title: An original take on Purcell's Funeral music for Queen Mary

text:
Given how little is know of the music that was played at the funeral of the beloved Queen Mary in March 1695, and how little of Purcell was played on that occasion - only three pieces, a March and a Canzona for brass and a short funeral anthem, "Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts" on the last lines of the prayer for the Burial service from the Common Prayer Book, said or sung "while the corpse is made ready to be laid into the earth" - it is extraordinary how many versions of it (or purporting to be) have been recorded.

Purcell's Funeral music was revived in the late 1950s through a very corrupt edition by Thurston Dart, who not only adapted the orchestration for modern instruments and added timpani (based on the premise that the military drum players would have ad-libbed over the brass music while the procession moved to Westminster Abbey), but also interspersed in his "suite" three Funeral Sentences that Purcell had written some years before and that were not played at the 1695 Funeral, but that set to music the complete funeral prayer "while the corpse is ready" of which Purcell had set only the last lines in 1695. Still in 1976 John Eliot Gardiner, a former student of Dart at the Royal Academy of Music, not quite yet an uncompromising champion of authenticity and with an ensemble still playing on modern instruments, still followed the pattern established by Dart (see my review of [[ASIN:B00000E8RQ Purcell: Music for Queen Mary]]).

Not so with Christophers, recorded in 1994, who, like Andrew Parrott in 1988 ([[ASIN:B00004SLGU Purcell: Odes and Funeral Music /Tavener Consort, Choir & Players * Parrott]]), plays the three early Sentences separately (and repeats the third in the Funeral music itself, but in the 1695 setting, different from the earlier one, and simpler). In fact, since Parrott's recording for EMI Reflexe (EMI's ancient music collection in the early days of the CD), each new recording seems to come with its own musicologist (Parrott's was Eric van Tassel) and its own theories. Harry Christophers and Collins joined the services of Bruce Wood, the author of an important article, "The First Performance of Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary" published in the volume edited by Michael Burden, "[[ASIN:0198164424 Performing the Music of Henry Purcell]]".

So, Christopher's main originality is to offer what is claimed (if I understand Wood's liner notes) to be the complete funeral music as it was played in 1695. In fact Wood has edited a score, which can be found cheaper on various online shops than here, [[ASIN:0853605521 Funeral Music for Queen Mary]]. Two marches by Thomas Tollet and James Paisible are played alongside Purcell's (but in the liner notes Wood doesn't say on what information he bases the notion that they were played in 1695), and they sound indeed very similar. As Christophers segues into the next one without a break, you don't even perceive a seam. But musicologists ever disagree among themselves. Parrott and van Tassel did the March WITHOUT drums (on the premise that the March and Canzona were heard INSIDE Westminster Abbey and not during the procession to it, and that inside the church only a smaller band of trumpeters from the royal household had the right to play, NOT the "large band of military trumpeters, with kettledrums and/or side drums" that escorted the funeral cortege to the church. Wood has another theory: at the funeral, the marches were "undoubtedly heard", not with kettledrums but with and band of thirty military drums playing "the Old English March", which "had been prescribed by royal warrant, earlier in the century, as the only march to be used by the infantry, and was preserved - alone among English drum marches - in contemporary documents".

Wood doesn't give the sources for his claims in the liner notes and I haven't read his longer article to know how much he substantiates his theories there. I think "undoubtedly" is what a musicologist writes when his theory is as bold and arbitrary a guess as the theory of the other musicologist but he wants you to believe HIM, not the other one.

About the anthems, Wood writes: "recent research by the present writer has revealed that Purcell composed Thou knowest, Lord to replace a lost movement in an otherwise complete setting of the service by Thomas Morley - a dignified Tudor work, whose use at English state funerals had become traditional".

So it is Morley's settings that are played here alongside Purcell's anthem, not just of the first lines of the prayer-for-the-corpse-in-readiness which were also those of Purcell's Funeral Sentences (starting with the line "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live"), but also those that in the Burial service come before, "I am the resurrection and the life", said or sung by Priest and Clerks "meeting the corpse at the entrance of the Church-yard, and going before it, either into the Church, or towards the grave".

About these matters of musicology, we listeners don't need to care too much I think about "authenticity", unless we listen to music for history and not for music. The only true issue, I think, is: how does it it sound.

And it sounds fine indeed.

Nobody can say if the March(es) sounded in 1695 anything like how Christophers plays them, but heard more than three centuries later they sound great, very funeral indeed. In fact, I find that they sound incredibly evocative of the funeral marches written during the French Revolution (which I have reviewed at length here, [[ASIN:B000009IGC Les Grands Hymnes Revolutionnaires (Erato)]]) and down to Berlioz' Symphonie funèbre et triomphale. Contributing to the feeling is that his "military drums" are much "busier" than the timpani of Gardiner in 1977. Unlike Parrott, Christophers doesn't vary much the repeats, but that's a small matter.

Wood calls Morley's setting "a dignified Turor work" and he's right, that's what it sounds like, meditative but not very elaborate, relying on choral mass and mood rather than on very elaborate part-writing, and in fact Purcell's setting is much in the same vein. But the three earlier Funeral Sentences are much greater masterpieces, much more elaborate in the intricacies of the four-part writing and harmonically much more daring and sensuous.

There, Purcell's score shows a clear distinction between "verse" and "chorus", from which one is led to the conclusion that "verse" was sung by soloists, and that's how Parrott does them, which lends a greater intimacy to the music, madrigal- and chamber- rather than church-like. Not so with Christophers, and I hear no striking differentiation between verse and chorus (as at 1:55 in the first Sentence). There is a contrast in the second Sentence when enters "chorus" at 3:16, but it is through the chorus now singing fortissimo rather than adding voices to the parts.

Again, it may be a concern for those who seek utmost "authenticity" in music, but Christopher's The Sixteen sound great, standing out through their sonic silk, the otherworldly purity and homogeneity of the sopranos, the brooding and meditative inwardness of the choral sound, even in the fortissimos, and their awesome crescendi.

To this program, Christophers adds the two Latin Elegies on the Death of Queen Mary also composed by Purcell, more intimate settings for, respectively, solo soprano and soprano duet, and continuo, and they are beautiful pieces, beautifully melismatic and, in the second, beautifully intertwining the two voices, madrigal-like. They are also beautifully sung, by Libby Crabtree and Carys Lane, with a gentle delivery that is entirely un-operatic and thus, I find, wonderfully suited to the music.

The International Music Scores Library Project is surprisingly poor in Purcell scores, but, bless them again, they offer an invaluable fac-simile of the first edition of the Three Elegies (music by "Henricus Purcell"), printed in 1695 by Printed by J. Heptinstall for Henry Playford. The other elegy is by Purcell's teacher, close friend and, ultimately, survivor, John Blow, and it is too bad, really, that Christophers didn't chose to record Blow's elegy as well, rather than "Love's Goddess Sure Was Blind", the Ode for Queen Mary's Birthday in 1692, which, as fine as it is, sounds emotionally jarring with the rest of the funeral program.

Christopher's recording is completed by (and, in fact, opens with) by two Latin Motets which, like the Three Funeral Sentences, have no relation with Queen Mary's funeral but were written much earlier, and the first and longest one being not even funeral, but an invocation to Jehovah for help and support against one's enemies. But they sound funeral enough and they are, again, quite elaborate.

TT is 79:42, you can't beat that. The original Collins CD is also sold under this entry, [[ASIN:B000003VYK Sacred Choral Works by Purcell, Morley and Tollett]], and, after the demise of Collins, was reissued on the Sixteen's own label, Coro: [[ASIN:B00030EROW Purcell: Love's Goddess Sure Was Blind]].


title: TT is short, but Mitropoulos fills these two works with unique passion and intensity

text:
Great that this CD reissue by Sony Japan, SRCR 1702, is now listed on Amazon.com (which doesn't necessarily mean it is offered). Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Tallis had already been made available on CD by Sony, together with Mitropoulos' recording of the 4th Symphony and Stokowski's 6th, [[ASIN:B003D1WXFI Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 4 in F minor / Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis / Symphony No. 6 in E minor]] (it is now also on a label called Retrospective, [[ASIN:B00005UPOT Ralph Vaughan Williams - Symphony No. 4 - Mitropoulos / Symphony No. 6 - Stokowski ; New York Philharmonic]]) but it is the first time Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht/Transfigured Night is available on the digital medium, and hitherto its only CD reissue. For those who couldn't wait for an offer to show up on this website and would like to go immediately hunt after it, look on the Japanese sister company or search after the barcode, 4988009170237.

It is worth it. First, the sonics: the recording was made in March 1958, and it is, in Sony's transfer, a sonic splendor, of breathtaking presence, vividness, detail, transparency of textures. I can't recall having heard, or having been so alert to Schoenberg's dense and intricate part-writing, in any other recording of Transfigured Night. The cellos are awesome, not only in sonic presence, but in virtuosity: you can hear every one of their fast sixteenth-note, clearly articulated. Who needs digital, when you have this? In Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia, the separation between the full string orchestra and the string quartet registers well (and the quartet is beautifully clear when it plays alone at circa 5:30), although some inner parts of the full orchestra (second violins) don't come out clearly at some points.

And then, Mitropoulos: this was his last recording with the New York Philharmonic and for Columbia. Bernstein had shared co-directorship with him in the 1957-58 season, and Columbia was betting their money on their young American hero, as the recording schedules in those months clearly indicate (see James H. North's discography of the New York Philharmonic, [[ASIN:0810858541 New York Philharmonic: The Authorized Recordings, 1917-2005]]) - and a clever choice, too: much was gained of course in Bernstein's rise to unshared stewardship of the orchestra, but something was lost as well. From top, Mitropoulos leads a uniquely urgent and intense Verklärte Nacht. Compare the 25:13 it takes him to get through, to Stokowski's 27:49 (in 1952 for RCA, [[ASIN:B007MPAHEU Schoenberg: Gurrelieder]]) and 28:16 (in 1957 for EMI, [[ASIN:B000FPHFJE Leopold Stokowski Conducts Bartok, Barber, & Schoenberg]]), Horenstein's 28:52 (in 1956 for Vox, [[ASIN:B000001K5U Till Eulenspiegel Merry Pranks]]) or to Ormandy's languid 32:00 (with Minneapolis in 1934, the premiere recording of the orchestral version, [[ASIN:B00000G4MH Eugene Ormandy - Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra - Early North American Recordings Vol. 1 - Sibelius: Symphony No. 1 / Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht (recorded in 1934-35)]]) and 30:25 (in 1950 with Philadelphia, reissued in their Centennial box, [[ASIN:B00003E4CG The Philadelphia Orchestra the Centennial Colection]]). The approach lacks perhaps the sense of large breathing and slow unfolding at the beginning and at the end, it presses a bit and Schoenberg's arch-romantic composition can take a touch more languor, but as the passion develops Mitropoulos fills it with unique tension.

