title: An object lesson in how to scandalously betray a great masterpiece (now reissued on CD)

text:
March 2014.

I originally published this review in the summer of 2012, in the context of a comprehensive survey of the recordings of Schubert's C-Major Quintet, which ultimately resulted in two listmanias for which I have provided the link in the comments section.

I don't usually write reviews of LPs - in fact, before that one, I never had (I've done a few more since), as I like to entertain the notion that I write my reviews for them to be read... But I felt I must make a special case for this one. It was recorded in 1965 by the Vienna Philharmonic Quintet, an ensemble comprised of the first seats of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra around their leader Willy Boskovsky, better known when it played in other lineups as the "Vienna Octet". It got a glowing review in The Gramophone issue of September 1965, available on their online Archive:  "This seems to me easily the best recording of the Schubert available in stereo... The Vienna players produce the expected golden tone quality, and the first movement in particular is a joy all through... they manage to prevent the start of the scherzo from sounding muddy, capture the full tragedy of the Trio section, and are superlative in the finale, bringing to the second subject just that Viennese light-music flavour that it needs. None of the other ensembles grip one so deliciously at this point."

Of course it made me salivate with envy to hear it, but also curious why it had been kept in the cold-chamber and never reissued on CD by Decca, Universal or whichever conglomerate held and now holds the rights to it - or, as I originally wrote, "the blessed Australian Eloquence, which seems to reissue everything that the big conglomerates should have but have failed to bring back to life" - when many of the recordings of the Vienna Octet had been duly reissued.

Anyway, an Amazon friend indicated that it had been made available in a downloadable transfer from the LP, so, at last, I was able to hear it... and, in the absence of a CD reissue, posted a - scathing - review here.

But my commment about Australian Eloquence was prescient... as, a year later, they finally reissued it on CD, paired with the Vienna Philharmonic Quartet's recordings of Schubert's string trio, String Quartets No. 10, 12 (Quartettsatz) and 14 "Death & the Maiden", [[ASIN:B00CJUL86Y Schubert: Str Qrts Nos 10 / 12 & 14 / Str Trio 471]]. The latter was not a first CD issue, in fact it was the pairing of one of those early CD reissues of the Vienna Octet's "historicals", Schuberts Trout Quintet with Clifford Curzon ([[ASIN:B0000041S1 Trout Quintet / Death & The Maiden]]).

So: I've now moved my damning review to the CD set... and can now let a chance to the hapless sole seller of this LP to sell it... If you want to know why the Vienna Philharmonic Quartet's versions of Schubert's C-Major Quintet and Death & the Maiden are object lessons in how to scandalously betray great masterpieces, go to the CD.

...And my review of the LP DID get two favorable votes after all. Thanks, guys, I'll keep those, and hence not altogether delete this review!


title: How could Sony let this exceptional version of Beethoven's Triple disappear into oblivion?

text:
Sony was still CBS back in 1988 when this CD came out - ah the good old days when American companies were American; thinking back on it is like listening to Barber's Knoxville, nostalgic remembrance of things past, a Millenium away. They could have come up with a more coherent pairing, though: naturally Beethoven's Triple and Brahms' Double are usual and natural bedfellows on disc, but none of the artistic personnel is shared between the two recordings. The coherent choice would have been to pair this 1964 recording of Brahms' Double Concerto performed by Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose under the direction of Ormandy, with the same forces' recording of Beethoven's Triple (with Stern and Rose's usual trio partner in those days, Eugene Istomin), made that same year. It is indeed what Sony did on their 2-CD set, volume 4 of their great Isaac Stern Edition, [[ASIN:B000002AZL Beethoven, Brahms: Violin Concertos]], but that comes with the soloist's later remakes of the Beethoven and Brahms violin concertos from the mid-1970s (under the direction of Barenboim and Mehta), which, on paper, are less appealing than those from 1959 with respectively Bernstein and Ormandy. A set with those four recordings would have been a real treat, but I bet Sony thought - and rightly so - that it would kill any chances of any issue of the Barenboim and Mehta remakes. Other than on that set, the same 1964 Beethoven Triple could be found only with other non-coherent pairings artist-wise, namely Leon Fleisher's Beethoven piano concertos with Szell (multiple entries on this website).... until recently, that is, since Sony Germany has released, on a super-budget series not listed here, ASIN B001ET21WG on the European sister companies, that Triple paired with Stern-Bernstein's 1959 Violin Concerto, and this is how I finally bought it, which has the additional advantage of avoiding any irksome duplication.

As for this Marlboro recording of Beethoven's Triple with Serkin-Laredo-Parnas under Alexander Schneider (longtime second fiddler of the Budapest Quartet), from May 23, 1962, how about Serkin-Marlboro-Schneider's Beethoven 4th Piano Concerto, that is now on [[ASIN:B00004UAOE (Marlboro Music Festival 50th Anniversary) Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4; Choral Fantasy / Dvorak / Janacek]]?. Sure, it was recorded twelve years later, and so what? Or any of the Mozart piano Concertos that the two recorded together. Sony had a basketful to pick from: 9, 10 (2 pianos), 11, 12, 14, 17, 21, 23, 27... How about 16 (a recording from November 1955 with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra), that to this day Sony has NOT reissued on CD (the French United Archives recently took care of that, thanks to copyright termination, [[ASIN:B000VDG2LW Piano Concertos No. 11 12 16 & 17 [Import]]]) or 20, which to the best of my knowledge has NOT yet been reissued on CD at all (August 1957 with the same Marlboro Festival Orchestra)? I am indebted for all this info (including the recording date, not provided on the CD) to the marvelous Schneider website maintained by the French Yvan Latournerie, search "sacha-schneider discographie".

Anyway, Sony didn't consult me, and even worse, they let this CD - which was the only way you coult get the Serkin-Marlboro Beethoven Triple - get out of print and remain there for years. Thanks to D. Altschuler in the comments section for pointing out that it has just been reissued on the great and budget Sony/bmg Serkin set [[ASIN:B008CG1HPQ Rudolf Serkin Plays Beethoven]] (but for the Mozarts, we can only wait, and hope). It deserves not to be missed.

In both works the sonics are great - in Beethoven even more vivid and present than in Brahms, although this comes at the cost of more tape hiss. But the Beethoven offers a unique experience, not only interpretively but also sonically. The sound there is so vivid and close that, in the orchestral introduction and the tuttis of the first movement, it is as if you were sitting in the orchestra, there is a rarely heard clarity and crispness of the bass lines (just listen at 0:27 how clear and distinctly you hear each cello and bass eighth-note) and the woodwinds and brass also come out very clearly, in an ideal balance with the strings that eschews the grand and thick "symphonic" perspective (as in Karajan's famous recording with the Soviet dream team in 1969 and also in Ormandy's 1964 version) and lends the concerto a welcome chamber-like character. But as soon as the soloists enter you are now right with them, as if sitting with the pianist (to the point that sometimes woodwinds and horns are inaudible - but in all fairness, they are also, and in the same spots, in versions where you are not so embedded with the soloists). That wouldn't be half as exciting if what you heard wasn't the big and creamy tone of Leslie Parnas, the lyrical violin of Jaime Laredo and the expert pianism of Serkin, whose blend of lyricism and crisp staccato is perfectly in situation in Beethoven. The interpretation is outstanding, with a great combination of lyricism and muscularity, and striking a fine middle ground of tempo in the first movement between the urgency of Walter in 1949 (in New York with Corigliano-Rose-Hendl, [[ASIN:B000002A85 Brahms: Double Concerto / Beethoven: Tripile Concerto]]) and the spaciousness of Stern-Rose-Istomin-Ormandy. This may come as a surprise to some readers, but Scheider's first movement comes within seconds of Karajan's.

Schneider and partners' Finale is more original in its pacing, taken at a very laid-back tempo (Ormandy with Stern-Rose-Istomin did the same two years later) and in a laid-back atmosphere; you don't get here the energetic and ebullient drive of Toscanini ([[ASIN:B0000269II Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 / Triple Concerto]]) or even Walter, just a sense of infectious "joie-de-vivre" and a joy of playing together, and with an invigorating robustness in the orchestral outbursts, lending the quasi-Fandango passasge at 10:58 (the Finale doesn't get a separate cue from the slow movement) an uplifting character. The movement is filled with very idiosyncratic interpretive touches of great character also, like its hushed and almost pensive beginning, as if the performers were keeping in the energy for the next outburst, or the very pronounced rallentando they do at 8:49 and again at 14:52, almost grinding to a halt, or again their unhurried pacing of the Allegro section before the coda at 16:05 and the robustness of their phrasings at the return of the Tempo I at 18:00. I don't know if it is something in this version's interpretation and I suspect it is, but for the first time a realized why I love so much the Triple Concerto: it is the closest Beethoven ever got to Schubert's Trout Quintet (of which of course Serkin made an outstanding recording, four years later).

All this would make it a great version among a number of great versions. But then, the slow movement. This is not just "great", this is other-worldly. For all the criticism that has been leveled at Karajan's recording (most of it unfair, in my opinion), I thought his Largo was the movement that no one except the most badly biased and insincere Karajan-bashers could take exception with, played at a beautifully held back tempo, with silky, caressing strings and soloists able to sustain the slow tempo. But this here is even more beautiful. Schneider's strings may not be as silky as Karajan's but they are caressing enough, and the opening tempo is even a touch slower. And then, at 0:23, enters Parnas, and you are not just seated with Parnas, you ARE Parnas, and this beautiful, deeply songful melody will make you think that nothing more beautiful in the world was ever written. And listen carefully to the small inflexions, the accented sf at 1:14 for instance (it is notated) - this is not just beautiful sounds, it is deeply expressive. And, even if you don't follow with score, listen very carefully at 1:18, something you will not hear with Karajan: the low, softly growling voice of the horn. I could go on describing measure after measure the ineffable beauties of this reading, but I'll add just one. Jump at 4:19 and hear the sudden forte outburst of the strings. Schneider here is a great conductor. This is a recording of Beethoven's Triple I wouldn't want to be without and so far, among those I've heard, it is my desert island version, and it is more than a shame, a crime against music really, that Sony has let it lapse.

