The “Art Deco” Music of Maria Herz

HERZ: Piano Concerto.* 4 Short Pieces for Large Orchestra. Cello Concerto.^# Orchestral Suite / *Oliver Triendl, pno; ^#Konstanze von Gutzeit, vc; Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin; Christiane Silber, cond / Capriccio C5510

Once again, we come up with another great woman composer from the past whose name is barely known today, Maria Bing Herz, and in her case, especially, the oversight is criminal.

Many years ago, I read an article (I now forget where) criticizing woman composers in general. The author complained that most of their music has been lightweight and of little value. If they were so great, he asked, where are their symphonies? their operas? their concertos? Yet as great latter-day composers emerged who did write symphonies, concerti and operas, their work was still marginalized or demeaned. Starting in the 1980s, such composers as Ethel Smyth, who did indeed write operas, concerti and a wonderful Mass in D, as well as Emilie Luise Mayer, who wrote symphonies, and others who wrote powerful works in large forms also emerged, at least on records, but for the most part their works were ignored as well.

And now, here we have Maria Herz, who just might have been the most startlingly original of them all. Not a single note of the music on this remarkable CD is lightweight or trivial; it has the same tensile strength and originality of any male composer of her time; yet not only is every piece on this CD a first recording, I sincerely doubt that any of these works will be played publicly unless Christiane Silber, the enterprising conductor on this disc who single-handedly revived these amazing works, is the one to perform them. They will probably languish here on this record and only on this record, and they do not deserve to do so.

Maria Herz

But who was Maria Herz and how did this remarkable music come about? It’s a bittersweet story with a splendid beginning but a tense middle period and a sad ending. She was born as Maria Bing to a wealthy textile manufacturer and his wife from Cologne in 1878. But wait a minute…wasn’t there another person in the music business named Bing who was born to a wealthy textile manufacturer? Why, yes, there was…Rudolf Bing, general manager of the Glyndebourne Opera Festival from 1934 to 1950, then of the Metropolitan Opera from 1950 to 1972. Comparing their photos, Maria and Rudolf Bing didn’t look very much alike, but Bing is not really all that common a name. My guess is that Rudolf’s father was one of Maria’s older brothers (she was the youngest child and the only girl), so she might well have been his aunt. I could not confirm this one way or the other, however; it’s just my guess.

Showing musical talent from a young age, Maria had some of the best teachers in Europe, among them piano pedagogue Max Pauer, a second-generation student of Mozart’s son Franz Xavier. She was also trained as a cellist and a composer, and she became an eloquent speaker on artistic matters in both German and English. In 1901 she married a chemist from Cologne, Dr. Albert Herz, who was six years older than she. Although they had four children, Albert took care of them as often as he could so that Maria could continue to study composition as well as write music.

But then, calamity struck. Despite being married with children, the German army was so desperate that Albert was drafted to serve in World War I. Although he survived physically, he returned a broken man suffering from PTSD. Two year later, in 1920, he died in the bird flu pandemic , leaving Maria a widow. She eventually moved in with her brother, whose wife had also died from the bird flu, and thus added two more children to her care, but her brother helped as much as he could. Istvan Ipolyi, the original violist of the Budapest String Quartet, encouraged her as much as he could because he found her music original and stimulating.

During this period Maria wrote most of her music, which she wisely published using her late husband’s first name: Albert Maria Herz. She was very proud of the fact that her music sounded strong, not like most “women’s music,” yet it was considered too strange for most audiences and thus was seldom performed. Then the Nazis took over Germany in 1933; a year later, Maria and her children, now grown adults, fled to England where she lived until 1950…but she never wrote another note of music.

Listening to her works, I found it very difficult to discern her influences because her music doesn’t really sound like anyone else’s. I think it was very fitting that the cover art for this release used an Art Deco-styled painting, because her pieces sound like a musical extension of the Art Deco movement of the 1920s and early ‘30s. Yes, there are lyrical themes in them, and her development sections follow established musical rules, but the overall effect is of edgy music—and by that I mean music with a sharp edge to it. Many passages in her works moved in a vertical, serrated fashion, like the teeth of a saw. Just reading this, you might get the impression that the music is “gimmicky,” that it doesn’t work, but that’s not it at all. It’s just so different that it’s hard to pin down. The only contemporary composer whose music hers resembles in some respects was George Antheil—but Antheil generally worked within a modal harmony, whereas Herz’ harmony shifts vertically as does the top line.

This is immediately evident in the first movement of her piano concerto. Herz, being a virtuoso pianist herself, wrote some fantastic lines for the instrument, yet even the piano part falls into those serrated passages. As for her handling of the orchestra, that, I think, shows the influence of Stravinsky with his biting wind and string sections. She tended to use what I would call a “glassy” sound rather than a warm one. Conductor Silber and pianist Triendl capture this feeling perfectly in their recorded performance, although I did feel that Capriccio’s engineers over-emphasized this a bit. The orchestra and piano sound so bright that their timbres are almost unnatural. I boosted the mid-range and bass by 2 db, which helped restore some of the mid-range and bass that their engineering tended to eliminate, and I think it sounds better this way.

Within her serrated musical world, however, Herz followed the proper rules of theme-and-development, yet there are so many little surprises as one goes along that you begin to realize what an inspired composer she was. Little of this music is predictable in any way; she may indeed jump around both rhythmically and harmonically—the altered chords, as noted above, move up and down with the top line—but it all holds together and makes perfect musical sense. It’s just…different.

Towards the end of the first movement the music slows down considerably in pace and eases in intensity until the coda, where Herz ramped up the music to a feverish pace, including fast-running viola passages beneath the biting violins. The second movement opens with the extraordinary sound of extremely low winds and basses holding a single notes over which the piano and a forlorn-sounding oboe are heard. This is in C minor and stays there for some time, despite occasional harmonic shifts, presenting a very dolorous mood which, to my ears, has an underlying Hassidic sound. Eventually the pianist moves into a melodic line played in slow triplets, then back to a straight four as the curiously Hebraic harmonies resume—but not for long, as Herz then starts moving things around for the development. Again, she was in her own musical world; she sounded like no one else, and no one else sounded like her.

The third movement opens with the trombones playing a quirky five-note modal theme, into which the strings come galumphing, followed in turn by the piano. This is not just a dialogue but a whole musical conversation going on between soloist and the different sections of the orchestra, creating a strange modal world in the minor. Once again we hear an oboe solo, over which the pianist plays odd sixteenth-note figures until things settle down a bit and the music continues to move on. In the soft passage, it almost sounds as if the piano is asking a question, only to be answered by heavy-sounding trombones and other orchestral members. And once again, nothing in this music is predictable or expected; it almost overwhelms the listener with both its novelty and its surprisingly linear construction. About two-thirds of the way through this movement, things quiet down in terms of volume but not in rhythm; a jolly, burping bassoon is head in the background. Then the tempo changes completely to a rapid 6/8, eventually returning to 4 when it feels like it. A very strange piece, but at the same time stimulating and exciting.

The first of the 4 Short Orchestral Pieces is a bit less serrated-sounding but still quite unusual in its rhythmic and harmonic construction. Being a medium-slow piece, Herz uses a more lyrical and less serrated top line, but even so the music has its own unique construction and direction and it does become quite fast and agitated in the second section. And, wonder of wonders, it feeds directly into the second piece, taken at the same pace and the same key, an extension of what has just occurred rather than a discrete piece in a contrasting tempo, style or mood, though it does slow down as a solo violin plays a theme above swirling clarinets and flutes. Then back to the fast, quirky music, which then speeds up even more (albeit with short pauses) towards the end. The third piece has a different vibe, slow and eerie, though again emphasizing those biting wind and string sounds over a sort of ground bass. This almost sounds like some of the post-war modern music that evolved long after Herz had stopped writing. Everything here floats, but in an atonal way. The fourth, though also in a minor key, is all bustle with fast string passages in a 6/8 moto perpetuo, alternating with wind, French horn and trombone figures. But then—a surprisingly slow section right in the middle before the bustle re-starts; the volume increases as it proceeds to a loud finale.