But the approach works even better in Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Tallis. Great pairing, the Tallis Fantasia is one of the most immense works for strings alone of the literature, all centuries included. Even considering that approach to tempo was generally swifter before the 1960s (witness the recordings of Toscanini live in 1938 and 1945, Boult in 1940 and still in 1954, Walter live with New York in 1953, Karajan in 1953, Steinberg in Pittsburg in 1958 and Ormandy still in 1963, all between 14 and 15 minutes - almost everybody since has been above 16, with Bernstein the most extreme at 18:04 - see the comments section for the product links), Mitropoulos fills it again with breathtaking urgency and intensity: he runs through in 12:42! I can't say that Mitropoulos is entirely unique here, because Pierre Monteux, recorded live in 1963 with Boston, has been as swift, even a touch swifter, in a strikingly similar approach - if possible even a hair more passionate (available only in the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 12-CD centennial box, [[ASIN:B0013L92WC Boston Symphony Orchestra - Symphony Hall Centennial Celebration, From the Broadcast Archives 1943-2000]]). Their climax (with Mitropoulos from circa 8:15) is unique and uniquely intense, with a way of hurling into it that belongs only to them, even counting the numerous subsequent versions. With them, the Tallis Fantasia is no grandiose and noble and solemn and brooding and mourning processional as it is under the baton of Barbirolli or the later Boult or Silvestri, it is a passionate and intense tribute to the dead - or, who knows, the longing remembrance of a summer of love. The Tallis Fantasia is a possible candidate for the music you'd want to be played at your funeral - but NOT in the interpretations of Mitropoulos and Monteux. This is for declaring your love to the woman - sorry, partner - of your life. Perfect match with Schoenberg's lushly erotic fantasy.

The CD is only 38 minutes long, but it is a CD to cherish.

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title: Not as original and challenging as in Attrition

text:
I knew the Belgian Jean-Luc Fafchamps as a pianist of contemporary music - among other things, I had his recording of Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories on the same Sub Rosa label, not his 2010 remake of the 1991 revised edition, [[ASIN:B004JUTICS Triadic Memories]], but the earlier one, made in 1990 and not listed on this website - but not as a composer. But hearing his 1993 CD [[ASIN:B00004TH0L Attrition]], I liked it so much that I immediately decided to explore more. Not that Fafchamps' music was entirely original, and you could hear what his models were: Crumb, Xenakis, Ligeti, Lutoslawski... But, first, you can imagine worse models, and second he combined all those influences to a richly imaginative whole.

This disc, recorded in 2000, gathers two pieces: "Melencolia Si..." for two pianos and two percussions (1994-98), and "A Garden" for wind quintet (1996-7).

That Bartok's own Sonata for two pianos and percussion comes to mind hearing "Melencolia Si...", especially in the atmospheric and hushed slow movement and the ebullient and rhythmic finale, is not entirely surprising: it is probably difficult to escape THAT model when one writes for the lineup first imagined by Bartok. Running almost 14 minutes, the Finale is also the longest movement in the piece. In the motoric activity and exultant climax of that Finale I also hear touches of Terry Riley's In C, and of Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano in the busy activity of part of the second movement. The combination of pianos (with sometimes their timbres altered with preparations in a Cagean manner) and percussion (either metal, wood or skins are priviledged in the various movements) produces coloristic and atmospheric results and at times impressive power, but, maybe because the Bartok model is so overbearing, "Melencolia Si..." is less original and striking stylistically than the pieces gathered on Attrition. The composition, says Fafchamps in the liner notes, is insipired by the famous engraving of Albrecht Dürer, La Melencolia, and its use of the magic square.

Likewise with the Wind Quintet: atmosphere, color, busy activity, but nothing that made me stick out an ear, thiking, "wow! I've never heard this". What I hear is a mixture of Schoenberg and Ligeti. On my copy, the disc's track information as it appears displayed on a computer or a CD player is puzzling: the first movement, "Ground", track 5, has a duration of... 0 seconds, which made me wonder if I had received a faulty copy where that movement would not have been engraved (or whatever they do with CDs). In fact I think the fourth and last movements play without a break on track 9 (listed as the last movement), so that what is given as the second movement (track 6) is in fact the first.

Ultimately, as interesting and pleasant as it is, I don't find the music as original and challenging as in Attrition.


title: 16 minutes of boredom will take you to 46 of ecstasy - fortunately the CD allows you to skip the part you don't want

text:
With a TT of 63:39, you'd think this CD was generous. False impression. Look at the track listing, and note that track 1 fills 16:33 of "Compline Service". What it means is 16:30 minutes of plainchant on single or two tones, interrupted by shards of preaching by the minister ("Brethren, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the Devil as a roaring lion walketh about") and Amens by the congregation. I mean, okay, if you are at Church. But as a music? The idea was to record a Compline service (with the omission of some of the psalms", thank God) "followed by music either for Compline or with texts and music of an appropriate mood". For the record, Compline, "in medieaval monastic and collegiate comunities, [] was the last of the seven daytime services, sung in mid-evening."

So you are left with 45:40 minutes of English Renaissance a cappella singing, hymns and motets of Sheppard, Tallis, Byrd, Robert White and one attibuted to Josquin, which is not so generous after all. Other than that, the music and singing is beautiful, although it doesn't provide for much stylistic or emotional variety, and 45 minutes of ecstasy up in the spheres tends to feel like a vast, calm sea in which the ripples hardly register.

Gamut was an English label that released circa 40 CDs in the early 1990s, and then went. Their catalog was often interesting and original. Highlights included GAM CD 516 The Piano Music of Ivor Gurney and Edward Elgar by Alan Gravill ([[ASIN:B00008F4Z0 The Piano Music of Ivor Gurney And Edward Elgar]]), GAM CD 526 "The Britten Connection", with piano music of Lennox Berkeley, Bridge, Britten, Ireland, Colin Matthews and Ronald Stevenson played by Anthony Goldstone ([[ASIN:B00000DU2I The Britten Connection]]), GAM CD 528 with the piano music of John Ogdon played by his wife and partner in music Brenda Lucas ([[ASIN:B00000DU2K The Piano Music of John Ogdon]]), GAM CD 518 Piano Trios of Rebecca Clarke, John Ireland and Frank Bridge by the Hartley Trio ([[ASIN:B00008F4Z2 British Piano Trios]]) and GAM CD 536 works for Piano Trio of Amy Beach, Ernest Bloch, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell and Charles Ives by the same performers ([[ASIN:B00008F4Z7 American Piano Trios]]), GAM CD 537 Viola Sonatas of Rebecca Clarke, Elisabeth Maconchy and Shostakovich by Philip Dukes & Sophie Rahman ([[ASIN:B00008F4Z8 Rebecca Clarke Viola Sonata: Works for Viola and Piano]], GAM CD 519 Music of Christopher Tye ([[ASIN:B00008F4Z3 Music of Christopher Tye]]) sung by the Clare College Chapel Choir und Timothy Brown (same performers as here) and there was another one by the same performers, GAM CD 538 Motets of Richard Dering, apparently not listed on this website, GAM CD 521 piano transcriptions of Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol and Scheherazade by Anthony Goldstone & Caroline Clemmow ([[ASIN:B00008F4Z5 Rimsky-Korsakov: Piano Transcriptions, Scheherazade, Capriccio Espagnol, Neapolitan Song]]), GAM CD 535 with the choral music of Samuel Barber ([[ASIN:B00008F4Z6 Barber - Choral Music]]). Some have been reissued, on various labels, Dal Segno, Guild, Heritage, Regis or Grasmere - and this one too, originally GAM CD 531, now on Guild, [[ASIN:B000025YOF Compline With Anthems & Motets]].


title: An important early score of Honegger

text:
Timpani continues here, in 1999, under the guidance of the great Honegger specialist Harry Halbreich, a series begun in 1992 with the recording of Honegger's great unpublished "ballet-oratorio-melodrama-pantomime" and collaboration with dancer, actress and wealthy patroness Ida Rubinstein and author Paul Valéry, [[ASIN:B0000285FB Semiramis]], and followed in 1996 by two other great and forgotten stage works and Rubinstein commissions, Amphion and L'Impératrice aux rochers ([[ASIN:B000001YNH Honegger: Amphion / L'Imperatrice aux Rochers]]).

"Le Dit des Jeux du Monde" (something like "The Tale of the World's Games", or "The Story of the World at Play" as the liner notes' English translation suggests) is an important score in Honegger's output. Written in 1918 when he was fresh out of the Paris Conservatoire, predating King David by three years and Pacific 231 by five, it is the incidental music to a hybrid combination of ballet and stage play, on a symbolist/abstract book by a young and now forgotten Belgian poet of back then, Paul Méral (hey, the book is even listed here, [[ASIN:B004VJHKDQ LE DIT DES JEAUX DU MONDE]]!). I'm not sure (even after reading the documentation about it) what it was about, the action was supposed to take place "everywhere, even nowhere, in the space where people and things move" and the sets consist only of lighting, but the musical numbers describe various "games" - the game of the Sun and the Flower, of the Mountain and the Stones, the Rat and Death and so forth. There are thirteen numbers in all - ten "Dances", two Interludes and an Epilogue - adding up to nearly 45 minutes of music. It was premiered in December 1918 and was a "success de scandale" - or rather, "insuccès de scandale", which established Honegger's stature as one of the most important young composers on the French scene.

Because of the piecemeal nature of the musical numbers, the composition doesn't have the cogency of Amphion, it is more in the nature of musical vignettes (the most extended, "Man and the Village, track 6, is 5-minutes long). The composition is interesting also for its lean chamber scoring, solo flute, solo trumpet, double string quintet, and percussion consisting of bass drum, side drum, timpani and a "bouteillophone" of Honegger's own invention, apparently bottles playing at a definite pitch. Because of its very acoustic nature, the trumpet often sounds concertante. It is one of Honegger's most "exploratory" scores, and although Halbreich mentions the early atonal Schoenberg and Berg, I find it evocative of a similar one composed around the same time: Milhaud's "L'Homme et son désir" (but it is doubtful that Honegger knew Milhaud's piece, since he was then acting as ambassador Paul Claudel's secretary in Brazil). But some parts, written for percussion alone (track 2, "The Mountain and the Stone", track 7, "Men and the Earth") or percussion and flute (track 11, "The Rat and Death"), strikingly bring Varèse to mind (a similarity also acknowledged by Halbreich).

