title: ...and who cares if it isn't Mahler and Shostakovich who wrote it

text:
wow. Until now Polish-born, Russian established Mieczyslaw (or Moishei) Vainberg (alternately spelled Weinberg, Vajnberg or Wajnberg) was little more than a name to me, one of those Soviet composers in the wake of Shostakovich that seem to enjoy a burgeoning cult following... But until now there was just too much vying for limited listening time, and I just kept the name Vainberg in a corner of my consciousness, with a question mark above it. Plus, a guy who composed 22 symphonies let me anticipate too much Myaskovsky rather than Shostakovich... I bought this CD as an aside to another one purchased with an eBay seller - you know, the thing yo do to benefit from the reduced postage cost for combined shipment. Well: wow.

Symphony No. 19 op. 142, a late work premiered in 1986, in one continuous movement of, here, 33:30, sounds like a combination of the Adagio of Mahler's 10th and of Shostakovich, but it also has the dramatic sweep of the best American symphonies of the 1930s to 1950s. But Vainberg's Symphony rises to climaxes of intensity and violence that go beyond Shostakovich, in pounding power, angularity and aggressiveness. It is overall a grim and dramatic work, with only a few and short-lived rays of pastoral relief and moments of great passionate, Mahlerian intensity. This is an extraordinary work, if you are partial to non-avant-garde 20th century language. The music of Alan Pettersson comes to mind as well, also because both composers seem to share a taste for the symphonic language. 22 symphonies???? I'm going to have to break the piggy bank again.

Vainberg's "Chamber Symphonies" are no different from his other symphonies, he called them that way because he himself got awed by the high number of his Symphonies and didn't want to add more. So four Chamber Symphonies makes it 26 symphonies to break one's piggy bank for. The Mahler/Shostakovich connection continues in the Chamber Symphony No. 3 op. 151 for strings from 1991, almost to the point of pastiche (of Mahler's Adagio from the 10th Symphony) in the first movement, while the second starts like one of those sardonic and aggressive Shostakovich Scherzos, but evolves into a more grim and dramatic mood. The third movement is another Adagio, but this one more like Shostakovich, grim, desperate and intense. When a neo-baroque theme erupts at 3:19 in the Finale from what had been until then elegiac music over an obsessive marching bass pizzicato, and even more when it returns at 8:26 in a romantically lush environment of strings, one thinks of Michael Tippett's Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli.

If all this sounds somewhat derivative, it is. But it's great derivation. When you listen to an intensely beautiful Adagio of Mahler or Shostakovich, who cares if it wasn't composed by Mahler or Shostakovich. Both works are live concert performances from respectively November 1986 and November 1991 - possibly the premieres of both works, in fact, although the liner aren't specific about it - and have more than their share of coughers, but in view of the significance of the music, it doesn't matter. TT 65 :25.


title: excellent recital of Italian Renaissance music, impaired by the absence of texts

text:
Excellent recital of Italian Renaissance music, recorded in 1986 by IMP Classics, centered around Florence and music composed for the Carnival period (May 1 - June 14) in the days of Lorenzo de' Medici (1469 - 1492) and the Dutch composer established in Florence, Heinrich Isaac. Good and varied mixture of instrumental (lute & guitar, drum, recorder & shawn, sackbuts, cornett, viol) and vocal (always multiple voices, madrigal like), and, within the madrigals, of a cappella and accompanied, and good and varied mixture of the lively-playful and meditative-solemn. Other than the instruments, th booklet credits three (male) singers as comprising London Pro Musica, counter-tenor and two tenors, but I hear four including a basso, so I am supposing that conductor Bernard Thomas also sings. London Pro Muica was an ensemble specializing in Renaissance music, especially  that of Italy, widely toured in Great Britain and continental Europe. There's still a London Pro Musica choir active today, but it is based in London... Ontario, Canada (!!!), and I doubt that it has anything to do with this earlier Renaissance ensemble. There's also a London Pro Musica publisher of ancient music, and this one based in London England, so maybe that is a distant offshoot of the performing ensemble, but I don't know.

All that is fine, except for the absence of texts and translations of the madrigals sung, which hampers enjoyment. As everyone with a taste for Italian madrigals will know, madrigals aren't just "pure" music, intertwining melodic lines meant to be vaguely listened to. No, they are setting of words, poetry, and if you can't follow closely the words, you just remain at the surface, you are condemned to listen only vaguely. Layer of disappointment, then, in a recital which could have been highly enjoyable.

IMP was an interesting English label, first set up by Pickwick in the early days of the CD, then passed on to Carlton Classics in the mid 1990s, and they disappeared around the end of that decade. Many of their installments sell for 1 penny and many more for less than a pound on the UK sister company. How can one resist. I've bought hundreds.


title: a significant occasion, but problematic transfers of a sonically problematic source

text:
The series of concerts given at the end of September 1947 by  Menuhin and Furtwängler with the Berlin Philharmonic were an important event, and even a political statement. The ban on Furtwängler's post-war conducting activities in Germany had recently been lifted after months of bureaucratic procrastination (the ban HAD been lifted in Austria earlier, and he had also given concerts in Italy), and on May 25 of the same year the German conductor was able to step back onto the podium in Berlin, with his Berlin Philharmonic, in a program consisting of Beethoven's 6th and 5th symphonies.

In the Fall of 1945, upon a visit to recently liberated France, Menuhin had asked his French colleagues which German conductor they'd accept to play with and they had all unanimsously answered: Furtwängler. So after the end of the war he had been anxious to play with him. It happened first in Salzburg, on August 13, 1947 with the Vienna Philharmonic, in Brahms' Violin concerto. They convened again in Lucerne at the end of August for a charity concert with Beethoven's Concerto and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, on the occasion of which they recorded it for HMV, on the 28th and 29th (reissued by Testament in a great transfer, [[ASIN:B000003XKA Beethoven: Violin Concerto; Romances Nos. 1 & 2]]). So they met again a month later for three repeat concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic, given on the 28th, 29th and 30th, and the same Concerto was played again on October 2 at the Deutsche Staatsoper in the Soviet sector, but with the Berliner Staatskapelle Orchestra (I was made aware of this chronology by a partial listing of Menuhin's concert schedule available online).

But this wasn't Lucerne or Vienna or Salzburg, it was Berlin, still lying in the rubble of the war bombings, and Menuhin  met an immense campaign of hostility from some American Jewish circles for siding with the ennemy, the man whom they saw as a Nazi cronie. But Menuhin didn't view Furtwängler like that; he saw him as an immense musician, one who lived only for and with music, and as a man who had remained in Germany only to protect German culture (and many Jewish musicians) against the Nazis, and he was ready to brave the ire of his compatriots.

There is a question mark on which of the three concerts this is exactly. The Furtwängler discographies say 30 september, and that's also the date given by Tahra as well as by Music & Arts in their own edition (CD-708, [[ASIN:B000001OF8 Concerto Violin/Suite Orchestra 3]]). But the recent Audite set of Furtwängler's broadcast Berlin concerts, [[ASIN:B0029LJ9IM Edition Wilhelm Furtwängler - The Complete RIAS Recordings]], ascribes it to the 28th. The two performances on Tahra and Audite sure do sound alike, but after all, wouldn't they, three days apart, and a number of pointers suggest that they could in fact be different: Tahra's performance runs slower than Audite's, and by a ratio of 3.5 % in the first movement, which is far from insignificant (TT 24:29 vs 23:40). Yet I detect no significant pitch difference. Additionally, the ratio of diffference is not the same in the three movements (it is closer to 2.5 in the two others). However, the pattern of stage noises and coughs contradicts the notion. Certainly, some are on Tahra that are not on Audite, but that could be, and seems to be the effect of deft electronic erasing (and if so, kudos to Audite for erasing so much; on Tahra, end of September in Berlin sounds like hard winter and congested throats; listen to Audite's first movement at 7:38, what sounds like some indistinct, coarse but soft stage noise, is in fact a gigantic cough at 7:55 on Tahra); and on the other hand some are on Tahra that are also distinctly on Audite, and the same is true with a few minuscule performance glitches. So it seems that they are indeed the same performance after all, with the transfer engineer of Tahra or Audite having electronically adjusted pitch but not the running speed of whichever source they had. Whether it is the concert of the 28th or the 30th, or a mixture of both, is an unsolved point (there is even an edition - apparently bootleg - that takes no chances and says 28-30 September, [[ASIN:B00545UKYW Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: A Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, Op. 21 / Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61 (Furtwangler Rare Live Series, Vol. 5) (28-30 September 1947)]]). I don't have the Music & Arts edition, but the timings given on the back cover are, in the first movement, more compatible with Audite's than Tahra's (23:51, and there's a separation blank in there), exactly the same as Audite's in the Larghetto, but too short in the Finale to be compatible with either Audite or Tahra. So other running speeds for what is, presumably, the same performance?

I don't suppose the stage manager of the concert had his stopwatch and took note of the exact running time of the actual concert for purpose of counting overtime, so we'll never know which edition is the most faithful representation of the actual event. I will presume that it is the Audite edition, because it claims to have worked from the concert's original tapes kept in the archive of the Berlin Radio. It also comes in marginally but perceptibly better sound than Tahra's transfer, not just by dint of its reduced coughs and stage noises, but also more transparent and precise sonics, less muffled and with less background noise.

What neither Tahra's nor Audite's engineers did away with is the sound of the heavy airliners flying over Berlin, and it is for the better: it really gives a sense of being there, then. And there and then, one can sense the tension, the excitement of the occasion. Naturally the difference in running speeds changes, marginally but perceptibly, the interpretive picture. Among the five recordings of the Concerto left by Furtwängler - two more with Menuhin in the studio, the 1947 Lucerne version and the April 1953 remake with the Philharmonia Orchestra ([[ASIN:B000002SG3 Beethoven, Mendelssohn: Violin Concertos (Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61 / Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64)]]), plus  the January 1944 wartime performance with Erich Röhn, [[ASIN:B00000E4EZ Beethoven: Violin Concerto, Op. 61 / Coriolan Overture, Op. 62]], and the May 1953 live with Wolfgang Schneiderhan, [[ASIN:B00028DNP4 Beethoven: Symphony No. 5, Violin Concerto]] - Audite's transfer makes the first movement the swiftest and Tahra's the broadest! Here are the timings up to the cadenza:

Röhn 1944 19:31
Menuhin Lucerne 19:44
Menuhin Berlin 19:25 (Audite) or 20:06 (Tahra)
Menuhin Philharmonia 19:49
Schneiderhan 19:39

It means also that, for nearly a decade, there was never more than a 3.5 percent difference of overall timing in any of Furtwängler's documented recordings of the first movement, whichever fiddler he did it with - which does leave space for more variance within the movement. And indeed, more than these matters of "absolute" tempo and timing (and I don't know how much I would have perceived an interpretive difference between Audite and Tahra if I hadn't been alerted by the clock, or between Tahra's transfer and Menuhin-Furtwängler's Lucerne recording - I listened to Audite first, where the difference is more pronounced), what makes this performance stand out is its even greater flexibility of tempo. Aside from the huge power he brought the orchestral outbursts, Furtwängler is often viewed (and was viewed by me when I knew less) as a conductor always favoring very deliberate tempos, but more than that, the true hallmark of his conducting style - more even in concert than in the studio, especially the studio recordings he made for EMI at the end of his life - was the extreme flexibility of his pulse. He may have started with deliberate tempos (and he did in all his recordings of Beethoven's Violin Concerto), but whenever dynamics rose and more dramatic moments approached, he would step down on the gas pedal and could reach truly Toscanininian frenzy. Such freedom of pulse and extreme rubato is easily associated with an "old world" style of music-making. It fell out of fashion somewhere in the 1930s and 1940s (if ever it was truly a "fashion", rather than the interpretive choice of individual musicians). You can hear it in the orchestral tutti of Bruno Walter's 1932 recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto with Szigeti ([[ASIN:B000026CK9 Bruno Walter, V.7, Overtures, Symphony #6, Violin Concerto and Emperor Piano Concerto.]]) - not any more in their 1947 New York remake ([[ASIN:B00000DSHD Beethoven: Violin Concerto; Violin Sonata No. 5 "Spring"]]). Heard today it would probably make everybody laugh and jeer - at the lack of discipline, the arbitrary waywardness, the readiness to let instinct and the spur of the moment override architectural coherence and respect of the score.

