Saint-Denis) and music workstation (Macintosh IIfx operated by Ilan Rechtman). The recording was made in October 1992.

The Macintosh llfx isn't exactly pre-history, but, in the age of the modern computer, anything more than 10 years-old seems prehistory: "The Macintosh IIfx is a model of Apple Macintosh computer, introduced in 1990 and discontinued in 1992. At introduction it cost from US $9,000 to US $12,000, depending on configuration, and it was the fastest Mac available at the time. (...) The IIfx was the apex of Apple's 68030-based Macintosh II series and was replaced at the top of Apple's lineup by the Macintosh Quadra series in 1991. It was the last Apple computer released that was designed using the Snow White design language." (from the Wikipedia entry).

Re the liner notes: "This complete work was arranged and recorded "direct to hard disk" on a computer. We used an Apple Macintosh IIfx equipped with 16Mb of RAM and an 800Mb hard disk drive running system 7.1. The computer was driving two Digidesign SempeCell nubus cards, loaded with 8Mb each, a well as Digidesign's Sound Accelerator. The applications used are Opcode's StudioVision Digidesign's Sound Tools, and Coda's Finale. The synthesizers used were Kurzweil K1000; Korg m-1; E-mu Systems Proteus/2; Roland U-220 and Akai Sampler S-1000." (not that I understand everything that I am copying here).

The concept is: "what would old Antonio make of the new-found trendiness of his Four Seaons? We tried to imagine how differently Vivaldi would compose the Four Seaons if he were alive today. We decided to take the challenge and do it for him."

No way. To think (if even this fantasy has any meaning) that Vivaldi today would have developed into a pop composer writing tunes suitable for commercials or film romances? Why not imagine that he would have turned into Luciano Berio or Luigi Nono or Salvatore Sciarrino instead?

Better call this the arrangement by Saint-Denis and Rechtman then, and it is good enough. You get what you expect, and what you get with similar arrangements by Walter/Wendy Carlos ([[ASIN:B0000024Q9 Switched on Bach]], [[ASIN:B00002DDS5 Switched-On Boxed Set]] for the complete collection), Don Dorsey ([[ASIN:B000003CTU Bachbusters]], [[ASIN:B000003CUI Beethoven Or Bust]]) and Joel Spiegelman ([[ASIN:B00000DP5E New Age Bach: The Goldberg Variations]]): a popsification of Vivaldi, loads of syrupy, New Age accompaniment, rhythmic pop drums and double-bass, and whiffs of the Pink Panther theme.

But... the Four Sesons remain eternally the Four Seasons, and the music remains charming and sometimes even haunting, in any guise. I could have done without some of the New Age chorus background and pop drums, but many of the arrangements are cleverly done and I've enjoyed listening to the old warhorse in its new timbral guise. TT 42:53.

What became of these two guys? Odd trajectories, too: "Pierre Saint-Denis, born in France, studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, and subsequently was first flutist with the Philharmonie des PTT [that's the Post Office Philharmonic Orchestra], Orchestre Lamoureux and La Radio Television France [I suppose this is one of the two Radio orchestras, Orchestre National or Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique]. He is currently [1992] the creative director of the City Island Chamber Ensemble, with whom he performs regularly." So, fine, all this is very catholic. But then... "Mr. Saint-Denis is chef/owner of Le Refuge, a highly acclaimed restaurant in New York City which he founded in 1977. He is also the owner of Le Refuge B & B inn, City Island, New York, where he hosts a weekly early music series entitled "Tous les matins du monde"". WHAT??? Apparently the New York restaurant is closed now, but there is a chart of city inspections up to 2009 somewhere online: and I'm not sure you'd have wanted to eat there. As for the City Island inn... another sad story, recounted in The Bronx Times from 25 April 2009:

"A quaint bed and breakfast that was an important part of City Island for over 15 years shuttered its doors for good. The hotel's management had issues with the NYC Department of Buildings because the B&B's new location was only zoned for residential purposes.