The composition shows what a master Honegger already was at such an early stage, and that most elements of his abiding compositional style were already present, from the somber and brooding (as in the introduction to "Man Revolving on the Ground", track 4, or "Man Who Struggles and Leads", track 9) and the passionately lyrical ( "Man and Woman", track 8, bringing back striking echoes of Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy, "Man and the Shadow", track 10, whose wide melodic leaps Halbreich likens to the atonal lyricism of Schoenberg. Well... vaguely. A non-atonal Lyric Suite of Berg perhaps. But it reminds me mostly of the lyricism of Honegger) to the tempestuous (track 12, "Man and the Sea", anticipating Honegger's Prelude for Shakespeare's Tempest from 1923 and his score for the film Mermoz from 1942) and aggressively agitated (for instance in the fast part of "Man Revolving on the Ground" or "Man Who Struggles and Leads"). Shows also that he was already a master of counterpoint (fastidiously learned at the Conservatoire under his revered teacher André Gédalge) as in "Man and the Shadow", track 10, appropriately canonic in scoring. He's already got an incredible ability to conjure a lush and evocative orchestral sound-world with his small chamber ensemble ("Man Revolving on the Ground", "Man and the Village" track 6, "Man and the Sea"). "The Mad Man" (track 5) is interesting also for being a playful and abrasive Scherzo in the style of Les Six - a group Honegger would be associated with a few years later, more by dint of the publicity stunt of Cocteau than by any true stylistic affinity, although the lighter side always ran in Honegger's blood, from his 1924 Piano Concertino to his late Concerto da Camera.

Unlike the recordings of the Ida Rubinstein commissions, this one wasn't a recording premiere. Didier Bouture for the label Cybelia did that in 1990, a version which I haven't yet heard ([[ASIN:B004A3QLW4 Arthur Honegger: Le Dit Des Jeux Du Monde (1918) / Hymne (1920) / Prelude, Arioso Et Fughette Sur B.A.C.H. (1932)]]). There was also, in 1994, a CD published by Koch/Schwann, [[ASIN:B0000261YG Fumet: La Nuit; D'indy Piano Concerto Op. 89; Honegger: Le Dit des Jeux du Monde]], but it had only six out of the thirteen numbers (a fact acknowledged nowhere in the disc's credits or liner notes), which rules it out, and anyway, Tamayo's more urgent conducting is preferable.

As a filler Timpani offers the Concerto da Camera for Flute and English Horn from 1948, one of Honegger's most gentle and lyrical works. Tamayo offers a fine performance, whose most striking feature is the very playful and whimsical way flautist Etienne Plasman plays his first solo at 0:41 - nice touch. In the first movement Tamayo plays up the dynamism and bounce rather than, like Jean Fournet ([[ASIN:B000066IL9 HONEGGER:ORCHESTRA WORKS]]), the pastoral gentleness - both ways are fine for me. Tamayo's Finale is not as "Vivace" and dynamic as Schwarz' ([[ASIN:B00000E0FJ Richard Strauss: Duet-Concertino; Arthur Honegger: Concerto da Camera]]), but more than Fournet's. Tamayo plays an unnmarked acceleration in the last bars - why not? The only drawback is that the transfer is cut at a very high volume and the two soloists sound artificially close, and tend to congest the sonic space in some of the embroidery of the second movement - I had to turn down the volume by half.

The TT of 58:47 isn't as generous as the two previous installments. As long as they were recording "Le Dit..." with its scoring of ten strings, too bad they didn't take the opportunity to add Honegger's early and rare "Hymne". Bouture did on the Cybelia disc. But I don't want to end with a negative note, "Le Dit..." afforded many satisfactions. Not a disc to recommend to the occasional listener of Honegger - he should start with the symphonies and symphonic poems - but an indispensable one for the serious Honeggerite.

There are other entries for the later reissue of the same disc, you might want to check for the best price, [[ASIN:B000Y1BR84 Le dit des jeux du monde]] and [[ASIN:B00003NHC0 Le Dit Des Jeux Du Monde  / Cto Da Camera]].


title: Deceptive Honegger

text:
The label, Koch/Schwann, hasn't been entirely honest about what it offers here. "Le Dit des Jeux du Monde" (something like "The Saying of the Games of the World") was an important early score of Arthur Honegger, written in 1918 when he was fresh out of the Paris Conservatoire, predating King David by three years and Pacific 231 by five. It is the incidental music to a hybrid combination of ballet and stage play, on a symbolist/abstract book by a young and now forgotten Belgian poet of back then, Paul Méral. I'm not sure (even after reading the documentation about it) what it was about, and the action was supposed to take place "everywhere, even nowhere, in the space where people and things move" and the sets consist only of lighting, but the musical numbers describe various "games" - the game of the Sun and the Flower, of the Mountain and the Stones, the Rat and Death and so forth. It was premiered in December 1918 and was a "success de scandale" - or rather, "insuccès de scandale", which established Honegger's stature as one of the most important young composers on the French scene. The score is interesting also for its lean chamber scoring, solo flute, solo trumpet, double string quintet, percussion, including a "bouteillophone" or "bottle-o-phone" of Honegger's own invention, the modern version of the glass harmonica. It is one of Honegger's most "exploratory" scores, evocative of a similar one composed around the same time: Milhaud's "L'Homme et son désir" (but it is doubtful that Honegger knew Milhaud's piece, since he was then acting as ambassador Paul Claudel's secretary in Brasil). But some parts, written for percussion alone (track 7, "The Mountain and the Stone") or percussion and flute (track 9, "The Rat and Death"), strikingly bring Varèse to mind.

But here comes the rub. The liner notes, by Belgian musicologist Carl de Nys, duly mention that the music included "ten dances, two interludes and an epilogue" and give the titles of those thirteen numbers composed by Honegger... but mention nothing of the fact that the recording includes only six out of those thirteen, hardly half of the music. With the CD as it is running 56 minutes, the remainder would probably have fit. To make matters worse, in track 7 it isn't "The Mountain and the Stones" that they play as the track listing claims, but the movement (also for percussion alone) called "Men and the Earth". De Nys is also mistaken when he claims that this was the premiere recording: the recording was made in 1992 and two years before, Didier Bouture had recorded the complete music for Cybelia, [[ASIN:B004A3QLW4 Arthur Honegger: Le Dit Des Jeux Du Monde (1918) / Hymne (1920) / Prelude, Arioso Et Fughette Sur B.A.C.H. (1932)]]. Later, in 1999, Timpani, under the auspices of the great Honegger specialist Harry Halbreich, also published a recording of the complete music, under Arturo Tamayo ([[ASIN:B00003NHC0 Le Dit Des Jeux Du Monde  / Cto Da Camera]] or [[ASIN:B00003Q089 Le Dit Des Jeux Du Monde [French Import]]]), the third installment in their great series of great and forgotten scores of Honegger, after those devoted to the 1934 ballet Semiramis ([[ASIN:B000001YN8 Semiramis]]) and the 1929 Amphion and 1925 L'Impératrice aux rochers ([[ASIN:B0000285FJ Honegger: Amphion]]).

So, that rules out this version for Honegger. Not that much is missed interpretively either. I haven't yet heard the Bouture recording, but compared to Tamayo, Bouaniche who conducts here appears often excessively plodding, both in the fast, scherzo-like movements or sections (like track 6, "The Mad Man", music very much in the playful spirit of Les Six, or track 10 "Man and the Sea", tempestuous music where he lacks tempestuousness, despite the vehemence of his trumpet), and even in the slow ones (like track 8, "Man and the Shadow", that he makes sound more elegiac and gloomy, but also more placid). Don't buy this disc if your interest is Honegger.

Not a bad idea to pair Honegger with D'Indy, since the latter was the former's teacher at the Paris Conservatoire (but of conducting, not of composition, which was Gédalge), and good to have a rare piece of D'Indy, not a "Piano Concerto" as the front cover dubs it, but a "Concert for Piano, Flute, Cello and Strings"  op. 89 from 1927, a welcome change from the customary Symphony on a Mountain Air. That said, nothing could be further apart stylistically than the music of "Les Dits" and the Concerto. It is really a Concertino, with its chamber orchestration and its inspiration alternating between Bach (and not even "neo-Bach", in the first movement, but plain Bach) and the elegant, cheerful and fluffy spirit of Les Six. But there is genuine poetic beauty in the slow movement, the most extended (it plays half of the concerto's 20 minutes). I haven't heard the competing version on Timpani, [[ASIN:B00103E368 Symphonie Italienne - Piano Concerto]], but the version here sounds, in the first movement, very thick, Bach as they played it in the fifties. No such problem however in the two remaining ones.

Remains "La Nuit" (Night), the tone poem of Dynam Victor Fumet (which, adding to the impression of sloppiness, the disc's liner notes and credits call "Dyam"). The link is again D'Indy, who (according to de Nys), when he discovered the music of Fumet in 1914, tried to foster a public recognition, but to no avail. Running 15 minutes, "La Nuit", for strings, is a particularly interesting piece, for its echoes of Schoenberg's Transfigured Night (to which it would make a perfect complement, on disc and in the concert hall) and Strauss, Rosenkavalier-style.


title: No replacement for Mussorgsky's Masterpiece, but an enjoyable moment of modern piano music

text:
"Pictures at a Mondrian Exhibition" - the title is fun and stirs curiosity. It originates in a program devised in 1994 by the Dutch pianist, Marcel Worms, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Mondrian's death. Piet Mondrian was the famous Dutch 20th Century artist and one of the most important representatives of 20th Century abstract painting (grids of inter-crossing black lines filled with squares of primary colors), who shared his life between his home country, Paris and, after 1940, New York.

Taking its cue from the fact that Mondrian repeatedly expressed his fascination for the ragtime and other jazz-derived popular music, the program mixes such jazz-inspired compositions by contemporaries of Mondrian (Grainger, Tansman, Antheil, Schulhoff, Stravinsky, Morton Gould - Webern's Variations opus 27 being the odd-piece out, here) and pieces written especially for the occasion (and for the pianist) by Dutch or Dutch-based contemporary composers: Theo Lowendie, Sumire Nukina, David Little, Willem Breuker. It is actually David Little's piece which has given its witty title to the album. To all these, Worms has also added two authentic boogie-woogies written around the time when Mondrian was in New York, by Jimmy Yancey and Mead Lux Lewis.