But not with Furtwängler, and this is, I believe, the very essence of his art of conducting, and the reason why he viewed Toscanini, disparagingly, as a mere "time-beater". You can hear it here as early as the first fortissimo tutti in the orchestral introduction (Audite 1:04, Tahra 1:07), where Furtwängler noticeably accelerates, only to return to the opening, unhurried tempo when enters the second theme on the woodwinds (A 1:34 - T 1:38). You have it with the second orchestral fortissimo tutti at 8:43 (Audite 8:25), which has its equivalent only in the 1944 performance with Röhn (and it's no coincidence that, on Audite's transfer, Furtwängler reaches the same point at exactly the same timing... and that the soloist should reenter on his ascending scale at 10:25, exactly like Menuhin). On Audite's transfer it is, as much as the imperceptibly faster basic pulse, that constant playing accordion with tempo that explains the overall swiftness of the performance, and even in Tahra's, the impression of urgency, even if it is belied by the clock.

The Largehetto runs along the same interpretive lines as Menuhin-Furtwängler's Lucerne recording, held-back and hushed, just this slightly more animated (even in Tahra's transfer) but again that's an information given by the clock rather than something truly perceptible. It is in their 1953 studio remake that Menuhin and Furtwängler strayed from their previous model (which was also Furtwängler's in his two other concert performances, with Röhn in January 1944 and Schneiderhan in 1953) and adopted a more flowing pace, to a result that, to my ears, sounds less deeply-felt. Furtwängler, with or without Menuhin, was never one to take a brisk and boisterous Finale ala Heifetz, although he usually made up in power and vigor what he lost in pacing (only the 1953 studio version elicits a slight sense of plodding at times, I find). Here again, Audite vs Tahra makes a small difference, but in either case the difference with Lucerne isn't significant. It is the version with Röhn that is the most animated, and the one with the Philharmonia that is the most unhurried.

But whatever its interpretive merits and the sense of occasion that pervades it, this version can serve as no more than a document and certainly not replace Furtwängler's other recordings of the Concerto, with or without Menuhin. It is not principally that Menuhin has his share of small technical glitches and pitch vagaries (most conspicuous at 23:49 - Audite's 23:01) - one could easily do with that, and with the quantiy of coughs that evening, although those are more annoying, especially on Tahra's transfer. But the sonics are really an impediment to musical enjoyment. The orchestra sounds distant, and the violin even more. When I first listened it gave me the impression the Menuhin was standing behind the orchestra. The ear adjusts I guess (and it helps if your system allows to turn up the volume really high), and after repeated listenings of both Tahra and Audite's transfers it didn't bother me as much as it did at the beginning, but jumping to the other recordings, well, you hear the difference. Enjoyment is not just a function of the "objective" interpretive parameters, tempo, phrasings. It also derives from the physical, sensuous experience of the violin tone and orchestral color and impact. You don't get it here.

And then there's the unsettling thought that it lies on the listener to choose his preferred "performance of 30 september 1947". Do you want it marginally more spacious and mellow? It's Tahra's. Do you want it slightly (but perceptibly) more urgent and tense? it's Audite. Of course it is tempting the associate the notion of a live performance, and of such a significant one as this, with more urgent tempos. Also, Audite's tempos makes this version stand out more among Furtwängler's other recordings than Tahra's. But in truth we don't know, and it's almost as if there were six, and not five, different Furtwängler versions, and Tahra's is really for the Furtwängler specialist and completist. The two truly important ones are the 1944 performance with Röhn and the 1947 Lucerne recording with Menuhin. The 1953 live with Schneiderhan comes next, then the 1953 Philharmonia recording with Menuhin, then Audite's transfer of this performance. So Tahra's only your 6th Furtwängler version.

This CD release, Tahra FURT 1016, was one of the label's early releases, made in 1997. They reissued it later, in the same transfer, on a 4-CD Furtwängler box, [[ASIN:B0000634VL Wilhelm Furtwangler and the Berlin Philharmonic (Live 1947-1953)]], which collated more of these early Tahra Furtwängler releases, including  Furtwängler's 25 May 1947 return concert in Berlin, which is also on the Audite set, but in sonics that are not evidently superior to Tahra's.


title: More attractive edition elsewhere

text:
Let me make this one short:

1. There's controversy around the merits of this version with Klemperer, Menuhin's 4th studio recording, from 1966. I think it's great.

2. There's a much more attractive edition, not only because it sells for less than a buck at the time of writing, but also because it pairs the Violin Concerto with the two Beethoven Romances, recorded with the Philharmonia Orchestra under John Pritchard in 1960: [[ASIN:B00000DOBH Beethoven: Violin Concerto / Romances Nos. 1 & 2]]. Interpretively they aren't so good, as Menuhin offers a much too solemn and sentimental approach for the music's own good. But the pairing remains more coherent and sastisfactory than these two Overtures - and the price is even more satisfactory, of course. You will find under that entry my very detailed review, expounding what faults critics have found with Menuhin-Klemperer's version of the Violin Concerto, and why I think they are entirely off the mark.

3. In fact what critics have said against this version you will find in the review of the other reviewer, Colloredo of Caracas. He has in fact copied and pasted (but without citing his source and passing it off as his own, tut tut tut... technically it's called "plagiarism") the review of Edward Greenfield published in the November 1966 issue of The Gramophone. But don't trust Greenfield: much of what he says is crap, independent even of the value judgment, simply in his description of the Klemperer performance vs the other ones. See my review under the other entry for the details.


title: the one and only Mirushitein

text:
This entry's labeling is so ineptly and excrutiatingly funny that I'm not going to change it. "Batsuha:Baiorinkiyousoukiyokushi" by an artist called "Mirushitein", really !!! This definitely beats the Japanese edition of "Halord in Itary by Hectol Belrioz". Usually, when I happen on badly labeled Amazon entries, making the CD in question impossible to find unless you have its barcode number (which is how I find many of them), I will send an update product info request, and usually it'll be accepted by Amazon. But this here is too funny to change it. Readers who'd chance here: don't spoil it either!

That said, unless you've been forwarded here thanks to the reference I made to it in my review of the French 4-CD set [[ASIN:B000OCYGPO Les Introuvables de Nathan Milstein]], I don't know who would chance on this entry. The obvious search on "Bach Vivaldi Milstein" certainly doesn't yield it.

But after all, I found it. I was alerted to its existence thanks to an eBay seller. When I had reviewed the French Milstein Introuvables set, back in July 2008, it hadn't been issued yet. That Introuvables set offered seven Vivaldi Concertos played and conducted by Milstein, which were apparently for the first time on CD. They were recorded between 1962 and 1966 and published not on Capitol as the rest of the Milstein material on Introuvables, but on Angel. Ten in all had come out in three instalments: Angel S-36001 (RV 186, 350, 352) which also had P. 419 (= RV 199; only the old Pincherle catalogue numbers were given back then), S-36004 (213, 340 and 233, with P. 208/RV 234 left out) and S-36010 (R 343, with P. 258/RV 242 left out). The latter LP also had Bach's BWV 1041 & 1042. In the series came also S-36006 with Vivaldi's Concerto for 2 Violins op 3-11 (featured on another Milstein 6-CD compilation,  [[ASIN:B000002S53 The Art of Nathan Milstein]]), paired with Bach's Double Concerto and Sonata for two Violins BWV 1037, with Milstein partnered by Erica Morini. Back in July 2008 I commented that "all that Bach is still unreissued on CD".

Not anymore, then. This twofer came out in Japan in 2011, EMI Tower Records Classical Treasures QIAG 50066-67, barcode 4997184920162. I've uploaded the front and back cover photos. All the Bach is there, but only, alas, one of the three missing Vivaldis: RV 242/P 258. The compilation includes op. 3-11 (e.g. RV 565), but left out are still P 208/RV 234 and P 419/RV 199.

My four stars are, to an extent, arbitrary: I don't have this twofer, I haven't heard Milstein's Bach. But I HAVE listened to the seven Vivaldi Concertos that are both here and on the Introuvables set (although I don't know how the sonics compare). This is what I wrote of them in my review of the Introuvables set: "Of course, this is not how we are accustomed of hearing Vivaldi these days, with textures too Romantic and lush-sounding and no ornamentation, but still Milstein was at the avant-garde of his days for using, not an overbloated symphony orchestra, but a small ensemble with (discreet) continuo, which he conducted. Excellent stereo sound".

Anyway, if only for Bach, this is indispensable to the Mirushitein fan. I'm sure there are more of those in Japan than here, though.

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title: A convenient pairing of two of Furtwängler's Beethoven Concerto recordings pirated from Tahra

text:
In the simplistic, comfortable and predictable record-collecting world in which I live, there are, when it comes to reissues of historical recordings, two categories: the legitimate, serious labels like Music & Arts, Tahra, Biddulph, Pearl, APR, Dutton, Naxos Historical, or the big labels like EMI, RCA or DG when they reissue their past catalog, who go back to the 78rpm or broadcast sources and use the services of sound wizards with good sets of ears, and the bootleg labels, often Italian (although some Germans seem to have crept in), like Archipel, Iron Needle, Arkadia, Andromeda, The Piano Library, Grammofono, Arlecchino, Classico d'Oro, TIM or Membran, putting out recordings often or always pirated from the legits, and oftentimes in dreadful and overfiltered sound that testifies to machines without ears. Those, I avoid by principle.

Every rule calls for exceptions, though. As other collectors, I am partial to the Dante label, because, although some of their releases were demonstrably pirated from legits, this wasn't systematically the case, and the catalog of more than 800 CDs of historical reissues they were able to bring out during their 10-year lifespan, some still today unavailable elsewhere, builds a unique and invaluable archive. Another exception is when the recording I am coveting, if it was brought out by a legitimate label, is so hard-to-find and so ludicrously expensive when you do, and the pirate edition so cheap, that I think, "oh what the heck, at that price I can bear to suffer dreadful and overfilted sonics, at least I'll have a notion of what the performance is like, until I can find the legitimate release at an affordable price".