And then there’s the cello concerto, which opens with very low trombones over muted tympani. Again the music is slow and, though somewhat bitonal, lyrical in quality. with a gong sounding in the midst of the opening theme statement. There are also brief solo spots by other instruments, including a very forlorn-sounding English horn and a trombone. Then things begin to ramp up in intensity, volume and strangeness of both the melodic line and the harmony as the rest of the orchestra pitches in. A little before the halfway mark, we suddenly switch to a strange sort of galumphing 4/4 as an entirely new theme enters for the cello and others to play. But shifts in meter, tempo and key continue as the pace increases, though staying basically in the minor. How I wish that such well-known cellists as Zuill Bailey and Stephen Isserlis would play this concerto! Konstanze von Gutzeit, our soloist here, is an excellent technician and has the right style, but their outstanding interpretive abilities could, I think, make this something of a repertoire piece. I was particularly impressed, as the piece went on, how Herz eventually made the solo cello just another voice in the orchestra, albeit the most prominent one.

We end this disc with the seven-piece orchestral suite. Although the music is still recognizable as Herz’s, the serrated quality of her earlier works is somewhat minimized, yet once again she seemed to be operating in a sound world unique to herself. The fourth piece is particularly inventive, but even the more subtle ones grab and hold your attention due to Herz’ unique style and continual inventiveness.

The sad thing is that Maria Herz isn’t even a “forgotten” composer. She’s a completely neglected one, and although she lost the will to compose once the Nazis took over, you really can’t call her a victim of “entrarte music” because even before the Nazis were elected few if any were playing her music. I must give high praise to Christiane Silber, not just for her wonderful conducting but for insisting that this material be recorded and issued. Here she is, folks, that “major woman” composer you’ve all been saying never existed.

Deal with it.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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Gabriel Genest’s “As It Is”

AS IT IS / Sur le fil. Kairos. Effet papillon.^# Savor (2 tks). As It Is. Stalemate.* Voir au-delà.* She Let Go (Genest) / Gabriel Genest, t-sax; *Jean-Nicolas Trottier, tb; ^#Olivier Salazar, vib; Yannick Anctil, pno; Alex Le Blanc, bs; Guillaume Pilote, dm; Jeanne LeForest, voc / Odd Sound ODS-032)

This album of highly unusual and idiosyncratic jazz comes from Montreal saxist-composer Gabriel Genest. The publicity blurb for this release states that “Genest wanted to bring together two worlds that are dear to him: jazz improvisation and mindfulness meditation, which he has been practicing diligently for 10 years.” Thus Genest combines here pieces that are extremely complex in terms of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic construction—clearly not “simple” elements—with improvisation, which requires fast thinking “in the moment.” The results are utterly fascinating.

The opening track, Sur le fil, starts with an a cappella solo by the leader before the rhythm section comes in beneath him. It’s not so much that the rhythms are hard to follow as than the meter is constantly shifting, sometimes within a bar, which takes the music away from the average listener’s ability to “get into a groove” with the band. I don’t know for sure if Alex LeBlanc really has that large of a tone on the bass or if he was just miked closely, but he certainly has a rich tone, and the advantageous mic placement emphasizes this in the ensemble. I was also highly impressed by drummer Guillaume Pilote, a musician who varies his approach to the beat without sounding overly busy, as if he wants to take over the whole rhythm section. Yannick Anctil is a gentle pianist in the Bill Evans vein, or perhaps the Claude Thornhill vein, playing “gingerbread around the edges” as Thornhill did in his bands. Yet it is during Anctil’s solo that Pilote played his most complex drumming. A response to the pianist or, perhaps, a desire to increase the intensity in what he felt was a rhythmic lull? It’s hard to say.

Kairos, although also somewhat complex, has a funkier beat that is also more regular. I really liked this piece because, despite its use of modal harmony, the melodic line is somewhat catchy, which gives one something to hang on to as the music progresses. In his solo here, Anctil plays a few passages with a stronger touch than in the previous track, and as a result Pilote is less busy behind him except for the press rolls in the last four bars, which lead into a nice solo by Genest. Interestingly, LeBlanc’s solo here stays within a repeated bass lick, acting more as a rhythmic rather than as a melodic springboard.

Olivier Salazar joins the quartet on vibes in Effet Papillon, a nice ballad which, for a change, is played in a straight four. The mood on this one is relaxed and pleasant; everyone is laid back rather than keyed up, and there’s a sort of bossa nova feel here that I liked. Anctil’s solo on this track is excellent. Salazar’s vibes stay in the background for color.

Vocalist Jeanne LaForest makes her first of four appearances on Savor, humming quietly in the opening theme statement before LeBlanc’s bass takes the first solo. This is a real rarity, a soft jazz piece that is not boring or lacking in interest although it does have a peculiar “floating” quality about it, like a musical cloud that floats overhead. LaForest is also heard on As It Is and She Let Go as well as the alternate take of Savor. To be honest, I didn’t much like As It Is; for me, the music was too amorphous. Except for Genest’s lovely sax solo and the fine drumming, it contained nothing in it that interested me.

But Stalemate, which opens with a nice duet between Genest and trombonist Jean-Nicolas Trottier, is simply wonderful: an old-school kind of piece with a swinging if somewhat fractured beat that gets your feet moving in spite of yourself. Genest’s solos on this one, however, are more fun-oriented than dazzling; he was obviously enjoying the vibe and just letting it wash over him. On the other hand, Trottier’s trombone solo is absolutely terrific, using a lean, almost vibratoless tone in the manner of Miff Mole or J.J. Johnson, and Pilote has a field day on drums.

Trottier is also heard on Voir au delà, a piece using a sort of serrated (and simple) motif played by trombone and sax as its theme, then moving from a regular 4 into more esoteric tempi, in fact eventually relaxing so much that it almost sounds like no tempo at all. The volume also recedes at this point as Genest plays an extremely soft yet very busy tenor solo over the rhythm section, following which Trottier comes in while LeBlanc occasionally duets with him. A strange piece but a really good one. She Let Go is another soft ballad, but the lyrics are interesting and Genest’s solo is excellent.

I really liked this album, but came just short of loving it. You really should hear it at least once; most of it makes a good impression, and stimulates the mind as well as the ear.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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Perelman & Shipp’s “Magical Incantation”

MAGICAL INCANTATION / Thirteen (Prayer). Eight (Rituals). Three (Lustihood). Eleven (Enlightenment). Ten (Sacred Values). Fourteen (Incarnation). Seven (Vibrational Essence). Six Edit III (Magical Incantation) (Perelman-Shipp) / Ivo Perelman, t-sax; Matthew Shipp, pno / Soul City Sounds, no number; available for streaming and purchase on Bandcamp

Although pianist Matthew Shipp has made numerous recordings with tenor saxist Ivo Perelman over the years, it’s not often that he speaks out publicly about their recordings, but of this one he raved about their collaboration and the high level of artistry they attained. Considering that their ESP-Disk’ of two years ago was titled Fruition, which to me signifies an apex of artistry. and it was, I was more than curious to hear this newest outing.

From the very beginning of Prayer (take 13), it was obvious to me that Perelman has entered an entirely new zone of musical sophistication and sensitivity. Here, he actually plays melodic lines in a basically tonal style against the backdrop of Shipp’s largely (but not entirely) tonal piano setting. I’ve said for years that Perelman is at his best when playing with Shipp because the pianist, although himself a free jazz musician, is more rooted in chords and the sounds of chords because of his instrument, which has more than one “voice,” and here we have further proof of both the intelligence and sophistication of their evolving relationship. As in his previous album, too, Perelman has learned that his high-register excursions need not be screamed out at full volume. Moreover, on this recording he has entered a new approach to free improvising, creating wholly musical rather than abstract lines. Even in the second track, Rituals (take 8), where both he and Shipp revisit their older, more outré and abstract style, the music has more form than in the old days. Here, too, Perelman goes even higher into the stratosphere of his instrument than he did previously, yet for the most part this, too is under more perfect technical control.

I have often mentioned in previous reviews of his recordings that his lower range is warm and rich, a warm musical embrace that I felt resembled the playing of Ben Webster except for the fact that everything he plays is completely improvised on the spot. Here, by reining in his previous tendency to screech in the upper register, he has created a much better-integrated musical approach. Shipp’s own playing, too, has become a bit softer than in the past; some of the chord positions that he feeds Perelman on Lustihood (truly a strange title!) are reminiscent of the highly sophisticated work that Bill Evans did—and I consider that a high compliment. Many jazz pianists who came up after Evans, including Herbie Hancock, were to some extent influenced by him, but very few succeeded in capturing his flow of ideas as Shipp does here.