One can of course question the program, both for its inclusions and exclusions. Why Webern? Because, re: the notes, his "progression from a late romantic to an austere atonal style reveals a striking similarity to Mondrian's gradual transition from figurative to abstract painting", and because "the Variations Op. 27 are the aural embodiment of the culmination of that development". OK, I'll buy that, and I do agree that the Variations are something like the music equivalent of Mondrian's lines and colors (I'm not too infatuated with Mondrian's oeuvre, by the way, which I find cerebral and unemotional, concepts rather than emotions - but I am ready to accept that this failure to "get it" expresses only my personal limitations). Stravinsky's "Tango" is fine, but why not have included his "Piano-rag music"? Same question with Antheil: his "Airplane Sonata" is his most-often performed piano piece, probably only by dint of the scores' easy accessibility through the auspices of Theodore Presser Company (the rest is published by Schirmer. I've sent a mail to the French representative, inquiring about purchase. They haven't even responded. Apparently some businesses are not interested in making money, nor in fostering their roster of composers. Appalling.) But since the liner notes refer at one point to the "derivative syncopated stereotype dance forms like... the shimmy", Worms might have added Antheil's "Little Shimmy". Finally, the liner notes also mention Mondrian's friendship and numerous discussions about the common ground between music and the visual arts with the Dutch composer Jakob van Domselaer. Too bad the opportunity was missed to include a piece of his.

Of course, given the way the program was composed, one should not expect the kind of stylistic unity beyond the diversity of moods that one finds in the recital's model, Mussorgsky's famous "Pictures at an exhibition". But one can simply sit back and enjoy the recital for what it offers. It is interesting to see how each composer tackles the popular dance forms, whether he more or less yields to them (which is the case, I find, despite all their respective compositions' virtuosic demands, of Grainger, Tansman, Schulhoff and Morton Gould) or bends them to his own language (Stravinsky - but I prefer the colors of the orchestral version - and Antheil).

David Little's "Pictures at a Mondrian Exhibition" is written in a similar spirit. It does have the Jazz references (Broadway Boogie-Woogie) but also subjects them (as in the last piece, which is a variation of the same Boogie-Woogie) to a tersely and whimsically pointillistic approach which makes them no more than a whiff, a passing reminiscence. The second piece sounds like a Jazz improvision on Webern's second Variation. I also enjoyed Willem Breuker's "Underberg" (after the German herb-based digestif bitter, on whose bottles appear a black dancing couple), very "Antheilian" I find in its willingness to outlandishly and provocatively pound on a single idea.

Lowendie's "Red, Yellow and Blue" is a short (1:50) minimalist piece in the style of Feldman, in which not much happens and, consequently, whatever happens is supposed to have a great dramatic impact. It hasn't. It is also reminiscent of some slow movements (or sections) in Ives' piano music. It is atmospheric, but doesn't leave much of an imprint. Nukina writes many more notes, and the four excerpts from her "Tree Series" are interesting and enjoyable, but her language is hardly distinctive in its middle-of-the-road contemporary style. Sometimes it has a busy activity reminiscent of Ives or Sessions (Tree # 1), sometimes the weighted mysticism of Carl Ruggles or Dane Rudhyar (The Red Tree). Ives again comes to mind as well. The liner notes give wrong timings for the second and third piece.

I had never encountered pianist Marcel Worms, but he plays well enough. The first movement of Antheil's "Airplane Sonata" is marked "as fast as possible" and Worms is not the fastest here - of all the versions I know that credit must go to Roger Shields, [[ASIN:B000001K6M Piano Music in America  1900-1945]] - but he is fast enough, muscular and well-articulated. He must also be lauded for taking the second movement at a forward-moving tempo - this is not music that should be sentimentalized. The scherzo variation in Webern's piece is a bit heavy-handed, I find. Stravinsky's Tango could have been more spiky and disjointed - after all, it is not a Tango but Stravinsky's take on the Tango.

This will certainly not replace Mussorgky's masterpiece, and not even sit besides it, but it does offer an enjoyable moment of modern music.


title: Useful reissues from the good ol' LP days

text:
All these recordings except one were originally published in the LP era on Decca's labels Argo and L'Oiseau-Lyre, and they all get their first CD releases on this Decca compilation from 2004. Back in the LP days the collector could hope to be a Maxwell Davies completist, and this 2-CD set - complemented with the HMV recordings from the 1960s now collated on [[ASIN:B00061S0LO Revelation and Fall]] - conveniently brings back most of what was available of his music up to the late 1970s, before Unicorn (late 1970s to early `90s), then Collins Classics (`90s) and now Naxos championed him.

O Magnum Mysterium for a capella children's chorus with interludes for instrumental ensemble came on Argo ZRG5327 in 1963. The LP included an organ fantasia played by Simon Preston "which realize[d], on far deeper and more searching levels, the implications of the [O Magnum Mysterium] theme" according to the composer's comments on the original LP, but it has been left out of the reissue.

"Second Fantasia on Taverner's In Nomine" was published in 1973 on Argo ZRG 712. The flip side of that LP had the "Points and Dances from Taverner", now reissued as a companion to MD's First Symphony, conducted by Rattle in 1978 ([[ASIN:B00009V8VP Peter Maxwell Davies: Symphony No. 1 (25th Anniversary Edition)]]).

Antechrist, Missa super "L'Homme armé" and "From Stone to Thorn" all came in 1972 on L'Oiseau-Lyre DSLO2 which also had Hymnos for clarinet & piano (played by Alan Hacker and Stephen Pruslin), not reissued here. "Hymn to Saint Magnus" was published in 1976 on L'Oiseau-Lyre DSLO12 with Psalm 124 and Renaissance Scottish Dances, the two latter not reissued here (but the Dances can be found on [[ASIN:B0000759YD Trumpet Concerto, Renaissance Scottish Dances (Howarth)]]). Incidentally, the covers of these two LPs are nicely reproduced in the CD booklet.

Strangely no recording date is given for "Lullaby for Illian Rainbow" for solo guitar, but it first came on a Timothy Walker collection released in 1974, Oiseau Lyre DSLO3, with Britten's Nocturnal and compositions of Walker himself, Giles Swayne and David Bedford. The recital also had an arrangement by Maxwell Davies of Lennon and McCartney's Yesterday, and one regrets that it was left out of this reissue.

Finally, "Seven In Nomine" is said in the disc's product info to be a "First ever release", although it was recorded as far back as 1979.

The compositions span the first twelve years of Maxwell Davies' compositional career, and they are presented here in chronological order. He wrote O Magnum Mysterium in 1960, while he was still teaching music in the Cirencester Grammar School. Written for high school forces, the choral writing is much simpler and gentler than what you'd expect from MD, and barely more advanced than the British choral tradition or Duruflé. Harbingers of the demanding and often stern MD are heard in the instrumental interludes.

"Seven In Nomine", composed between 1963 and 1965, are in fact seven preparatory studies for the big orchestral piece commissioned from MD by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the ensuing "Second Fantasia on Taverner's In Nomine". Some are elaborations after themes of Taverner and other Renaissance composers, some are by MD himself (2, 3, 5, 7). When they consist only of realizations of Renaissance material, they are not extremely characteristic, or only of MD's abiding taste for these arrangements and sources. Those by MD are stern and contrapuntal, and the woodwinds dominate, sometimes piercingly.

MD really becomes his own with the Second Fantasia from 1965. It is an elaboration and development of some of the material expounded in his opera Taverner, which he organized in quasi-symphonic form, with slow intro developing into fast first movement, a scherzo, a lengthy slow movement and a short coda. The "Symphony" is serious, austere and not particularly colorful or seductive, but rich in sonic events and oftentimes genuinely dramatic. The New Philharmonia Orchestra under Sir Charles Groves acquit themselves with admirable precision of this fiendishly difficult score.

The gathering on CD 2 of Antechrist (1967), Missa super "L'Homme armé" (1968 revised in 1971) and "Hymn to Saint Magnus" (1972) is particularly appropriate, as they share similar stylistic traits. First and foremost, they take their point of departure in a composition of medieval music (a 13th Century motet in Antechrist, a 15th Century mass on the popular song l'Homme armé in the Missa, the 12th Century Hymn to St Magnus in the same-named composition, although the original hardly comes through in the latter composition) which MD then elaborates (even filling the gaps of the incomplete original in Missa super "l'homme armé"), transforms and distorts in an entirely contemporary musical language (in Missa some of the distortion takes the form of sections pre-recorded on crackling 78rmp discs). The mood is generally sardonic and saucy (spoken text - by Vanessa Redgrave - helping, the Missa sounds itself really like an Antechrist mass, and "Antechrist" proper easily functions as an orchestral intro to it), the writing for chamber ensemble is virtuosic, often delicate and coloristic in the instrumental interplay and the use of percussion, more often piercing and aggressive, but the constant return to the medieval source, in Antechrist and the Missa at least, serves as a softener of the contemporary language, making them among the most easily accessible compositions of MD from those years. Because the original source is less obvious, "Hymn to Saint Magnus" sounds much more like "straight" - e.g. more radical and forbidding - MD.

Likewise with the Guitar Lullaby (1972) and "From Stone to Thorn" (1971). The guitar piece is mostly brooding. "From Stone to Thorn" is a Cantata for soprano and ensemble, on poems by the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown, with whom MD collaborated on numerous compositions. The same sense of color as in the "medieval-derived" compositions is much in evidence there, with delicate percussion and much interplay between instruments, but, as in "Hymn", there is here little to soften the jagged contours of the music, except perhaps the constant surprises afforded by the unexpected colors of the instrumental interplay and the stern lyricism of the vocal line, very reminiscent of the more radical Henze from the 1960s, I find. Texts regrettably are not included.

Good sound, minimal tape hiss in the softer passages. TT 76:38 and 78:06.


title: Two Perlman commissions and two enjoyable contemporary violin concertos

text:
When I originally wrote this review, in September 2010, I didn't find a listing for the CD, although (or maybe: because) it had been published as long ago as 1988, and I had to post it under the entry for the vinyl, [[ASIN:B001N8AXM8 Violin Concerto]]. Returning to it in 2014 I now chance on it. Thanks to whoever created the entry.