Le Refuge Inn was originally located in a large home later purchased by former Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. and his family at 620 City Island Avenue between Kilroe and Bridge streets. It was a popular destination since opening in 1992. It relocation in 2004 to the Samuel Pell historic landmark house down the street caused a torrent of trouble. The Samuel Pell House was built in 1876.

It was the move to 586 City Island Avenue that created a DOB problem resulting in over $10,000 in fines for the hotel's operator, Pierre Saint-Dennis. The new location did not have the proper Certificate of Occupancy to operate a commercial establishment.

DOB received a complaint in October 2006 about the hotel violating the zoning rule that allows for two-family houses at the location. The owner of 586 City Island Avenue is listed as Michelle French.

City Islanders had grown fond of the B&B.

"I feel it is a sad day for us to lose such a dynamic partnership between business and community that Le Refuge Inn brought to City Island," said Bill Stanton, president of the City Island Civic Association. "For me, it brought back memories of City Island as a quaint, boat-building community."

Stanton feels that the closure of Le Refuge Inn holds other lessons for the community.

"Le Refuge helped create a positive tenor and tone for City Island," Stanton said. "While I am forced to accept the closing because of the landmark and zoning rules, I would hope that the sacrifice of this asset would serve as a greater point in comparison to unscrupulous developers who skirt every zoning rule."

Whatever the reason for the closure, there is no denying that Saint-Denis created a unique dining experience at the B&B. Pierre turned the eatery and hotel into a Zagat-rated point of destination that was praised in reviews by The New York Times, Daily News, and Long Island Press.

Saint-Denis is an award winning chef who has catered to celebrities like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis."

And Rechtman? Okay, I can spare some copying, because he has a website, three dabya dot ilanrechtman dot com.

I see that the duo also recorded a CD of Bach arrangements: [[ASIN:B00005TNCO Bach in Blue: Music of Bach]].


title: Ursula Oppens plays Rzewski - European release

text:
Postscript from July 2016: as some cursory readers such as the one who posted a comment under this review seem prone to hasty and uninformed conclusions, let me make it very clear that this review is ONLY for the Vanguard CD mentioned hereafter. If it appears under Ursula Oppens' LATER recording of Frederic Rzewski's people united, only the incompetence of the united people who run this company is to blame they've linked the Vanguard entry to the one of the remake, so that any review posted under one will appear under the other. For these people, any recording of Rzewski's masterpiece by Oppens is the same "product" as any other; and that's minor! I've seen them link, say, Solti's and Levine's recordings of Aida, as if that too was the same "product". This incompetence by the way is one of the main reasons why I've given up reviewing on Amazon.com. It's too much energy spent on trying to fix things that these people are simply  not interested in fixing, and in fact their incompetence oftentimes borders on wilful deceit. OK, I vented that. Here's the review now.

This here is, badly labelled, the European release, on Vanguard 08 8056 71, barcode 3351478056714, of a recording published in the US as Vanguard OVC 8056, barcode 0723918805627, listed here: [[ASIN:B0000023FC Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated]]. Frederic Rzewski's Variations on the Chilean Song "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" is arguably its composer's most famous and most important work. It was composed in September-October 1975, as a tribute to the Chilean people then under the yoke of Pinochet's dictatorship.

While it is certainly a pianistic monument, equal in scope and duration to the Goldberg or Diabelli Variations and demanding an impressive digital virtuosity, and a finely-wrought architecture (described in some detail in the liner notes), I'm not convinced it is such a towering musical monument.