On Enlightenment (take 7), Shipp plays in an uptempo manner although using highly irregular meters. This sets up a playful mood into which Perelman jumps with both feet. There are several passages here reminiscent of his earlier work, but! He pulls back on them a bit, and integrates them into a musical line. Shipp, responding to this, also gives us some playful single-note lines on the keyboard. They continue to inspire one another like this throughout the track, even when Perelman really wails in the upper register and Shipp starts playing a series of triplet chords to pull him back into their musical rodeo. This is followed by an alternation of just two notes on piano over which Perelman improvises an appropriate top line.

And this greater subtlety of interplay continues throughout the album. As track follows track, we hear this highly skilled duo “conversing” musically in a way that involves a great deal of linear and harmonic sophistication. As has been the case over the course of their relationship, Shipp is often the one who “leads” Perelman, but on this CD, not always. They seem to take turns inspiring one another, and when they converge in joint inspiration, as roughly two-third of the way through Sacred Values (take 10), they are moments to treasure.

To put it another way, this recording—to my ears, anyway—presents several Zen-like moments when these two musicians are locked into what they are doing at that specific time, yet they are simultaneously following each other in and out of musical puzzles and finding solutions. Being a jump-off-the-cliff-without-a-parachute approach, there are some moments where things do not work as smoothly, but here they find sure footing more quickly after such moments, thus managing to take the music somewhere without getting bogged down in the wrong track. Only in Incarnation (take 14) did I feel that they stayed in a state of musical chaos longer than they should have, but the one immediately following it, Vibrational Essence (take seven) shows them using the same formula but producing something that makes more musical sense.

I only hope that Ivo continues to modify his musical approach in future recordings. He certainly seems to be on the right track.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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Frank Martin’s Chamber Music

MARTIN: Piano Quintet.* String Quartet. Pavane couleur du temps for String Quintet ^# / Terpsycordes Qrt; *Fabrizio Chiovetta, pno; ^#François Grin, vc / Claves 7619931308128

Here’s a recording distributed by Naxos that slipped by me because it was not promoted as a “featured release,” whereas superfluous new recordings of Bruckner, Bach, Mozart etc. were. It seems almost incomprehensible to me that, until about a decade ago, I had never even heard of Frank Martin, whereas now I eagerly pounce on any releases of his music that I don’t already have in my collection.

As it turns out, the Piano Quintet is a very early work, written in 1918 shortly after his marriage. According to the liner notes, this piece coincided with Martin’s first expansion of his style away from late Romanticism and more into the aesthetics of Debussy, but Martin’s musical mind worked in different ways from Debussy and thus produced a very idiosyncratic work combining the fluid harmonic structure of Debussy with a melodic line strangely reminiscent of Fauré—who, of course, was one of the composers who influenced Debussy. Yet it is impressionistic in feeling if not in actual construction, the pulse being more obvious here than in much of Debussy’s music, and considering that he was in a very happy state when he wrote it, the music has a curiously wistful, almost melancholy tinge about it.  Yet, as I say, it is still “Martinesque” in form, pointing towards all the excellent works to come.

The Terpsycordes Quartet (ignore the pretentious French spelling on the album cover) and pianist Fabrizio Chiovetta really get under the skin of this music, creating alternately opaque and sharply defined sounds as the quintet progresses. The second movement, a Scherzo set to a minuet tempo, is a bit cheerier than the first but still not entirely happy. Let’s just call it moderately pleased. The secondary theme, set in 4 rather than 3, harks back to the melancholy feeling of the first movement without repeating any of its material; only the last chorus, again in triple time, has strong, assertive energy. In short, this is very subtle music, even subtler than many later of Martin’s compositions; somehow I feel that only a minority of listeners really appreciated it in its time, particularly the strange third movement which undulates more than it coalesces around a set theme that the ear can easily follow. By the way, I may be wrong bur it sounds to me as if the Terpsycordes Quartet is using straight tone. If so, this is stylistically wrong, but since this is practically a religion nowadays for classical string players I’m not terribly surprised. Apparently, no one appreciates good string vibrato anymore. All classical string playing must now sound like a MIDI.

And then—a surprise! After three movements of subdued, somewhat melancholy music, the finale is played mostly in the major (with a few side-trips to neighboring keys) and for the most part maintains a rather upbeat feeling. Yet in this movement Martin is almost constantly playing around with and shifting the meter, so that the toe-tapping listener will have his or her feet crossing each other in places, leaving the poor dear out of step with the music.

The String Quartet dates from nearly a half-century later, in 1967, and is fully mature, highly complex music exhibiting the influences of Stravinsky and, to a certain extent, Bartók: the opening theme of the first movement sounds curiously like the Hungarian folk songs that Bartók and Kodály collected on cylinder recordings way back when and then used as a basis for their pieces. The opening movement sounds somewhat mysterious but not as melancholy as the Piano Quintet and, despite its harmonic sophistication, the melodic line actually sings. The fast second movement is a sort of moto perpetuo in bitonal harmony, edgy and slightly menacing but not melancholy. For the most part, Martin integrates the cello into the ensemble; it is the lead violin that gets most of the solo work, although it frequently plays in tandem with the second violin. And of course, there’s a lot of counterpoint going on here. There is, however, a mysterious feeling in the slow “Larghetto” typical of Martin’s late music. The final “Allegro leggiero” has a strange galumphing rhythm about it that puts it in a strange space emotionally. Is it meant to be taken entirely seriously, or a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor? Let the listener decide.

We end this recital with the Pavane couleur du temps, a string quintet piece written in 1920 (and much later, in 1954, arranged for a chamber orchestra). According to the notes, it was inspired by Charles Perrault’s fairy tale Peau d’âne (Donkeyskin), “in which a princess, seeking to avoid a dreaded marriage, tests her future and undesirable husband by requesting a gown ‘the colour of the sky’.” This links this piece to Ravel, whose orchestral suite Ma Mère l’Oye opened with a Pavane also inspired by Perrault, and indeed this is one of Martin’s more conventional works, sounding a great deal like Ravel without actually copying him. The harmonies are much more tonal and regular, as is the pulse, yet in the middle Martin suddenly introduces an edgier theme with shifting harmonies to add contrast, and it makes a charming and effective finale to this recording.

Aside from the completely wrong and ahistoric use of straight tone in the strings, this is a really marvelous CD, and since I had none of these works in my collection I am surely adding it. Recommended despite my caveat.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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Franz Schmidt’s Religious Oratorio

SCHMIDT: Symphony No. 4 / Vienna Symphony Orch.; Rudolf Moralt, cond / Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln/ Julius Patzak, ten (John the Evangelist); Otto Wiener, bs (Voice of the Lord); Hanny Steffek, sop; Hertha Töpper, alto; Erich Majkut, ten; Frederick Guthrie, bs; Franz Illenberger, org; Graz Cathedral Choir; Munich Philharmonic Orch.; Anton Lippe, cond / SOMM Recordings ARIADNE5026-2

This extremely interesting release features two first recordings of Schmidt’s greatest works, his fourth symphony and the religious oratorio The Book with Seven Seals, based on the Book of the Apocalypse. Although I am not a believer in Christianity and thus do not respond in a religious way to works based on religious texts, this piece is a masterwork on a par with J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor and St. Matthew Passion, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and the Requiems of Mozart, Verdi, Fauré and Frank Martin. Great art is great art, and it should be remembered that Mozart was none too religious, Beethoven was a Deist and Verdi an agnostic.

Lani Spahr

Since these recordings date from 1954 and 1962 respectively, I was not expecting really great sound, but restoration engineer Lani Spahr, who also wrote the liner notes for this release, is one of those rare exceptions who can turn potentially murky-sounding source material into sparkling, modern-sounding gems. I defy you to play this transfer of Schmidt’s Fourth Symphony through your stereo speakers and tell me that it really sounds like a 1954 mono recording.

Conductor Rudolf Moralt takes this symphony at a slower pace than Paavo Järvi did, yet if one simply plays Moralt without making an A-B comparison it doesn’t sound perceptibly slower, and in fact the orchestral texture sounds much clearer here than in Järvi’s digital recording. Both conductors imbue the music with great feeling, particularly the second movement which was dedicated to Schmidt’s daughter, who had recently died in childbirth. The clear sound of this recording allows the listener to pick up on some things that did not come through perfectly in the Järvi release, particularly the low sustained organ notes but also the separation of strings and winds. This was a remarkable achievement for 1954, a time when only the recordings of Toscanini had this kind of clarity. Like Järvi, Moralt understands the long line of the music without allowing it to droop or sag, and the vastly underrated Vienna Symphony Orchestra plays with stunning virtuosity for that time.