Earl Kim's Violin Concerto (premiered by Perlman in 1979, Zubin Mehta conducting the New York Philharmonic) is one of the most appealing and original recent American violin concertos I've heard. From its very first notes its originality and seductiveness strike the ear: it starts with a long (3') hushed orchestral introduction, a tapestry of violins playing softly in their upper harmonics - so softly that you can hear the traffic at a distance -, an effect appropriately likened by one critic to "the first, dim, auroral stirrings". The violin enters softly, playing a wistful and brooding theme over soft punctuations of percussion. Then comes (at 4:13) a jagged, pointillistic episode, almost a Webern Klangfarben melody, then (6:25) a scurrying passage that has a coloristic lushness and sweep reminiscent of Britten, or Glass at his best (and really you might be in repetitive music, although not quite - and that very ambiguity is intriguing). The Concerto's architecture is also quite original, in one continuous movement but in two parts, part one consisting of the introduction, two variations and two "Episodes" (the second being the cadenza), and the second of an Introduction, Episode and Finale (too bad they aren't cued; but they are relatively easy to locate). That allows Kim to go through a variety of moods and even styles - not eschewing either the big, sentimental melody (14:40) over a hushed, shimmering "wave-like pattern in the strings" , making you think you are in a concerto of one of the Balts, Vasks or Pärt or Kancheli. But the Concerto never feels piecemeal: everything unfolds quite organically. Kim is a master at eliciting strange and fascinating instrumental colors and tunes; he himself describes the passage starting at 7:10 as a "delicate and tender Lento assai, which transforms the expressive content of the opening into a childhood fantasy of enchantment with brief hints of a lullaby". Ensues the cadenza, which opens with an orchestral introduction in which you hear the horns in the distance belch out what sounds like dog barks. The Concerto has its more angular moments but is quite accessible and tonal, with shimmering colors reminiscent of Del Tredici's Alice cycle, and it is this very attitude that I enjoyed: the hell with making music modern, let's just make it beautiful; and the value of Kim's Concerto is that he has, but unlike so many others, in a way that is very personal and original, not by re-hashing trite romantic gestures trodden and over-trodden by so many others. Kim, born in California of Korean parents in 1920, died in 1998.

Both Kim's and Starer's Concertos were commissions by Itzhak Perlman and were recorded in April 1983. Premiered in 1981 by the same forces as on this disc, Robert Starer's Violin Concerto is also quite enjoyable, though less inventive and more predictable than Kim's, with its dynamic but angular and grim outer movements (the finale interrupted by slower and more whimsical episodes) framing the customary slow movement. But not only are the fast movement very effective and the slow movement quite subtle in its orchestral coloring; the violin line (and sometimes the orchestra) also  has a lyrical bent that I wasn't used of hearing in other Concertos of Starer which I've just listened to, his Viola Concerto from 1958 ([[ASIN:B000001K5F American Concertos]]) and his Cello Concerto from 1988 ([[ASIN:B000005TV7 Starer, Wernick, Wilson: 3 Concertos]]), and it has also nice whimsical twists in the second and third movements - the composer describes them as "glissandos into the same note from above and from below" and says it is a technique from the Near-East, but it could be inspired by Chinese or Korean folk-music just as well). These features make the concerto stand out of the ordinary. Starer died in 2001 at 77.

Not surprisingly, at 44:40 TT is LP length. Short timing notwithstanding, this is an enjoyable disc, and shame on EMI for letting it slip out of its catalog and into oblivion.


title: versions of reference, in one of their earliest CD reissues

text:
David Oistrakh has of course special authority in Khachaturian's Violin Concerto: he was the composition's dedicatee and first performer, in 1940, Alexander Gauk conducting. The fiddler from Odessa left three studio recordings: one from 1946 with the same Gauk (it has been reissued by Pearl, [[ASIN:B000000WSO Aram Khachaturian: Violin Concerto in D major; Dance in B flat, Op. 1; Nikolai Miaskovsky: Violin Concerto in D minor]]), his EMI Philharmonia recording from 1954 with the composer conducting (easily available as [[ASIN:B000I2ISM2 Khachaturian: Violin Concerto/Taneyev: Suite de Concert - David Oistrakh, Aram Khachaturian, Philharmonia Orchestra]], but I have it with an all-Khachaturian program on EMI's "composer in person" series, [[ASIN:B000002RTZ Composers in Person: Aram Khachaturian Conducts Masquerade / Gayaneh / Violin Concerto]], see my review), and this one, a stereo remake from 1965 with the USSR Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra, again under the composer. There is also a live recording from May 15, 1947 with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra under Kubelik, of hair-raising urgency but dismal sound, which I have on its first CD release by Multisonics, [[ASIN:B0000034DW Concertos - Liszt/Prokofiev/Khachaturian]]).

This 1965 version is here on volume 3 of the 14-volume "Edition David Oistrakh" released by Chant du Monde between 1987 and 1989, and it has become so rare it wasn't even listed on this website nor its sister companies until very recently. The same recording can be found on various other CD reissues: [[ASIN:B000001LNG Khachaturian: Concerto for violin in Dm; Concerto for piano in Df]], paired with the Piano Concerto, in another composer-conducted performance with Nicolai Petrov, on a 2-CD set from Melodiya with various Khachaturian works conducted by the composer ([[ASIN:B000023ZS7 Khatchaturian: Symphony No.1, Violin Con]]), on a Mobile Fidelity CD with Sibelius' Violin Concerto (Rojdestvensky conducting), listed under [[ASIN:B00000DWQN David Oistrakh: Khachaturian / Sibelius]], and on a 2-CD set from Vox with the same Sibelius and the Violin Sonatas of Franck and Shostakovich played by Oistrakh and Richter ([[ASIN:B000027EJ4 Shostakovich, Franck: Violin Sonatas / Khachaturian, Sibelius: Violin Concertos]]).

It is a wonderful reading, slightly less urgent and dynamic in the outer movements than the 1954 recording (or than the 1951 Kogan and Khachaturian, [[ASIN:B000006BAE Khachaturian: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Minor / Concerto-Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra]], or the 1958 Kogan and Monteux, [[ASIN:B00004WFO9 Alexander Nevsky / Violin Concerto]]) but still full of snap and brilliance in the first movement and irresistible drive in the finale. Oistrakh may be less openly virtuosic than before and have lost some of his crispness, but he is perhaps more magisterially aristocratic, and plays always with his wonderful tone, full and sunny. But it is in the middle movement that I find him and the composer-as-conductor here unequalled, in the brooding atmosphere they conjure, the shades of hushed, longing dreaminess they unveil, and the despaired intensity of their climax. As in 1954 Oistrakh does not play the printed cadenza but his own, and practices a minor cut in the finale. Good stereo sound (despite some saturation in the tuttis). The details of orchestration come out wonderfully in the finale, unveiling the wonderful Sibelian atmosphere of some passages (from 3:01 onwards you'd think you were in the finale of Sibelius' Violin Concerto, and starting at 4:09 here comes the Kalevala, or again at 5:53, agitated flute sixteenth notes included), making the Sibelius coupling on the above-mentioned Mobile Fidelity CD a highly appropriate one.

On this Chant du Monde CD it comes with Kabalevski, very coherent as well. Oistrakh made only this one recording of Kabalevski's Violin Concerto, in 1949 (the back conver mentions the date of 1955, but I'm more inclined to trust Paul Geffen's invaluable discography, available online), with the composer conducting the USSR National Symphony Orchestra. The piece doesn't seem to have been very successful with fiddlers, and for very long Oistrakh's remained the only available version, at least in the West. Zukerman recorded it in 1975 (not reissued on CD) and a few versions came out during the CD era. Yet I find it incomprehensible that Glazunov's salon-music over-inflated to the size of a concerto should maintain such a stronghold in the repertoire, at least on records, and Kabalevsky's remain in such relative neglect. Certainly in its outer movements Kabalevsky doesn't have the knack for color nor the unforgettable melodic gift of Prokofiev or Khachaturian, but it is the same spirit of brilliance and Soviet ebullience and dash, making a coupling with Khachaturian's Concerto and Prokofiev's 1st - Kabalevsky's is only 15 minutes long and all three would easily fit on a single CD - an ideal one, and the middle movement may sound like a collection of romantic clichés (it did to me on first hearing), but it can also be quite touching if you are in the right, Doctor Zhivago mood. The 1949 sound is somewhat harsh and saturated, but well-defined, with prominent violin.

TT 53:43 - Prokofiev's First or Glazunov's Violin Concerto could have been added. Oistrakh recorded them in the same years and they were inexplicably not included in Chant du Monde's Edition.


title: in the shadow of Dukas more than of Debussy-Ravel - but beware of the short timing

text:
Pianovox was a short-lived French label in the late 1990s, dedicated exclusively to piano music and based on the absurd concept of offering "short-playing" CDs, e.g. ranging from 25 to 40-minutes. Something like selling a full-size, half-filled bottle of coke. No wonder the label folded rapidly. In all fairness, after their first dozen of releases they switched back to more normal-timed CDs, but obviously it wasn't enough to keep them afloat. Some of its productions were then reissued on the Ogam label (but not this one), but that too didn't last long. I don't know if the Pianovox CDs were really priced accordingly, but now that the label is gone it makes no difference on the secondary market. So beware.

And this Pierné offering is one Pianovox' shortest deals, too. Containing only the Variations in C opus 42, it totals a stingy 27-minutes. It really should have been (or should be, if anybody picks up the catalog) coupled with something else, and Paul Dukas' grandiose Piano Sonata would have been a perfect choice.

Indeed Pierné's Variations evoke less Debussy or Ravel than the piano compositions of Dukas - they were near-contemporaries too, with Pierné born in 1863 and Dukas in 1865, members of a generation which included Gustave Charpentier of "Louise" fame (1860), Debussy and Maurice Emmanuel (1862), Guy Ropartz (1864), Albéric Magnard (1865), Satie (1866), Koechlin (1867) and Roussel (1869). Despite a few occasional outbursts and a few fugues to boot, the music is mostly serene, pensive, brooding, moody, even despondent (no criticism implied in this description). It is worth hearing, especially if you are interested in the piano music of Dukas and the other "minor" French composers of those days in the shadow of Debussy and Ravel. Without scores nor discographic comparison, I can't assess the interpretive merits of Canadian Jean-Paul Sevilla, but I am grateful to him to have tackled such rare repertoire.


title: Silvestrov's own way

text:
It is the string quartets of Silvestrov, which I enjoyed greatly (see my review of [[ASIN:B0000000Q1 2 String Quartets / Quartetto Piccolo / Postlude]] or [[ASIN:B000027KIH Silvestrov - String Quartets]]), that sent me back to this disc, collating his three piano sonatas and sonata for cello and piano. I'm not as convinced, though. The Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov, born in 1937, started off as a post-Webern radical (the atmosphere seems to have been slightly more permissive in Ukraine in the early 1960s than it was nearer the heart of the Empire in Russia, but, as many of his generation (Pärt, Gorecki), he soon grew dissatisfied with the avant-garde and moved away from it, to adopt a more mystical, meditative and slow-moving style. The first sonata was composed in 1960, already Silvestrov's reaction against "hammer music", music that forces itself onto the listener's attention. After its completion he put into a drawer, re-discovered it later, revised and trimmed iteven more. It is hushed and subdued, the outbursts are few and far between, they don't build up to much intensity and are short-lasting. The harmonic mood and melodic outlook are vaguely reminiscent of the bitter sweet atmospheres of late Prokofiev or Shostakovich, or Hindemith, at their most brooding and meditative. Short but very atmospheric and dreamy second movement, playing on rippling scales and mysterious resonance, evoking almost Debussy at times.