Its language is not really, or not always cutting edge, in some variations even surprisingly romantic and even ballad-like (var. 13-15, 28, 30) and even when more modern and jagged, it doesn't go much beyond the American modernist language of the 1950s and 1960s (the Sonatas of Sessions come to mind) or progressive jazz of the same era (try variations 1, 2 and 7, that sound like Webern revisited by Jazz, or variation 5, an interesting etude on chord attacks and resonance). I find "The People United" the best when the language does stray beyond these confines, as in the jagged and impressively virtuosic Variation 10, the toccata-like var. 19, or Variations 22 and ensuing. But if you want towering pianistic monuments of the 20th century, better go to Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus or Crumb's various Makrokosmos cycles (list not limitative). I don't think Rzewski's "The People United" quite belongs to the same league.

The composition is dedicated to Ursula Oppens, who premiered it on February 7, 1976 along with Beethoven's Diabelli Variations and performs it here, in a recording made in April 1978. Sonics, in Vanguard's digital transfer, are state-of-the-art, and although apparently Oppens leaves out some of the optional choices given by Rzewski in his score and particularly the penultimate improvisational cadenza, this can be considered an authoritative reading of a work that, in my opinion, isn't quite as great as its reputation. I have the US issue and it includes remarkable liner notes by Christian Wolff, presumably the same are included in the European issue. TT 49:20.


title: a very personal and convincing view of Honegger's Symphony for Strings and, with Phèdre, a highly valuable complement

text:
In capsule: As in his recording of Honegger’s Symphonies Nos. 1 & 5 on the same label, Rozhdestvensky offers here a very idiosyncratic, deeply personal reading of Symphony No. 2, like no one else’s, but one that I find entirely convincing. Except for the “molto moderato” introduction, which he takes at a rather flowing pace in the manner of Munch, his intepretation is marked by very deliberate tempos, but with any sense of sluggishness offset by the powerful vigor of the bows’ attacks on the strings, abetted by Melodiya’s stupendous 1986 sonics. The suite for d’Annunzio’s Phèdre offers a great complement, it is Honegger at his most modernist, angular and dissonant, and Rozhdestvensky again performs it with drive and bite. It is only the three excerpts from Honegger’s music for Abel Gance’s ill-fated film Napoleon that are disappointing, not just because they are not the most interesting excerpts from that music (go to Adriano on Marco Polo), but also because here Rozhdestvensky is very sluggish. Also, that part has been dubbed directly from an LP, surface noise and all, it’s senseless. But Symphony No. 2 and Phèdre are reason enough for the serious Honegger fan to buy this CD, not as a first choice – too personal and idiosyncratic – but as a complement to more mainstream versions like those of Munch or Karajan.

This is the summary, from 14 February 2018, of a review that was originally much longer and way more substantiated in its interpretive comparisons, providing many links to other versions. To know more about it and why it’s gone, see My Profile.


title: find it cheaper under its other entries

text:
These are great versions and I find that I always return to them and use them as a yardstick against which to gauge others. The Eroica is collated from two performances or recording sessions, made on November 28 and December 5 1949; at some points you can distincly hear the splices. Anyway, whatever the sonic glitches, the interpretation belies the notion that Toscanini always conducted everything fast and relentlessly, let alone TOO fast and TOO relentlessly. Sure, compared to Furtwängler or Klemperer... But his first movement is way below Beethoven's metronome mark, and at 15:28 is Marcia Funebre is in the norm of everybody else except the extremes of slow (Sabata, Furtwängler, Karajan, Barbirolli) or fast (Scherchen, Leibowitz or Norrington); it is the same tempo as Szell, and Reiner was faster. Likewise with the first part of the Finale, up until the "poco andante" section at 6:17. His Scherzo does zip through at light-speeed, even faster than Beethoven's metronome, will-o'-the-wispy, and it sounds great that way.