As for Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln, this was clearly a strange choice of text even for the very religious Lutheran Schmidt. He tackled it slowly and methodically, as was his wont, and agonized over how to set the text and, more importantly, what musical forms to use for it. Eventually he decided to move away from his usual symphonist’s tendency towards through-composed music and write it in sections, like most oratorios, but the perceptive listener will notice that the first part is much more episodic in nature than the second, and it is in this second section that some of Schmidt’s greatest music can be heard.

In researching this piece, I discovered that there are many more recordings of it than I thought would have existed, the most starry of these being a 1959 Salzburg Festival performance with Anton Dermota (John the Evangelist), Walter Berry (Voice of the Lord), Hilde Güden, Ira Malaniuk and a young Fritz Wunderlich. This was issued by three different labels, Melodram, Andromeda and Sony Classical. Then there is a recording with Eberhard Buchner (John), Robert Holl (God), Gabriele Fontana, Robert Holzer and Martin Haselböck, conducted by Horst Stein, on Hänssler Classic’s Profil label; a version on Oehms Classics conducted by Simone Young; another on Orfeo with Peter Schreier, Robert Holl, Carolyn Watkinson and Thomas Moser, conducted by Lothar Zagrosek; a Chandos recording with Johannes Chum (John), Robert Holl (Voice of the Lord), Sandra Trattnigg and Michelle Breedt conducted by Kristjan Järvi; and yet another on EMI with Stig Andersen, René Pape, Christiane Oelze and Alfred Reiter, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst—not to mention live performances on YouTube, including one with Herbert Lippert, Franz-Josef Selig, Simona Šaturová, Mauro Peter and Tareq Nazmi, conducted by Fabio Luisi (and another conducted by Paavo Järvi). Ah, and just now I’ve learned that there was also a recording by Nikolaus Harnoncourt on Teldec.

Most of these are very fine performances, particularly the Mitropoulos, but it’s in mono sound. One critic on MusicWeb International raved about the Kirstjan Järvi recording, but then admitted that bass Robert Holl was in terrible voice—and mezzo-soprano Michelle Breedt is no prize, either. Many critics pick the Welser-Möst recording, but tenor Stig Anderson has an unpleasant, somewhat unsteady voice that wears on one as the performance continues.

Thus this 1962 recording seems to me to be the best on balance. Its main attraction is that John the Evangelist is sung by tenor Julius Patzak, who studied composition with Schmidt before he became a tenor, but all of the soloists are in good voice and in this newly-remastered version the sound quality is so good that it could pass for DDD, yet the recording was originally issued on LP in Europe by Amadeo and in the United States by the Musical Heritage Society.

The US premiere of this work came in Cincinnati in May 1954, conducted by Josef Krips. Interestingly, Eugene Goossens, who conducted the Cincinnati orchestra in the 1930s. wrote his last work on the same subject matter as Schmidt’s – The Apocalypse. A 2-LP recording of the Goossens piece made by Myer Fredman in Sydney in the 1980s awaits reissue by ABC on compact disc. It was Josef Krips who revived Schmidt’s masterpiece at the Salzburg Festival in 1950, and Mitropoulos who revived it again in 1959.

Interestingly, Lani Spahr—who is also a practicing musician (oboe)—suggests that The Book with Seven Seals was written to predict the coming apocalypse caused by the Nazis. Like most sensitive souls and musical artists, Schmidt detested the Nazis; late in his life, when practically forced to write a cantata praising them, he wrote that this commission was “a diabolical liberty that will probably finish me off” (quoted by Spahr in the liner notes for this release). Although in failing health, he put this unfinished cantata aside in order to write a Clarinet Quintet in A minor for left-handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein.

But to return to the Book, the music is extraordinary, being lyrical and harmonically edgy (though not as thoroughly modern as the Stravinsky-Bartók-Prokofiev school) at the same time. It is divided into a Prologue and two parts, the first taking place in heaven. John sings the words of God, who then makes his own appearance to declare that he is the alpha and omega and will show what must come to pass. The first part then covers the opening of the first six seals telling the story of Mankind and our buddies, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Schmidt interprets the first rider, all in white on a white horse, as Jesus announcing the Antichrist, who of course is You-Know-Who. He is then followed by the second rider, all in red on a fire-red horse representing War, “who shall drive all peace from the world.” Now, if this wasn’t meant to represent Hitler, you tell me who it was supposed to be in 1936. The third and fourth riders represent famine and death/pestilence. And if you don’t think this happened under Hitler, you need to read William Shirer. Jolly old Adolf’s “scorched earth” campaign when he knew he was losing the war created famine and death among his own people. What a guy!

As I say, the first sections of the oratorio are in more harmonically conventional language than the latter portions, but even this earlier music is excellently crafted and, in spite of his decision to break up the text into sections, there is indeed a certain “long line” running through the music. Patzak is clearly the finest interpreter in this performance, but honestly, his is the role that counts the most. “God” is just a declamatory voice, nothing more; it is John who tells the story through his words.

It is during the organ solo in the midst of Part One where the harmony begins to change. Schmidt threw in some very edgy harmonies reminiscent of late Reger or even early Messiaen, and this carries over into the remainder of the oratorio. One can clearly hear this in track 2 of the second CD, where Schmidt pits trombones playing bitonally against surging and rather ominous-sounding basses, and when the chorus enters, their sections, too, are singing bitonally against one another. This, along with the sudden intrusion of percussion—snare drums (surely representing the march of war) as well as bass drum—on the mixed choral and orchestral textures. And I have to say, considering that this is from 1962, that not only Spahr but whoever was the original engineer on this recording did an utterly remarkable job capturing an almost 3-D quality in the “layering” of sound while providing perfect clarity of texture. Of course, some of this must surely be attributed to conductor Anton Lippe (1905-1974) who, like Julius Patzak, was a pupil of Franz Schmidt and made performances of this oratorio an annual event at the Graz Cathedral, where he was music director. Lippe also conducted Verdi’s Requiem at the Vienna Musikverein on December 9, 1945, “In Memoriam of the Fallen”—a performance in which Patzak was also the tenor soloist. Oddly enough, none of this information is in the booklet accompanying this recording; I had to go online and dig it up.

Thus, in addition to my personally liking this performance, we have other reasons to recommend it. But just the listening, I think, will convince you. Lippe’s extensive experience in directing this work shows in virtually every passage, particularly in track 7 on CD two, where the eerie orchestration, clashing harmonies and wonderfully transparent sound texture all combine to give the listener an almost overwhelming experience. One reviewer of the Kristjan Järvi recording on Amazon listed this one as being nearly its equal, thus considering that Otto Wiener is in better voice than Robert Holl on the Järvi version, I’d put this new incarnation in first place.

And thankfully, SOMM provides a link to the complete text of this oratorio in both German And English: https://d2me0q24x7p585.cloudfront.net/ARIADNE5026Libretto.pdf. For my readers who are also musicians and would be interested, I also herewith give you a full score to peruse.

This is truly a first-rate release in every respect, musically, technically and in terms of high performance quality. I don’t think my recommendation is really needed, since it recommends itself on all counts.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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Paavo Järvi’s Schmidt Symphonies

SCHMIDT: Symphonies Nos. 1-4. Notre Dame: Intermezzo / Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orch.; Paavo Järvi, cond / Deutsche Grammophon 00289 483 8336

This review is a story of two underrated classical musicians: the composer Franz Schmidt, who until a quarter-century ago was known only for one work, The Book of the Seven Seals (to be reviewed next), and conductor Paavo Järvi, of whom I took a dim view when he was music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. I listened to three of his broadcasts with the orchestra, including one in which he performed the Beethoven Ninth, and was utterly dissatisfied by his glib, surfacy readings—technically flawless but lacking any feeling or character. Yet in the years since he left Cincinnati, I’ve been impressed by a couple of his recordings made with European orchestras, so I decided to give this set a try.

And I’m glad I did, because it’s terrific: better than the one his father, Neeme Järvi, made for Chandos or the one that Vassily Sinaisky made for Naxos (although the Sinaisky performances are better than Pop Järvi’s).