The second sonata, composed in 1975 and dedicated to Alexei Lubimov who plays it here, is more enigmatic still and seems first to go through a variety of moods and styles, sometimes expressionist in the manner of the (serial or not) Germans, but rapidly settling down into a mostly brooding and dreamy mood again playing much on atmospheric resonance, with apparently very elaborate pedal work. The are some moments of agitation and flurries of notes. There is a long central passage, starting at 6:30, in which Silvestrov uses Crumb-like effects of harping the strings or striking keys with fingers on strings to produce a dampened and distorted sound (in fact there is also much in Silvestrov's play with resonance that seemed to point to Crumb). There are some very simple romantic melodies that almost seem there by way of pastiche or reminiscence, and, at 14:08, after a long pause that makes you think it is over, there is aother dreamy and wistful rippling passage playing in the keyboard's upper registers, quite lovely - then it is really over. It is all very atmospheric, and the Sonata's 17 minutes do produce a certain hypnotic effect, but it is also pretty repetitive and predictable I find (it would have been more original if Silvestrov had composed it 10 years earlier; still, for 1975 Soviet-Union, I guess it is, indeed, quite original), and I'm not sure I hear a true logic in the use of those techniques and styles, other than that of being a catalog of effects and styles.

In the third Sonata from 1979 Silvestrov has traveled the full journey. No more outbursts, just short wave-shaped dynamic swells, and a long and somewhat rambling span of more dreamy and softly resonating atmospheres, sometimes ominous in mood: the keyboard improvisations of LaMonte Young and Terry Riley come to mind - but without the "just-temperament" feeling of being played on an out-of-tune piano.

The cello sonata from 1983, dedicated to cellist Ivan Monighetti who plays it here, is exactly the same, only the cello plays, so to speak, the piano's the right-hand, adding its own brooding-romantic feeling to the music. Again, the music is not very varied (there is a more ominous and agitated passage starting at 7:24) but very atmospheric and, having reached that point, either because I got used to it or because the cello sonata is indeed more effective in its atmospheres, I found it quite fascinating. And did it vaguely bring to mind some passages of Britten's Cello-Piano Sonata?

The most interesting aspect of Silvestrov's Sonatas is that he plows deep his furrow. He's set on exploring a certain style and mood and doesn't budge, whether it taxes the listener's attention and patience or not.

Thorough and informative liner notes by composer and conductor Virko Baley. TT 70-minutes.


title: A good, mid-priced version, generally moderate in tempo but vigorously accented

text:
This recording of Schubert's Octet by the Chilingirian Quartet was made in October 1986 for the mid-price UK label EMI Eminence, but it was apparently released only at the end of 1988, a few months after the recordings made slightly later by Kremer and partners (DG, [[ASIN:B00000E3ZD Schubert: Octet, D803]]) and the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields (Chandos, [[ASIN:B000000AGO Schubert: Octet in F major, D. 803]]). It also shares with the latter ensemble clarinetist Andrew Marriner - while its bassoonist Felix Warnock went on the re-record the piece in 1990, on period instruments, with the Academy of Ancient Music, for L'Oiseau Lyre ([[ASIN:B0000042HS Schubert: Trout Quintet, Octet, 3 Violin Sonatas]]), a recording in which he partnered with clarinetist Antony Pay, who had taken part in the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields' first recording in 1977 ([[ASIN:B00000E36J Octet, D.803]], and don't be fooled by the first cover photo, only the second one is right) - music in Britain is a game of moving blocks. By the way the individual members of the Chilingirian Quartet are not credited on the CD - not a very considerate oversight. Anyway, it is a good reading, generally unhurried in its choices of tempo, but vigorous and strongly accented.

The opening movement is a good example of that approach; tempo is not as dynamic as the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields' first version from 1977 (Philips) or Hausmusik on period instruments (1990, EMI Reflexe, [[ASIN:B00000DNOD Schubert;Octet]], and it has been reissued by Virgin), but the playing has plenty of vigor and accents; it is actually quite similar to the ASMF's second recording on Chandos, but with better instrumental definition (the Chandos recording is marred by resonant, church acoustics). However, cello sound is sometimes thin and wanting in lyricism (try the passage 11:58) and string sound in general lacks some fullness. Like the ASMF in both their recordings (but less dramatically), Chilingirian and partners slow down at 9:03 upon the return of the introduction music, a gesture uncalled for by Schubert and which seems to point to a certain misunderstanding of his tempo relationships. Unlike the ASMF, they take the first movement repeat.

At their hands the beautiful "Adagio" (second movement) is expansive, broad and lyrical, not as dramatically accented as Kremer and partners, and perhaps a bit placid in the long run. As in his near contemporary recording with the ASMF, clarinetist Andrew Marriner produces beautiful dynamic nuances, but the cello has a rather dry tone in the passage starting at 6:20. Again the third movement is moderate in tempo but strongly accented, an approach which imparts it a nice rustic flavor. The approach does go against Schubert's "Allegro vivace" tempo indication, but notwithstanding it is a valid and convincing option in its own right. The fourth movement's theme is piquantly phrased, though the moderate tempo adopted by the ensemble also gives it a not so commendable maudlin flavor. By contrast, the more animated tempo chosen by the Kremer band pays dividends. The ensuing variations are marked throughout by the same relaxed tempos and "gemütlich" (easygoing) atmosphere. Not surprisingly, it is close in conception to the ASMF's second recording. In variation 1 the recording is slanted in favor of the violin and consequently the witty horn & bassoon accompaniment figures do not as much presence as with others. Variation 2 is moderate in tempo but well accented. Likewise tempo in variation 3 is a bit lazy, but Levon Chilingirian displays fine purity of violin tone. In the fourth variation, given the moderate tempo the cello cantilena is nonchalant in mood. The fifth variation is nicely somber and brooding but doesn't have the violent accents and dramatic impact of Kremer, Hausmusik or Achibudelli (Sony, [[ASIN:B000002APO Schubert: Octet L'Archibudelli & Mozzafiato]]). There is nice, perky woodwind work in variation 7.

Again the musicians adopt a stately tempo in the Menuetto (5th movement), likening it to some 18th century Tafel- or Unterhaltungsmusik, and again it is similar to the ASMF-Chandos, but with better instrumental definition and furthermore firmer accentuation of Schubert's fp marks - still it doesn't have the wonderfully vivid hunt-like horn colors of the period instrument versions, and I find it ultimately a bit soporific. The Finale's slow introduction is powerful and remarkably accented, and the ensuing Allegro is not fast but also strongly, in some places even angrily accented, with sonorous and perky woodwind and brass.

There are other, brisker and more dramatic options, exemplified by the ASMF's first recording, Kremer (despite a plodding finale) or Hausmusik on period instruments, but this one is a fine example of the way vigorous accentuation within the framework of generally moderate tempos can reconcile an easy-going mood and a sense of dynamism.


title: scarlatti + accordion = great disc

text:
1. I love the keyboard Sonatas of Scarlatti,
+ 2. I love transcriptions,
+ 3. I love the accordion.

Statement 1 needs no justification, I think. As for transcriptions, my taste may be one of a jaded music lover, but not only: I find that they shed new and often refreshing light on music that you may have heard too much, but also that they often offer new timbral possibilities and seductiveness that have an appeal of their own, independent of how much you've heard the composition.

As for my love of the accordion, I find that the instrument offers the best of two worlds: it has all the sharpness of attack and dazzling virtuosity of the keyboard instruments (harpsichord and piano), AND the long breath of the wind instruments, the ability to sustain sound from one note to another rather than fake it through resonance and decay time as with piano and harpsichord. Add to that the unique, lush timbral colors of the instrument. It sounds very much like the organ, but doesn't have the muddy, over-thick basses of that instrument. Because of all these qualities the accordion is a great instrument for contemporary music, but it turns out to be a great instrument for playing the classics as well, as this disc bears out.

Mie Miki's recital features a good selection between the most famous Sonatas (K 159 track 4, K 141 track 6, K 9 track 7, K 24 track 8, K 519 track 13) and the more neglected ones, and a fine balance between the lively and the pensive. The fast ones she plays with the required pyrotechnics and the slow ones (10) with fine atmosphere, a true sense of poetry and imaginative use of changes of registers (try track 3 at 1:25). TT is 68:31. This is as fine as any Scarlatti recital - with a plus: the seduction of the instrument. Her choice of Sonatas makes it, I find, a more attractive recital than the similar one by Teodoro Anzelotti on Winter & Winter, [[ASIN:B0000525L7 Vivi Felice: Scarlatti on Accordion]].

So now, let's compute:

1. I love the keyboard Sonatas of Scarlatti,
+ 2. I love transcriptions,
+ 3. I love the accordion,

= this is a great disc!

And, if you are into the great classics played on accordion, make sure not to miss (and if you are not, I strongly advise that you try):

Bach Goldberg Variations by Stephan Hussong on Thorofon [[ASIN:B000027AA9 Goldberg Variations]]

Bach Goldberg Variations by Mika Vayrynen on Alba ([[ASIN:B0002NY8JE Goldberg Variations Played on the Accordion]])

Bach Goldberg Variations by Teodoro Anzellotti on Winter & Winter, [[ASIN:B003LQVM5C Goldberg Variations]]

Bach Partitas 2, 3, 5 by Stephan Hussong on Denon ([[ASIN:B0000034WC Bach: English Suites Nos.  2, 3, 5]])

Bach Partitas 2, 4, three Chorales by Hussong on Denon ([[ASIN:B0000034Q9 Stefan Hussong plays Johann Sebastian Bach]])

Bach Inventions and Sinfonias by Janne Rättyä on Castigo, see European sister companies under ASIN B00006IQNV

Frescobaldi by Hussong on Thorofon ([[ASIN:B00003A9QF Stefan Hussong plays Frescobaldi]])

[[ASIN:B00005Q6FY French Baroque Music]] by Mie Miki

Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition by Friedrich Lips (with contemporary works) on Russian Disc ([[ASIN:B0002IN1I8 Pictures At An Exhibition (Mussorgsky, Boellmann, Banshchikov, Gubaidulina) - F. Lips (The Stars of Russian Bayan)]])

For more, see comments hereafter.

