Gulda Plays Mozart & Gulda

MOZART: Rondos for Piano & Orchestra: in A, K. 386; in D, K. 382.* Piano Sonata in C, K. 330. GULDA: Improvisations 1 & 2. Play Piano Play: Excerpts. Suite for Piano, E-Piano & Drums: Aria / Friedrich Gulda, pianist; *Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; *Leopold Hager, conductor / BR Klassik BRK900713 (live, Munich: *October 4, 1969; June 27, 1982)

Why is it that I love Friedrich Gulda’s Mozart so much and tend to dislike so many other pianists playing it? Not all, mind you; I enjoy Nadia Reisenberg, Annie Fischer and Clara Haskil in the concertos and Ronald Brautigam in the sonatas. But not many. I think it’s because Gulda, like those others, played his music with guts. He didn’t play it like some mincing drawing-room quadrille to be admired by slothful wealthy patrons but not by the general public.

Of course, much of this stems from Gulda’s own aesthetic, which was that music should be eaten by the performer and then internalized, to be played out as if it were part of your DNA. His lifelong affinity for jazz, which he eventually came to play pretty well, had a lot to do with it—that, plus the fact that as a jazz musician he was, ipso facto, a creator himself. The Improvisation No. 1 on this album starts out like a tumbling pile of bricks on a construction site, only to evolve into something quite simple, tonal and lovely. But the undercurrent of the construction site is still there under the lace and gingerbread. Only Gulda, it seems, could juxtapose two such wildly different moods and make them work together. Moreover, the delicate ending of his Improvisation makes a perfect intro to the Mozart Piano Sonata K. 330, which he limns with surprising elegance. The wild man of the keyboard could also have his tender moments, and still make them work.

So does this CDs appeal primarily to Gulda fans? I suppose it all depends on your viewpoint. Surely, Mozart’s music outweighs his own. Twenty-four minutes of music are of his own compositions, 31 minutes are of Mozart’s, and I can’t even think of another pianist who played the Rondos as well as this. Leopold Hager, well known and respected for his Mozart interpretations, matches Gulda’s vivacity and sense of fun in conducting these two pieces. It’s interesting to note how young Hager was at the time of recording, only 34 years old. Gulda himself was five years older, but had been playing jazz professionally for more than a decade by then. The classical world wanted him to go away and stop returning to the classics while the jazzniks wanted him to give them up, but Gulda would do neither. He stayed right in his comfort zone, which was to go back and forth between the two, often in the same concert. He wanted his jazz audiences to appreciate Mozart and Beethoven, his twin idols, as he wanted his classical audiences to appreciate jazz. So he just kept it up until he died. He did vocals under a pseudonym, which he pretended was an entirely different person. At one point in the 1990s he even faked his own death just to see what the obituaries would say. He was that kind of guy.

The second Improvisation takes the opposite route of the first, starting out in a classical vein and become more jazz-like as it progresses. Gulda’s sense of jazz rhythm was always a little stiff; being Austrian, and raised in the classics, swinging didn’t come easily to him; but he never stopped trying. It was his life’s blood. Perhaps his most swinging compositions were the set of “etudes” he published under the title Play Piano Play. I’ve yet to see any pianist record the full set. I was a little surprised by how romantic, in a pop-music sense, his excerpt from the Suite for Piano, E-Piano and Drums was. Evidently, Gulda had his sentimental side as well.

Sorry if this review isn’t as musically detailed as usual, but when listening to Gulda’s own pieces and improvisations I just let my mind wander inside of his and follow it where it goes. And so should you. Recommended!

—© 2017 Lynn René Bayley

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Barab’s “Red Riding Hood” a Laugh Riot

BARAB: Little Red Riding Hood / Margaret Astrup, Jennifer Caraluzzi, sopranos; Hernan Berisso, baritone; ad hoc orchestra; Andrew Gordon, conductor / Centaur CRC3508

I wonder if anyone besides those who lived through the late 1950s and into the ’60s really remember Seymour Barab and how wonderful he was. The publicity blurb for this release tell us that Little Red Riding Hood was his first and most successful comic opera (actually an opera comique with spoken dialogue, like his later Snow White and Rose Red), but Barab wrote a ton of wonderful music during those years that is still delightful to hear. How many of you remember his setting of A Child’s Garden of Verses (recorded by Russell Oberlin) or Dorothy Parker’s Songs of Perfect Propriety (sung, and recorded, by the wonderful Barbara Cook)? Or, for that matter, his updating of Snow White and Rose Red?