But – who was Franz Schmidt, and why was he dismissed for decades? It’s a long story, but I’ll give you the Cliff Notes version here. (I almost wrote Reader’s Digest version, but the current version of this magazine is more of a handy help tips rag for homemakers and bears little resemblance to the one we boomers grew up with.)

Schmidt, who was Austro-Hungarian, was born in Pressburg, Hungary, which is now Bratislava a few days before Christmas 1874. His mother was an excellent pianist who was a pupil of Liszt; Franz later said she was the best piano teacher he ever had. He then studied piano with Rudolf Mader; also an organist, Mader taught him that instrument as well. But young Schmidt seemed to have been born under an unlucky star. In between his studies with Mader and entering the Vienna Conservatory, he took lessons with the well-known pedagogue Theodore Leschatitzky, who Schmidt found to be musically lacking and demeaning. When he finally got into the Vienna Conservatory, Schmidt was told that he had to study a second instrument in addition to music theory and counterpoint, so he chose the cello and became highly proficient on it. Schmidt originally studied theory with Anton Bruckner, but illness forced Bruckner to stop teaching and he was transferred to the class of Robert Fuchs, who was a proponent of Brahms. Unfortunately, Schmidt didn’t like Brahms’ music, so he left Fuchs’ class at the end of the year and studied privately while half-heartedly continuing his cello studies.

Schmidt auditioned for and won a position as cellist with the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra, which was a pretty ragged organization until Gustav Mahler arrived and put things into shape. Impressed with Fuchs’ playing, Mahler made him first cellist of the orchestra, but in time there was a falling out between the two when Mahler discovered that Schmidt disliked his music even more than he did Brahms’ (he called Mahler’s symphonies “cheap novels”). This, however, should not be construed as a racist comment. Remember that Schmidt detested Brahms’ music, too, and until the 1960s most of the world’s great conductors, except for Mahler’s acolytes Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer, either avoided Mahler’s symphonies completely or only conducted one or two works. But this attitude led to Schmidt’s playing being demeaned not only by Mahler but also by his acolyte Bruno Walter. Schmidt ceded his post as first cellist but stayed in the orchestra for several more years, during which time he wrote his first symphony as well as the opera Notre Dame, which Mahler originally promised to perform but never did.

By that time, too, Schmidt managed to obtain a position teaching cello until 1908 at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, and from 1914 as professor of piano at what was now the Vienna Academy for Music and Performing Arts. In 1918 he began teaching composition at the Staatsakademie, where one of his pupils was future tenor Julius Patzak. All of these positions eventually let him leave the orchestra and concentrate on composition.

Bad luck somehow continued to hound him. In 1919, for an unexplained reason, his wife went mad and had to be institutionalized. Unlike his older colleague Richard Strauss, Schmidt had a low-key personality, was not a self-promoter and suffered bouts of depression and ill health. One of the few times his work was recognized was in 1928, when he submitted his Third Symphony to an international competition sponsored by the Gramophone Company which was celebrating the 100th anniversary of Franz Schubert’s death that year. Schmidt, however, did not win the top prize which was a large sum of money; that went to Kurt Atterburg. Instead, he was given a lip-service consolation prize for the “best new Austrian composition.”

Then more bad luck, His daughter, who married in 1929, died in childbirth two years later, This threw him into the depths of depression. He gave up composing for several years, turning to religion for comfort. That is when he read the utterly irrational Book of Revelations and began work on what is considered his masterpiece, The Book with Seven Seals (Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln). Sometime during this period, he also wrote his fourth and last symphony, which many consider to be his greatest.

So here was Schmidt, finally recovered from his deep depression and being creative again, when in early 1938 here came Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to take over Austria. When Hitler discovered Schmidt and realized that he had been, however briefly, a pupil of his beloved Bruckner, he and Goebbels made a big fuss of him, publicly lauding him as the “greatest living Aryan symphonist” (not that Schmidt had much competition at the time), putting him in a newsreel, and commissioning a cantata from him to praise Hitler and the Nazis. Schmidt began working on this cantata but his heart wasn’t really in it, so he turned to other projects, but knowing that if he didn’t write it he might be sent to a concentration camp, he kept working on it but didn’t finish it before he suddenly died in 1939. This was Die deutsche Auferstehung, a piece that celebrated Austro-German unification. As Lani Spahr wrote in the liner notes for the reissue of Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln, Schmidt was never a proponent of Nazi ideology: “The worst that can be said is that he was politically naïve.” And yet for many people, Richard Strauss got a free pass for his taking over conducting posts when protesting music directors walked out of Germany, or being so complicit with the Nazis that he also wrote pieces celebrating their allies, such as the Japanese Festmusik (which he also recorded for Deutsche Grammophon).

Even more info has come out on Schmidt since: that he had his composition pupils study Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, that he helped Jewish students get out of Austria after the Nazi takeover, and that although Schmidt himself was not a Nazi, his young second wife Marguerite was. Perhaps this is the reason one eyewitness saw Schmidt once give the Nazi salute in public.

Thus poor Schmidt was kicked to the curb, particularly when, after his death, the Nazis put up a large plaque honoring him (see below)—but that didn’t stop them from sending his insane first wife to be gassed in 1943.

File source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Franz-Schmidt-Villa_FoNo5.jpg

I know this seems like a terribly long opening to this review, yet I think it necessary in order to explain at least one reason why his music wasn’t played for decades after his death. The other reason, of course, is that his harmonic language, while extremely interesting, was already considered passé by the time he died. All of which is a shame because each of his four symphonies had a different character, and the music, though written in a late-Romantic style, is exceptionally good.

In fact his first symphony, which premiered in 1902 with the composer conducting, received high praise from the critics—the same critics who also lambasted Mahler’s symphonies, which did nothing to help his relationship with the orchestra’s director. Despite Schmidt’s disdain for Brahms, there are some touches of that composer in this work although it also leans towards Wagner (lots of loud French horns and thick orchestral scoring) and his teacher Bruckner. Yet the first movement, in particular, is even more memorably melodic than Brahms or Bruckner. During the first full orchestral peroration, some of the violins are feverishly playing string tremolos behind the mass of sound, followed by a bit of Richard Strauss-like themes. But Schmidt was a superb craftsman, and he weaves all of these influences together into a smooth and unified narrative. And I have to say, the Frankfurt orchestra plays their hearts out in this symphony, thus I would think that they, at least, appreciated Schmidt’s music even if there are still music critics who find it second-rate. I don’t. This music is simply bursting with interesting and novel ideas; Schmidt obviously had a talent for blending his inspiration with a high level of craft. But of course it is exactly this unified form that contemporary critics (and most conductors) did not find in Mahler’s episodic sonic landscapes, which were all over the place in terms of themes, meters and tempi. Although their methods and results were different, Mahler shared with Berlioz the dubious distinction of being the most misunderstood composer of his time and, if anything, it took much longer (70 years as compared to nearly 40) after their deaths for Berlioz to become a mainstream composer than it did for Mahler.

Yet although Schmidt’s music was more conventional in form, his way of telling a story in sound is simply phenomenal. He managed to take the Wagnerian style and omit the slower, duller passages in the latter’s operas where the orchestra simply acts as an accompaniment to the words being sung, which gave his music a constant flow. You can hear this in the second movement of this symphony, and it is to Järvi’s credit that he understood that slow movements still need forward momentum—something that many modern-day conductors forget even when playing Beethoven, Schubert or Brahms. I would also add that it is exactly this skill of Schmidt’s to create long and continually developing lines that is almost completely lacking in the music of many modern composers, who seem far too hung up on “effects.” Schmidt also avoided one device that always seemed to be a prescribed formula in symphonies and concerti of his time, and that is the sudden fast passage in the middle of the slow movement. In addition to the constant flow of ideas, his constantly “moving” orchestration, in which at least one section is playing something different from the rest of the orchestra, holds one’s attentions.

Such subtleties, however, are often missed by ears tuned to catch other things in the music. Many critics, including one who I will not name because I highly respect his ears and his opinions, described Schmidt’s symphonies as “good but not great,” yet it is exactly this layered sound and intermixture of details that make his symphonies great. There is really a lot going on in this music, but alas, much of it is “under the surface” where some ears fail to go. Each movement of this symphony is quite long, even the Scherzo (“Schnell und leicht”) which runs nearly eleven minutes, but it doesn’t feel long because your attention never wavers; and it is here, in the Scherzo, where Schmidt reverses the convention usually accorded second movements of symphonies by introducing a slow theme in the midst of the bustle rather than the other way around. Ironically, the theme of this slow section actually sounds a bit like Mahler.