But in the real world things are sometimes a little more complicated than that. To make a long story short, I have various editions of these two Concertos conducted by Furtwängler in live performance, from legits and bootleg labels, including this one from Archipel. They are cases where I bought the bootlegs first on the rationale stated above, then was able to find the legits at affordable prices.

Although Furtwängler performed all of Beethoven's Concertos including the Triple, there are recordings left, live or studio, only of the Violin Concerto (one with Erich Röhn, three with Menuhin including two in the studio and one with Wolfgang Schneiderhan), these of Piano Concertos No. 1 (a live performance given at the Lucerne Festival on August 27 1947 with the Swiss pianist Adrian Aeschbacher) and 4 (apparently a conflation of live performances given with Conrad Hansen and the Berlin Philharmonic between 30 October and 3 November 1943), another live performance of the 4th from 1952 with the Radio Orchestra of Rome and Pietro Scarpini, [[ASIN:B00005UKK1 Pietro Scarpini Edition: Beethoven]] (a private archive is also said to exist of a 1941 performance with Kempff), and the famous 1951 EMI studio recording of the Emperor with Edwin Fischer, [[ASIN:B00000DNZY References - Beethoven: Piano Concerto no 5, etc / Fischer]].

So, I have, other than this Archipel release from 2002, Music & Arts' CD-839, [[ASIN:B000006KGO Piano Concerti 1 & 4]], released in 1994, with the same pairing (how I found that one for cheap enough is a complicated story of its own, not entirely relevant here, see my review of the Music & Arts CD) and Hansen's 4th Piano Concerto on two different editions:  Dante's Lys 070, volume 6 of their Furtwängler-Beethoven cycle, [[ASIN:B00000DMMT L'Heritage de Wilhelm Furtwängler - Cycle Beethoven Volume 6: Symphony No. 5 (recorded 1926); Concerto for piano No. 4 (recorded 1943)]] (released in 1996 and paired with Furtwängler's first, and studio, recording of the 5th Symphony from 1926) and Tahra's TAH 4004, [[ASIN:B003DQWPH4 Furtwängler Dirigiert Beethoven]] (where it is paired with Furtwängler's live wartime performance of the same 5th Symphony). The latter is from 2010, but in fact it is a reissue from a previous 6-CD set of Tahra from 1999, FURT 1034-39, [[ASIN:B00004VHP2 Wilhelm Furtwaengler and Berlin Philharmonic Wartime Archives of Thr Rrg]].

What I haven't found yet for a price I'd be happy to pay is Tahra's edition of the First Piano Concerto with Aeschbacher, FURT 1028-29, an attractive twofer with the complete August 27 1947 Lucerne concert, [[ASIN:B00000662T Concert in Lucerne: August 20 1947]]. The same performance is also on Music & Arts CD-1018, [[ASIN:B0000061FZ Wilhelm Furtwangler at the Lucerne Festival]], a 4-CD set documenting various Furtwängler-Lucerne performances; but I assume (although I am not certain) that it is the same transfer as the one on my Music & Arts CD-839.

But as much as I'd like to endorse the legits against the bootleg labels, it isn't so entirely simple here. The sonics in the First Piano Concerto on Music & Arts CD-839 are appalling, and much worse than Archipel's. Dynamic levels are compressed, sounding as if you were hearing the concert from the venue's entrance hall, the wrong side of the auditorium's closed doors (and with a soft background of what sounds like radio static, but could also be shellac surface noise), and when comes the first fortissimo tutti at 0:26, it sounds as if someone had suddenly jerked the db control knob down. Ghastly. By comparison, Archipel's sonics are much more present and vivid and very acceptable for 1947. The same soft radio static (?) is present, but kept in much better check, with a much better music/static ratio (there is only a point in the Finale where Archipel's static becomes somewhat obtrusive, from 2:57 to 3:15). I can only suppose that both Music & Arts and Archipel (but please bear in mind that I am talking here of "Archipel" to make it simple. Always translate in "whoever Archipel plundered their release from", more about that below) had access to a recording of the broadcast, but Archipel's had been made on a much better equipment, or whichever source they had in their possession was much closer to the first-generation recording. Music & Arts' back cover does confess that the transfers were made "from lacquer discs which had wow, limited fidelity and surface noise", and Archipel's back cover claims "from original broadcast tapes", but, as will be shown below, the latter's claims do not deserve trust.

A further enigma is that both versions have the same little glitch, a missing beat at 3:28 (3:30 on Archipel - the two recordings don't run exactly at the same speed) in the first movement. Given the huge sonic superiority of Archipel's 2002 release, it is obvious that they (or rather, the label and edition from which they tapped) worked from a different source than the one used by Music & Arts in 1994, so I can only suppose that the performance wasn't aired live but after some editing had been done, and that, either by mistake or to hide a glaring performance mistake, the beat in question had been excised before broadcast, meaning that any source deriving from the broadcast will reproduce it.

Out of "professional" conscientiousness, I listened to Music & Arts up to the piano's entry. When it enters, at 2:55 (2:57 on Archipel), it sounds slightly out-of-tune and "honkey-tonk". But listening to Archipel reveals that it wasn't the piano, which there sounds perfectly firm and clear;so it was, again, Music & Arts' inferior source or transfers. There's also the point in the Finale where Archipel's static or shellac noise becomes somewhat obtrusive that I wanted to check on Music & Arts. Well, it is kept softer, but with a piano so muffled and an orchestra so distant and dulled that I found it unlistenable. That, in all honesty, was the limit to my professional conscientiousness: I quit there and, with a sense of relief, returned to Archipel.

Now, you'd think it was a problem with whichever source Music & Arts had access to for the First Piano Concerto, and that their transfer of the 4th with Hansen ("from Magnetofon tapes which had occasional flutter and peak overload", they say), a recording which had much currency since its initial publication on a Unicorn LP in 1969, would be devoid of such sonic blemishes. Not even. On comparison with Archipel's, it sounds like one of those overfiltered dubs I associate with Italian bootleg labels, with a disagreeably tubby sound on both piano and orchestra, the kind of sound you might have expected to hear in a 1943 movie, rather than on a sound recording. Incidentally, here it is obvious that Dante pirated Music & Arts: the sonics and timing of HPC 070 are exactly the same (Archipel's transfer runs a little longer). Archipel's sonics aren't ideal, lacking a touch of brilliance and with some harshness in the orchestral fortes, but they are incomparably fuller and more comfortable than Music & Arts.

Yes but. Now, turning to Tahra TAH 4004 with Hansen's Fourth Piano Concerto, itself a reissue from the 1999 6-CD set FURT 1034-39, it becomes obvious where Archipel in 2002 pirated their 4th from: sonics, timings, they're exactly the same. So now, I'm ready to bet to Archipel's First with Aeschbacher also comes from Tahra's  FURT 1028-29, the complete August 27 1947 Lucerne concert.

I know that many music lovers are ready to give short-shrift to those considerations of "authenticity" vs piracy. Heck, wasn't I, if I couldn't find the legitimate issues at affordable prices? The thinking is "what the heck if it's pirated, as long as it's cheap and available and sonically as good. Welcome pirates! Give us more!". The consideration that this widespread piracy will run the legits out of business and ultimately dry up the well from which the pirates suck, only remotely comes into consideration. We prefer to dance on the volcano.

Only a remote perspective, really? Tahra has announced, a few months ago, that it ceased producing new releases and would from now on only sell their backlog; they sold so few copies, they say, that it wasn't worthwhile anymore.

This is starting to look like Lion Kingdom after Scar and the Hyenas took possession.

Remains that Archipel's pairing is an attractive one, to make one regret that Tahra didn't offer it in another reissue (although Tahra's single TAH 4000 is also very coherent, with Furtwängler's Beethoven Fifth from the same year 1943 as the Fourth Piano Concerto). So although I am a bit disheartened at the thought that this Archipel edition may have been a small stone to Tahra's grave, a few interpretive comments do remain in order.

When you approach this 1947 performance of Piano Concerto No. 1 from its past rather than its future, with in mind the recordings of Beethoven's First that were made before the 1950s, those of Schnabel (with Sargent in 1932), Gieseking (two versions, with Hans Rosbaud in 1937 and Rafael Kubelik in 1948) or Ania Dorfmann with Toscanini (two versions in 1944 and 1945) rather than those of Kempff-to-Pollini by way of Barenboïm-Klemperer (product links in the comments section), what is immediately perceptible is the geniality of approach of Furtwängler, the robust but somewhat pedestrian gait he lends to the orchestral introduction, closer to an "Allegro moderato" than to the "Allegro con brio" indicated by Beethoven.

That said, the phrasings are kept crisp (woodwinds, although the oboe's tone is piercing and undistinguished) and muscular and the expansiveness of tempo is not excessive either, far from the impossibly heavy-footed and solemn approach of Böhm with Gulda in 1951 or Karajan in both his recordings, with Eschenbach in 1966 and Weissenberg in 1977. The 2:57 it takes Furtwängler to play the orchestral introduction is certainly more expansive than Toscanini's, Rosbaud's or Kubelik's 2:20 to 2:33, but not much more deliberate than Schnabel's 2:53, although the movement as a whole unfolds more expansively than that. The martial power and muscularity of Furtwängler's tutti pulls the music away from the Mozartean buoyancy and jubilation brought to it by Rosbaud and Kubelik, but in favor of a more... Beethovenian allure, which is not an entirely wrong choice after all, and it is only in some of the more lyrical sections of the first movement, as the one starting at 4:14, that Furtwängler makes the music sound a little too prissy and affected. Aeschbacher, while not entirely free of a few digital glitches, also plays with a welcome verve, crispness and muscularity. A point of interest is that Aeschbacher plays Beethoven's rare first cadenza (out of three - it is the third, also the longest and wildest, that is most often played) - with some smudged runs it seemed to me, but the sense of power and wild improvisation is conveyed.

Again the Largo is very expansive - in fact, it is the tempo of Schnabel with Sargent, where Gieseking and Dorfmann-Toscanini had adopted a much more flowing approach. But unlike Schnabel, Aeschbacher, at least as recorded here, doesn't have the subtlety of touch to make it work, his is very percussive and it ruins any sense of "time-suspended" dreaminess that the music could have conveyed. That is possibly what led Furtwängler specialist and discographer John Ardoin, reproduced in the liner notes of the Music & Arts release, to accuse him of being "faceless" and of "gliding across the top of the notes" with "little depth of feeling", although this is true only of the Largo where Ardoin makes it a general comment. That Furtwängler doesn't always keep the strings' dynamics at the piano indicated by Beethoven, and the harshness of their fortes don't necessarily help either (6:25). The Finale isn't rushed but it is played with power by the orchetra and great character by Aeschbacher. I have no idea what Ardoin hears, or doesn't, when he says that there is, "in the last movement, no wit". He must have listened to the Music & Arts transfer.