Be that as it may, this sprightly, lively performance of Barab’s Red Riding Hood will make you smile and perhaps even more than that. Conductor Andrew Gordon and his cast of three not only deliver their lines with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek, but they can all sing without wobbles (a miracle!) and they have perfect diction (double miracle!). The only problem was that the album cover didn’t indicate which soprano was singing Red Riding Hood and which one the Mother, so I had to go to YouTube where I found a recording of Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 by Margaret Astrup. She’s definitely our mother and grandma (singing the latter in a cracked, nasal voice, very much in character), so Caraluzzi is our Red Riding Hood.

Barab’s genius was in being able to write for children without writing down to them. Thus his jokes, although sometimes a bit corny, are always funny because they presume that his audience of children are bright and not a bunch of dunces. Puns were always a part of his librettos, which he normally wrote himself, but there were also little jokes on being a child…having to mind one’s manners, not talking to strangers, all the time showing the kids that being a bit of a smart-aleck was not only fun but important to survival in our modern world. In Red Riding Hood, the wolf makes it clear in his introduction that he’s not a vegetarian, so please don’t bother giving him fruits or veggies to eat, so later when Red Riding Hood describes the “delicious” strawberries in her basket, the wolf yells out, “STOP it! You’ve gone and ruined my appetite!”

So of course when the wolf dresses up as Grandma (who isn’t eaten, she hides in a closet) and Red Riding Hood is attacked, she talks about all the various ways one can serve strawberries: shortcake, pudding, ice cream, souffles, etc., until the wolf almost upchucks and runs outside to save himself. The friendly woodsman kills him with his axe, and they all live happily ever after (apparently this was the only Grandma and Riding Hood eater in the neighborhood). Listening to this, I was also reminded of the old Fractured Fairy Tales version of the story, in which the wolf was blown up by a substitute “basket o’ goodies” loaded with dynamite. Ah, yes, they don’t write those fairy tales like they used to!

A splendid fun release, highly recommended for those days when Beethoven and Mahler just seem to dour and deep for your mood.

—© 2017 Lynn René Bayley

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Amandine Beyer Plays Superb C.P.E. Bach

C.P.E. BACH: Violin Sonatas: in B-flat, Wq 77; in C min., Wq 78; in G min., H545; in B min., Wq 76 / Amandine Beyer, violinist; Edna Stern, fortepianist / Alpha Classics 329

This is a reissue of an album made by Amandine Beyer for Zig Zag Territoires in 2005. I already had the Sonata in B minor, Wq 76, on a compilation album by her and so wanted to hear the full set.

I was not disappointed. I’ve mentioned before, and will repeat again, that Beyer is one of a very small number of “straight tone” Baroque violinists who knows what she is doing in terms of phrasing, dynamics markings and coloration of her tone. If she would only add a touch of vibrato to her sustained notes (yes, I know, in the HIP world that’s heresy), she would surely be one of the greatest violinists of all time, but at least I can listen to her with pleasure because she is a creative musician and not just a mechanical robot.

Interestingly, however, I found Beyer’s and Stern’s performance of the Sonata Wq 76 not quite as spacious as the one by violinist Leila Schayegh and harpsichordist Jörg Halubek on Pan Classics 10305, and the difference is in the keyboard playing. Of course, a harpsichord just sounds so much better than a fortepiano that I automatically “hear” the music as drier and klunkier when played on the latter instrument, but the real difference is that Beyer and Stern take it at a much faster clip—the first movement only runs 7:23 as opposed to Schayegh’s 7:49. Yes, a half-minute longer does make that much difference. Yet when one listens carefully, he or she will note that it is Beyer who does so much more with the violin part than Schayegh, although Schayegh is very, very good in her own right (I certainly wouldn’t have kept her album if she wasn’t good). Do I wish that Stern would have played the harpsichord? Yes, I do, but that’s water under the bridge by this point. We have to accept what was done and deal with it on its own terms.