But it is not so much those matters of tempo that matter: it's the unique bite, the explosiveness of accents cracking like whiplashes, the drive, the energy, the glaring brass, the devastating violence even in some moments of the Marcia, as in the "maggiore" section at 4:41. It's that, even more than tempo, that makes Toscanini absolutely true to Beethoven's character indications: "allegro con brio" (first movement), "allegro vivace" (third movement), "allegro molto" (finale). "Relentless", maybe, inasmuch as Toscanini never allows the tension to sag, he's on maximum voltage from start to end. Some may find it suffocating, I find it breathtaking. It is often commented that, or rather, paid lip service to the fact that Beethoven was "revolutionary", not just because of his embrace of the ideals of the Enlightenment and French revolution, but due to the advancements he authored in the compositional techniques of his time, the unprecedented scope and power he brought to symphonic music - and the revolution starts with the Eroica: there was nothing equivalent before, in scope, power, length, intensity, and the two canon shots that introduce it are a perfect symbol of the new era. I am of the opinion that this revolutionary, trail-blazing aspect of Beethoven is illustrated much better in such an exhilaratingly dynamic and exuberant reading as Toscanini's, bringing out all the music's youthful brashness, its ebullience and explosiveness, than in the more stately approaches of Furtwängler, Klemperer and the likes.

I've always read that Toscanini's sound was harsh, dry and unpleasant. Not here. These were recorded not in the (in)famous NBC 8-H studio, but in Carnegie Hall. The sound is good for its vintage, although, as mentioned, you can hear splices or 78s side breaks, and some artificial reverb has been added, that is noticeable especially on the final chord of each movement.

The First was recorded two years later (21 December 1951) but I hear no striking difference in sound. Interpretively, it follows the same approach as the third: brisk and dynamic, explosive, exuberant. Likewise, I find it absolutely irresistible. At past 80 years of age, Toscanini was younger than many young conductors. And more than 60 years later, he still is.

This very same edition has another entry where it is sold for MUCH cheaper, but for some reason it does NOT show up when you do the obvious researches, like "Beethoven 1 3 Toscanini". Not a problem of bad labeling or indexing, "Beethoven", "Toscanini", "Symphonies No. 1 and 3", it's all there. I've reported the problem to Amazon ten days ago, so far it hasn't changed. Here's the link: [[ASIN:B00000E6DU Beethoven - Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3]], where you'll also find my more detailed review. The same recordings were also reissued in the early 1990s on RCA's great Toscanini edition, vol. 1, [[ASIN:B000003EWK Beethoven: Symphonies 1 & 3]] - I don't know if the same transfers were used or new ones.

RCA also published two other Eroicas by Toscanini, both live performances: one given in the 8-H studio on October 28, 1939, now on RCA's Toscanini edition vol. 23, [[ASIN:B000003EWZ Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 3 "Eroica" & 8]], and the other from Carnegie Hall on December 6, 1953 - Toscanini's final season, and his last performance of the Eroica, reissued on the Toscanini edition vol. 29, [[ASIN:B000003EX1 Beethoven: Symphony 3 "Eroica"  / Mozart: Symphony 40]]. Which one to prefer? See my detailed review of the 1939 version to know.


title: This reissue is one of the secret treasures of the early CD catalog

text:
Although he had a long association with the composer in the concert hall (the 7th Symphony was even the last piece he conducted, a few days before his death), Barbirolli didn't record much Beethoven in the studio (some live recordings have been cropping up), making this 1958 recording of two of Beethoven's "small" symphonies, # 1 & 8, originally made for the British label Pye (and licensed in the US by Vanguard), all the more valuable.

These are "traditional" readings in their approach to tempo - they are usually significantly slower than what the indications of Beethoven seem to imply and than the metronome marks that he later added - but Barbirolli brings to them a unique power and muscularity of articulation. Add to that that the transfers are truly excellent, offering spacious stereo sound and more vivid presence than, say, Bernstein's New York recordings from the mid-sixties. There is only a touch of saturation in the louder passages and a strange background buzz in the most silent ones, such as the introduction to the finale of the First Symphony (but far less obtrusive than the surface noise of an LP). The emphasis is on the strings, but the woodwinds usually come out clearly, and within the brass the trumpet always registers with an invigorating glare (try the menuetto of the First Symphony).