The Brahms Double is also a fine performance, even though it illustrates a very slanted and extreme approach. Stern and Rose had recorded it before, in 1954 with Bruno Walter ([[ASIN:B000002715 The Early Concerto Recordings, Vol. 1]]), but the distant mono sonics make that no more than a document. As for Ormandy, he was the conductor of Heifetz' and Feuermann's 1939 recording, [[ASIN:B000003FII Heifetz Collection, Volume 5 (1939-1946)]], an interpretation of rarely equaled fire and passionate intensity (if possible, Toscanini in 1948 surpassed it, [[ASIN:B000003EWR Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 3/ Double Concerto (for Violin & Cello)]], and Heifetz himself almost equaled it, but it incomparably better sonics, in his 1960 re-recording with Piatigorsky and the powerful but less biting Wallenstein, [[ASIN:B000003EQ9 Double Concerto]]). That Ormandy adapted to his partners, or perhaps mellowed with age, is amply proven by this one. As with his Beethoven Triple of the same year, it is a very deliberate reading in the "Germanic" tradition of Schuricht (1947 with Kulenkampff and Mainardi but I'm now out of authorized product links; it's on Dutton, ASIN:B001O4CSVA ) or Furtwängler (1950, Vienna Philharmonic with Boskovsky and Brabec, ASIN:B0059GYDE4), grand, majestic and tender in the first movement rather than heroic and passionate, leisurely rather than kinetic in the Finale (though not to the extreme of Schuricht or Furtwängler). In that style, Ormandy is even extreme, and although the first movement as a whole clocks faster than Schuricht's or Furtwängler's, his orchestral introduction, after the soloists' opening quasi-cadenza, is for instance one of the most deliberate I've  encountered. But (as in Ormandy's Beethoven triple) any impression of trudging that might arise in the outer movements is fortunately offset by the formidable impact of the tuttis, the vivid instrumental presence of the soloists and their muscular accenting. Stern and Rose are equal to their former selves, but much better recorded, and the balance between the two is great, with the cello never covered. One small quibble I may have is that, when they pass the melodic line from one to the other, as Brahms' scoring so often does, maybe by dint of the close recording pickup it's rarely, as on other recordings, seamlessly done as if it were only one instrument moving from one register to the other, you distinctly hear the passage from one instrument to the other.

In the middle "andante" they follow the steps of Oistrakh, Fournier and Galliera in 1956 (ASIN:B00000DO2I) by adopting a very held-back tempo which brings out beautifully the movement's tender lyricism, rather than, like Heifetz at a much brisker tempo, its aching passion. The sonics are great, offering felicitous interplay with the woodwinds in the finale. My personal preference goes to the fiery 1948 Toscanini and 1939 Heifetz (with the 1960 remake as second best) but this one can safely be recommended, with Galliera's 1956 recording (with Oistrakh and Fournier) and Walter's from 1959, as an irreproachable and entirely convincing realization of an approach which has become standard.

The 30 and something demanded for this CD at the time of writing is higher than I would pay for any CD, and fortunately Sony's reissue of the Beethoven Triple on their Serkin box now means that the music lovers won't get ripped and some internet vultures can now bite off their fingers. But the music-making here makes it worth every dollar.


title: a lovely, non radical reading on period instruments that should appeal even to HIP-bashers

text:
For all the popularity of Mozart's five Violin Concertos, his two true masterpieces in the genre are the Concertone - a Triple Concerto for two Violins and Oboe in all but name, at times turning into a Quadruple Concerto with the addition of an obligato cello - and the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola. The Concertone may be an early work of Mozart, written when he was 17 (all is relative of course - like Schubert's, all Mozart works are "early", and the Sinfonia Concertante, considered the "mature" work, was written at 22), and his first real Concerto (all the previous ones had been arrangements of Sonata movements from other composers), and it is still marked by the influence of the galant style in its middle movement and Finale, but it also teems with irresistible enthusiasm and wonderful melodies and smacks of the opera in its boisterous opening one.

These recordings by the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, with Jaap Schröder leading and playing first violin, made in 1986, are great versions on period instruments, likely to please even listeners adverse to historically-informed Performances (HIP), because there is nothing radical about them, they are played in a classic manner, lively and spirited in the outer movements (with the exception however of the Concertone's Minuetto-Finale, see further), and true to Mozart's "Andantino grazioso" in the middle movement of the Concertone. Anti HIPsters might object to their taking the middle movement of Sinfonia Concertante at a flowing pace, closer to the "Andante" written by Mozart than to the romanticized and solemn Adagio many (including, to an extent, Harnoncourt, [[ASIN:B008L450NO Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante, Violin Concerto, Kremer, Kashkashian]]) turn it into, but not only is it truer to Mozart's indication, I find that Schröder and McDonald show a touching restraint there, with neither flaunted pathos nor the emotional turbulence of Heifetz (a great reading, at an even brisker tempo, [[ASIN:B000003EQ9 Double Concerto]]), eliciting instead a mood of touching tenderness. There is the touch of acidity associated to period instruments but great timbral character from the strings, and oboes and horns in Sinfonia Concertante are covered just a little too much in the tutti in the first movement, but marvellously present in the finale. The two soloists, Jaap Schröder and Marilyn McDonald, play and blend well, McDonald's viola tone isn't big, but it is creamy.

The first movement of the Concertone teems with youthful jubilation, the sonic perspective of the orchestra is perfect, with the oboes and horns never covered by the strings and the strings never over-resonant and excessively symphonic, underlining the Serenade nature of the music. Schröder and McDonald blend beautifully, making them almost indistinguishable, and oboist Stephen Hammer must be lauded for his marvellous timbral character. Their take on Mozart's "Andantino grazioso" is exactly that: andantino and gracious, very catholic in its choice of tempo (it is virtually the same as Oistrakh's, [[ASIN:B00000DOJD Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante, KV 364 in E Flat Major, Concertone KV 190 in C Major, Adagio KV 261, Rondo KV 269]]), at times vaguely languorous, but with sombre hues when comes the passage in minor mode at 5:15. I would take exception only with their tempo in the Menuetto-Finale. There is a puzzling contradiction in Mozart's indications there: "Tempo di Menuetto", and you easily associate that with a somewhat pedestrian pacing - the menuetto was an elegant, aristocratic dance after all, not a rock-and-roll - but then Mozart adds "Vivace". A vivacious Menuetto, then. Clearly, Schröder favors the elegant aristocratic and vaguely stately dance. I find versions that take Mozart's "Vivace" at face value (as, recently, Yakov Kreizberg with Julia Fischer, [[ASIN:B000W043VA Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante [Hybrid SACD]]]) more convincing, and certainly more exciting.

But this very elegance of Schröder here is an additional factor likely to please even those adverse to the style associated to period instrument playing. The best offer at the time of writing is another budget reissue (with no liner notes): [[ASIN:B00000E6W9 Mozart Edition Vol. 1: Sinfonia Concertante K. 364 & Concertone K. 190]].


title: A lovely, non-radical period instrument performance that should appeal even to HIP bashers

text:
For all the popularity of Mozart's five Violin Concertos, his two true masterpieces in the genre are the Concertone - a Triple Concerto for two Violins and Oboe in all but name, at times turning into a Quadruple Concerto with the addition of an obligato cello - and the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola. The Concertone may be an early work of Mozart, written when he was 17 (all is relative of course - like Schubert's, all Mozart works are "early", and the Sinfonia Concertante, considered the "mature" work, was written at 22), and his first real Concerto (all the previous ones had been arrangements of Sonata movements from other composers), and it is still marked by the influence of the galant style in its middle movement and Finale, but it also teems with irresistible enthusiasm and wonderful melodies and smacks of the opera in its boisterous opening one.

These recordings by the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, with Jaap Schröder leading and playing first violin, made in 1986, are great versions on period instruments, likely to please even listeners adverse to historically-informed Performances (HIP), because there is nothing radical about them, they are played in a classic manner, lively and spirited in the outer movements (with the exception however of the Concertone's Minuetto-Finale, see further), and true to Mozart's "Andantino grazioso" in the middle movement of the Concertone. Anti HIPsters might object to their taking the middle movement of Sinfonia Concertante at a flowing pace, closer to the "Andante" written by Mozart than to the romanticized and solemn Adagio many (including, to an extent, Harnoncourt, [[ASIN:B008L450NO Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante, Violin Concerto, Kremer, Kashkashian]]) turn it into, but not only is it truer to Mozart's indication, I find that Schröder and McDonald show a touching restraint there, with neither flaunted pathos nor the emotional turbulence of Heifetz (a great reading, at an even brisker tempo, [[ASIN:B000003EQ9 Double Concerto]]), eliciting instead a mood of touching tenderness. There is the touch of acidity associated to period instruments but great timbral character from the strings, and oboes and horns in Sinfonia Concertante are covered just a little too much in the tutti in the first movement, but marvellously present in the finale. The two soloists, Jaap Schröder and Marilyn McDonald, play and blend well, McDonald's viola tone isn't big, but it is creamy.

The first movement of the Concertone teems with youthful jubilation, the sonic perspective of the orchestra is perfect, with the oboes and horns never covered by the strings and the strings never over-resonant and excessively symphonic, underlining the Serenade nature of the music. Schröder and McDonald blend beautifully, making them almost indistinguishable, and oboist Stephen Hammer must be lauded for his marvellous timbral character. Their take on Mozart's "Andantino grazioso" is exactly that: andantino and gracious, very catholic in its choice of tempo (it is virtually the same as Oistrakh's, [[ASIN:B00000DOJD Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante, KV 364 in E Flat Major, Concertone KV 190 in C Major, Adagio KV 261, Rondo KV 269]]), at times vaguely languorous, but with sombre hues when comes the passage in minor mode at 5:15. I would take exception only with their tempo in the Menuetto-Finale. There is a puzzling contradiction in Mozart's indications there: "Tempo di Menuetto", and you easily associate that with a somewhat pedestrian pacing - the menuetto was an elegant, aristocratic dance after all, not a rock-and-roll - but then Mozart adds "Vivace". A vivacious Menuetto, then. Clearly, Schröder favors the elegant aristocratic and vaguely stately dance. I find versions that take Mozart's "Vivace" at face value (as, recently, Yakov Kreizberg with Julia Fischer, [[ASIN:B000W043VA Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante [Hybrid SACD]]]) more convincing, and certainly more exciting.