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

And a postscript from September 2015: the original Vanguard CD is a rarity and sells pretty expensive on the marketplace, if even it is offered, but I see that it's been reissued in a cheap 5-CD box from Brilliant Classics, together with other Scarlatti Sonatas played on the harspichord, piano, guitar and harp. I haven't heard it and don't know what these other interpretations are worth, but I like the principle: [[ASIN:B00BX2JN66 Sonatas]]


title: powerful and imaginative work, but short TT

text:
TT 33:50, this is a short CD. In their early days NMC released a few like those.

Robin Holloway is one of those composers who claims to have relinquished the "constructivist, grey and dreary" avant-garde style that (he felt) was forced upon him in his early days, in favor of the "emotional/coloristic/melodic/harmonic richness" of the "forbidden territory of romantic harmony", leading you to expect some neo-romantic composer writing a clichéd rehash of things already said and over-said, a kind of epigone of Barber, if not of Diamond. Fortunately, his Second Concerto for Orchestra, premiered in 1979, is much better than that.

That it is atonal or tonally rooted doesn't matter. Holloway's Concerto has some tonal references and some short passages of neo-romanticism (not the most interesting moments), but more important it is a work of great evocative power, drama, tonal lushness and sonic imagination, at times closer to Ligeti and Lutoslawski than to, say, Barber or Britten. Given the timing, find it cheap, but don't miss it. You might want to check the CD's other entry for a beter price, [[ASIN:B00000DD79 Second Concerto for Orchestra]].


title: A French outsider and an original compositional voice

text:
Though something of an outsider on the French contemporary music scene and certainly an obscure figure internationally, François-Bernard Mâche (born 1935) is one of France's most original composers of today, and this CD, originally published in 2002 on the label Assai ([[ASIN:B000063XPF François-Bernard Mâche: Kengir - Phénix - Brûlis - Figures - Aulodie]]), provides a good introduction.

Taking my examples in Kengir for voice and sampler, the 1991 piece that opens this disc, written for the same Françoise Kubler who performs it here, I would mention four features that distinguish Mâche's compositions and constitute their originality and appeal:

1. The extra-european inspiration of much of his music. Kengir is the name that the ancient Sumerians gave themselves in their own language. Mâche has a degree in Greek archaeology as well as in musicology, and his composition sets to music five poems in Sumerian language, said in the liner notes to be mankind's earliest love poems: it sounds like an invented language, like the one often used by Claude Vivier, pure play on phonemes and colors (but I guess any language that you don't understand functions like that, Hungarian as well as Wolof). The music sounds like some reinvented ritualistic music that could come from anywhere, Africa (especially in Kengir 4 Kubatum with its quasi-balafon and kora) to Mongolia.

2. His use of samplers "in lieu" of an orchestra or instrumental ensemble; Mâche, a pupil of Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, was the founder with Pierre Schaeffer of the French Public Radio's electronic studio GRM; he was, I think, one of the first composers to make such a systematic use of samplers, in the early 1980s, when these machines were still hot and new, and he uses them very imaginatively, to great timbral color and fine atmosphere. In the five songs that make up "Kengir", you hear distorted bells and their distorted resonance (Innana), distorted drums (Enlil), the percussive phonemes from a male spoken over which Françoise Kubler deploys her wordless vocalises (Shusin), quasi-balafon and kora (Kubatum), Ligeti-like organ and Stokhausen-like (the Stokhausen of Gesang der Jünglinge) female chorus (Dumuzi).

3. His very specific rhythmic writing. The treatment of the vocal phonemes in Kengir 3 is very typical: they are treated like a melodic typing machine or morse code, synchronized with similar harp punctuations. There are the same effects in Kengir 1 (Innana) at 2:38, in Kengir 2 (Enlil). It is somewhat reminiscent of the vocal writing of Aperghis, another remarkably original "outsider" on the French contemporary music scene.

4. The melodic appeal of much of his music. Mâche doesn't shy away from the haunting vocalise, as in Kengir 3, or the sweet oriental-balinese melody in Kengir 4.

The same originality of rhythmic invention and timbral imagination through the use of electronics is at play in Aulodie for clarinet piccolo and tape (1983). The electronic sounds were realized in the composer's studio and use both sounds produced by digital synthesis and of instrumental origin, then processed with one of the very first sampler keyboards to be marketed. They are not only imaginative, they are extremely funny and the clarinet engages with them in a voluble dialogue, a contest of yackety-yacking evoking some alien birds. I love that piece and it should be in the repertoire of every clarinet player worth his salt.

The other compositions are purely instrumental: Phénix for percussion (vibraphone and toms) written in 1982 for Sylvio Gualda, Brûlis a trio for piano clarinet and cello, written for Accroche Note and premiered by them in 1999 (at times energetic and dance-like like American minimalist music, at times surprisingly lyrical), and Figures for bass clarinet and vibraphone (1983). They are pleasant but less original. It is when Mâche uses sampler and voice that he is the most original, intriguing and appealing. Note that two pieces on this CD, Phénix and Aulodie, are reissues of recordings originally published on a 1993 Erato-Musifrance Mâche collection, [[ASIN:B005ZGLABW F.-B. Mâche By Accroche Note]], whose program also included an earlier recording of Figures by the same interpreters, and another great piece for voice, instruments and sampler, Aliunde.

Authoritative interpretations by performers long-associated with Mâche and who premiered some these pieces. The Mâche entry on Wikipedia is close to nothing, but there is a good essay (but in French) on the Brahms.Ircam online data base. There isn't much Mâche available on CD, and even less on this website. Other Mâche CDs include:

L'Estuaire du temps / Braises / Andromède, originally published in 2000 by MFA/Radio France (ASIN B00004SRGI in France) and reissued by a label called "Densité 21.5",  listed here, [[ASIN:B000EHPY00 L'estuaire Du Temps-Braises-and]]

Manuel de Résurrection for voice and two keyboards / Kassandra for ensemble / Sopiana for flute and piano / Amorgos for ensemble / Moires for string quartet, 1999, Musidisc-INA/GRM, available here on download ([[ASIN:B00260T9CW François-Bernard Mâche]]), CD in France ASIN B00002R2VT (it is offered once in a while; I bought mine there in september 2010, and that is what sent me back to Mâche).

[[ASIN:B0009YSGDK MacHe : Marae - Aera - Khnoum - Le Printemps du Serpent [Import]]] by Percussions de Strasbourg, 2005.

Mâche's music for pianos on Naxos, [[ASIN:B000H1QUQU MUSIC FOR TWO PIANOS]], paired with Maurice Ohana's Sorôn-Ngô for two pianos (2006).

Other Mâche pieces are available in composite collections also.


title: getting closer  to the delights of the non-causal thinking and the Samsâra ecstasy

text:
Cryptic. Just the composer's name, Guy Besançon, the title of the piece, "Jakumetsu, Meditations", a photo of the composer (somewhere in his late forties) but no biographical information, and a short blurb about the piece that doesn't augur well: "a sojourn in a monastery and a retreat enabled Master Besançon [no kidding] to elaborate this collection of nine transcendantal meditations, establishing a fascinating link between the East, here Buddhistic Japan, and the creative spirit of a French musician. The work of a master craftsman, aimed at motivating the delights of the non-causal thinking and the Samsâra ecstasy". Makes me cringe in anticipation. The CD didn't get very good reviews in the French magazines I used to read when it was first published in 1992, which kept me away all these years. But I've been stalking the publications from that small French label Cybelia, and found it for cheap, so I decided to give it a try.

In fact I find Jakumetsu quite beautiful: slow moving, ritualistic in its first five tracks, VERY Buddhistic Japanese-sounding (but track 7 sounds more Indian it is use of, apparently, sitar and tabla), more rhythmic and "progressive rock" oriented in tracks 6 and 7, back to calm and getting close to Nirvana in track 8. Track 9 is only 50 seconds of wind (the same sonic effect opens the disc), so calling it a "Meditation" may be a bit far-fetched.

The liner notes are entirely silent about the instrumentarium used and who plays them. The music uses a vast array of instruments, some sounding Japanese-tradtitional, plucked strings (presumably biwa, the traditional Japanse lute, with its typical non-tempered, micro-tonal intervals), bowed strings (probably the Japanese kokyū), flute, gongs, cymbals, membranophone percussion instruments. But apparently synthesizers are used (I don't think all the membranophone sounds in track 7 are natural), and track 2 sounds very much like music Tomita could have composed. There are also, in tracks 4 and 5, various nasal bassoon sounds, some of which could be imitating the horn of some freight ship, that I think are electronically rather than acoustically produced, and likewise with the oboe-and-soprano-saxophone sounds of track 6. Jakumetsu straddles world-music, new wave, progressive rock, and Tomita. No wonder it got a bashing back in 1992. "Serious" critics (and myself) were much less welcoming for these things than they have possibly become.

I've done a little internet research on Besançon which at first didn't yield much. In fact it is because the guy now goes by the name Guy BeZançon and he's an organist, composer and painter living near Paris.

For your transcendental medition Jakumetsu is perfect and I think it got me closer to the delights of the non-causal thinking and the Samsâra ecstasy, need to ask my shrink about that. But simply as eerie and atmospheric music, it works too. However, with a shortish TT of 41:43, we are a long way from eternal bliss.


title: what a Boehmer!

text:
Sorry, I couldn't refrain myself from the title. But it does express my feelings.

Konrad Boehmer is a German composer born in 1941. He was the youngest pupil at Stockhausen's composition course in Darmstadt in the summer of 1959, and later was active at the electronic music studios of the West German Radio in Cologne. He moved to Holland  in the late 1960s.

The early pieces, Klangstück I from 1959 and Potential II and III from 1961, sound uncompromisingly and intractably "contemporary" and serial: lots of pointillistic single notes and crashing chords all over the place. The original "Potential" was first called "de-composition" and was a semi-determined piece in which (to quote the composer), "a fully determined, serial musical texture was to be combined with textures which were only partially defined in pitch and/or duration (...) supposed to be assembled by the performer himself and to be inserted into the original texture". Apparently the semi-aleatoric results weren't very convincing and Boehmer subsequently elaborated three fully-determined versions, of which Hodges plays here II and III.