After an introduction unfolding majestically, Barbirolli takes the First Symphony's first movement not as the "Allegro CON BRIO" Beethoven wrote but rather as an "Allegro with bonhomie" - but, within that approach, he has the orchestra play with plenty of muscle, clear articulation, sharp accents and much character. The same comments apply to the Menuetto, taken as the heavy gallop of sturdy warhorses rather than the "Allegro molto vivace" written by Beethoven (peasants near Vienna in Beethoven's days were apparently not as clumsy as we fancy them nowadays), but within that disputable choice, Barbirolli has his Halle forces play with uplifting vigor. Abetted by the vivid sonics (although the engineers have not succeeded in making the timpani sounding like anything but a wash of sound), the finale is unhurried and powerful, with the staccato articulation from the strings not entirely perfect. Only in the second movement is Barbirolli's forward moving tempo true to the "andante con moto" indication (although still a far cry from Beethoven's metronome mark), and the woodwinds have wonderful clarity.

The same approach is at work in the 8th, with the first movement, "allegro vivace e con brio" taken significantly slower than Beethoven's metronome mark (something like 50 dotted half-notes per minute rather than the score's 69) but actually true to a certain tradition (Bernstein in New York, my customary yardstick for the traditional approaches because it is one of the better balanced ones, takes exactly the same tempo, [[ASIN:B00000DS7E Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 7 & 8]]) but with magnificent power and snap, vivid recording and string tone that lacks Viennese silk but not bite. Barbirolli and the Halle show great mastery of Beethoven's dynamics, which are often more or less or limited to two levels: piano and fortissimo, with sudden jumping from one to the other. The one movement I find most questionable and least convincing is the "Tempo di Minuetto", not just because it is taken so much slower than Beethoven's metronome mark (circa 104 to Beethoven's 126), but because playing it at Beethoven's tempo works so much better! My other great yardstick in the recordings from that era, and to me a hall of fame version, is René Leibowitz' cycle with the Royal Philharmonic ([[ASIN:B000003GDJ Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 8 ~ Leibowitz]] or [[ASIN:B005I4H0HE Beethoven: Symphony 7 and Symphony 8]]): in the mid-sixties Leibowitz was, years before all the Norringtons and Gardiners and Van Immerseels, one of the first conductors to try and play Beethoven's Symphonies in accordance to the composer's metronome marks. When you hear the infectious exuberance and verve of his Tempo di Minuetto (and for that matter of all the other movements as well), you realize that it simply works much better that way; in comparison Barbirolli sounds pedestrian, if not elephantine. I guess he was bothered, here, by the absence of a genuine slow movement - but like it or not that's the way Beethoven wrote it. Fortunately Barbirolli's Finale is great: it starts off deceptively - you think Barbirolli is off again for one of his slow tempo-massive power gigs -  but he soon gets the proceedings worked up to fiery intensity, and you get the massive power AND the exuberant forward momentum.

Most repeats are taken. Given its age and relative rarity this disc is probably of no interest for the general Beethoven admirer, but the Barbirolli aficionado (are there any left these days?) can safely go for it. This and more Barbirolli-conducted works (Elgar's Cello Concerto with Navarra and Enigma Variations, the First Symphonies of Mahler and Elgar, Vaughan Williams' Second and Eighth, Brahms' Fourth), but also works conducted by Boult or Scherchen, mostly from the Pye and Westminster catalogs, was reissued in one big batch in 1987 by the short-lived label PRT: there was no second batch, as far as I'm aware. Presentation is minimal (no liner notes, not even timings of the individual movements) but some of these reissues were valuable, and some have not been reissued since - others have, many on the Westminster label and its offshoots. These two Beethoven symphonies have indeed been reissued by Dutton in collaboration with the Barbirolli Society, [[ASIN:B00000J7Z1 Symphonies Nos. 1, 5 & 8 (Barbirolli)]], with the 5th Piano Concerto (Mindru Katz) and 5th Symphony. However, compared to the suberb PRT transfer there is less immediacy and bloom and a slight shrill edge on the Dutton reissue. Nothing that is likely to bother anyone not doing an A-B comparison, but I'll keep my PRT for its better sonics.