Now that the kind of expansive, laid-back, lyrical approach exemplified by Hansen and Furtwängler in the 4th Piano Concerto has become the general norm (their tempi in the first movement are virtually the same as those of Kempff-Leitner, Pollini-Böhm or Weissenberg-Karajan), we tend to forget that it was absolutely not the case when they performed it. Here as in the First Piano Concerto the interpretive model prevalent before the mid-1950s, as illustrated by about everybody who performed and recorded it back then except Kempff in his first recording from 1941 - Backhaus in 1929-30, Schnabel three times between 1933 and 1946, Hofmann twice in live performance with Ormandy in 1938 and Mitropoulos in 1943, Gieseking with Böhm in 1939, Serkin with Toscanini in 1944, Casadesus with Ormandy in 1947, even Rubinstein with Beecham in 1947, and still Palenicek-Ancerl in 1953 - was much more urgent, ebulllient and jubilant, showing that the image we now so much associate with the 4th Piano Concerto that we believe it is intrinsic to it, of an essentially expansive, laid-back and lyrical work, is only a matter of interpretation.

A few timings for demonstration, up until the first movement cadenza:

Backhaus- Landon Ronald (1929-1930) 13:04
Schnabel Sargent (1933) 13:16
Hofmann Ormandy (1938) 12:21
Gieseking Böhm (1939) 12:09
Schnabel Stock (1942) 13:12
Hofmann Mitropoulos (1943) 12:44
Serkin-Toscanini (1944) 12:37
Schnabel Dobrowen (1946) 13:01
Rubinstein Beecham (1947) 12:48
Casadeus Ormandy (1947) 12:54
Palenicek Ancerl (1953) 12:37

Kempff Van Kempen (1941) 14:07
Hansen Furtwängler (1943) 14:06
Kempff Van Kempen (1953) 13:55
Kempff Leitner (1962) 14:12
Pollini-Böhm (1976) 13:53
Weissenberg Karajan (1977) 14:12

As in the First Piano Concerto, I am a great fan of the earlier, more urgent and ebullient interpretive model, which I find incomparably more exciting than the more laid-back, when not lazy approach which has become the norm, while translating, to my ears, in no loss of lyricism, and I am one to lament its disappearance from the consciousness of listeners and performers. So I wasn't ready to be entirely partial to Hansen-Furtwängler.

That said, there ARE reasons why Furtwängler is Furtwängler and that Karajan, Böhm or Leitner aren't, even when their timings are virtually the same, not only overall but section by section. His main interpretive trademark is not so much the deliberate tempos, as the huge tempo flexibility, with very expansive lyrical sections, imbued with beautiful interiority and meditativeness, but dramatic accelerations when the dynamics rise, which means that the music is not uniformly deliberate and that the forte orchestral tutti acquire a truly cosmic and ecstatic grandeur; and the transitions from one to the other are so organically done and natural-felling that you hardly notice them. Once again I must question the accuracy of John Ardoin's ears, when he writes that that "more might have been expected of Hansen's performance (...). At times his shaping of phrases is unaccountably harsh, and many details (some important pianisimos and sforzandos, for example) go by the wayside". If anyone can point to me a missing pianissimo or sforzando, please let me know. I find nothing but to laud in Hansen's playing, not only in the interiority and dreaminess of the more lyrical sections, but also in his great dramatic sense (hear his dramatically pounding bass in the upward scales at 8:13). One additional interest is that he plays Beethoven's first cadenza in the first movement, but at 15:44 he goes into something else which sounds very Busonian, but I've read comments that it was Hansen's own arrangement.

Had Ardoin NOT listened to the extraordinary Andante con moto? As played by Hansen and Furtwängler this may be much more a Largo than an Andante, let alone con moto, but the dialogue between the imposing, Commendatore-like orchestral recitative and the beautifully meditative piano, the mesmerizingly appeased and meditative coda after the outburst of pianistic trills, and Hansen's whispered pianissimos throughout, are simply magical, 6 minute and 14 seconds during which the listener dares not breathe. The unsuspecting reader may not have reacted to the indication that the movement lasted 6:14. Not that it's is the slowest ever recorded: among the versions I've heard, that record goes to Gould-Bernstein, at 6:39, although Gould's typical percussive and staccato touch deprives the music of much of its interiority. But for reference, Karajan, always prone to taking very expansive and silky slow movements, played it in 5:04 with Weissenberg, Pollini-Böhm in 5:05, Kempff-Leitner in 4:49 (5:33 in 1941 with Van Kempen), and Barenboim-Klemperer in 5:46.

The Finale doesn't break any speed records - and it doesn't need to. Hansen-Furtwängler are no slugs either, but more important than that is, again, as in the opening movement, the great tempo flexibility by which the more dramatic passages can be very swift and powerful indeed, and the fine crispness and bite of both pianist and orchestra.

I'm not always sympathetic to the Beethoven of Furtwängler's, whose expansive tempos, I find, sometimes skid into the sluggish and leave aside too much of the drive, ebullience, explosiveness that I think are essential features of Beethoven's letter and revolutionary spirit. There is some of that, I find, in the First Piano Concerto. But in Hansen's Fourth, I take off my hat and bow in admiration. Had this been a "legitimate" Tahra release, it would have garnered five stars. Take away two for each nail it hammered in Tahra's coffin. These are essential testimonies of the art of Furtwängler and of the art of interpreting Beethoven. But, unless you are financially desperate, as a gesture of revolt against hyenas, buy them from Tahra, not Archipel. Flowers on graves have never brought the dead back to life, but they can express one's posthumous solidarity, respect... and regrets.


title: Gould more "Gouldian" in PC 4 than in PC 3 - the latter surprisingly "normal"

text:
Incomprehensibly, until very recently, this 2001 release from the widely-circulated Bernstein Century edition was not listed on this website, although it was duly so on the European sister companies. For these works, one had to go to Gould's complete Beethoven Piano Concertos ([[ASIN:B0085MK2KI Glenn Gould Plays Beethoven: The 5 Piano Concertos]]) or, if one wanted the works individually, to the Original Jacket Collection releases with their frustratingly scanty timings of 37 minutes each: [[ASIN:B000VFGSCS Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Min]] and [[ASIN:B000VFGSDC Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Maj]].

Well then it is now repaired, although it remains to be seen if marketplace sellers will offer it at competitive prices, given that the two Original Jacket Collection issues sell pretty cheap at the time of writing. From his complete traversal of Beethoven's Piano concertos, Gould recorded three with Bernstein: No.2 (April 1957, [[ASIN:B000UO7IN8 Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major / Bach: Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D Minor]]), 3 (May 1959) and 4 (March 1961). Sony's Bernstein Edition seems wrong in crediting the New York Philharmonic in Piano Concerto No. 3: the official Bernstein discography attributes it (like the 2nd) to the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, and in his discography of the New York Philharmonic ([[ASIN:B003X0BQO8 New York Philharmonic: The Authorized Recordings, 1917-2005]]) James H. North doesn't list it. Why the Columbia Symphony Orchestra in No. 2 and 3 rather than Bersntein's New York Phil, and why the change of conductors for No. 1 (Golschmann, October 1958, [[ASIN:B000UH8HQC Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Ma]]) and No. 5 (Stokowski American Symphony Orchestra, March 1966, [[ASIN:B000VFGSFA Beethoven: Emperor Concerto]]), I don't know. An exchange of correspondance with North leads me to think (without being absolutely sure) that it is indeed the New York Philharmonic, without its proper name for some obscure contractual reasons.

Anyway, this version of Piano Concerto No. 4 is exactly what you expect of Gould: different from any other - and I am at this point making no pronouncement on its value. One of its distinctive features is the very spacious tempos adopted in all three movements - after Barenboim-Klemperer ([[ASIN:B000I2ISL8 Beethoven: Piano Concertos 1-5/Choral Fantasia - Daniel Barenboim, Otto Klemperer, New Philharmonia Orchestra & John Alldis Choir]]), the slowest I've heard among some 20 other recordings in the outer movements, and even significantly slower than Barenboim-Klemperer and even Hansen-Furtwängler ([[ASIN:B00007997L Beethoven Piano Concertos 1 & 4]]) in the middle Andante -, the effect in the first movement being sometwhat laid-back, if not lazy, a "Pastorale" on a sultry summer day, trudging at times, majestic also in the tutti. The other feature is the percussive clarity of Gould's piano, making it almost brittle, together with its left-hand clarity, factoring back in some explosive dynamism which the slow tempos might have negated, and making it always interesting to hear, but also depriving the middle andante of some of its interiority (although some of that is factored back in by the very slow tempo). Other than that, it is relatively free of Gould's customary idiosyncracies, those you find in his "Emperor" with Stokowski, like trills played not like trills but like sixteenth notes (e.g. very slow); the only ones are the slightly arpeggiated opening chords, and the usual suspect's usual humming. He plays Beethoven's cadenzas. The sonics are superb and Bersntein conducts with vigor, partly compensating for the slow tempos, with a superb and brisk final coda. The value judgement associated with those "objective" factors is opened to each listener. I find it always interesting, and welcome as an alternative view.

With all that, it is almost surprising how much Gould's 3rd is devoid of his customary idiosyncrasies: the only ones I've spotted are a few slowly vibrating trills (but not as slow as on the Emperor) and a few emendations in Beethoven's first movement cadenza, most of which I find rather welcome: not the strange decision to omit the first two bars, but Gould's playing p some of Beethoven's f, his Lisztian improvisation between 15:25 and 15:45 and the addition of the ensuing timpani rhythm at the left hand during the cadenza's final trills. Even the famous humming is kept at a minimum. As in the 4th and 5th,  tempos are broad in all three movements,  but they are not drawn-out or sluggish (which was sometimes the impression left by the two others), and Gould's crystalline, percussive touch and left-hand clarity are ideally suited to the composition. The middle Largo is as restrained and touching as anyone's (and, incidentally, very close in its timing to Bernstein's remake, with Serkin, in 1964, as is the finale, [[ASIN:B0000029XE Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 5 (Bernstein Century)]]). Great support from Bernstein, crisp and vigorous in the outer movements, heartfelt in the middle Largo.

Still: like him or hate him, Gould is unique and his Beethoven, as infuriating as it may sometimes be, is always thought-provoking.