But this very elegance of Schröder here is an additional factor likely to please even those adverse to the style associated to period instrument playing. The best offer at the time of writing is a later budget reissue (with no liner notes): [[ASIN:B00000E6W9 Mozart Edition Vol. 1: Sinfonia Concertante K. 364 & Concertone K. 190]].


title: reissue of an original Hungaroton recording from the mid-1970s, and a deeply flawed interpretation

text:
I've read on some online discussion forums this version being endorsed as "the best", associated with comments such as "driven, hard-hitting and brutal", "no one comes away from this performance unaffected one way or another", "extraordinarily dark", "unrelenting, disturbing and troubled", "the adagio is like a disturbing nightmare" and "they don't relax, don't smile, for a second".

Listening to the performance, such comments leave my jaws gaping and make me wonder what some listeners (well... ONE listener) hear. The reading by the Tatrai Quartet hardly fits any of the above descriptions. It is a reading that, at its best (the outer movements), has nothing really special to offer, and at its worst (the two inside movements), is deeply flawed. It is an original Hungaroton recording and was first reissued on CD by them, in their White Label budget series, which is how I have it ([[ASIN:B000009I4P Franz Schubert - String Quintet in C Major (Hungaroton / White Label)]]). The recording date is not clear, neither Hungarton nor, apparently, Capriccio provide it, but the earliest review I've found of the original LP was from May 1976, so that dates it back to the mid-1970s, which makes it contemporary with the recordings of the Weller and Hungarian Quartets (1970), the Juilliard Quartet's first version with Bernard Greenhouse (1972, not reissued on CD), the Smetana Quartet with Milos Sadlo (1973), the Bulgarian Quartet (1974), the Guarneri Quartet's first with Leonard Rose and the Alberni Quartet with Thomas Igloi on CRD (both 1975), and a little earlier than the famed Melos Quartet-Rostropovich collaboration (1977 - product links not provided in the review are in the comment section).

Their first movement offers a clean, middle-of-the-road but ultimately anonymous approach, closer to the urgency of the Hollywood Quartet ([[ASIN:B000003XID Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht; Schubert: Quintet]]) than to the sometimes sluggish spaciousness of the Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet ([[ASIN:B000025GDT Quintet In C]]), but with a fine lyricism when comes the second subject at 1:53, obtained through phrasings rather than (as with the Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet) any radical slowing down of tempo, and the urgency comes back as soon as the part-writing becomes thicker (3:19); that sense of urgency which dominates the first movement is the most positive feature of the reading. But already the staccato march at 4:32 is nothing special, not excessively slack but not particularly crisp either (and it does verge on slackness after the repeat bar, at 10:21), and likewise with the big chord before the repeat bar at 5:03. The vehement violin shouts after the repeat bar, at 10:33, are gently vehement and cannot be taken exception with, but they aren't particularly vehement either. There is a constant mellowness, lack of presence and bite, preference for the legato, in the second cello's articulation of Schubert's staccato that deprives the music of some of its essential dramatic underpinning. Also, the players' tone has a slight deficit in bloom and tonal beauty if compared to the best of those years (the 1970 Weller Quartet, [[ASIN:B00000E3O8 Schubert: String Quintet]], the 1973 Smetana Quartet, [[ASIN:B000007T0B String Quintet D956 / Quartet 3]]), which deprives the music of some of its lyrical blossoming (try the soaring violin line at 11:03) - is that what the fan heard as "the eerie and distinctive sound that [first fiddler] Tatrai himself produces"? Sounds to me like a case of painting lead in a gilded coat.

So, ultimately, the main claim to originality of the Tatrais here is to have been one of the first versions in the LP era to have, not exactly played the first movement repeat, but to have fitted on side A of their LP the first movement with its repeat and the Adagio. Until then the time constraints of the LP made it impossible, so that playing the first movement repeat would have entailed splitting the sublime Adagio between two sides: no way. And yet, the Soviet label Melodiya, for their 1963 recording of the Taneyev Quartet (and Rostropovich's first recording of Schubert's Quintet as second cellist) did exactly that - an extraordinary version but a terrible choice, see my review of [[ASIN:B007S9IWYW Schubert: String Quintet Op. 163 Taneyev Quartet With Mistislav Rostropovich]]. A later German reissue on Eurodisc cut out the repeat (terrible choice!), and I think it was only the American release on Westminster Gold, in 1974, that was able to fit the first two movements on one LP side. The Alberni Quartet in 1975 on CRD also played the repeat and fitted the two movements on side A, [[ASIN:B000027Q0D Schubert: String Quintet In C Major- Op 163-D956]]).

The Finale is also OK, if not presenting anything particularly original either. The tempo again is rather flowing, which is fine, but again not as urgent as the most urgent readings like the Hollywood Quartet's, and the lyricism of the second subject at 0:58 is expounded with no exaggerated and mawkish slow down of tempo and no fussing of phrasings, which is also fine. Again there is a certain dryness of instrumental timbre (and not just from the first fiddler) that deprives the lyrical melodies of some of their bloom, but the lyricism does come through. I'm not so happy that the Tatrais play the Quintet's final chord not as the traditional diminuendo, but with a forceful accent. It may conform to the way modern Schubert scholarship interprets the score's arrow above the chord, but it isn't nearly as original and effective as the diminuendo. Small detail, and the Tatrais are in good company here.

But then, you have the two inside movements. Interpretively the worst is the Scherzo. Mind you, even when they are notated "Presto" as here, or "Allegro molto" as in the Death and the Maiden Quartet Quartet or "Allegro vivace" as in the 15th String Quartet, it has been common practice to take Schubert's Scherzi at a more pedestrian pace, something like an "Allegro moderato", and I have no objection to that: it lends the music the affectingly rustic character of a country dance. But this here isn't pedestrian, it is elephantine, and it is no rustic dance in the country-side near Vienna, but dancing at Weight-Watchers - on first day, not last. And it is not just subjective impression, mind you; it is corroborated by a look at the timings: 4:48 to reach the middle trio, even the Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet hadn't been that sluggish. The most pedestrian versions of those years, the 1970 Hungarian Quartet ([[ASIN:B0000CE7FV Schubert: String Quartets 13 - 15 & String Quintet;  Hungarian Quartet]]) and the 1974 Bulgarian Quartet ([[ASIN:B000027O9L String Quintet in C Major]]), took respectively 4:23 and 4:21, and of the (many) versions recorded after that I've heard, only the 1992 Foné Quartet has been slower - but that at least was in the context of a very consistent interpretive approach, very spacious in all four movements ([[ASIN:B000RGACXM Schubert: String Quintet in C Major, D.956]]).

Not so with the Tatrai Quartet, and inconsistency is their nickname. I've left aside their Adagio, because there is indeed something special about their reading. One of my favorite grinding axes is the issue of tempo relationship in that Adagio. As we know, Schubert's sublime Adagio is in A-B-A' form, with a slow, ethereal A part and a fast and vehement B part. But I've long been intrigued by the fact that Schubert indicates no tempo change between the A and B part, just more notes per beat, syncopations, triplets: A and B are not so much a "slow" and a "fast" section as an "appeased" and an "agitated" section. Yet just about every ensemble in the history of recording, at least since the Budapest Quartet in 1941, has more or less dramatically slammed on the gas pedal when comes the B-section, and that because the interpretive trend has been to take the A section slower and slower. Just compare the timings of some of the early recordings (links in the comments section):

The Cobbett Quartet (premier recording in 1925): 3:19
The London String Quartet 1928: 4:07
The Wendling Quartet 1934 (they recorded the Adagio only): 4:01
The Pro Arte Quartet 1935: 3:47
Budapest Quartet 1941: 5:10
Wiener Konzerthaus Quartet circa 1950: 5:03
Hollywood Quartet 1951: 4:20
Stern-Casals and friends from Prades 1952: 4:30

Budapest and Wiener Konzerthaus were trend-setters, and from there, in the 1960s and 1970s, tempos were always more expansive, culminating in the Melos Quartet's "time-at-a-standstill" 5:54 and the Lindsay Quartet's "standstill frozen" 6:26. Within that trend Heifetz in 1961 had been an exception, at 3:18. In 1973 the Smetana Quartet essayed a uniquely brisk adagio and established a world-record, with an A section in 2:59. In all honesty, it didn't work (see my review for more on that). Even Heifetz' 3:18 sounded grotesquely rushed. To my ears, the Pro Arte Quartet was perfect, and they kept their tempo in the middle section.

Tatrai Quartet? 3:26. This is indeed "exceptionable", and most listeners used to more spacious and ethereal approaches will probably find it rushed and lacking any sense of spirituality - and the latter is true. It doesn't brood, doesn't meditate, doesn't pray - it flows. "A disturbing nightmare", really? Well, we are all entitled to our subjective feelings and images, and I guess I can relate what I hear to that one. Still, it begs the question whether you want Schubert's Adagio to sound like a nightmare; so many people have wished that their funeral took place at the sound of Schubert's Adagio, I hope that's not what they meet wherever they go from there. But still this flowing pace, retaining the gentle lilt of Schubert's ternary rhythm, is one thing I hold in this versions' favor, it is an ear-opening "exceptionable". Unfortunately the Tatrais (like the Smetanas) still flunk it by stepping up markedly their tempo in the B section, presumably to introduce a sense of contrast. What was the point then? Certainly not expressive. Many versions, from the Pro Arte to the Weller Quartet, have shown that a more held-back B section translates in no loss of vehemence. In that kind of approach, only the 1935 Pro Arte Quartet got it right, and proved that it was a valid option, making it all the more frustrating that nobody ever since has been able to reiterate their achievement in modern stereo sound. Still, I'll grant that the vehemence of that middle section with the Tatrai Quartet does kindle the feeling of a "distrubing nightmare".

In sum, then: two outer movements that are, overall, fine, even if they don't offer any particularly special insights and don't say anything that wasn't said in other versions, and two inner movements that are certainly original in approach and even thought-provoking for the Adagio, but so flawed as to offer a veritable distortion of the music (I dread the thought that the Hungarian music lovers behind the Iron Curtain in the mid 1970s had only this version to get acquainted with Schubert's masterpiece). "The best"? In your most distrubing nightmares, maybe.


title: The Academy's second and not so successful go at Schubert's Octet.

text:
The Academy of Saint-Martin-in-the Fields Chamber Ensemble had already made an outstanding recording of Schubert's Octet in 1977 for Philips (see my review under the original CD reissue, [[ASIN:B00000E36J Octet, D.803]]. It is now available on a twofer from the budget-priced Duo series with the Beaux-Arts trio's "Trout" and the Quartetto Italiano's "Death & the Maiden": [[ASIN:B0001GAS50 Schubert: Great Chamber Works]]), but this new one, made ten years later around 1st violin Kenneth Sillito, shares only three of the members involved back then: viola, cello and horn. Recorded and released hard on the heels of the version published by DG with Gidon Kremer and partners ([[ASIN:B00000E3ZD Schubert: Octet D 803]], see my review), it was generally enthusiastically received by the critics - and I don't entirely agree.