title: a good "traditional" Eroica - but how good to Beethoven is a traditional Eroica?

text:
Walter's Eroica, recorded in January 1958 and his third studio recording after those he made in 1941 and 1949 with the New York Phil, is an excellent "traditional" reading. It may be exceptionable to call it that, because that kind of interpretive approach wasn't dominant before World War II; it became more so after. Tempos are almost always on the slow side, a far cry not only from Beethoven's controversially fast metronome marks but even from what the tempo indications at the beginning of the outer movements seem to suggest: "Allegro con brio" (1st movement), "Allegro molto" (finale).

Walter's first movement is spacious, leisurely, powerful in a heavy way rather than urgent, explosive and biting like Toscanini's ([[ASIN:B00000E6DU Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3]]), Scherchen's ([[ASIN:B00005OLDP Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 6]]), Bernstein's ([[ASIN:B00000DS7B Symphony 3 " Eroica "]], [[ASIN:B00000I0W0 The Bernstein Century - Beethoven: Symphony no 3 'Eroica' / Bernstein, New York PO]]) or Leibowitz' ([[ASIN:B000003GDM Symphonies No. 1 & 3]]). Tempo is even more spacious than Furtwängler's (in his last studio recording from 1952 with the Vienna Philharmonic, [[ASIN:B000005GOG Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 "Eroica"]]), but it certainly feels faster, because Walter benefits from great stereo sonics and vivid orchestral presence, his accents are more muscular (though not explosive like Toscanini's), his basses are crisp and his brass blazing. But the overall impression it conveys is that of gentleness. He takes the Funeral March at a moderate tempo although far from the extremes of Sabata in 1946 ([[ASIN:B00000E474 Symphony 3 in E Flat " Eroica "]]), Furtwängler, Karajan (in his first DG recording from 1963, [[ASIN:B000W99IIO Beethoven: Symphonien Nr. 3 "Eroica" & 4]]) or Barbirolli ([[ASIN:B000006CHR Symphony 3 / Elizabethean Suite]]), and he invests it with much power and weight (the apparently small number of double-basses works wonders here), rising even to genuine dramatic intensity in the fugato in the "Minore" section starting at 6:38, thanks to a dramatic acceleration of tempo (from 60 quarter-notes/minute to 84, to be compared to Beethoven's 80 metronome mark). Still he doesn't reach the white-heat dramatic intensity of Toscanini or Scherchen: with Walter it sounds less like a march than like a meditation on the passing of things. But on its own terms, it works. His pacing of the scherzo is perfect, almost at Beethoven's tempo (112 against 116), while most of the "fast" versions from those days (Toscanini, Szell, Leibowitz) are in fact faster here (from 120 to Toscanini's hair-raising 128), although his "hunting" horns in the trio section are surprisingly soft-grained - somewhat evocative of the off-stage hunting horns in Mahler's First. But the finale's "allegro molto" sets off at such a snail's pace, you'd think an old man riddled with arthritis trying to run. That's only the turbulent intro, and the theme and variations per se can take that deliberate, gentle and balletic approach much better. Thank God it remains a far cry from Furtwängler's trudging 44 half-notes/mn (but Furtwängler does accelerate later in the movement), and it doesn't preclude moments of genuine grandeur. But its gentle and balletic character doesn't generate that much excitement either, I find.

This is certainly a version I'd recommend to the (new) traditionalists, and I think it gives a better view of that tradition than Furtwängler's 1952 recording (a controversial one, as it seems not to be viewed as his best one even by his fans), because of its much better sound and greater muscularity, and than Klemperer's, who doesn't always avoid the impression of trudging.