In the fourth movement, Schmidt cleverly weaves in and out between the major and minor, so quickly, in fact, that if you’re not listening carefully you’ll miss it. Sometimes, these brief but telling key changes take place only in the subliminal lines of the music, such as in the basses but not in the top line. It’s almost like being in a cluttered Victorian living room where everything seems to be in place but the shifting lights coming in through the windows suddenly make things look briefly different, but you can’t say exactly how. The soft viola passage right in the middle is one such moment: don’t miss it! And then, note how he suddenly and almost nonchalantly shifts the meter from 4/4 to 6/8, then back to 4 when the tempo suddenly doubles…but the violas are still playing 6/8 beneath the 4/4!

The second symphony was written from 1911 to 1913 and published the following year. Schmidt dedicated it to conductor Franz Schalk in hopes that he would perform it; he did, but much to Schmidt’s dismay, he discovered that Schalk didn’t have a true understanding of the piece. David Hurwitz, executive editor of Classics Today, described it as a real Gothic, “hairy knuckle” piece, but compared to Havergal Brian’s “Gothic” Symphony it’s not quite that. It is, however, much more muscular music, to be sure; here, Strauss seems to be his principal inspiration, but mixing in some of Salome with Ein Heldenleben, which it resembles in places; but once again, in the intricate low clarinet passages woven around the flutes with string tremolos tossed in for color, his orchestration is entirely his own. (I would think, in fact, that Strauss would have been a bit jealous of this symphony, but I’ve not been able to find any solid evidence.) At 7:25 in the first movement, Schmidt uncorks some absolutely incredible mushroom clouds of sound from the orchestra, something he never did again, followed by a strange-sounding solo for what sounds like a bass clarinet against the low strings before a luftpausen and yet another busy theme written with complex orchestration. Although this movement, in Järvi’s performance, runs 14:33, it doesn’t sound “long” because so much is going on.

Score page from the first movement of Schmidt’s Second Symphony

The second movement is more conventional thematically, using a fairly simple melodic line in 3/4, but again the music shifts and changes. Here, however, the music does sound episodic, even in such skilled hands as Järvi’s; I can just imagine how Schalk must have butchered this. It’s a surprisingly weak movement in Schmidt’s oeuvre, but only in terms of this episodic feeling; Orchestrally, it is again superb if here, perhaps, even more obviously Straussian. Schmidt makes up for this, however, in a superb third (and final) movement. Drawing on his experiences as an organist, he creates a very long, slow line for the opening which sounds very much like organ music transcribed for orchestra. One thing that I’ve not read about Schmidt’s music is that at times, like here, it resembles Max Reger’s, except that Reger’s orchestral textures were even thicker and didn’t usually have as many moving parts. In the development section, Schmidt doubles the tempo and turns it over to the violins, later brass and winds mixed in, as he doubles the tempo and suddenly envelops us in his by-now-expected web of sound, and he continues to shift and change the music as it goes on. It’s a very satisfying ending to this symphony and, once again, clearly simulates an organ.

Oddly enough, given his disappointment in Schalk’s performance of his Second Symphony, Schmidt let the same conductor give the premiere of the Third in December 1928. This is the symphony that Schmidt entered in the international contest run by the Columbia Graphophone Company for new symphonies in the spirit of the Unfinished” to honor the 100th anniversary of Schubert’s death. As everyone knows, it was Kurt Atterburg who won the top prize with what was then called his “million dollar symphony/” Schmidt did, however, win first prize in the “Austrian zone” of the International Prize. Although Schmidt’s symphony bears no resemblance to Schubert’s in form or structure, I would say that he definitely used a Schubert-like melody in the first movement; in any even, it is unlike his usual themes, being rather more melodic, and although it includes his usual subtle key shifts and moving bass lines, it is less complex and cluttered than usual for him. A very pastoral opening, then, and quite charming, which is different from the first two symphonies, although this first movement does eventually build up to a stunning climax.

It is in the second movement, however, that we notice a definite shift in Schmidt’s style, towards bitonality. This is noticeable from the very start of the movement although, as in the case of his key shifts in the earlier works, he sometimes goes back to a pure tonality before shifting once again towards a tonal mixture. In the second movement, the harmonic mixture is even subtler, pointing towards what he would do in this fourth symphony. The third-movement scherzo is also somewhat Schubert-like, or at least Schubert mixed with Schmidt, which you would have expected. But there’s a surprise: a little over three minutes into this movement, Schmidt stops the music dead before picking up the next theme—again, something that Schubert would have done but not normally Schmidt. Also unusual, for him, is the very chipper feeling he put into it. The fourth and last movement, surprisingly, opens with a “Lento” theme  before suddenly moving into an “Allegro vivace,” again after a dead stop in the music. At 3:42 he suddenly brings the tympani in behind the orchestra for several bars, then drops it. All in all, a surprisingly playful symphony from Schmidt although it has his harmonic fingerprints all over it.

Then, at last, we arrive at his remarkable Fourth Symphony, written in 1933 and dedicated (finally) to another conductor, Oswald Kabasta, who premiered it with the Vienna Symphony (interesting…not the Philharmonic!). This was the culmination of his symphonic writing, a piece that is continuous from start to finish and clearly folded in several Mahlerian elements in addition to his subtle key changes, which are more frequent here and, in a way, become part of the overall structure, including the development sections. Hearing this work, one realizes what a shame it was that Schmidt never wrote a fifth symphony; everything about this piece is equally fascinating and emotionally moving. The music almost seems to pulsate as it continually morphs and develops in a continuous arch. By this time, too, Schmidt has become familiar with some of Schoenberg’s music and although he clearly did not go into 12-tone music, he also seemed to me to have had some ideas about how to incorporate even more frequent key shifts, which kept the harmony up in the air much of the time.

But I don’t think it was just Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire that he discovered by this time. This symphony, to my ears, also shows the influence of that same composer’s Verklärte Nacht—in addition to Strauss and Mahler. This may not have been a particularly forward-looking work,  but it was a culmination of the German symphonic style which incorporated some then-20-yerar-older ideas into its basically Romantic structure. By and large, this symphony moves at an almost consistently moderate to slow pace, which allows the listener to absorb Schmidt’s masterful grasp of harmony in sort of “slow motion.” At the 4:40 mark in the slow(er) second movement, there is even a certain allusion to the funeral march from Beethoven’s Third Symphony, albeit updated in style and not quite as funereal in tempo. I can only hope that Oswald Kabasta did as good a job on this symphony as Järvi does here; he really nails this music in its strange combination of subtlety and power.

The Intermezzo from Schmidt’s opera Notre Dame is a nice piece, but I wish that Järvi had also included the Introduction and “Carnival Music” as Sinaisky did in the Naxos set. Even so, this is an outstanding set of performances that do full justice to Schmidt’s unusual but Romantic symphonies. This was clearly as far as the Romantic style could go without fully embracing the aesthetics of a Scriabin, Bartók, Stravinsky or Prokofiev as the symphonic form marched forward in both time and style. Kudos to everyone involved with this set, particularly the engineers who captured every note with clarity.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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Hannigan Sings Messiaen

COVER ITUNES.indd

MESSIAEN: Chants de Terre et de Ciel. Poèmes pour Mi. La Mort du Nombre* / Barbara Hannigan, sop; Bertrand Chamayou, pno; *add Charles Sy, ten; Vilde Frang, vln / Alpha Classics ALPHA1033

In a way, an album like this one is, like the majority of recordings of older classical material issued nowadays, superfluous. Each of these pieces has been recorded before, and many times; I own a performance of Chants de Terre et de Ciel by soprano Suzie Leblanc, not one but two recordings of Poèmes pour Mi by Yvonne Naef and Renée Fleming (and I once had a third, by Tony Arnold), and La Mort du Nombre by Lebanc; and since these are not the kind of songs that are open to individual interpretation, as in the case of 19th-century German lieder or late 19th-early 20th century French chansons, the only reason for this disc’s existence seems to be to please Barbara Hannigan fans.

And of course, there is the fact that Hannigan, at age 51 and after singing almost continually for a quarter century, still has one of the most beautiful voices in the world. Not a hint of upper-register strain, no unsteadiness or wobble, just a pure stream of sound, excellent diction, and that creamy sound that permeates all she sings. In this respect the album is sure to please her millions of admirers, of which I am one, thus it was definitely worth hearing once. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, particularly since my current state of disability precludes my being able to go out to concerts, and Hannigan probably isn’t going to sing in Cincinnati anyway. If you, too appreciate this remarkable soprano, I recommend that you hear it as well.