Part of the problem lies with the resonant church acoustics (it was recorded in St Silas Church, London). It deprives the instrumental definition of some clarity, and the horn and clarinet seem picked up from a greater distance than the strings. In the 3rd movement (a Scherzo in all but name) you might even think that there are two horns involved. As a result perhaps, tempos are generally spacious, to the point sometimes of ponderousness.

Witness the opening movement. Tempo (including that of the slow introduction) is spacious and acoustics are resonant. The music gains in symphonic grandeur but, despite the Academy members' creamy instrumental tone and laudable effort to animate the movement and give it dramatic impact, it does loose a touch in sprightly liveliness and sounds a bit heavy-footed, like a Beethoven symphony played by a traditional symphony orchestra rather than a sinewy, period instrument ensemble: the leaner and more dynamic approach of the 1977 Academy was more convincing and dynamic. Like their predecessors but unlike the contemporary Kremer on DG, the Chandos Academy does not take the first movement repeat, an unfortunate decision not justified by the CD's time limitation as it had been by the LPs. They also slam the breaks at 7:20 upon the return of the opening theme double note value (quarter note becomes half note), in order to harmonize tempo with the one they had adopted in the intro - but the slowing down is uncalled for by Schubert, and only seems to point to the players' apparent misjudgment of Schubert's tempo relationship.

Likewise the second movement "adagio" is spaciously paced and quite beautiful, but the cost is a touch of rhythmic laziness. The conception is close to the Academy's 1977 essay, though a little more animated in the more dramatic passage starting at 7:21. Andrew Marriner (also featured on a recording made a few months earlier but released a little later with the Chilingirian Quartet on the British mid-price EMI Eminence) produces beautifully hushed and dreamy clarinet pianissimos, and in general instrumental tone is more luscious in 1987 than in 1977 (try the cello cantilena at 6:24), but as mentioned clarinet and horn seem recorded from a further distance than the strings, and the effect is somewhat artificial. Again spacious tempo, resonant acoustics and a distant sounding horn rob the third movement "Allegro vivace" of some of its impact - but the bassoon registers clearly.

In the fourth movement (a theme and variations), the theme's enunciation doesn't linger but isn't as zestful as Kremer and partners (DG). Tempo is relaxed in the ensuing variations, with the second played with bonhomie rather than with the rhythmic bite and dramatic impact imparted to it by Kremer and his Lockenhaus partners. Yet the ASMF members do not hesitate to dramatically vary tempo in order to characterize different moods, as in the "slow" fourth variation to which they bring a wistful quality, and the "fast", tango-like fifth variation. 1st fiddler Kenneth Sillito's purity of tone is a remarkable feature in his variation 3 and 7 filigree, but Denis Vigay's cello accompaniment is hardly audible against the brass and woodwinds in the latter.

The Menuetto (5th movement) is relaxed and not strongly accented (compare its 7:36 duration to Kremer's 6:34), and again the effect of this "gemütlich" approach I find pedestrian and ultimately soporific, despite some fine dynamic nuancing by Sillito. On the other hand, after again a spacious intro which sounds like the accompanied recitative of an opera, the finale is commendably brisk and sprightly but once again the resonant acoustics deprive it of some instrumental definition, making it sound busy but slightly untidy.

This is a version for those who prefer their Schubert symphonies played by Furtwängler or Böhm than by Fricsay or Szell. But the Academy's first essay is preferable, and for those who insist on digital versions, among versions recorded at the same time as this Chandos disc, Kremer's recording is preferable despite its misconceived and plodding Finale, and the Berliner Octet's on Teldec is better still (see my review of [[ASIN:B00000E8QS Schubert Octet in F Major Berliner Solisten]]).


title: A historical recording, with drama but also some interpretive and intonational flaws

text:
These two recordings date from 1953 and were among the first mono LP recordings of the two quartets - Jac Gorodetzky had not yet given his 2nd fiddler's seat to Alexander Schneider. There was not much then by way of competition: for "Death and the Maiden", the Wiener Konzerthaus Quartet on Westminster (heavy-handed, now on [[ASIN:B00006OA3Z String Quartets]]), the Fine Arts Quartet's first recording on Mercury (not to be confused with the later, stereo one reissued on CD by Boston Skyline, [[ASIN:B000001UOO Schubert: Trout Quintet/Death and the Maiden Quartet]]), the first and fiery recording by the Amadeus Quartet also on Westminster (now in a DG box, [[ASIN:B0000U1NGK Haydn Schubert Brahms 1951-1957]]); the famed Hollywood Quartet's recording for Capitol was another two years in the making. The 1953 sound is somewhat cavernous, and by comparison the transfer from the 1955 Hollywood Quartet on Testament sounds much more focused ([[ASIN:B000003XJM Hollywood Quartet plays Schubert: Quartet No14 Death & the Maiden, Wolf: Italian Serenade, Dohnanyi: 3rd Quartet]]), but one gets rapidly used to the sonic perspective. Strangely, the 3rd and 4th movements suffer(in my French Masterworks Portrait copy) from more perceptible and obtrusive tape hiss than the first two. More irksome, in 1953 one can already perceive - sometimes painfully so - the intonational difficulties in the upper registers of 1st fiddler Joseph Roisman, that were to mar the group's later recordings.

The Budapest's allegro auspiciously begins with a raw, gritty and almost raging energy, but slows down as early as 0:45, exaggeratedly underlining the more lyrical aspect of the music. And this is very typical of the Budapest's approach, with a marked tendency to overplay the contrast between the dramatic and the lyric by relaxing tempo and prettifying the music - and losing the forward-moving tension in the process. Likewise, at times they favour a raging weight at the expense of forward momentum, and the movement becomes slightly bogged down. The movement ends with a nice interpretive touch,though: a headlong - and pitch-grating - "piu mosso" followed by a very slow coda.

Likewise, their Scherzo (3rd movement) is one of those approaches that, despite Schubert's "Allegro molto" tempo marking, adopts a fairly deliberate tempo and goes for weight and power rather than rage and fury - the effect is somewhat ponderous. With a relaxed tempo and a hint of portamento, the central Trio doesn't avoid a sense of cloying mawkishness.

The 2nd and 4th movement fare best in the Budapest's recording. The famous "Death & the Maiden" theme is delivered at a tempo that is somewhat slower than Schubert's "andante con moto", but with a march-like impetus which imparts it a convincing sense of inevitability; then the variations unfold with no great architectural care for unity of tempo, but much expression and drama: the Budapests give a marked fillip to the tempo with the launch of the 1st variation  and give the music with a fine rhythmic snap, the cello unfolds its long lyrical line in the 2nd variation, tempo is given another whiplash in the third variation which appropriately evokes a hurried gallop to death, the 4th variation has charm without mawkishness (but some uneasy pitches too) and the 5th variation is finely dramatic. The quartet is topped off by a rhythmically taut finale, with drive and biting energy.

Still, from that era, the recordings by the Amadeus Quartet and The Hollywood Quartet offered more convincing readings.

There are two other entries for this CD on this website, and you are likely find it cheaper there: [[ASIN:B0026HYLV4 Schubert: Quartets In D Minor & A Minor - Budapest Quartet]] and [[ASIN:B00000DSDE Schubert: Quartets No. 13 in A Minor (Rosamunde) and No. 14 in D Minor (Death and the Maiden)]]


title: a slanted view reissued

text:
This is the reissue, by Musical Heritage Society, of a disc first published by Chandos in 1986. I've reviewed it under its original guise, [[ASIN:B000025S2N Ralph Vaughan Williams: Norfolk Rhapsody; In the Fen Country; Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis]]. Bryden Thomson certainly can't be criticized for lack of consistency in his interpretive approach: he favors the very expansive tempos, the lush to thick orchestral textures, the big orchestral sound. Sometimes it works, sometimes I find it less convincing.

Most successful and convincing I find is his "Five Variants of Dives & Lazarus". It is remarkable for the unusually expansive tempos adopted by Thomson, especially in the theme and Variants I & II, markedly below the composer's metronome mark and conveying a solemn and longing mood that is not necessarily in the very essence of the music, but it is quite taking in its own right.

Thomson's Tallis Fantasia is quite beautiful but less remarkable, if only because he goes nowhere where others haven't been before him, from Anthony Collins in 1952 to Sir Adrian Boult in 1976 ([[ASIN:B0001ZILDW Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis]]): it is an expansive, brooding and lush Fantasia - but not as remarkably brooding and expansive as Barbirolli's ([[ASIN:B00003ZKRL Elgar / Vaughan Williams: String Orchestra Works]]) or Silvestri's ([[ASIN:B000006DED Symphony 4]]), too say nothing of the extreme Bernstein ([[ASIN:B0000027O5 Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 4 / Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis / Fantasia on Greensleeves / Serenade to Music (Bernstein Royal Edition, No. 96)]]). His great climax at 11:01 has more grandeur than intensity - the great versions, like Barbirolli, have both. And I find that Thomson relies too much on big sound and not enough on transparency of texture, and his mezzo-fortes are not very different from his fortes, and these from his fortissimos. But the string quartet is remarkably well recorded.

I'm not so convinced with Thomson's approach in the two early pieces, In the Fen Country from 1904 and the 1906 Norfolk Rhapsody, two compositions that straddle the stylistic worlds of late-romanticism and impressionism. He conducts a lush and lushious Norfolk Rhapsody, longing in mood, very expansive, even languid, underlining more the composition's late-romanticism than its impressionism, and with a scherzando passage at 6:27 that is powerful but heavy-footed in the manner of Boult ([[ASIN:B000002S2R Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music; The Lark Ascending; Fantasia on Greensleeves; English Folk Song Suite; In the Fen Country; Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1]]). Again the approach is quite effective in its own right, but, compared to the much more animated and passionate Norman Del Mar ([[ASIN:B000005GQN Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis / Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus]]), somewhat lacking refinement and transparency in orchestral tone - as well as passion, of course. In the same kind of approach as Thomson, I find Marriner preferable, slightly more animated and more transparent in orchestral texture, and with a markedly more dynamic scherzando passage ([[ASIN:B00000419V Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; In the Fen Country; Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 in E Minor; The Wasps Overture; Variations for Orchestra; Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus]]). But to me, the passionate intensity of Del Mar remains irreplacable.