(PS from August 16: in the unlikely event that you are reading this review under the entry ASIN:B0009P768K with the same works performed by Anton Nanut(Conductor), Jiri Malat(Conductor), Dubravka Tomsic(Performer), Peter Schmalfuss(Performer), Radio Symphony Orchestra Ljubljana(Orchestra), Radio Symphony Orchestra Pilsen(Orchestra), or under the entry for the Mp3 download ASIN: B003HU13D8 by the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra and Alexander Dmitriev, please see the comment hereunder.)


title: Outstanding early recordings by the already not-so-early Rubinstein. But better go to the sources: RCA BMG

text:
These are two great recordings, the first two Beethoven piano concertos recorded by Rubinstein (and his only recorded collaboration with the two respective conductors), the third in 1944 with Toscanini conducting his NBC Symphony Orchestra, and the 4th in 1947 with Beecham and the RPO: by then Rubinstein was already 60 and had behind him a career which would have filled the whole life of many other pianists. And he had another thirty-five years to go! In fact the 4th was Rubinstein's first studio recording of a Beethove concerto; the third is a live performance, commercialized by RCA in 1946. The interpretations will surprise those who know Rubinstein only through his later recordings, with Krips (1956), Leinsdorf (1964) and then Barenboim (1975): they are - and not only under Toscanini - uniquely brisk, ebullient, urgent. Uniquely? In fact, not quite: we've forgotten, because another interpretive tradition has taken the upper hand after World War II, but this is how Beethoven was interpreted until the 1950s, even in the "pastoral" and lyrical 4th: witness (to limit myself to the 4th) the recordings of Schnabel (three between 1933 and 1946, [[ASIN:B00005K3PG Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3, Piano Concerto No. 4]], [[ASIN:B000003FCK Piano Concerti 4 & 5]] and [[ASIN:B000003XI4 Piano Concerti 3 & 4]]), Josef Hofmann  (in concert with Ormandy in 1938, a stupendous performance, available in the Philadelphia centennary tribute box, [[ASIN:B00003E4CG The Philadelphia Orchestra the Centennial Colection]]; there's another version, very similar in conception but not as accomplished in execution, with the New York Philharmonic under Mitropoulos in 1943, [[ASIN:B00006L6XR Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 and 4]]), Gieseking with Böhm in 1939 ([[ASIN:B000H4VZ80 Gieseking Plays Beethoven: Piano Concerto Nos. 4 & 5]]), Casadesus with Ormandy in 1947 ([[ASIN:B00005AU51 Ormandy: Maestro Brillante (Box Set)]]), and I could mention more, other than Serkin's two recordings with Toscanini (live in 1936, his US debut, and the "official" version from 1944), which I haven't yet heard.

I don't have this Dante CD and can't assess the quality of the transfers, I just wanted to insist on the value of the interpretations. But if you are interested in those recordings (and you should!), it is better (unless you want precisely that pairing) to go to the source: RCA/BMG's transfers (I'm not implying that Dante pirated theirs from there, I don't know that, although they had a record of doing such things, although not systematically). You will find also my detailed reviews of both recordings: the 3rd piano concerto is paired with Toscanini's 1940 Violin Concerto with Heifetz,[[ASIN:B000003EWT Violin & Piano Concertos]], and the 4th is in RCA's Rubinstein collection vol. 9, in a very good transfer: [[ASIN:B000051W3L Rubinstein Collection, Vol. 9]].


title: Great Concerto, terrible solos: that it's old and historical doesn't necessarily mean that it's always good

text:
This is a significant recording of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, originally published by the German label Telefunken: only the third ever made, after the now-forgotten Mark Hambourg with Malcolm Sargent from 1929 on His Master's Voice with an orchestra dubbed "Symphony Orchestra" which was in fact the London Symphony (reissued by Pearl, [[ASIN:B0000260ZX Piano Works]], and by The Piano Library, [[ASIN:B00004KD1M Legendary Recordings]]), and the historical Schnabel in February 1933 with the same Sargent, now with the London Philharmonic (many reissues. I have it in Dante's complete set of Concertos and Piano Sonatas, [[ASIN:B00000G405 Sonatas & Concertos]]). The Piano Library is commendable for giving the full information about labels and matrix numbers, but other than that they are way below standard by giving no info whatsoever about recording dates other than those contained in the title, "Eduard Erdmann The Telefunken, Polydor & Parlophone Recordings (1920-1933)" and providing no biographical details whatsoever about Erdmann either - in fact there are no liner notes but only a catalog of The Piano Library's publications instead. And even those dates, 1920-1933, seem dubious. Bayer records, which also reissued the Concerto on [[ASIN:B000025Z2C ERDMANN,EDUARD-KLAVIER / RECORDINGS 1928-1945 /]], indicates November/December 1937, but that seems impossible, since The Gramophone magazine, when it did a survey of the Beethoven Piano Concertos in its March 1937 issue, mentioned it (although it hadn't yet reached them). So I'm inclined to trust the label Tahra, when, in their own reissue the Concerto in their Eduard Erdmann vol. 1 collection ([[ASIN:B000003O79 Eduard Erdmann: Piano Works (The Pianist Philosopher)]]), they indicate 17 November 1935 (I don't have the reissue, I found the info on Tahra's website).

I knew the now relatively obscure Artur Rother as a fiery conductor, from his war-time Beethoven Emperor Concerto recorded in Berlin under the allies bombs in October 1944 with Gieseking - and in experimental stereo, a truly essential historical document (see my review of [[ASIN:B00000HZG1 Walter Gieseking, Vol. 3: Beethoven Concerto No. 4 (Böhm 1939) & 5 (Rother 1944)]]. But that Erdmann's and Rother's Beethoven 3rd PC should begin with a first movement taken at such a brisk pace by today's standards must probably be attributed as much to the style prevalent in those days as with the artists' personality. In fact tempos are similar to Schnabel-Sargent in 1933. Those who'd be tempted to find Rubinstein, in his 1944 live recording with Toscanini ([[ASIN:B000003EWT Beethoven: Violin & Piano Concertos]]), too fast and uninflected here and to blame it on the conductor, should note that they take a few seconds longer than Schnabel-Sargent and Erdmann-Rother (if anybody wants to blame something on Toscanini, they should hear his live recording with Dame Myra Hess from December 1946 - now that's not swift, not fast, not even racing: it is insane, [[ASIN:B0000269IO Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 / Wagner: Gotterdammerung (Toscanini Concert Edition)]]). Even Arrau - not remembered as a firebrand, but rather for his poise and stateliness - when he recorded it in 1947 with Ormandy, was in the same league as Rubinstein-Toscanini ([[ASIN:B00000HZF6 Claudio Arrau: Beethoven: Concerto No. 3, Op. 37 / Sonata No. 21, Op. 53 "Waldstein"]]). The result is not "majestic" as we are now accustomed to hearing the first movement of Beethoven's C minor, but immensely powerful (more so than Schnabel-Sargent, thanks to the greater sonic impact), virile and dramatic. The Finale isn't as comparatively swift, but it has all the bounce and perky humor required. But Erdmann isn't just muscular and heroic: his Largo is beautifully held-back and meditative, evoking Schnabel's again.

I don't have any of the other reissues on Bayer or Tahra for comparison, but whatever their source, The Piano Library's transfers sounded okay to me, despite an awkward side joint at 4:31 in the Finale. These are historical recordings, dubbed from 78s, so nobody will expect stereo with no background noise. But those accusstomed to these things will easily hear the music through the surface swish.

In view of his great Beethoven 3rd, it is incomprehensible how bad Erdmann is in some of the solo pieces. And if he had been perfunctory and unfeeling in the Largo, at least there would have been a pattern: outside of muscularity and heroism, nothing. But obviously this was not the case.

Haydn's great Variations Hob. 17:6, in fact a set of double variations and one of Haydn's last compositions for the keyboard, were recorded, according to CHARM, the Center for History and Analysis of Recorded Music, in November 1940, and it is also the date given by Bayer Records. Unlike Haydn's Sonatas, the Variations were a rather popular work in the 78s era: other than Erdmann's, WERM, the 1950 World Encyclopedia of Recorded Music, lists three other versions, all made between 1937 and 1940, including one by Paderewski (reissued by APR, [[ASIN:B002KHSPDA Paderewski-His Final Recordings]]) and one by Lili Kraus. Erdmann is remarkable for playing every repeat, which nobody else did in the 78rpm era (and Mikhail Pletnev still didn't in 1988). Other than that, it is a very "objective", no-frills approach, at a flowing tempo, with a very clear and slightly percussive right hand, leaving ores of expression and color untapped.

His Brahms op. 117 must have been recorded in 1935: Bayer indicates 7 September, and the two 78s (1 & 2 on Parlophone E 11287 and 3 on Parlophone E11295 with Beethoven's Bagatelle op. 126-6), were reviewed in The Gramophone of January and April 1936. They must be the least atmospheric readings I've ever heard of these pieces. Opus 117-3 sounded first a little better than that, until the middle and more agitated section, which Erdmann takes so briskly that he makes it sound like a Capriccio. The Beethoven Bagatelle is impossibly rushed, and Debussy's Minstrels (1928 says Bayer) impossibly scrambled.

The Bayer reissue seem a more attractive offer since it collates, on 2 CDs, more of Erdmann's early recordings. And it even sells cheaper at the time of writing.


title: Bach + Vivaldi + Heiller + Marcussen = grandiose

text:
Anton Heiller was Vanguard's house harpsichordist and made countless recordings for them, both solo and with ensemble. This Bach recital was the first organ recording he made for them (and I must respectfully correct reviewer Larry VanDeSande here). It first came out in 1963, on BG 637 (mono) / BGS 5049 (stereo) with the title "Bach-Vivaldi: Four Concerti for Organ". "Bach Organ Works vol. 2", featuring the Prelude and Fugue in E minor BWV 548, Prelude and Fugue in A major BWV 536, Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor BWV 582 and Fantasy in C major BWV 572, came out on BG 674 (mono) / BGS 70674 (stereo) and has been reissued on CD ([[ASIN:B0000023A7 Organ Works]], with the complements of the mighty Toccata and Fugue BWV 565 and Fantasia and Fugue BWV 542 from Heiller's Bach vol. 3, originally on BG 675 / BGS 70675) and SACD ([[ASIN:B0002MPQQY Organ Works]], no complements).

These are, in fact, transcriptions for organ made by Bach of three Vivaldi Concertos, probably from the parts, the last being by Duke Johann Ernst of Weimar (track 4), in a time (which lasted until the invention of the gramophone) when playing keyboard reductions was most of the times the only way to actually hear the music. To quote the short but informative (and uncredited) liner notes of my edition (about that see below): "Altogether, there are extant twenty-two Bach transcriptions of violin concertos by various composers, Italian and German, seventeen of which are for harpsichord and five for organ. Other than the ten taken from Vivaldi, one is supposedly by Alessandro Marcello, one is by Telemann, and five are by the gifted young Duke Johann Ernst of Weimar. The authorship of the remaining five has still not been established".

Of Bach's five organ transcriptions, three are of the Vivaldi Concertos featured here, made in his early Weimar years. The A minor BWV 593 (track 1) corresponds to the Concerto for Two Violins op. 3 No. 8 from the L'Estro Armonico collection, the C major BWV 594 (track 3) to the far less popular op. 7 No. 5. The D minor BWV 596 (track 2), from op. 3 No. 11 (the liner notes misprint this as II), was long attributed to Bach's son Wilhelm Friedemann, until early 20th century musicology determined that it had been handed down to him by his papa.

The other two Bach organ transcriptions, BWV 592 and 55  were of concertos of Duke Johann Ernst of Weimar, the nephew of his Weimar boss Duke Wilhelm Ernst and a talented organist and composer who died at 19. Of these, Heiller plays BWV 592.