"Tango deslavado y moroso" from 1984 is a world apart - the title says it all: it can be translated by "Washed out and dawdling Tango", but it is interesting for combining the melodic strains and dissonances of tango into a language of contemporary music; the tango survives. No wonder it was premiered by Ivar Mikhashoff. "Nordisches Liedchen" from 1975 was written for the piano class of his two little nieces, and is exactly that: a tonal, simple little song.

The three recent pieces written in a truly contemporary language, "In Illo Tempore" (1979), "Kinderlied zu Dresden" (1990) and "Orpheus Unplugged" are less pointillistic than the early serial pieces, but they pound a lot, often furiously. "Kinderlied zu Dresden" was inspired by Boehmer's presence at the demonstrations in Dresden on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of East Germany, and is a deconstruction based on Schumann's song on an ironic text of Goethe, "Die wandelnde Glocke", a symbolic spoof on the failure of the German revolutions of 1848/49. Boehmer has the pianist shout the text (excerpts from Goethe's poem, updated to fit the 1989 situation) in a kind of demented Sprechgesang, over pounding piano. It sounds like a modernized version of Berg's mad scenes in Wozzeck (and I've experienced that Berg's orchestra reduced at the piano can sound furiously pounding). Of "In Illo Tempore", Boehmer says that it is "conceived as an audible history of keyboard music", making no actual quotation but staging "all the attitudes which have been adopted by keyboard-players towards the instrument (as well as its quickly developing technique and music since the Middle Ages): all gestures and `attacks', which are here melted into a single composition." On the menu it seems pretty appetizing, but sorry Konrad, I simply don't hear it. What I hear is 30 minutes of mostly furious pounding, an while the sheer decibel power and energy spent by the pianist can be very impressive, I found it very soon very monotonous. Same tricks and same piano pounding in "Orpheus unplugged", a kind of preparatory study for "a music theatre piece" Boehmer was working on, but now it comes with the tape recording of three poems by Albert Ostermaier (texts provided, but no translation), read by himself in a very matter of fact tone that could be used for reading the newspapers, mixed with various real sounds that Boehmer recorded in Greece, France, Rome, Oslo: one wonders why he went so far, since wind, thunder, rustling river, hoisting crane, sawing machine, heartbeat of an unborn babe and even (despite Boehmer's claim that they benefited from the "wonderful acoustics" of St Peter's Cathedral in Rome during the night hours) "pissing and farting" sound alike wherever you record them, especially if they are going to be mixed beyond recognition and covered by the din of the furiously pounding piano All this sounds to me absolutely vain, and I will avoid Boehmer's music theatre piece if I can, when it is completed.

Nicolas Hodges is brave to have tackled Boehmer's piano music, but there is nothing here that I feel requires permanent presence of the shelves of my music library.


title: Two great Nordic Violin Concertos, superbly played by veteran Arve Tellefsen

text:
Attention: unknown masterpiece. Only Norwegians seem to be aware that Fartein Valen's Violin Concerto (1940) belongs to a stylistic trilogy, together with Berg's (1937) and Schoenberg's (1936). Although much shorter (circa 13 minutes) and in one movement, its similarities with Berg's valedictory work are striking, all the way to the concluding quasi-Bach chorale - as the liner notes aptly put it, both are an instrumental requiem, Valen's to the memory of a relative died three years earlier. But there is also the intense atonal lyricism of the violin part, the stern quasi-waltz rhythms that pop up here and there, the short passage in arpeggios (here at 5:28) that recall the opening of Berg (but more furious in the context of Valen's), the woodwind filigree and its constant interplay with the soloist. Evocative of Schoenberg is the general stern-ness and even grimness of the lyricism. Another striking feature of Valen's Concerto is that, other than in its short cadenza, it is written in one single tempo (no metronome indication is given, just "allegro moderato"), the impression of calm vs agitation being conveyed by the shortening of note values within the beat (e.g. more notes per beat). The short concluding chorale bears the character indication "tranquillo", but since the violin repeats the same motives as in the first part, it seems to imply a difference of mood within a maintained unity of tempo (and that's how everybody plays it).

With three recordings to his credit, Tellefsen is the main champion of the composition. The first was in 1974 with conductor Karsten Andersen conducting the Bergen Philharmonic, originally on Norwegian Philips 6507 039 (Contemporary Music from Norway series) paired with the tone poem Epithalamion and the Piano trio, all three now on a Simax CD with the tone poem An die Hoffnung, the Piano Concerto and Serenade for Winds, [[ASIN:B000028CIE Violin Cto / Epithalamion / Die Hoffnung]]. Next was in 1994 with Ole Kristian Ruud and the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, again on Simax but now paired with Sibelius' Violin Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Paavo Berglund and Two Sentimental Romances of Stenhhammar, [[ASIN:B000026BBI Sibelius: Violin Concerto / Stenhammar: Two Sentimental Romances / Valen: Violin Concerto]]. This one was recorded in June 2000 with the Oslo Philharmonic under Christian Eggen. Other versions are Camilla Wicks' premiere recording from 1949, reissued on CD by Biddulph, [[ASIN:B000HKDB5E Camilla Wicks (violin) plays Sibelius and Valen: Violin Concertos [Biddulph 80218-2]]] (and unfortunately invalidated by the clogged 78rpm sonics), and Elise Batnes' version from 2005 (with the Stavenger Symphony Orchestra and the same Christian Eggen as here) on vol. 1 of BIS' invaluable traversal of Valen's orchestral music, [[ASIN:B00158UU60 Orchestral Music Vol. 1]].

The Simax CD with Tellefsen's early recording is attractive for offering a fine survey of the composer's output, but the Violin Concerto specifically suffers from a too close sonic pickup of the soloist, which results in a violin texture that is somewhat too thick and forceful, and a lack of refinement in the important interplay with the orchestra. Tellefsen's two subsequent recordings are excellent, with fine sonics allowing for all the woodwind filigree to register clearly. 1994 is slightly more nonchalant and laid-back (TT 13:42), 2000 more tight and taut and dramatic (13:08). But it is possibly Elise Batnes who offers the most refined and lyrical rendition of all. That said, the main deciding factor is going to be pairing. BIS offers a coherent, all-Valen orchestral program. If you are in for Violin Concertos, Simax, with Sibelius and Stenhammar, will be for the more conservative audiences, and this one, with Arne Nordheim's Violin Concerto, for the more daring and exploratory, despite its ungenerous TT of 43:44. It is a powerful work, highly dramatic, sometimes violent, traditional in the sense that it is based on melodic development rather than timbre and texture and presents a violin part with moments of intense and torn lyricism (and in a cadenza at 16:07, you can hear an accompanying arpeggio in pizzicati which seem to me another reference to Berg's Violin Concerto) but making no concession to the larger audiences' tastes. I don't have the competing recording by Peter Herrestahl on BIS, [[ASIN:B00005QE18 Con Vn/Orch/Duplex Vn/Vc/&]], but Tellefsen seems to play with consummate ease.


title: Three Menuhin commissions and premieres - and Williamson the masterpiece

text:
Great of EMI to have reissued these three concertos in their "British Composers" series, and a fine tribute to Menuhin. Lennox Berkeley's Violin Concerto was commissioned by the Bath Festival (Menuhin was its artistic director) in 1961, Malcolm Williamson's was a co-commission from Menuhin and the same Festival and was premiered in 1965, and Menuhin commissioned Panufnik's in 1971. The Berkeley and Williamson concertos were recorded in 1971 and paired together on the original LP, Panufnik's Violin Concerto was made in 1975 and originally came with the Sinfonia Concertante, now on another, all Panufnik EMI British collection, [[ASIN:B000E5L84S Panufnik. Sinfonia Rustica]].

Written for Menuhin, it is no wonder that Panufnik's Violin Concerto should be a highly lyrical work, much more than Panufnik's symphonies for instance. It also has a robust, bartokian finale. It is a very accessible piece, though not as original and revelatory as the composer's orchestral works from the same years, but rather harking back to the earlier style of his Sinfonia Elegiaca (Symphony No. 2). There's always a special aura to the recording of any premiere performer, and even more when it is Menuhin. That said, despite the formidable orchestral presence of the Menuhin Festival Orchestra under the composer, the two other versions that I have in my collection seem interpretively preferable, by Krzystof Smietana and the London Musici under Mark Stephenson on Conifer (a recording made under the composer's supervision in September 1989, [[ASIN:B0000024CH Andrzej Panufnik: Violin Concerto / Hommage à Chopin / Bassoon Concerto]]) and by Robert Kabara and Sinfonietta Cracovia under Wojciech Michniewski (recorded in August 1995 by Dux, [[ASIN:B0000589AD Arbor Cosmica/Violin Concerto]]). Menuhin plays with big tone and arch-lyricism, but he is also more raucous in the more agitated passages of the first movement and Finale, and, more problematic still, considerably less animated and dynamic, especially in the first movement, more heavy-footed and with a more "sticky" bow. Even in the slow movement, which Menuhin and the composer take in 10:07 to Conifer's 8:23 and Dux's 7:45, do they sound somewhat too heavy, thick and loosing a sense of flow, compared to the two others. Panufnik's Violin Concerto seems to be one of his most popular works on disc, I'm aware of two other recordings which I haven't heard, [[ASIN:B005WPT02C Wanda Wilkomirska: Maestra]] and [[ASIN:B00014X836 Alexander Sitkovetsky Plays Mendelssohn, Panufnik, Takemitsu, Bach]].

The Violin Concerto of Lennox Berkeley is also a very lyrical work, lightly scored (strings, two oboes and two horns), but not without its moments of robustness and dash, and with a beautiful, songful solo part, but without much that truly engraves in memory.

But for me, the best discovery is Malcom Williamson's Violin Concerto. There is nothing advanced or revelatory in its compositional language - tonal, moderately modern - but it is very effectively brought to bear, with two slow movements of magnificent lyricism, often plangent (it is dedicated to the memory of the great eccentric Dame Edith Sitwell - the nonsensical poet of Walton's Façade - who had died the year before), with passages of subtle orchestration, but rising to great dramatic impact, even forbiddingly so at times, framing a sardonic and lyrical scherzo that Prokofiev could have written.

In these two recordings from 1971 (Berkeley and Williamson) with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Adrian Boult, Menuhin is in top form, beautifully-toned and highly expressive and lyrical.