Expansive, grand, but also thick-textured, trudging, languid, plangent and mournful are also attributes of Thomson's interpretation of "In the Fen Country". Just compare Thomson's overall timing to Boult's or Marriner's (same discs as above): 17:37 vs respectively 13:50 and 14:13. The result is both grandiose or over-inflated.

All in all, exercise caution. Except in the Tallis Fantasia, these are highly slanted views of the compositions. That is both their value, and their limitation. It would be somewhat misleading to know the pieces only through this recording. For a first and more balanced approach of In the Fen Country and Norfolk Rhapsody better go to Boult, and for Variants the reference remains David Willcock's 1968 recording ([[ASIN:B000F0KDA2 Vaughan Williams: Five Tudor Portraits Benedicite / Five Variants Of Dives And Lazarus Wilcocks]]), for his admirable observance of the composer's tempos and tempo relationships.

TT 59:15, but the collection was reissued augmented with complements from Thomson's traversal of VW's symphonies (Greensleeves, originally with the 8th Symphony, and Lark Ascending, originally paired with Symphony No. 5): [[ASIN:B00002EPN3 Ralph Vaughan Williams: Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1; In the Fen Country; Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; etc.]].


title: folksy, as if Harris hadn't successfully managed to bend his folk material to his own, uniquely personal language

text:
I am not as familiar with the symphonic works of Harris as I am with those of Piston, Mennin, Schuman and Sessions. Still, listening recently to (and reviewing) Harris' Symphonies # 1, 5 and 6, I found them, much to my surprise, truly excellent: altogether very accessible but withouth lapsing into the trite and cliched Romantic sentimentality or pastoral prairie style typical of so many American composers of those years, epic without falling into bombast, and displaying a very original and personal sonic invention (see my reviews of [[ASIN:B0000049KU Roy Harris: Symphony 1933; Concerto for Violin and Orchestra; Symphony No. 5]] and [[ASIN:B0000049M7 Barber: Capricorn Concerto; Copland: Saga of the Prairies; Harris: Symphony No. 6 "Gettysburg"]]). So I decided to investigate more, and the 4th seemed the next step to make.

Well, those stylistic traits I enjoyed in the above-mentioned symphonies are present, but only fleetingly so. The "Folksong Symphony", written in 1940, is Harris' Big Patriotic Statement (it was even broadcast to American troops in North Africa during WW II). It elaborates on old American folksongs, Cowboy songs, songs from the Civil War and even, in the 6th movement, Negro spirituals, as a tribute to "the Negros- who so admirably represent our nation both in war and music" in the composer's own words - a nice statement, and not an obvious one back in 1940, but evidently one implied by Harris' fascination and identification with Abraham Lincoln. Movements 3 and 5 are orchestral interludes, in the form of boisterous, hoe-down-like music spiced with Harrisian turns-of-phrases. Typical Harris can also be heard "under the chorus", so to speak, in the searing violin phrases of the two slow and wistful movements, 1 and 4. But the most original, and the one in which Harris' typical style is most present, is the long (4') orchestral introduction to the 6th movement, "Negro Fantasy", as well as the ensuing, glissando-filled chorus.

Yet, overall, I feel that Harris hasn't been entirely successful in bending this folk material to his own language. As a result, the Symphony, it seems to me, sounds less "Harrisian" than just folksy, almost, at times, to the point of corniness. The chorus is also, I feel, a problem. Harris wrote it "for the range of good high school choruses, with the thought in mind that such choruses might have a work to prepare with the symphony orchestras of their cities". But generous community thought doesn't always make good music. The music is very simple, even simplistic, sounding like choral parts for an opera of Carlisle Floyd or even a Broadway Show of Rogers & Hammerstein or Jerome Kern. I can't help feeling that Harris would have been better off at resisting the temptation of making a Grand Statement and letting himself just be inspired by the original folk tunes but then discarding the chorus altogether.

The so-called American Festival Chorus doesn't sound very full and homogeneous either, but that is in keeping with the notion of a high-school chorus, I suppose. On the other hand the recorded sound from 1960 is perfectly acceptable, and there are good liner notes, reproducing Harris' own comments. But the 48:35 TT of the disc (Harris' Symphony is 38' long) is ungenerous. Despite the historical significance of this particular recording, there is a newer one by Marin Alsop (paired with Harris' famous Symphony # 3, [[ASIN:B000EBEGZK Roy Harris: Symphony No. 3; Symphony No. 4 'Folk Song Symphony']]) which is probably now a better offer. But I won't rush to buy it.

Creston's "Gregorian Chant for String Orchestra" is an expansion of a piece written for String Quartet and makes a small but welcome 11' bonus. It is broodingly and lyrically Romantic, very similar to similar works of Hanson, Barber and others from those years. Apparently, though also recorded in 1960, it gets here its first outing ever. No explanation is given to the belated release.


title: slow-moving, ritualistic, bizarre: music for the admirers of Feldman, but maybe not the best introduction to Radulescu

text:
Horatiu (or Horatio as his first name is sometimes spelt) was an interesting and often fascinating composer in his willingness to explore un-chartered territories and try outlandish musical experiments. He was born in Bucarest in 1942 but established in France since 1969, acquiring French citizenship in 1974. He recently died, on September 25 2008. He was, of course, alive and kicking when this recording was made, in 1993, on the occasion of its premiere in Strasbourg (although it is not entirely clear that this is the recording OF the premiere, since that was given in open air, and there is no such ambience here. So presumably it was recorded shortly before or after).

Although not officially associated with the French school of "Musique Spectrale" whose main proponents are Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail, he was one of the first composers, in the 1970s, to make music based on the spectral properties of sound, e.g. the physical property by which an acoustic tone will produce a spectre of overtones.

Inner Time II opus 42 is in fact a reworking of sorts of a piece originally composed in 1983 as the vis-à-vis of another piece from three years earlier, "Outer Time", bearing the same opus number. Says the composer: "Inner Time is a valley, Outer Time is a mountain. Inner goes from the highest register to the lowest to the highest, Outer from the lowest to the highest to the lowest". Outer Time exists in versions for 23 flutes, for 42 Thai gongs, for trio of alto-cello-double bass, for two concert grand pianos, for 8 brass. Inner Time was originally scored for solo clarinet, with subsequent versions for seven trios of flute-oboe-clarinet, and for solo clarinet and four accompanying clarinets. Did I say Radulescu was an experimentalist, and does that sound outlandish enough?

The present version is a new composition based on the same spectral material as the earlier composition(s). It is scored for 7 B-flat clarinets that, in live performance, are to be placed in a large circle around the audience. Radulescu (like Henry Brant) used these same-sounding instrumental ensembles to produce micro-clashes of micro-intervallic tones through which the spectral properties of sound might unfold. I won't enter the detail of the compositional processes - they are way over my head and I'm afraid to have smeared egg all over my face already.

From the listener's standpoint, what you get is a continuum of high-piercing clarinet sounds, sounding subtly "off-pitch" because written in micro-intervallic proximity, slowly moving and ritualistic, broadly descending in range but very slowly and not by much, then ascending again, over a span of 56 minutes. As the English liner notes recall, Radulescu claimed to compose "music of a special state of the soul, and not the music of action" and this is exactly what you get here. Although does elicit a certain fascination, this is not the most immediately seductive and appealing music I've heard from this composer. The clarinets are not playing in their most sensuous tonal range, not much happens in the first 30 minutes - and little more thereafter.

This is music for those who enjoy Morton Feldman. I've recently heard and reviewed a CD which I think is a better introduction to the art and unique personality of Radulescu: [[ASIN:B000KEG8P2 Intimate Rituals]] or [[ASIN:B000K7UGO8 Intimate Rituals]].

Different liner notes in French, German and English - and those in English are by far the most complete and precise, so much so that you need to be a composer or musicologist to get it all.

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title: Boult's 1954 Vaughan Williams from Pye/Nixa - see under the CD's other entry

text:
The label is PRT, Precision Records and Tapes. It made a Flash Gordon kind of appearance in the late 1980s. I don't know if the label was founded and run by Michal Dutton (who later established Dutton records, another label specializing in historical reissues), but he engineered the transfers. PRT released one big batch of CDs in 1987 (I've counted 32, including a 3-CD set with Scherchen's Messiah), in excellent transfers, of valuable material, drawing on the catalogs of Pye-Nixa (mainly recordings of Boult and Barbirolli) and Westminster (recordings of Scherchen). Then PRT was gone. The Scherchen/Westminster material later reappeared on Tahra (but in other transfers I believe), and the Barbirolli on Dutton, under the auspices of the Barbirolli society. When I've been able to compare the sonic differences between PRT and Dutton weren't very perceptible, and I think Dutton used his previous transfer. I don't think this Boult-Vaughan Williams was picked up by another label, although a label new to me, First Hand, has been relaunching the Boult Nixa recordings, including some previously on PRT (see for instance [[ASIN:B003IEAMWG 1956 Nixa-Westminster Stereo Recordings, Vol. 1 - Britten: Opp. 9, 24, 33a, 33b, 34 / Elgar: Opp. 40, 63, 68 / Walton: Symphony No. 1]] - Walton's and Elgar's symphony previously on PRT).