The matter of Vanguard's CD reissues is a bundle. The label was owned in the mid 1980s/early CD era by a Welk Music Group, and this is their (first CD) reissue, VBD 35, from 1988. I don't have this version, but the one they licensed in the UK to a short-lived Start company, VECD 7515, not listed hear but selling very cheap on the UK sister company at the time of writing (search UPC 5013116751525), and I believe that they are the same transfers. The recording was also licensed in France to Carrère, who published it under the label number Vanguard 302 459 (UPC 3483903024590). The Vanguard classical catalog was then repurchased by Vanguard's founder Seymour Solomon, through his Omega Records company, in cooperation with a Dutch Arcade company which retained the distribution rights to Europe. They launched an extensive program of CD reissues, but for some reason unknown to me (and so far as I could establish) did not include this recital. For some other obscure reason (maybe the lawsuit that he filed in the mid 1990s against Arcade), towards the early 2000s, Solomon pursued his program of reissues not under the Vanguard label, but under an Amadeus label which he established, and did then reissue Heiller's Bach Organ Concerti, with complements from Heiller's Bach vol. 3 LP, as AMD 7018, listed but not offered at the time of writing, [[ASIN:B00005JI4H Concerti for Organ]], and presumably in new transfers. After Solomon's death in 2002 the Vanguard catalog was acquired by a short-lived Artemis Classics from New York (they were the company responsible for the SACD reissue of Heiller's Bach vol. 2), but I haven't found a reissue of this specific recital, and they stopped their operations in 2006.

This is grandiose organ music. On my Start reissue, there is significant tape hiss, which I do not find intrusive because the music is often very loud, but other than that, the sonics are grandiose. The organ - the (modern-built) Marcussen Organ at the St. Mary Church in Hälsingborg, Sweden, which Heiller considered ideally suited to the music of Bach, so much so that he convinced the Vanguard team to travel that far to record him - is grandiose. The music is grandiose, with its combination of Vivaldi's irresistible melodiousness and Bach's organ's grandeur (the music of Duke Johann Ernst is more German-souding, but jubilant). Only regret: 46:48 minutes of this, straight out of the LP? One wants it never to stop. A pity Heiller didn't include Bach's other organ transcription of Duke Johann Ernst. As it is, Solomon's Amadeus reissue is a better offer (and I can imagine that the sonics are even better, although these are nothing to complain about) - if you can find it. In the meanwhile, go to the uk sister company and buy the Start reissue, while there are still cheap copies sold.

Excellent scholarly article by Pr. Gregory Butler available online on the Vivaldi Bach organ transcriptions, Google search "Bach The Transcriber: His Organ Concertos After Vivaldi".


title: Excellent Cowell recital by an outsider

text:
Considering the historical importance and the musical value of Henry Cowell's output for piano, it is saddening to see how rarely it is played and recorded, then and now. There was never much available on LP, although what there was, was of great value: namely the invaluable recording of a selection of 20 made by the composer himself on Folkways in 1963 and now reissued by Smithsonian ([[ASIN:B000001DM0 Henry Cowell plays his own Piano Music]]), and Sorrel Doris Hays' recording from 1977 on Finnadar, now on Townhall ([[ASIN:B00005T6H6 Sorrel Doris Hays Plays the Piano Music of Henry Cowell]]). The rest were limited selections included in miscellaneous collections (as with Shields 1975: [[ASIN:B000001K6M Piano Music in America  1900-1945]] and Miller 1976: [[ASIN:B0000030F0 Sound Forms for Piano]]). Sadly, not much has been added in the CD era: Anthony de Mare plays 11 pieces along with compositions of Ives and Lou Harrison on [[ASIN:B00004TKRZ Wizards & Wildmen]], Cheryl Seltzer and Joël Sachs from the Continuum Ensemble share ten on their Musical Heritage Society survey now reissued as two Naxos CDs [[ASIN:B00076SHHA Continuum Portrait 1]] and [[ASIN:B0007ACVMI Henry Cowell: Continuum Portrait 2]]. The recital on New Albion, [[ASIN:B000003TM6 New Music: Piano Compositions By Henry Cowell]], deriving from a series of concerts given in 1997 by four pianists (including Hays again), is flawed both sonically and interpretively (see my review), and I haven't yet heard the Cowell CD of Stacey Barelos, [[ASIN:B0088XQEAQ Cowell: Piano Music]]. So a warm welcome must be given to Chris Burn's collection, published in 1993 by the small and hard-to-find British label Acta: it certainly doesn't replace Cowell's invaluable but sonically flawed testimony nor Sorrel Hays contribution, but it provides a fine, modern complement to them, and is quite good in its own right.

The program is well-chosen, with most of the composer's most famous masterpieces, to which Burn adds some unpublished pieces, some of them real rarities: The Fairy Answer, The Sword of Oblivion, The Sleep Music of the Dagna, Sway Dance - for the last three, this is the only recording I am aware of. Burn's is also one of the only two versions I know of the (admittedly not essential) "Invention", and the only one of "The Fairy Bells", though the latter is as inventive and poetic as anything written by the composer, and the score easily accessible.

Apparently Burn is not a classical music pianist but one involved in free improvisation, which, according to the notes, "led him to a thorough and ongoing examination of piano technique. This resulted in the development of an extensive, personal vocabulary that frequently used sounds found from "inside" the piano", and this naturally led him to an interest for the music of Cowell.

Well, I can vouch that Burn's technique is impressive and entirely up to the particular demands of Cowell's piano writing - which also includes the digital fleetness associated for centuries with classical piano technique, but also much more. Witness his dazzling `Advertisement", in which he captures perfectly the piece's perky, cartoonesque, Katzenjammer humor and its dazzling bouce (in view of which it is unfortunate that he plays it without repeat). In "What's This" (the 1st Encore to Dynamic Motion) he is as dynamic and precise as Seltzer, though not as nuanced in his dynamic shadings. On the other hand in the "Invention" he takes a more moderate tempo and is less dazzling than Roger Shields.

He can be appropriately massive and pounding in pieces such as "Tiger" (although the rather mate recording robs it of some of its power), "Dynamic Motion" (but there, the recording doesn't allow for the resonances at the begining to be heard), "Amiable Conversation" (very dynamic, almost sprightly), "The Tides of Manaunaun" (solemn and weighty, but with great power), "The Voice of Lir" (great forward momentum and an impressive crescendo) although overall he doesn't quite command the same kind of massive pounding power and frenzy as the composer himself or Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs, particularly so in "Amiable Conversation", "Anger Dance" (clean and precise, but not as angry as Cowell's) and the final pages of "Tiger".

But he displays a fine sense of color, as in "Sinister Resonance", "Aeolian Harp" or "The Banshee", maybe less "feminine" than Cowell's own but all the more terrifying. His Banshee is a monster, and you don't want to be around that night in the old, run-down mansion when it comes out to call.

He is precise, oftentimes more so than the composer himself ("Aeolian Harp", "The Snows of Fuji-Yama", where his first clusters sound off-pitch, probably due to ill-balance between both hands), and with a good sense of the Cowellian rubato - though nothing near the composer's unique hand at it. In "The Trumpet of Angus Og" he is faster and exudes more exuberant joy than Cowell's nostalgic solemnity - and it is, I find, an entirely valid alternative. On the other hand in "The Lilt of the Reel" his tempos are more contrasted than the composer's, more expansive in the first part and more exuberant in the faster passages, but again he has fine colors and good tempo flexibility. Burn is interesting also for following in some pieces the composer's recording rather than his score. For instance, in "Lilt of the Reel" again, he plays Cowell's apparently improvised coda/cadenza, and in "Aeolian Harp" he lets, like Cowell, the final chord resonate longer than notated.

With only 55 minutes on the disc, it is too bad Burn didn't add Exultation (a kind of boisterous barn-dance with left-hand clusters), Fabric (a superb study in polyrhythms), Piece for Piano (an impressive compendium of all of Cowell's special piano-playing techniques), Harp of Life (not easily accessible, not in the two -difficultly - available Schirmer/AMI collections of scores, but everybody including composer plays it), Antinomy and Time Table (the two last Encores to Dynamic Motion). It would have made it the indispensable modern Cowell piano collection. As it is, it is still an essential acquisition for anybody persuaded in the significance and beauty of that music, or wanting to find out.


title: Serkln's Reger (European edition). For Reger, go to Hamelin (same with Haydn)

text:
As the liner notes point out, Serkin was always an ardent champion of the music of Max Reger. It started as far back as the late 1910s, when young and prodigy Serkin (15 years-old) was a member of Schoenberg's circle and performed in the Viennese master's Society for Musical Private Performances. Schoenberg had declared Reger "one of the great masters of music" and proclaimed that "we must study his music in depth in order to learn more about his genius, his style and his creative technique". In 1964 Serkin and Ormandy made the premiere recording of Reger's mighty and mightily Brahmsian Piano Concerto, which remained for decades the only one. Reger's great Bach Variations op. 81 from 1904 were already at Serkin's repertoire in the 1970s, as documented on a BBC Legends CD ([[ASIN:B000ENC6UU Works By Bach & Reger & Beethoven]]) bringing back a concert given at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on 4 June 1973, and on [[ASIN:B008P0COCE Schumann: Kreisleriana / Reger: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by J.S. Bach / Mussorgsky: Pictures from an Exhibition (The Curtis Institute of Music: The Piano Director's Legacy)]], with a concert given at the Curtis Institute on November 22 of the same year. But it's only in the early CD days (exact recording date is not given, but the present disc is copyrighted 1986, and was released by a company which wasn't called "Sony" yet, but CBS) that he recorded it in the studio. Not a premiere recording, that one: I've found mention of a least an earlier one, by an obscure German pianist on an obscure German label, and a recording by Wolf Harden, made in December 1985, probably very close in time to Serkin's, was issued in 1986 on Marco Polo (not yet famous for its companion budget label Naxos), [[ASIN:B000009I3U SCHUMANN, R.: Humoreske, Op. 20 / REGER: Variations and Fugue, Op. 81]] - later reissued on the NAxos label, [[ASIN:B0000013S7 Schumann, R.: Humoreske, Op. 20 / Reger: Variations And Fugue On A Theme Of J.S. Bach]]. But Serkin's version was certainly the first one, by a major pianist, to give international exposure to the piece, and at any rate a historical one: not a matter of when it was made, but of the stature of who made it and his longstanding ties with the music of the composer.

The variations are a huge work, based on a theme derived from the Aria No. 4 in Bach's Ascension cantata Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein BWV 128, and, running circa 30+ minutes, clocking marginally longer than Brahms' Haendel Variations. I'd call them a cross-breed of Brahms and Schumann: they have the chordal thickness and grandiose pounding power of Brahms' Third Sonata, and the whimsical fantasy and exuberance of Schumann. Their limitation, possibly, and the reason why they never truly secured a stronghold in the repertoire (even since Serkin's recording), is that their range seems limited to the slow and solemn and (even in the more Schumanesque/whimsical moments) the massively and impressively pounding, but with nothing in between.