And the bottom line is that Beyer is absolutely hypnotic in every phrase she plays. How does she do it when scores of her rivals can’t, or won’t? I cannot say, but I know she is a genius. She knows exactly when to pull back, when to press forward, when to lighten the sound and when to darken it. Beyer’s musical instincts are so superb that it almost sounds as if she wrote the music herself. That’s how good it is.

And this is very clearly prime C.P.E. Bach. All those unexpected stops, starts, sudden shifts in tempo and occasional unexpected modulations are hallmarks of his mature style. Take, for instance, the opening movement of the Sonata Wq 78, which sounds like something his father might have written until you reach the development section, which is much more expressive, and the second movement almost sounds like something that early Beethoven would have written. Beyer brings out all the feeling and color of the music in her own unique way.

Heard in context, by which I mean after having heard all the preceding sonatas on this disc, the opening movement of the Wq 76 sonata still sounds a little glib in terms of Stern’s performance, but Beyer adds all the drama one could ask for in her performance of the violin line. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, much of this has to do with the nature of these old fortepianos, which had zero sustain ability; it almost sounds as if the accompaniment were played on a xylophone. (Yeah, I know, don’t give them any ideas.) This is a real problem in the expressive second movement, where Beyer is responsible for carrying the fortepiano on her back as she plays those long, beautiful lines that C.P.E. wrote.

All in all, a fine album and another feather in Beyer’s cap. Highly recommended for what she is able to extract from this music.

—© 2017 Lynn René Bayley

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Getting Into the Heart of Pauline Viardot

Pauline Viardot in old age

After having discovered the marvelous German songs of Pauline Viardot-Garcia in the album by Miriam Alexandra, I decided to explore further some of the various other recordings of her music available. In addition, I tried as much as possible to zero in on recordings by singers whose voices came close to the verbal descriptions of Viardot’s own voice in order to get, as the academics would crow from the balcony, as close as possible to the way the artist herself actually sang her own material.

This, of course, is not easy, and not just because Viardot never recorded. It’s difficult because she had one of those rare voices that was extraordinarily large and extraordinarily flexible: try to imagine a combination of Jon Vickers and Juan Diego Florez (or, on the distaff side, Birgit Nilsson and Kathleen Battle). Such voices don’t normally exist in nature, but she had that kind of voice. Heinrich Heine, the German poet, described it thus:

She is not merely a nightingale who delights in trilling and sobbing her songs of spring. Nor is she the rose, being ugly, but in a way that is noble…She reminds us more of the terrible magnificence of a jungle rather than the civilized beauty and tame grace of the European world.

One of her greatest admirers, composer Camille Saint-Saëns, was more exact in his description:

Her voice was enormously powerful, had a prodigious range and was equal to every technical difficulty but, marvelous as it was, it did not please everybody. It was not a velvet or crystalline voice, but rather rough, compared by someone to the taste of a bitter orange, and made for tragedy or myth, superhuman rather than human; light music, Spanish songs and the Chopin mazurkas she transcribed for the voice, were transfigured by it and became the triflings of a giant; to the accents of tragedy, to the severities of oratorio, she gave an incomparable grandeur.

Thus we have a description of Viardot as woman singer: “ugly beauty,” transformed in the crucible of her soul into something that deeply moved the most sensitive and musical of listeners with something indescribable. By these accounts, the very pretty voice of Miriam Alexandra is not an approximation of how Viardot herself sang, fine though her performances were.

To find a singer, or singers, whose voices come close to Viardot’s we have to pick and choose. Soprano Soile Iskoski, who has also recorded her songs, is a marvelous interpreter but has a defective high soprano voice—not the right fit. Soprano and mezzo Cecilia Bartoli, who has recorded her Hai Luli!, Havanaise and Les Filles de Cadix, comes closer.

But the two who impressed me the most were Bulgarian Ina Kancheva, in her stupendous recital on Toccata Classics 0303, and Russian Julia Sukmanova on Fontenay Classics FC1006. Both have rich, deep lower ranges—remember that Viardsot-Garcia was a mezzo-soprano and not a soprano—and in addition Kancheva has the remarkable flexibility demanded to sing all those trills, mordents and appoggiatura. And this brings us to a more important and germane discussion, which was Viardot’s composing style.