At the time of writing, this same CD is available under another entry, though not cheap for its LP-tailored total time of 40:22. See also my detailed review thereunder, [[ASIN:B003XGXW0S Vaughan Williams: English Folk Song Suite (arr. Gordon Jacob); Norfolk Rhapsody; Fantasia on Greensleeves; Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis]]. In capsule, Boult's later remakes during the stereo era didn't show any major interpretive evolution, other than marginal and hardly perceptible ones in his Tallis Fantasias which tended to become more spacious and majestic rather than passionate in the central, animated passage. For the other pieces it is in fact remarkable how unchanged Boult's interpretation remains. But, as good as were the Pye/Nixa sonics and Michael Dutton's transfers (with a spaciousness and clarity that would make you think almost that this was early stereo), the later recordings came, of course, in great stereo. So this issue is best reserved to historically minded collectors, the others will find more sonic beauty and more value for money in the various remakes, [[ASIN:B000MBU46W Holst: The Planets; Vaughan Williams: Tallis Fantasia/Greensleeves Fantasia/English Folk-Song Suite (Boult/Vienna State Opera Orchestra) + Music of Elgar & Britten (2-Cd Set)]], [[ASIN:B00005OLDO Holst: The Planets]], [[ASIN:B000002S2R Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music; The Lark Ascending; Fantasia on Greensleeves; English Folk Song Suite; In the Fen Country; Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1]] and[[ASIN:B000002S2O Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony; Fantasia on a Theme]].


title: Boult-Vaughan Williams 1954 for historical collectors

text:
The "folksy" Vaughan Williams of the English Folk-songs suite is not the one that interests me; the "pastoral" and impressionist Norfolk Rhapsody offers more rewards, but the towering masterpieces here are the Tallis and Greensleeves Fantasies. It is fascinating to follow Boult's interpretive evolution in Vaughan Williams, a composer he was closely associated with since his first recording of the Tallis Fantasia, made in 1940 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (reissued by Beulah with Boult's early Planets, not listed here but available on the UK sister company under ASIN B000057ERL). The recordings reissued here were made in 1954 for Pye/Nixa with an orchestra then dubbed "Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra", which was in fact the London Philharmonic. The sound as transferred by PRT (Michael Dutton) is a bit wanting in bass, but remarkably spacious and detailed, making you think that this was early stereo. Subsequently Boult made three more recordings of the Tallis Fantasia (in 1959 for Westminster with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, 1970 for Lyrita with the LPO and 1976 with the London Symphony Orchestra), two of Greensleeves (Westminster Vienna 1959 and LSO 1970), two of the English Folksongs-Suite (Westminster Vienna 1959 and LPO 1971) and one of the Norfolk Rhapsody (New Philharmonia 1968). The Westminster recordings were reissued by MCA, [[ASIN:B000MBU46W Holst: The Planets; Vaughan Williams: Tallis Fantasia/Greensleeves Fantasia/English Folk-Song Suite (Boult/Vienna State Opera Orchestra) + Music of Elgar & Britten (2-Cd Set)]], and the Tallis and Greensleeves from that series in refurbished sound as complements to Boult's recording of Holst's Planets, [[ASIN:B00005OLDO Holst: The Planets]]. The Lyrita Tallis was reissued on a collection of miscellanea, [[ASIN:B000YAQPNW Lyrita Classics]] (it is the only one I haven't heard), and the later recordings, all for HMV, were conveniently collated on [[ASIN:B000002S2R Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music; The Lark Ascending; Fantasia on Greensleeves; English Folk Song Suite; In the Fen Country; Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1]], except for the Tallis Fantasia, which serves as a filler to Boult's London Symphony, [[ASIN:B000002S2O Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony; Fantasia on a Theme]].

Permanence and change. It is in fact remarkable how unchanged Boult's Norfolk Rhapsody in 1968 his from his 1954, not just overall but section by section. It is a lush and languid Rhapsody rather than an urgent and passionate one, and the middle scherzo (starting at 5:40 in 1954, 5:34 in 1968) is playfully pedestrian rather than biting, but imperceptibly more animated the first time around.

Same remarkable permanence of conception with Greensleeves, again not only overall - 4:45 in 1954, 4:42 in 1959 and 4:31 in 1970 - but also in Boult's shaping of the piece's architecture. Indeed Boult stands out, not so much for taking the Greensleeves theme at a relatively flowing tempo (which commendably avoids any sentimentalization), but for playing the middle and constrasting section (based on the Norfolk folk song "Lovely Joan") very slowly (and introducing it every time by a biting accent), depriving it of any sense of contrast but turning instead the whole piece into a continuous, brooding dirge, or a nostalgic pavane. No criticism implied: it is very beautiful as such. The TT in 1970 is shorter by a few seconds because Boult takes that middle section imperceptibly faster: but it is still very slow.

On the other hand Boult's Tallis Fantasia fascinatingly illustrates the general and oft-observed law by which tempos have dramatically spaced out at the end of the 1950s. With only a few exceptions (Barbirolli in 1946, Stokowski in 1952), the Tallis Fantasias recorded before the stereo era (and even into it) were urgent and passionate: Walter, Karajan (both in 1953, Walter live), Steinberg, Mitropoulos (both 1958), Sargent (1959), Ormandy (1963), all took it under 15 minutes (Sargent in 15:01 - links in the comments section). Then, starting in the 1960s, the versions running more than 16 minutes became the majority: Barbirolli (1962), Silvestri, Stokowski (1975), Bernstein among them. So, what is fascinating with Boult is that, unlike Barbirolli and Stokowski, at one point, he changed, and while the change was gradual between 1940 (14:03) and 1954 (14:43), something more dramatic apparently happened between 1954 and 1959 (16:19), with 1976 even imperceptibly larger (16:28). In fact, the slowing down process is across the board, but almost imperceptible at the beginning: Boult doesn't give the impression of being faster in 1954 than in 1976, although there is an added "gravitas" later, stereo sonics helping (it is in 1959 that he is at his most ample). It is when comes the central "animato" passages after the cadenza for solo quartet (starting at 8:19 here; 7:50 in 1940, 8:56 in Vienna and 8:46 in 1976) that Boult, especially in 1976, animates less and takes a more majestic than passionate approach. Despite the 1:30-minute overall difference, the differences between 1954 and 1959 aren't so striking, because Boult in Vienna doesn't lack animation and passion in that central section either, even if it remains more reined in.

PRT, Precision Records and Tapes, made a Flash Gordon kind of appearance in the late 1980s. I don't know if the label was founded and run by Michal Dutton (who later established Dutton records, another label specializing in historical reissues), but he engineered the transfers. PRT released one big batch of CDs in 1987 (I've counted 32, including a 3-CD set with Scherchen's Messiah), in excellent transfers, of valuable material, drawing on the catalogs of Pye-Nixa (mainly recordings of Boult and Barbirolli) and Westminster (recordings of Scherchen). Then PRT was gone. The Scherchen/Westminster material later reappeared on Tahra (but in other transfers I believe), and the Barbirolli on Dutton, under the auspices of the Barbirolli society. When I've been able to compare the sonic differences between PRT and Dutton weren't very perceptible, and I think Dutton used his previous transfer. I don't think this Boult-Vaughan Williams was picked up by another label, although a label new to me, First Hand, has been relaunching the Boult Nixa recordings, including some previously on PRT (see for instance [[ASIN:B003IEAMWG 1956 Nixa-Westminster Stereo Recordings, Vol. 1 - Britten: Opp. 9, 24, 33a, 33b, 34 / Elgar: Opp. 40, 63, 68 / Walton: Symphony No. 1]] - Walton's and Elgar's symphony previously on PRT).

That said, because Boult's interpretation has remained overall so unchanged, because the CD has a paltry LP-tailored time of 40:22, because the sonics have much improved since 1954 (the Tallis Fantasia in particular benefits from the spacious stereo sonics), and finally because the later orchestras play with more refinement than the 1954 LPO, this PRT CD is best reserved to historically-minded collectors such as myself. The others will find more sonic satisfaction and more value for money in the stereo versions of Westminster and EMI.


title: the chamber approach doesn't entirely convince

text:
On paper this looked like a winner. Orpheus is the New York-based, conductorless chamber orchestra, that was very much hot stuff when the disc was recorded in December 1985. In those years they made a lot of recordings for DG, which always earned the accolades. This is what their Wikipedia entry says about them:

"Orpheus was founded in 1972, by cellist Julian Fifer and a group of fellow musicians who aspired to perform orchestral repertoire using chamber music ensemble techniques. Central to its distinctive personality is its unique practice of sharing and rotating leadership roles. For every work, the members of the orchestra select the concertmaster and the principal players for each section. These players constitute the core group, whose role is to form the initial concept of the piece and to shape the rehearsal process. In the final rehearsals, all members of the orchestra participate in refining the interpretation and execution, with members taking turns listening from the hall for balance, blend, articulation, dynamic range and clarity of expression."

Yet, I find this one disappointing. Evidently, Orpheus adopt a chamber-ensemble approach to the masterpieces for strings alone of Elgar (too bad they didn't include the short "Sospiri" for strings and harp) and Vaughan Williams rather than a symphonic one, like Barbirolli's recording the same four pieces in 1962 with the Sinfonia of London and in 1968 with the Philharmonia for the Elegy (and the CD adds Sospiri from the same year, [[ASIN:B00003ZKRL Elgar / Vaughan Williams: String Orchestra Works]]). Only, here, it doesn't work, the ensemble is not large enough and the string tone lacks the necessary bloom. Elgar's Introduction & Allegro pits a solo string quartet against the full string orchestra, in a manner modeled after the baroque Concerto Grosso with its alternation of "ripieno" and "continuo". But here it sounds at times like no more than a double string quartet. Listen at 3:38 for instance, you think you are hearing the string quartet's first violin. But no, it is the first violin desk from "continuo" string ensemble, only here it sounds reduced to one player, so when the string quartet actually enters at 3:40, there is no contrast. Certainly, the chamber approach affords moments of fine crispness, as when the strings play staccato at 4:22, the basses have a clarity rarely encountered with larger ensembles, and in the fugue Orpheus try to compensate the lack of beef with urgency and bite - but they never let you forget that the sound lacks beef, power, amplitude. When Barbirolli made his first recording of Introduction & Allegro, in 1927, which was also the premiere recording, Elgar wrote him a note of thanks, saying that he had never known that he had composed "such a big piece" (quoted in the liner notes of Dutton's reissue of Barbirolli's 1947 and 1956 recordings, [[ASIN:B00004S7QR Edward Elgar: Symphony No. 1; Enigma Variations; Introduction & Allegro; Elegy for Strings; Bavarian Dance No. 2]]). With Orpheus you won't know it either. If you want to look at it positively you can say that they perform it as presumably Elgar thought he had composed it. But sometimes interpreters know better than composers, and for impact, go to Barbirolli.

Furthermore, in the Introduction Orpheus tend to adopt a "largamente" and sentimentally tender mood, neglecting Elgar's carefully and precisely-shaped rubato  and the moments of acceleration ("molto stringendo", "a tempo", "accel.") where the mood is all but sentimental. Try for instance the phrase at 2:58: if you don't have the score, you'll never guess that Elgar wrote that "più mosso", because Orpheus take it "largamente". Barbirolli, who made something of a specialty of the composition, recording it no less than 6 times in the studio, grasped that rubato to perfection, and so did William Boughton in 1983, [[ASIN:B00000E046 Elgar: Works for String Orchestra (Introduction and Allegro; Elegy; Sospiri; Serenade; Chanson de matin; et al)]].