Serkin's recording may be historical and very significant, and it was more than serviceable for some time, but in 1998 came Marc-André Hamelin, and that recording put everybody else in its huge shadow ([[ASIN:B00000I4JQ Reger: Variations and Fugue on a Theme of J. S. Bach /  Humoresques / Variations and Fugue on a Theme of  Telemann]]). It's not so much Serkin's heavy breathing and soft humming that's problematical - it's far less intrusive than Gould's, and you can easily take it in the name of historical importance and interpretive excellence. The sonics are okay, the piano sounds a bit metallic in some of the pounding fortissimos but I think this is faithful to Serkin's tone rather than an effect of the recording. That it becomes somewhat muffled in the enormous chordal pounding of the final variation track 15 may have more to do with the recording process. No way I think any microphone can pick up and any CD can render the massive power of a concert grand playing full blast.

But it's in the faster variations that, compared to the dazzling Hamelin, and even to Harden or to Serkin himself live in 1973 (I have the Curtis Institute version), it is evident that Serkin at 82 or 83 doesn't quite have the virtuosic technique to bring them off. In Variations 6, 8 and 14 (tracks 7, 9 and 15), you may be impressed by the massive pounding power, but on comparison with Hamelin and even Harden, it is all too clear that Serkin is trudging here, and substitutes mass to true drive. The same lack of sparkle can be heard in Variations 4 and 5 (tracks 5 & 6). In Variation 11 (track 12) there is a welcome crispness and bite to Serkin's touch which may function as an acceptable substitute to drive and explosiveness. Heard on its own you may be convinced by Serkin's Variation 13, very Lisztian in its sheer power; but then jump to Hamelin: there you will hear not just Lisztian power, but dazzling Lisztian sparkle and furious drive as well.

I'm not convinced Serkin helps the music when he solemnizes it too much, by playing some slow variations at a tempo far below Reger's metronome mark. A case in point is variation 8 where Reger's indication is 60-68 eighth-notes per minutes and which Serkin takes at circa 35. On the other hand, Reger wrote a grandiose conclusive double fugue, ending with obsessively pounding chords in sixteenth notes, played at a moderate tempo and requiring massive power rather than extremes of velocity, and Serkin plays it in a suitably grandiose manner. Hamelin plays it faster, probably because he can (but Serkin live at the Curtis Institute in 1973 was even more animated), but there is a lot to be said in favor of Serkin's more solemn and majestic approach, whether the result of an artistic choice or of digital necessity.

This is a great document of Serkin and Serkin's Reger. But for Reger go to Hamelin.

And it's not the filler that will make the difference. Haydn's Sonata Hob. 16:50 was recorded not in Troy Music Hall like the Reger, but in "Guilford, Vermont", and given Serkin's stalwart presence at the Marlboro Festival, I'd say it was his home (check on Wikipedia: confirmed: "He died of cancer on May 8, 1991, aged 88, at home on his Guilford farm"). The piano technician was "John Serkin", and the recording sounds like a home recording, with the piano sounding boxy and played in a small room. But the ear adjusts.

But it's not only the sonics. If Reger was more Serkin's Reger than Reger, so is his Haydn. The touch is, as usual with Serkin, crisp and dry, which suits Haydn's Allegros fine, although the brittleness is sometimes a touch more aggressive than it needs to. There is not much gentleness in Serkin's Haydn, even in the middle Adagio which is "objective" and percussive, far from the tenderness and delicacy Andras Schiff ([[ASIN:B000EAEACA Haydn: 3 Piano Sonatas in C Major, Hob. XVI:48 / in C Minor, Hob. XVI:20 / in C Major, Hob. XVI:50]]) or Gilbert Kalish ([[ASIN:B000005IYI Piano Music: Sonatas Hob. 41: Nos. 49, 40, 36, 41,50]]) found in it, but the charm and humor do come through. But tempo! The Finale is by no stretch of the imagination the "Allegro molto" Haydn calls for, more an unhurried (and percussive) Allegro, but it is the first movement that is the most exceptionable. The first notes of the opening are taken at such a pedestrian gait as to be jarring. Just to give an objective point of reference with other versions I have in my collection: Marc-André Hamelin ([[ASIN:B000N2H832 Haydn: Piano Sonatas, Vol 1]]) reaches the repeat bar in 1:43, Brendel ([[ASIN:B00000E36W Haydn: 11 Piano Sonatas]]) in 1:45, Schiff in 1:57, Kalish in 2:02. Serkin? 2:32! Serkin gets through the first movement in 9:45; Brendel takes 10:00 - but he plays the 2nd repeat, and not Serkin! This is Haydn at the nursery, toddlers very cautiously learning to walk (an old man dancing might be a more appropriate image). Certainly there's no denying that it is a Haydn with a unique personality, but it is also an exceptionable one. Serkin's Haydn then. For Haydn, go (among many other possible choices) to Schiff, Kalish... or Hamelin.

The disc's TT is a none too generous 51 minutes. In fact Sony did the right thing, by reissuing the Bach Variations paired with Serkin's 1964 Reger Piano Concerto: [[ASIN:B0001XPY4S Varations and Fugue on a Theme By J.S. B]]. For Serkin's Reger, that's the CD to get.


title: Egypt meets France

text:
This recital was recorded in January 1990 in Boulogne near Paris, France, and originally published by the label Cornelia, under the distributor's logo and catalog number, Adda 590031: [[ASIN:B002DMA4D6 King's Valley]], which is how I have it. Hussein El Masry was born in Cairo in 1952 and graduated from the Cairo Conservatory of Music in composition and music theory, and if there seems to be a contradiction between playing Egyptian traditional music and being University-trained, apparently not. He moved to France in 1977. His instrument, the Oud, is the mid-eastern lute, used principally in Arab art music, and apparently El Masry was innovative in importing it to popular music. He's not really a player of Egyptian popular music, in fact. He seems better defined as a composer using the forms and language of Egyptian popular music.

I'm not a connoisseur of Egyptian music, classical or popular, and no more of world music. I bought the Cornelia / Adda disc out of an interest for the label Adda, a French indie from the early days of the CD, not only a distributor but also a producer, that grew too fast and burst after a relatively short life of circa 8 years, but published hundreds of valuable CDs, mostly of classical music, but with some forays into jazz and world music.

I've found this a very appealing disc and a fine example of world/cross-over. The recital starts with a long composition (13:48) for Oud alone, and while the solo Oud may not seem to be the most appealing instrument, without the dazzling virtuosity and excitement of the Flamenco guitar for instance, those 13+ minutes, with their Egyptian strains and occasional micro-tones, do develop a genuine fascination, and even moments of exciting virtuosity. But I find the rest of the program, where the Oud plays with other instruments, even more appealing. "East meets West" is an old cliché and hasn't always produced good results, but in track 2, "Sun in the sand", the dialogue of El Masry's Oud and Pascal Bournet's guitar - Egypt meets France, as it were - is great, with a real sense of encounter, dialoguing, exchanging, and rejoicing together, and the result is very appealing world music, lively but with an undercurrent of sweetness and nostalgia that doesn't lapse in the sentimental. Track 4, King's Valley, is now a Trilateral meeting, with Oud dialoguing with Indian Tablas (played by a French percussionist) over an occasional carpet of "atmospheric" synthesizer sounds. I might have objected to that kind of New Age background, which has been used and overused and rarely judiciously, drowning everything under a nauseating coat of saccharine molasses, but here I find that it works very well, because it remains a discreet background, leaving the front stage to the two acoustic instruments and their dynamic interplay, rising to moments of great excitement.

Longa El Masry, track 3, a duet for Oud and Darbuka - the Mid-Esatern the goblet drum - is a great piece, because Hatem Badoui is a uniquely voluble percussionist and his crazy rattling is hugely exciting. And El Masry the composer stages a some surprising harmonic progressions that sound absolutely great. Only Oud, Violin (and not a Stradivarius, mind you, but an Egyptian traditional violin) and Quanun - the mid-eastern zither - are credited for track 5, but what I hear is another piece for Oud and Darbuka, with occasional and short interventions from Quanun (from 1:21 to 2:13) and Violin (2:41 to 3:32). Too bad, because these short dialogues are great.


title: Five Julian Bream commissions and classics of 20th century British guitar, in outstanding interpretations

text:
A quasi-perfect program, gathering five big and small classical masterpieces of 20th century British guitar: Britten's Nocturnal (1963), Tippett's The Blue Guitar (1983), Walton's Five Bagatelles (1972), Berkeley's Sonatina (1957) and Richard Rodney Bennnett's Five Impromptus (1968) - and all Julian Bream commissions. There are more of those, of course, even limiting myself to the solo pieces: by Reginald Smith Brindle, Malcolm Arnold, Alan Rawsthorne, Humphrey Searle, Giles Swayne, Peter Maxwell Davies (Hill Runes), Michael Berkeley and a Sonata by Bennett from 1983, but, with a recital here already clocking 71:34 it is doubtful that any would have fit on the CD.

And outstanding interpretations as well. Craig Ogden's Tippett The Blue Guitar is both precise and very atmospheric, beautifully pensive and dreamy in the opening "Transforming" and in the closing "Dreaming", and with great drive in the scherzando 2nd movement "Juggling", but never, as can be the case with Norbert Kraft on Chandos, at the expense of clarity and rhythmic precision ([[ASIN:B000000AJL Michael Tippett: The Blue Guitar, Sonata for Solo Guitar / Benjamin Britten: Nocturnal, after John Dowland, Op. 70 / R. Murray Schafer: Le Cri de Merlin - Norbert Kraft, Guitar]]), and yet with more flexibility than the atmospheric but very strict David Tanenbaum on New Albion ([[ASIN:B000000R2S Acoustic Counterpoint]]). This will now serve as my version of reference for The Blue Guitar.

Score in hand, Ogden's reading of Britten's Nocturnal is as precise rhythmically and as imaginative interpretively as his Tippett. The Blue Guitar is a masterpiece of 20th century guitar... and  Nocturnal is even more, or at least an even more immediately accessible one. In each of the piece's 8 short movements Britten explores a new idea and each time, truly, a fantastic one, not just in the sense "great", but also, nocturnal, nightmarish, evoking the wildest fantasies of the imagination, all the way to its concluding Passacaglia, with the obsessive return of the ground motto, as if it were ever stifling any attempt of the music to escape off... the ground, but ultimately giving way to the despondent but soothing Dowland air on which it is all based, "Come, heavy Sleep, the image of true Death". Nocturnal is echt and unmistakable Britten - listeners familiar with his output will easily recognize twists and turns-of-phrases already encountered, especially in the Cello-Piano Sonata and the Three Cello Suites, of which Nocturnal could almost pass for a transcription for guitar. Julian Bream, recorded in September 1966 ([[ASIN:B000003FG1 Music For Voice & Guitar (Julian Bream Edition, Volume 18)]]), may have been a touch more eloquent than Ogden, but not nearly as precise (and in fact often surprisingly imprecise) in his rendition of the rhythms and articulation marks of the score (I haven't heard Bream's remake from 1993, [[ASIN:B000002RTP Nocturnal]]).