Hannigan’s partner in La Mort du Nombre, tenor Charles Sy, has an equally beautiful but not quite as powerful a voice which reminded me somewhat of Eric Tappy, and Vilde Frang plays the violin obbligato with exquisite taste. Pianist Bertrand Chamayou is superb from start to finish, as he usually is, and in the first song Hannigan produces soft high notes so extraordinary that they reminded me of Emma Calvé’s “fourth voice,” which you can hear in her old recording of “Charmant oiseau” from Félicien-César David’s La Perle du Brésil. This was the one moment on the CD where I would say that her singing is totally unique.

But as far as keeping the CD, I see no reason unless you don’t have one of these pieces in your collection. Leblanc’s voice isn’t quite as beautiful as Hannigan’s, but if I were to play you the Leblanc performance of the Chants and told you it was Hannigan, you’d probably not know the difference (I know I wouldn’t unless you did an A-B comparison, and even then the difference would be minimal albeit noticeable to a trained ear). And Renée Fleming in her prime had an even more sumptuous voice than Hannigan, and did a great job on Poèmes pour Mi. So what’s the point?

Marketing, pure and simple. Hannigan would have done just as well to simply upload these recordings on YouTube or Spotify as streaming audio and let you hear them for free.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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Silvestrov’s Dolorous Symphony

SILVESTROV: Symphony for Violin & Orch., “Widmung.”* Postludium for Piano & Orch.^# / *Janusz Wawroski, vln; ^#Jurgis Karnavičius, pno; Lithuanian National Symphony Orch.; Christopher Lyndon-Gee, cond / Naxos 8.574413

Valentin Silvestrov, now 86 years old, is a Ukrainian composer who now lives in Berlin, but apparently even prior to the Russian-Ukrainian war he had a hard time of it. According to the back cover notes for this album, he was expelled from the Composers’ Union during the era of the Soviet Union, which led to his withdrawal from public life. These two works, the first written in 1990-91 and the second in 1984, are described as melancholy and mystical “but without nostalgia.”

By this description, I was expecting music in the sane vein as that of Mieczysław Weinberg, but what I heard was closer in style to late Stravinsky with overtones of Gubaidulina. Silvestrov’s orchestral scoring seems to be in orchestral “clusters” rather than in sections per se, with a heavy emphasis, in the symphony, on lower-voiced instruments: basses, celli, bassoons, French horns, violas and trombones. Indeed, except for the solo violin, I heard no sounds that to my ears signified a violin section until halfway through the first movement. As a result, the music has a thickness and density unusual even for Ukrainian or Russian music. Eventually a tempo appeared, but extremely slow and without any forward momentum, despite the marking of “Allegro moderato con moto.” Eventually a melodic line appeared, yet although this was played by the violins, most of it was pitched in their lower range. I would go a step further than the liner notes. This is not so much music of melancholy as it is music of personal suffering and, with the switch to a major-key tonality, of one’s inward fight to regain one’s spirits in the face of adversity. Since so many modern classical and jazz musicians like to inject social justice elements into their music, I will stick my neck out and say that this music could easily be applied to the millions of Americans of all races who are valiantly struggling to survive amidst outrageous and indecently high food and housing costs. That, my friends, is true human suffering, made all the worse because the sources of this imposed financial misery are invisible and unidentified.

The second movement of this symphony, which also opens with low, ominous orchestral clouds over which the violin plays, is taken at a much quicker tempo. The music is also more stark and more violent, to my mind suggesting one’s fight, not against inward forces but outside forces—again, to reiterate my analogy, the anger mixed with despair that people caught up in this economic stranglehold are experiencing. Yet here, too, Silvestrov suddenly injects a new musical expression, in this case sweetness and light, possibly suggesting that one’s spirit can transcend even the worst of circumstances. The underlying darkness occasionally returns, but the suddenly clear, open blue sky chases these emotional storm clouds away. This, too, is quite different from Weinberg who, when on those rare occasions when he does inject feelings of hope or joy into his music, leaves that feeling fairly quickly.

Another low orchestral rumble introduces the fast third movement, where feelings are all mixed up but impending doom or oppression seems to be winning. I should also mention that the solo violin line acts more as a lone-voice commentator independent of whatever the orchestra is doing. Some of its music, particularly in this music, is virtuosic, but never for the sake of virtuosity alone, and in this movement its voice suddenly changes from the one ray of hope to atonal despair, playing harmonically strange and often disturbing triplets, some of which reach into the upper ranges of the instrument, followed by downward chromatic runs suggesting a feeling of hopelessness, and this continues for the bulk of this surprisingly long “Allegretto” (11 minutes) as the orchestra becomes, if possible, even darker in texture and, with the biting sound of brasses played at a forte level mixed in, ever more ominous. Eventually the trumpets, alternating notes in quick succession (but not quite in hocket style) blend with the trombones and horns before the latter take over.

Yet these orchestral storm clouds clear up in the transition into the last movement (all four movements are played without a break), leaving our hopeful-sounding violinist to lead the way with yet another sweet, tonal melody. Although the basses still rumble ominously down below underneath it, Silvestrov does eventually make them dissipate. But it is not music representing a valedictory spirit of overcoming adversity, as in the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or the finale of Mahler’s Second, but more like a resignation of the fact that this is just how life now is and we have to withdraw a bit from our fellow-sufferers in order to survive.

To a certain point, I can understand why listeners could indeed be turned off by Silvestrov’s music. Unless one is currently experiencing despair for one reason or another, its overriding feeling of hopelessness is difficult to shake off. The reader will note, for instance, that I did not apply my usual descriptions of the music in technical terms, that for two reasons. The first is that, without a score, I felt that this amorphous, often rhythmless music was difficult to break down. The second was that its heavy and mostly dark emotions tended to override its form. Perhaps I should add a third, and that is that this symphony, and particularly the final movement which eventually repeats its basic thematic material far too often, simply goes on too long. In this one respect, it is the musical equivalent of a novel by Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. (My apologies to any Ukrainian reading this who feels offended by my comparing one of their composers to Russian writers, but I am not familiar with any Ukrainian authors who wrote long-winded novels that went on forever.)

As the liner notes promised, the Postludium is in the same vein as the Symphony, except a bit quicker in tempo (what you can make out of one) and more ferocious than obliquely ominous. Perhaps this is due, in part, to the fact that a piano is used, an instrument with a louder sound and fuller dynamic profile than a violin (not to mention that it is a percussion instrument). The pattern, however, is similar to the Symphony although using different thematic material, an attempt to escape the vortex of melancholy and despair via more tonal, melodic music, but not quite able to do so.

I do not want my readers to think that I found Silvestrov deficient as a composer in terms of technique or musical ideas. He is clearly, in his own way, an inspired composer with a truly astonishing gift for creating unusual and hard-to-describe orchestral blends. And of course, your perception of his music may completely differ from mine. As I learned decades ago, no two people in the world hear music the exact same way, not even established masterpieces of the past. I also admit that, listening to this recording on what is a gray, dismal day with heavy rain and occasional thunderstorms raging outside my window didn’t help my mood any. But I do not apologize for my analogy of the suffering felt in this music to the suffering of millions of people who are struggling just to eat and have a roof over their heads. The one thing Silvestrov’s music does inspire is a desire to try to overcome despair, thus I feel that my analogy is a fair one.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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Măcelaru’s Scintillating Saint-Saëns

SAINT-SAËNS: Symphony in A. Symphony in F. “Urbs Roma.” Symphonies Nos. 1-3* / *Olivier Latry, org; Orchestre National de France; Cristian Măcelaru, cond / Warner Classics 01902065333433

As I mentioned in my review of Cristian Măcelaru’s recordings of the Enescu Symphonies, this 2021 set with the same orchestra of the complete Saint-Saëns Symphonies is so good that you’d never guess it was performed by the same conductor and orchestra. Everything that went wrong with the Enescu—sluggish slow passages that “floated” and an orchestra that completely lacked “bit” in the forte sections—went unerringly right in this set, so much so that I consider it a benchmark for any and all conductors who wish to play these works.