On the surface Orpheus' Elegy may sound beautiful enough, and it is nice to hear really crisp and articulate double basses, but it remains very superficial and emotionally unengaged. I jumped to Barbirolli immediately after - oh depth, oh emotion, oh intensity, oh sense of eternity! Orpheus' is merely pretty.

The lack of bloom of their string tone is again detrimental in the slow movement of Elgar's Serenade, as deeply-felt as they play it. Surprisingly, in the outer movements they adopt moderate tempos (though not as radically so as Barbirolli), underlining the movement's Victorian genial elegance rather than its carefree merriment. It is an approach that is in fact very close to the composer's own recording, but that was made in the early 1930s, some four decades after the work's completion, and Elgar was himself significantly slower than his own metronome indications. That the approach is a matter of interpretive choice rather than in the work's very essence is shown by the classic recording from the mono era, by Anthony Collins, who took, at least in the first movement, a much brisker and merry view ([[ASIN:B00008ERVI Collins Conducts Elgar]]), and by my favorite modern version, again William Boughton on Nimbus.

I can be more positive with Orpheus' Vaughan Williams. Sure there is a lack of orchestral bloom in the "Greensleeves fantasia" compared to larger orchestras, but the longing sweep of the music certainly comes through, and I find that the central section, based on the Norfolk folk tune "lovely Joan", benefits from the earthy and romping atmosphere lent to it by the chamber-sized textures and brisk tempo. Significantly, at 14:09, their Tallis Fantasia is one of the swiftest I've encountered in the more than 30 different versions that I have heard, very similar to Sargent ([[ASIN:B00008ETZ5 Vaughan Williams:Overture 'The Wasps'/Fantasia on 'Greensleeves'/Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis/Serenade to Music/ Toward the Unknown Region]]), Del Mar ([[ASIN:B000005GQN Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis / Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus]]), or, more significant still because also a chamber-ensemble approach, Marriner (especially his third recording, [[ASIN:B00000419V Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; In the Fen Country; Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 in E Minor; The Wasps Overture; Variations for Orchestra; Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus]]). Although there were exceptions (the premiere recording by Boyd Neel in 1936, Barbirolli's first recording in 1946, Stokowski in 1952 - see links in the comments section), the swift and passionate approach was very much the interpretive paradigm of the 1940s and 1950s: Karajan, Walter, Steinberg and even Boult in his mono recordings, Sargent in 1959, Ormandy still in 1963 were all urgent, and nobody ever came close to the passionate urgency of Mitropoulos in New York in 1958, except Pierre Monteux in concert with Boston in 1963 (published on the BSO Centennial Box); here, with Orpheus, as with Marriner and the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, I would suggest that it has less to do with the individual choice of an interpreter, as with doing what the lack of tonal amplitude of the reduced body of strings lets you do. I don't mean it as a criticism. The Orpheus sound may again lack the bloom of larger string orchestras and certainly their weight, "gravitas", spirituality, but they compensate with an urgent passion, and the beauty, the longing sweep (yes, again) of the music comes through: this is a more intimate Tallis Fantasia, not one for and from the Cathedral, but no less passionate.

Why didn't they add Elgar's Sospiri? Certainly not for want of a harp, since one is used in Greensleeves; certainly not the lack of space, since Sospiri has a 5 minutes duration and the disc totals a paltry 49:22. The reference in that very same repertoire remains Barbirolli, although I find his Elgar Serenade too Victorian and stately.


title: When you have the Berlin strings, what's missing? Just small interpretive details

text:
"Serenades"? Not quite. If they were going to avoid Dvorak and include Elgar, Bychkov and Philips might have picked Elgar's Serenade rather than his Introduction and Allegro. And how about Britten's Serenade for soprano or tenor and strings? Barber's isn't a Serenade but the music is so beautiful we shall not be stopped by such petty concerns. And it was a nice idea to include the rarer Italian Serenade of Wolf, although it is not deep fare. Incidentally, this is the same program as the one recorded by Charles Munch with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1957 (and already in great stereo), except that Wolf's Serenade substitutes for Barber's Medea ([[ASIN:B00000E6PH String Serenades]]). The Berlin strings are superb, with a great silky tone, and with such an asset to start with, that Bychkov doesn't ultimately turn out great versions hangs on small interpretive details.

For instance the way he opens Tchaikovvsky's Serenade, with a big, solemn, stately "Andante non troppo" introduction in the manner of Karajan (in his second recording from 1980, [[ASIN:B000001G4G Tschaikowsky, Dvorák: Streicherserenaden - String Serenades - Serenades pour cordes]]), arguably more than is good for a serenade and certainly way under the score's metronome mark, although it didn't bother me as much as Karajan's - maybe just because I'm getting used to the approach, since objectively the differences between the two versions are here very slight (the sound is slightly thicker with Karajan though). The Allegro moderato proper unfolds at a leisurely pace and with great lyricism rather than the kind of zest and liveliness brought to it with a brisker tempo by Boult in 1937 ([[ASIN:B00008ERVG Boult's BBC Years (Tchaikovsky: Capriccio Italien Serenade in C; Beethoven: Symphony No. 8; Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel Overture)]]), Munch or Karajan, but thankfully the light-footedness of the Berlin strings avoids any sense of plodding or dragging. Bychkov's Waltz is OK, if I want to be really nitpicking I could say that it is a bit characterless perhaps - I've heard nobody who grasped the agogics of Tchaikovsky here better than Barbirolli ([[ASIN:B00000DO90 Phoenixa Series- Tchaikovsky: Symphony no 5, Serenade]]), and Boult's brisker tempo again conveys an uncalculated freshness that nobody I've heard has quite equaled. Bychkov conducts a very slow Elegy, slower even than Barbirolli's, and he hardly even accelerates at the "poco più animato" at 1:27; consequently, it looses the movement's "Larghetto elegiaco" character, but it is quite effective nonetheless, wistful to passionately longing. After a hushed and tender intro, his Russian finale doesn't drag but it is far from dashing either and lacks a touch of robustness.

The same lack of robustness in the accents mellows down the introduction of Elgar's Introduction & Allegro and makes it a low-voltage experience - just go to Munch or Barbirolli ([[ASIN:B00003ZKRL Elgar / Vaughan Williams: String Orchestra Works]]) to hear what intensity is here. Bychkov also underplays the constant tempo changes of Elgar, his "a tempo" is taken at the same pace as the "largamente", and the "accel.", "più mosso" and "molto stringendo" hardly register, keeping it all in a steady moderato verging on the sentimental, which it doesn't need to be. The Allegro is fine, with a certain lack of beef in string tone (apparently, in order to allow for the solo string quartet to come out, the Philips engineers deprived the "continuo" string orchestra of some of its bloom) but with a biting fugue.

At 8:02, Bychkov leads a rather flowing Barber Adagio, which I hold in his favor, as it reverts to the earlier interpretive tradition of Munch and Ormandy ([[ASIN:B0000029WJ Bernstein: Candide; Barber: Adagio; other American masterpieces]]) in 1957 (7:40), before Schippers (9:01 in 1965, [[ASIN:B0000029V2 Samuel Barber / Thomas Schippers]]) and Bernstein (9:53 in 1971, [[ASIN:B0000CD5GJ Barber: Adagio for Strings; Violin Concerto / Schuman / Ives / Copland ~ Bernstein / Stern]]) established a more static model - indeed a very beautiful one, but Barber's Adagio doesn't need any milking either. Berlin's string tone is full and gorgeous, and the character is elegiac and longing rather than mourning, and a little short on intensity at the climax: in Barber's Adagio, a climax is intense when the microphones can't quite pick it up and it makes you eardrums vibrate: that is what happens with Toscanini in 1938 (now on [[ASIN:B004YNRHBO Historical Recordings]]), Stokowski in 1957 ([[ASIN:B000FPHFJE Leopold Stokowski Conducts Bartok, Barber, & Schoenberg]]), Schippers and Bernstein.

Playing Wolf's Italian Serenade with a string orchestra is a rarely exercised option, since the composer orchestrated himself his string quartet movement for full orchestra - and so imaginatively, adding a solo viola in the process, that it amounts to an entirely new composition. Bychkov takes a genial and amiable view of the string version; and it is a valid option, although I am not so happy with the way he further slows down the tempo when comes the second theme, at 1:18 - although this is only in conformity with modern interpretive usage. But there was an art of interpretation up until the late 1950s, that seems to have died away with the advent of stereo, by which performers knew that lyricism didn't need to be milked and underlined and made sentimental to fully unfold. Bychkov offers a genial Serenade, but for Italian Serenades full of zest and spirit, go to the old timers (in the orchestral version), like William Steinberg or Adrian Boult, both from 1957 (I'm now out of authorized product links, see comments section). In Philips' recording there's not quite enough stereo separation between first and second violins to differentiate them when they toss the same themes back and forth.

These are not the best versions of each composition that you can get, but again: it hangs on small details. The Berlin strings are gorgeous and the beauty of the music certainly comes through. You can find better, but nobody will be cheated even if they have only these versions in their collection.


title: The masterpiece is Mirages and Le Corre plays excellently

text:
Florent Schmitt, born in 1870 and deceased in 1958, is one of those composers who started their compositional career at the apex of the late romantic period and embraced to an extent the "impressionism" (if that is what it is) of Debussy and Ravel, but he survived long  enough to witness the first essays in serialism of Boulez. Despite the popularity of his early oratorio Psaume XLVII and ballet La Tragédie de Salomé (or because of it), he was granted a seat only in second class on posterity's train, being neither a pathbreaker like Debussy nor having a unique voice and color like Ravel or even Roussel, and possibly also because he never entirely relinquished, way into the 1930s, the massive and lush constructions of his earlier late-romantic style. And that he was accused of anti-semitism and collaborationism with the German occupant probably didn't help his reputation either. At his best though, he could write music that wasn't inferior to Debussy's and Ravel's best, and this disc, recorded in 1986, bears witness of it.