I don't have the scores of the others so I'll pass interpretive comment for the moment, but I have no reason to doubt that Ogden there is as precise and imaginative as in the Tippett and Britten. Very thorough and informative liner notes by Geraint Lewis, although they are mistaken in their claim that this is the first recording of Tippett's The Blue Guitar in the order of movements as originally conceived by the composer, e.g. with the fast movement, "Juggling", in the middle rather than, as published and as Julian Bream had performed it, at the end. Ogden's recordings were made in March and September 1994, but the Blue Guitar had been been recorded in its original order already by David Tanenbaum on New Albion in 1990 (see link above).


title: The pathbreakers left way behind

text:
I'm not sure that without Alfred Deller, the "period-practice" or "Historically-Informed-Performance" movement would have developed as it has in the last quarter of the 20th Century, or at least so fast, and with it the Purcell and Handel revivals and all the other revivals of all those great 17th and early 18th Century composers.

The unique countertenor voice of Deller spurred a fascination for this "man singing with a woman's voice", and from there a desire to elucidate the riddle of "how it might have REALLY sounded back then". Anyway, Deller made an invaluable contribution to the rediscovery of swathes of forgotten repertoires from the Renaissance to the 18th Century. Especially through the sizeable amount of recordings he made for Vanguard and Vanguard's subsidiary label The Bach Guild in the 1950s and 1960s, he was among the few who put (to limit myself to the English repertoire, but Deller's explorations weren't limited to it) Purcell, Blow, Dowland, Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons back on the map, as well as lesser figures such as Thomas Wilbye, Thomas Weelkes, William Mundy, Thomas Morley, John Bartlett, John Jenkins and many more. Vanguard must be praised for having made it all available again on CD in the 1990s.

But then, it is the fate of once path-breakers to be passed by those they have attracted in their wake and left hopelessly behind, and this Purcell recital is a good illustration. It is in fact the compilation of two LPs: "Welcome to All the Pleasures" - the 1683 Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, not to be confused with the more famous one from 1692, "Hail Bright Cecilia" - was recorded in 1959 and came out on The Bach Guild BG-590 (mono)/BGS-5015 (stereo) paired with Blow's Ode on the death of Mr. Henry Purcell, and the rest of the program was done in 1962 and was released on The Bach Guild BG-635 (mono) and BG-5047 stereo. The instrumental ensembles are the Kalmar Orchestra of London (which, we are told, later became the English Chamber Orchestra, although I've found nothing online to substantiate that claim) and Deller's own Oriana Orchestra in Come Ye Sons of Art (the Ode for the birthday of Queen Mary in 1694 - her last), and Deller conducts.

Heard today, the problems of these performances are not principally, I think, a matter of musicology. Sure there is some of that both in the phrasings of the Overture of Come Ye Sons of Art, bound to the score to a fault, with none of the appoggiaturas and turns of phrase and departures from printed score which are one of the marks of period practice, and in the absence of any added ornamentation in the repeats. But those are peripheral details, and on the other hand continuo harpsichordist Walter Bergmann (but it's not entirely clear from the back cover credits of this European edition, 08 5060 71, that he is the harpsichordist in Come Ye Sons of Art - if not, none is credited) was one of the leading early-music musicologists of his day (he was a close associate of Michael Tippett at Morley College during the war and was, with the composer, one of the main propellers of the Purcell revival that started in the 1940s). Strangely, it is in the earlier recording, of Welcome to All the Pleasures, that the performance boasts a few brave attempts at period practice, not only in the continuo but also when the orchestra ornaments the repeats of the instrumental ritornello concluding the opening ensemble "Welcome to All the Pleasures", track 20, starting at 1:26.

Not a matter of musicology is the fact that, sometimes, Deller doesn't observe the promptings of the score. In "Lift Up Your Voices", the basso and chorus aria of Welcome to All the Pleasures (track 23), the performers do not observe Purcell's distinction between verse, ascribed to soloists (first basso then trio), and four-part chorus, because their chorus is so small - the basso even seems reduced to one-a-part - that there is hardly any contrast between them. The same is true in the anthem My Beloved Spake, although there, the early 20th Century Novello edition available online is more imprecise about which parts are assigned to full chorus. But this again isn't so essential, what Deller does here may not be exactly what the score prescribes, but it lends the music a nice, madrigal-like quality (also heard in the opening and concluding ensembles of Welcome to All the Pleasures, track 20 and 26) which is quite valid in its own right.

Not so peripheral on the other hand are the heavy double-bass(es) giving a distinctly 19th or 20th century feeling to the bass-line, the sentimental feeling conveyed by the strings in the introduction and ritornellos of the anthem Rejoice in the Lord Always (track 10) - to my ear the whole anthem as performed here sounds more like a hymn of the salvation army in 19th Century Victorian England than 17th Century music under Charles II, putting an ironic lie to the liner notes when, quoting a musician and commentator of the times, they point that the anthem "reflects the taste of Charles II (...), soon tired with the grave and solemn ways of the music inherited from Tallis and Byrd". Even worse, there are the huge and impossibly emphatic rallentandos at the end of about each Aria in Come Ye Sons of Art. But here, in truth, I don't know if these must be ascribed to a blind spot of early 1960 musicology or to the conductor's idiosyncratic way of making music.

And precisely: I think whatever shortcomings in these performances lie mainly in the performers' very conception of how Purcell should sound, of the range of emotions that his music should convey. The problem is that Deller conducts a stately, dignified Purcell.

Very typical is the slow introduction to Welcome to All the Pleasures: Deller's tempo is so languid that he makes it sound funeral - in fact, it sounds incredibly like Michael Tippett's Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli. It is very beautiful in its own right, but as an introduction to an Ode welcoming all the pleasures, really? Like, waking up from the grave and now, welcome to all the pleasures? But the ensuing "brisk" at 2:14 is jarringly pedestrian, so I guess these Resurrected must still have rather stiff bones. I mentioned as a positive point the ornamentation in the instrumental ritornello of "Welcome to all the pleasures" track 20 - but the ritornello itself plods in an elegant and dignified stateliness.

And it is not just in the Overtures and instrumental parts, almost all the arias are bogged down by the same approach to tempo. They are all taken as gentle, stately, if not plodding, dances, lending the music, in the opening Aria of Come Ye Sons of Art (track 2), more solemnity than it needs and depriving it from any sense of jubilation. The gentleness of mood in "Strike the Viol" with its two pastoral recorders (track 5) may seem seductive enough, but it is so at odds with the sense of jubilation of the text - really, this is the late 17th Century version of "let's rock!" - that something must be amiss, and when Deller sings the line "wake the harp", it really feels like "oh no, let it sleep just five more minutes...". The same contradiction between plodding tempo and the meaning of the lyrics besets the basso and chorus aria "Then Lift Up Your Voices" in "Welcome to all the Pleasures" (track 23) - those voices are weighed down to earth by the burdens of worldly matter. The tenor Aria, "Beauty Thou Scene of Love" (track 25) is turned into a plangent song of forlorn love, and when the strings enter for the concluding ritornello, they sound romantically thick and lush - now we are in the sound-world of Elgar's Serenade.

In truth, I don't know, and I don't know if musicologists know for sure, how dances were danced in noble circles in the time of Purcell - maybe they were, indeed, dignified and stately, rather than rocking and romping; it is certainly an image more easily associated with 17th Century Court. But heard today, 60 years after Elvis, it sounds stately, dignified, not very lively or exciting.

Deller's group of singers are a mixed bag. In Come Ye Sons of Art, his Oriana orchestra and chorus aren't very refined, with the chorus lacking homogeneity, sounding like a group of enthusiastic amateurs - which may well be how a chorus would have sounded in Purcell's day, but if even so, it would be pushing a taste for "authenticity" a little too far. In "Sound the trumpets", the magnificent duet in which the two counter-tenors imitate the sound of the instruments, Mark Deller sounds almost childish in timbre, but in a duet with his father it sounds strangely appropriate, and they sing with real enthusiasm, while the relatively spare and light continuo is charming. Baritone Maurice Bevan was a long-time associate of the Deller group, and his voice in 1962, especially in his aria "The Day that Such a Blessing" (track 6), sounds fresh and young (other than a top D that finds him strained), but not extremely characterful, and the singing is elegant, but somewhat bland - I have Gardiner's Thomas Allen in my memory, whom some critics have found TOO bombastic: I find him operatic and wonderfully characterful, and for me it leaves all the others pale (see my review of [[ASIN:B00000E8RQ Purcell: Music for Queen Mary]]). Soprano Mary Thomas, another Deller Consort stalwart, is okay, more vehement and assertive I find than truly sensuous in "Bid the Virtues", and her timbre doesn't marry ideally with that of the obligato oboe. Here again no match to Gardiner's Felicity Lott. I hear the same relative blandness and lack of strong characterization in the tenor, baritone and bass (the latter is Maurice Bevan again) of Welcome to All the Pleasures. Tenor Gerald English sounds better in his solo Aria, "Beauty Thou Scene of Love" (track 25) - in timbre, not in characterization, which remains bland. The ladies, April Cantelo and Eileen McLoughlin are better, and exquisite in the trio "While Joys Celestial" (track 22).

So what's left? Deller. Whenever he sings, solo or in ensembles, the voice is so large, so plum, so sensuous, he's a joy to hear, independent of any stylistic considerations. There is also, independent again of any stylistic authenticity, the fine, madrigal-like quality of the ensembles, the two sopranos in "While Joys Celestial", the basso arias and soprano-basso duet in Come Ye Sons of Art, which, to true animation, substitute a robust vigor. The music of Purcell doesn't fail to generate its pleasures, even in stylistically passé interpretations.

In this 1994 European edition, the transfers are excellent, and cut at a VERY high volume too, making them extremely present (and prompting me to turn down the volume). Vanguard Europe also issued the same program on another disc, 08 8027 71, with a different cover, not listed here. The American equivalent of that European edition is here, [[ASIN:B0000023EW Come Ye Sons of Art]], OVC 8027. From my experience with other Vanguard Europe vs Vanguard US issues, the transfers are the same. Vanguard US later reissued the recording, on OVC 8115, [[ASIN:B00000K0LW Purcell: Come Ye Sons of Art / Rejoice in the Lord Alway / My Beloved Spake / Welcome to All the Pleasures]], aparently in a Sony "Super Bit Mapping" remastering. I don't know how much the sound is improved, but the earlier CD reissue sounds good enough for me. For European readers, those European editions are found on the European Amazons under EAN 3351475060714 and 3351478027714. Vanguard must also be commended for not just reissuing the 1962 LP but complementing it from the Purcell recording of the 1959 recording, for a generous TT of 67:29, no complaints on that front either. Still, this is to be taken as a memento of Deller, and/or as a historical document on how Purcell was performed in the late 1950s/early 1960s. But for Purcell (at least in these works - Deller remains incomparable in the lute songs), move forward.