Whether this is an approach that best serves Beethoven and the revolutionary nature of the Eroica, is each listener's choice; I don't think so. See my comments on Beethoven's tempo indications: by no stretch of the imagination can the tempos adopted by Walter, except in the scherzo, be considered anywhere near what Beethoven indicates in his scores, and that is even leaving aside the controversial question of his metronome marks, which the composer added much later. Not that this consideration makes Walter's and the traditionalist's approach an invalid one. The composer's intentions are only one view of the work, and not even always the best one. But what is lost in the process, at least in the two outer movements, is what you get with Toscanini, Bernstein, Scherchen, and Leibowitz: the youthful brashness, the ebullience, the explosiveness, the sheer joy, the rage even (over a lost French revolution rather than a lost penny), the excitement. I happen to think that the revolutionary and trail-blazing aspect of Beethoven is best expressed with these values. Still Walter's recording is enjoyable as an alternative view, imbued with the conductor's gentleness and kindness, and not devoid of muscularity, power and drama. The Columbia Symphony Orchestra, a pick-up group of West Coast musicians, plays with consumate mastery; you wonder why you need to maintain and drill permanent orchestras when pick-up ensembles play that well.

And with all that, the same musical characteristics produce a great Coriolan Overture (recorded 15 April 1959), spacious (the tempo is the same as Klemperer's, recorded two years before, [[ASIN:B00000DO68 Beethoven: Overtures (Ouverturen / Ouvertures)- Leonore Nos. 1-3 / Fidelio / Konig Stephan / Coriolan / Die Weihe des Hauses]]) but immensely powerful and biting, and that bite, even violence in the attacks and accents, makes the difference between Klemperer's admittedly impressive massiveness, and truly gripping drama.


title: Toscanini in much better sound

text:
Fans of Bernstein may be surprised that I call this Eroica, recorded on January 27, 1964, "Toscanini in much better sound". Toscanini was always viewed as something of a radical, even a maverick, in Beethoven, and conventional wisdom was that he conducted everything, not just Beethoven (but including Beethoven), too fast and too relentlessly. Bernstein may have been criticized by some in his New York years, but not for those reasons. Yet, if I take Toscanini's famed 1949 recording for RCA, [[ASIN:B00000E6DU Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3]] (considered by even some fans of the Maestro too be TOO fast and relentless, compared to some of his pre-war accounts), Bernstein's tempos in the first movement, the Funeral March and the first section of the finale come within seconds of Toscanini's - and it is not always Toscanini who is the fastest. Bernstein reaches the first repeat bar in 2:59, to Toscanini's 3:03 and gets through the first movement (subtracted of the repeat, which he plays and not Toscanini) in 13:53, to Toscanini's 13:44. His Marcia Funebre is at 15:13, to Toscanini's 15:28, with the Maggiore section reached in 4:16 vs 4:13 and the Minore in 6:25 vs 6:24. In the Finale, Bernstein reaches the poco andante in 6:18, to Toscanini's 6:17.

But there's more than just tempo: like Toscanini, Bernstein invests the outer movements with sharp and punchy accents, glaring brass, conveying a marvelous sense of explosive exuberance and youthful brashness.

Does that make him (and Toscanini) a hard-driven, relentless, maverick radical? Hardly. Those who think otherwise should take a cure of Scherchen ([[ASIN:B00005OLDP Beethoven: Symphonies: No. 3 in E flat, Op. 55 "Eroica" / No. 6 in F, Op. 68 "Pastoral"]]) and Norrington ([[ASIN:B00005A9O0 Beethoven - Symphonies 1-9 * Overtures / London Classical Players * Sir Roger Norrington]]) - and take a look at the scores as well. It is a well-known fact that Beethoven's metronome markings are always - not only in the Eroica, but there too - insanely fast, so much so that generation after generation of musician have deployed treasures of imagination to find reasons not to observe them: that they were added years after the composition; that the metronome was defective; that he didn't know how to use it; that he was deaf and the tempo you hear in your inner self isn't the same as the one when the music is actually performed; that the music is unplayable at those tempos; and so forth.