Despite their title the early Pièces romantiques op. 42 - a cycle of six pieces, composed between 1900 and 1908 - aren't without traces of impressionism, and the first, "Lied tendre", starts with harmonies that seem a direct homage to Debussy's "La Cathédrale engloutie" - but the latter was published only in 1910. The cycle is probably interesting less for its musical merit than for its full deployment of all the resources of the Schumann/Brahms/Liszt piano writing, with the melody circulating from right to left hand and middle fingers and sometimes running on two voices simultaneously, hands crossing (especially in the last piece, Souvenir) or with the melody syncopated on ternary rhythms (e.g. played not on the beat but on the second eighth-note, especially in "Piece tendre"). The moods are varied, from the Satie-like simplicity at the beginning of "Valse nostalgique" to the whimsical and mischievous hopping rhythms of "Improvisation". Regrettably the individual pieces aren't cued. This is how it goes:

Lied tendre / Barcarolle 5:13 / Valse nostalgique 8:32 / Improvisation 11:07 / Nocturne 14:20 / Souvenir 17:27.

Likewise for the three Valses-Nocturnes op. 31 from 1901 (5:02 / 12:12). As Pièces romantiques, they offer modest but genuine pleasures that probably derive more from looking at the score (downloadable, as the others, from the International Music Scores Library Project, in all gratitude) and its showering of pianistic sleight-of-hands, than from listening to the music, with its tongue-in-cheek, elegant and nonchalant atmosphere of the salon in the first two and its Schumanesque atmospheres in the last.

But the masterpiece is the two "Mirages" op. 70, and they are also later compositions. The piano writing is rich and complex, written on three staves, and the music is hugely atmospheric. The first piece, "Et Pan, au fond des blés lunaires, s'accouda" (and Pan, from the depths of the lunar corn, leaned on his elbow), was written for the Tombeau of Debussy commissioned by La Revue Musicale for its December 1920 issue, to which Falla contributed his Hommenajes for guitar, Dukas his "Plainte au loin du Faune" (Far away moaning of the Faun), Roussel "L'Accueil des muses" (The Muses' Welcome) and Ravel his Sonata for Violin and Cello, other contributors including Satie, Stravinsky, Malipiero and Bartok (and two different labels have had the excellent idea of recording the complete Tombeau, [[ASIN:B000PFUATQ Hommages musicaux]] and [[ASIN:B000A2GO9Y Music of Tribute: Claude Debussy, Vol. 2]]). If "Et Pan", full of watery textures and rippling arpeggios and grace notes, is evocative of Debussy, it is of the second book of Images ("Cloches à travers les feuilles", "Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut", "Poissons d'Or"), but it is Ravel that first came to mind, the Ravel of Jeux d'Eau and Gaspard. Likewise, its companion "La Tragique chevauchée" (The Tragic Ride, starting at 7:24), is an extraordinary revisitation of Liszt's Mephisto-Waltz by Ravel's Scarbo. Mind you: no imitation or derivation, Schmitt is entirely his own man with his own voice, and they are wonderfully evocative compositions as well as pianistic tours-de-force.

Pascal Le Corre - a student of Aldo Ciccolini, born in 1959 - plays this fiendishly difficult music with great imagination and precision and warm tonal resources. In the first Mirages, his approach is similar to the recent Vincent Larderet ([[ASIN:B004GX91PW Piano Music: Ombres Mirages Tragedie De Salome]]) rather than to John Ogdon ([[ASIN:B000005GT6 Dutilleux / Schmidt / Dukas: Piano Works]]) or Marie-Catherine Girod (with the six piano pieces from the 1920 Tombeau de Debussy, [[ASIN:B0052XYIU8 Marie-Catherine Girod: Sillages / Tombeau de Claude Debussy / Tombeau de Paul Dukas / Clairs de Lune]]), going for atmosphere rather than whimsicality and vehemence, and he plays with more subtle touch (both in the piano and the forte dynamics), more atmosphere and fuller tone than Larderet (and is better recorded too); I prefer the atmospheric approach of Le Corre to the vehement one of Girod and Ogdon, although Ogdon is truly in a class of his own here, making his Pan a mischievous and threatening rather than a mourning one. In "The Tragic Ride", Le Corre doesn't run a wild, hectic ride like Ogdon but goes for massive power instead - his is a sturdy horse of the apocalypse. The approach has the advantage of brining more sharpness to the galloping rhythm and more atmosphere to the melody that emerges halfway through. Anyway I find that both approaches work, and they do certainly better than the here plodding and underpowered Larderet.

The quality of Le Corre's playing makes one wonder why he didn't make more of a career, on stage and on recordings: apparently his only subsequent recordings were Szymanowski's works for violin and Piano with Annick Roussin ([[ASIN:B000004CBW Works for Violin & Piano]]) and the piano version of Pelleas & Melisande with Théâtre Français de la musique (not listed here; I found the listing of the DVD on the French sister company, ASIN B002V9P8TG). I'd venture: stage fright. I see in his more recent bios available on the internet (none seem very recent) that he became a specialist of "neuro-linguistic programming"- an approach created in the 1970s, now viewed as a pseudo-science, but aimed at addressing problems such as phobias, depression, habit disorder, psychosomatic illnesses and learning disorders; go to Wikipedia to know more about it - and that he wrote a book on [[ASIN:2858683891 l'art du trac]], "the Art of Stage Fright". Elementary my dear Watson.


title: Imaginative and ear-catching Avant-garde

text:
Even among the small niche of the French avant-garde, José Luis Campana (born Argentinian in 1949 but established in Paris since 1975 and a student there of Ivo Malec, Betsy Jolas, Pierre Schaeffer and Guy Reibel) isn't among the most recognized and prominent, and I probably wouldn't have bought this disc, if it hadn't been out of an interest for the label. Cybelia, a small French label operated by the violinist Eric Alberti, was active between the late LP days and the early 1990s. In its relatively short existence and among its relatively small catalog the label published some interesting stuff, sometimes more on account of the repertoire rarity than because of its musical quality, but still: like, the premiere recording of Roussel's First Symphony, the first complete cycle of Milhaud's String Quartets, the Quintet of Paul Le Flem and those of Charles Koechlin, the cello sonatas of Guy Ropartz, piano music of Florent Schmitt, Henry Sauguet, Georges Migot and Gabriel Dupont, rare orchestral music of Schmitt and Koechlin, contemporary operas of Marcel Landowski, Charles Chaynes, Renaud Gagneux, and, of course, the recording of the Paris Opera world premiere of Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise under Ozawa, [[ASIN:B00008EYFR Messiaen: Saint Francois D'Assise]]. Not so bad for a small label. Those examples show that the bulk of their catalog was devoted to French music of the late 19th Century and 20th-century traditionalists. The Campana CD was one of their rare forays into really avant-garde music, and it was on sale cheap, so I decided to give it a try, not expecting much of it, something like dry and noisy "avant-garde" music without the sonic imagination and dramatic impact that make great avant-garde music.

In fact I enjoyed it extremely, and found that, at its best, it had exactly that: the sonic imagination and dramatic impact that make the great avant-garde music. The three compositions collated on the disc date from 1985 (Imago for 16-part A Capella Chorus), 1986 (My for flute, piano, percussion, voice and two instrumental players) and 1987 (2nd String Quartet), and each runs circa 20-minutes.

"My" starts in a bang, with explosive piano-percussion and various other percussion noises. It employs a full array of contemporary performing techniques especially with the flute, uses the piano not for melody but for color (often in the high, tinker-bell registers) and clusters of sounds, and its architecture and logic are more difficult to grasp than a traditional sonata-form. I'm not even sure there is a pre-defined architecture, when reading the liner notes' explanation that "the work's structure can be defined as a succession of sonic events transcribed as they presented themselves in their initial conception. Important developments were deliberately avoided in order for those events or sonic objects to remain identical to themselves". But within its options it is sonically imaginative, with always something new catching the ear. Nothing possessive in the piece's title, it was written for and premiered by the two performers who play it here, flautist Patrice Bocquillon and pianist Dominique My (that's a she), who gives it the title. They play not only their own instruments but also percussion (I'm not sure what instrument enters softly at 18:41, harmonium, accordion or electric organ) and My (Dominique, I mean) sings. She's a stupendous performer, not only an accomplished pianist but a trained soprano, and Campana's writing for the voice doesn't just call for grumbles and groans and moans and whistling like most (all?) contemporary pieces using performers' vocals, but real (wordless) singing: just listen to the end, at 17:30. Campana's melodic writing for the voice, accompanied by sparse percussion, caressing basso flute or apparently computer-processsed resonance, are mysterious, ritual-like, oriental-sounding, beautiful. Flautists with a mind set on daring explorations are strongly advised to look at My (and to put on ads for a pianist equally skilled as a soprano).

 "Imago" for A Cappella Chorus is equally impressive. It uses electronic sounds and processing much more conspicuously than My, starting with frightening sounds evoking some monster from the abyss. The compositions' theme is intriguing. Campana was also trained as a clinical psychologist, and Imago sets out to depict a session of group therapy. When you think of it, it is in fact an ideal subject for contemporary choral writing in the wake of Berio, Nono and Ligeti (and I'll let you figure out if this is meant seriously or tongue-in-cheek). It enables Campana to write a fine piece of contemporary music-theatre, using here again the full array of vocal techniques developed by and after the composers just mentioned: besides singing, cries, shouts, whispering, glissandi, amplified laughs, words, onomatopoeia, mixing them with electronic sounds. The result is, again, imaginative, ear-catching and dramatic. Campana also has a sense of humor. I enjoyed particularly the obsessively repeated line "I'm someone I'm someone I'm someone I'm someone I'm someone I'm someone I'm nobody" (maybe we should all take Group therapy to be so able to finally face the hard truth), and this one: "do you really need a theme"? This is the recording of the premiere, and the performers sound exceptionally good and invested.

The Second String Quartet is a tougher nut - avant-garde still, again going for the eerie sounds rather than for seductive melody, but either because it is in the nature of the medium, or (rather) because of Campana's less imaginative use of its tonal possibilities (with no electronics here), the quartet sounds full of unrelenting, exacerbated, ear-piercing tension, assuaged by no moment of truly mesmerizing tonal invention.

Still, two out of three is a pretty good average for contemporary creation and makes the CD a worthwile acquisition for those with a taste for that kind of music.

TT 63:21, the liner notes' English translation is inept. "The work's structure can be defined as a succession of sonic events transcribed as they presented themselves in their initial conception" becomes "the work structure is defined by initial conception transcribed into a sequence of sound events".