Moreover, this is as true for the composer’s unnumbered “juvenile” Symphony in A, written when he was only 15 years old. Although he did not destroy the score, Saint-Saëns did not consider it good enough to publish and so put it aside. Four years later, he tried a second time, working three years on his “Urbs Roma” Symphony in F, and to be honest, this one is so good that I’m still surprised he didn’t publish it as his first symphony. It’s every bit the equal in quality to the Beethoven First, although different in style. Or maybe the Fifth: his third movement here sounds like a slightly faster and more creative version of the second movement of the “Eroica” Symphony. Only the last movement disappoints somewhat, opening up as a medium-tempo “Allegretto” before Saint-Saëns suddenly doubles the tempo.

But perhaps my impression of this work is somewhat skewed by Măcelaru’s muscular and emotionally intense reading. Certainly, he does so much with the Symphony in A that he almost fools the ear into thinking it is a great work. Taking it on its own merits, however, it may not be great but it is certainly very good; many a 19th-century composer would not have cast it aside as he did for being inadequate. There are some excellent musical ideas in it, and even at that young age Saint-Saëns was able to work out his themes via variants and contrasting motifs to create a unified whole. The only thing it really lacks is a sense of spontaneity; the music sounds very well crafted but not always inspired. That is the only thing that keeps it from being considered a masterpiece. Listen, for instance, to the second movement, which is the “Andantino.” Young Beethoven would not have been embarrassed to have written this, particularly the strong middle section in the minor or the exquisitely elegant theme that follows it in the major, beautifully ornamented and developed. Compared to his mature works it is small genius, but genius nonetheless.

All of Măcelaru’s forte accents have the effect of guillotine chops, which is not to suggest a crude roughness but merely the feeling of energy he imparts to each of these scores. And in every movement o each symphony, the orchestra has a perfect” French” sound—not quite as “blowsy” in the brass and strings as one heard from the Orchestra National de France and Paris Conservatoire Orchestra of the 1930s through the 1950s, or in Charles Munch’s sound profile for the Boston Symphony Orchestra during his 13-year reign there (1949-1962), but good enough to stand comparison, which is all I ask. Only in the first section of the first movement of the numbered Symphony No. 1 does the conductor resort to the kind of “floating” sound that he imposed on all movements of the Enescu Symphonies. But, to my ears anyway, this first numbered symphony really isn’t as inspired or original as the “Urbs Roma.” Perhaps the composer wanted to make his entry in the symphonic world with something that didn’t remind one too much of Beethoven. It’s an elegant work but not an exciting one.

As for the most famous of all his symphonies, No. 3 (the “Organ” symphony), Măcelaru pulls out all the stops in what I deem to be the finest recording of this work ever made—even better than Ormandy with Virgil Fox, Munch with Berj Zamkochian or Toscanini with George Cook (a rare 1952 experimental stereo FM broadcast with excellent sound). You cannot imagine, until you’ve heard it, just how good this performance is. And the best part is that Warner Classics’ engineers captured the orchestra with absolutely perfect fidelity, which helps immensely.

Everywhere you listen in this fabulous set, however, you’ll find superb performances. This is now clearly the benchmark set of Saint-Saëns symphonies, and will probably remain so for decades to come.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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Christopher Zuar is Exuberant!

EXUBERANCE / In Winter Blooms. Moments in Between. Communion.¹ Simple Machines.^1,2 Before Dawn. Certainty (Christopher Zuar). Exuberance (Zuar-Anne Beal) ³ / Christopher Zuar Orch.: Matt Holman, Scott Wendholdt, Tony Kadleck, tp/fl-hn; Matt McDonald, Mark Patterson, Alan Ferber, tb; Max Siegel, bs-tb; Sara Caswell, vln; Charles Pillow, Dave Pietro, a-sax; Jason Rigby, Ben Kono, t-sax; Glenn Zaleski, pno; Pete McCann, gt/el-gtbj/mand/dobro; Drew Gress, bs; Mark Ferber, dm; Rogerio Boccato, Latin perc; Keita Ogawa, perc; Mike Holober, cond. Guest artists: ¹Sara Caswell, vln; ²Max ZT, dulc, Joe Brent, mand & Keita Ogawa, perc;  ³Emma Frank, voc / Tonal Conversations, no number

This remarkable album of modern large-band jazz is the second released by jazz composer Christopher Zuar. The promo sheet accompanying this release stresses the fact that the music celebrates Zuar’s love for his new wife, who is a Hollywood animator, but that does not need to concern us in appreciating the music itself, which I am positive will endure for a much longer time.

It does, however, explain the soft-grained quality of some of the music; In Winter Blooms, for instance, opens with a single repeated note on the piano before the orchestra enters, but when the musicians enter they are playing some very interesting and harmonically complex lines which then straighten out into a more tonal center for a brief tenor sax solo. Nonetheless, what impressed me the most about this orchestra is its instrumental texture. Like Toshiko Aliyoshi or Luzia von Wyl, Zuar has managed to find unusual instrumental blends entirely his own. For instance, at one point I could have sworn that I heard two bass clarinets in the background, yet the band personnel doesn’t list even one such instrument,

The strength of these performances are the way Zuar mixes the improvised solos into his through-composed scores, which is extremely clever. The weakness, as I hear it, is that he is at times overly busy for the sake of trying to sound overly busy. The very best jazz composers know when to simplify a line. This is the only thing, my ears tell me, that Zuar has not yet learned to do.

Another strength of Zuar’s scores is their wonderful use of dynamics and shading. His orchestral palette reminded me at times of Gil Evans, except that Zuar has the lines of certain instruments flow “into” his sound palette in a way that is extremely fluid, and this is something that Evans seldom if ever did. I’d be curious to know what classical composers influenced his writing; although his music is always closer to tonality, there are indications to me of certain impressionist composers. Oddly enough, one name that came to my mind briefly was that of Karol Szymanowski, except that since this is a jazz band, Zuar uses the brass much more (and of course, there is no string section).

I also wondered, as the album went on, whether he writes the top line first and then fills in the sound textures or if he conceives the music in this harmonically and instrumentally rich manner bar-by-bar during the creative process.  One is constantly aware of his mind working in this fashion, even in a piece like Communion where he uses a light rock beat (but, as usual, I could have lived without the screaming rock guitar solo, which I thankfully skipped over).

Within this context, the spot solos are always good but generally also maintain a low-key level of intensity. Most of the excitement comes from the ensemble and not from the soloists (Mr. Rock Guitar excepted). Once in a while, as in the coda to Communion, I felt that Zuar lingered too much on a moment that should have only lasted a few seconds. Some judicious editing would have corrected this.

The most interesting track on this album, for me, was Simple Machines, which used a fairly minimal melodic line but built interesting textures around it, including a piccolo solo (but where in the lineup for this band do you see a piccolo or even an ocarina??). This track is by far the most rhythmically complex on the album, a sort of “clockwork” piece that works very well. Ob this track, the band includes not one but four guest musicians, a violinist, Hammer dulcimer player, mandolinist and an extra percussionist. All of them add both their individuality and their sound into the whole, both in their solos and their contribution to the texture. For me, this track was the highlight of the entire album.

Before Dawn is clearly the most classical-sounding piece on this CD, particularly the soft-grained, French impressionist-style opening ensemble. It also had, for me anyway, the most attractive chord sequence and a really attractive melody. Although though the percussion solo doubled the tempo for a brief period, Zuar then moved into a very attractive ensemble with pastel sounds in which the melodic line was completely changed. I was also quite amazed here at his extreme skill at combining brass and reed sounds in a manner that blurred the line between them. No offense is intended, but I didn’t feel that guitarist Pete McCann had much to say on his instrument, even when playing softly as here. He just sounds like a junior version of John McLaughlin, all flash and no substance.

And oddly enough considering its title, I felt that Certainty had the least to say to me: it’s mostly just opaque textures set to a bland melodic line and not “certain” in any way that I could fathom. C’est la vie. In the finale, which is the title track, we hear a vocalist without much voice sing some innocuous lyrics (something about lightning in her eyes and dancing free, showing them kindness blah blah) which conveyed nothing to me, but the background instrumental was most interesting in its constantly shifting meter.

The album, then, is a mixed bag. Some of the music here, as I said in the beginning, is marvelous and timeless, while some of it (particularly the rock guitar solos) just didn’t say anything to me, but this collection of pieces is more of a smorgasbord to offer selections to those who like its offerings, and what I liked and what you will like may be two entirely different things.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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