But just take the tempo indications of the Eroica: "Allegro con brio" (first movement), "Allegro vivace" (scherzo), "Allegro molto" (finale). NOT "allegro ma non troppo", or "allegro moderato", or "moderato". How faster can you get? "Allegro precipitoso possible"? Beethoven wanted them brisk, explosive, teeming with energy - the energy and sweep and turmoil of the revolutionary ideals. Except for the Scherzo, that's how Bernstein, after Toscanini, plays them.

On the other hand Bernstein's funeral march, like Toscanini's, is far from fast, and considerably slower than Beethoven's metronome. He imbues it with great pathos, but less violence than Toscanini. But for Beethoven's tempo, go to Norrington. It is fascinating: what may be lost in pathos is certainly gained in the real sense of a forward-moving march, and hearing it at Beethoven's tempo it is easy to imagine that the composer drew his inspiration from his vivid experience and memory of the funeral processions of the the great fallen heroes so frequently staged when the French revolution swept Europe away.

Where Bernstein strays from the Toscanini model is in the Scherzo: his will shock no believer in the German tradition. His very moderate tempo, hardly faster than Furtwangler's, gives it the character of a good-natured and somewhat heavy-footed hunt in the forest (and the middle trio with horns has great character), like a premonition of the Pastorale, rather than the breathless race indicated by Beethoven's metronome, or the wild dance of the elves played by Toscanini at an even faster tempo.

But Bernstein hurls with great turbulence and agitation in the finale, and his theme and variation develop at a brisk pace and lively mood, reaching uplifting intensity and drama in the climaxes. Again: Toscanini in much better sound. Like everybody else before Norrington he does take a traditional view of the "poco andante" section starting at 6:18 - slowly paced, far slower than Beethoven's 108 eighth-notes, grandiose and triumphant in the climaxes. It is entirely convincing on its own terms. Go to Norrington to hear what it sounds like when played at a tempo closer to Beethoven's - it completely changes the character of the music. But Bernstein's coda is something of a letdown, way too cautious, and despite the wonderful pungency of the brass, it fails to generate as much excitement as it should.

Despite these few reservations, this remains a profoundly satisfying version, one that I regularly return to, with those of Toscanini and Leibowitz ([[ASIN:B000003GDM Symphonies No. 1 & 3]]), as a possible yardstick. Great sound.

The two overtures would seem like a fine bonus, for a TT of 65:30 - but I guess that, at one point in his artistic life, Bernstein grew tired of being Toscanini in much better sound (it does burn a lot of energy). His Egmont-Overture is from 12 February 1970 and it is a comfortable and grand reading, but it lacks the intensity of Toscanini's. But that's nothing compared to his Fidelio-Overture (January 31, 1967). I listened to it immediately after hearing a number of recordings made before it, Bruno Walter in 1934, Weingartner in '38, Toscanini in '39 and '44, Reiner in '55, Munch in '56 and Boult in circa '58, and although it pains me to say so, Bernstein is a near-disgrace. It doesn't start well: the two opening orchestral explosions are thick and lumpish rather than explosive. In the ensuing Adagio the balances are entirely wrong, when come the two bars of explosive woodwinds and brass punctuating each beat at 1:25 you hardly hear them, they are thick and don't punctuate anything. Then comes the Allegro, and it's all geniality, but no drive, no explosiveness, dynamics compressed - is that really what Bernstein intended, or is it my early CBS Masterworks' transfer? But I didn't hear any compressed dynamics in the two other pieces. And not just "impressions", mind you: Weingartner, Toscanini, Munch, Reiner all took the Allegro section in 2:51 to 2:58; Boult was more laid-back, at 3:05. Bernstein? 3:25. Did he have enough of Toscanini by 1967 and was he trying to be Klemperer for a change?

Doen't matter. The Eroica alone warrants the purchase of this CD, or of its subsequent reissues.