As someone who was originally set to be a concert pianist, Viardot knew her instrument intimately, and with her quick ear and studies in harmony and composition she was able to absorb musical styles like a sponge. In the liner notes for the Kancheva recital there is a remarkable anecdote:

One day her husband was visited by a friend who admired Mozart above all composers, and Pauline announced that she wanted to sing for them a magnificent aria by Mozart that she had recently discovered. She sang a long aria, with recitatives, arioso and a final allegro, which the two men praised highly without knowing that she wad written it herself specifically for the occasion. Saint-Saëns remembered that he, too, had heard the aria, and attested to the fact that “even the sharpest critic might have been taken in by it,” He continued:

“But we shouldn’t imagine from this that her compositions were pastiches; on the contrary, they had a highly original flavor. Why is it that those that were published are so little known? One is led to believe that this admirable artist had a horror of publicity. For over half of her life she taught pupils, and the world was unaware of it.”

Further on in the notes, Saint-Saëns goes further on her composing style:

I do not know how she learnt the secrets of composition; apart from handling the orchestra, she knew them all and the numerous lieder she wrote on French, German and Spanish texts testify to an impeccable technique. In contrast to most composers for whom nothing is more urgent than publicity for their products, she concealed hers as though they were a fault; it was extremely hard to persuade her to have them performed; the least of them, though, would have done her honor. She announced as a popular Spanish song one with a savage tone and relentless rhythms, which Rubinstein was infatuated with; it took me several years to get her to admit that she was the composer.

Here’s a small example (one of the few I could find online) of her writing, the last page of her song Bonjour, mon cœur:

A highly intelligent and complex woman, Viardot-Garcia was hailed by all who met her. Schumann, Brahms, Liszt and Wagner were among her friends and admirers. Clara Schumann once asserted that she was the most intelligent woman she had ever met in her life. Viardot was also a surprisingly fine sketch artist and caricaturist; here is her drawing of her father, Manuel Garcia Sr.:

Because of her high intelligence, linguistic skill (she spoke French, German, English, Italian and Russian fluently, and sang like a native in all five) and remarkable musical and poetic intuition, Viardot attracted the most sensitive and intelligent men in all of Europe despite her homely appearance. The Russian poet Ivan Turgenev saw her perform Rosina in The Barber of Seville at St. Petersburg in 1843 and remained hopelessly in love with her for the next 40 years. She set many of his poems to music and in fact he eventually lived into the house next door to her until he died in 1883. Viardot also set more poems by Alexander Pushkin to music than any Russian composer, and was the first to set the famous Les filles de Cadiz to music, years before Délibes tried his hand.

Listening to her Russian songs as sung by Kancheva (you can find sound clips of some of the songs on YouTube under her name), after having heard the German songs sung by Alexandra, one is startled by the completely different musical style. One would never guess that they were written by the same composer, so entirely different is their treatment of melody, harmony and rhythm. The Russian songs almost sound like something Glinka or Mussorgsky would have written, whereas, as I said in my earlier review, the German songs would do honor to Schubert or even to Schumann without really copying anything they had composed.

And then we reach the Chopin Mazurkas. She set 12 of them to lyrics, admittedly rather poor lyrics, in two sets of six each. The last mazurka in each set is a vocal duet. Who did she herself sing them with? We may never know. She actually performed them with Chopin, another friend of hers, at the piano on occasion. These are the most often recorded of her songs, but Kancheva sings them as I imagine Viardot herself did, with the voice of a lion. The performances are entirely remarkable, as are the songs themselves. To hear so large and powerful a voice turning mordents and trills at the speed of light is simply astonishing; it is probably the closest we will get in our lifetimes to hearing Viardot herself.

As yet another facet in her style, we then turn to the Italian and French songs. Here we must rely on another very pretty voiced soprano, in this case the remarkable Isabel Bayrakdarian, who sang at the Metropolitan Opera very briefly in the early 2000s, on Analekta AN29903. It would be easy to dismiss her performances as not being like Viardot’s own, but Bayrakdarian caresses the line with such evident love and extraordinary brilliance of tone that we are immediately captivated. But to complete this series of French and Italian songs, we need to turn to mezzo-soprano Marina Comparato on Brilliant Classics BC94615. Here, she presents us with a piece I didn’t even know existed, a vocal version of the Haydn String Quartet “Serenade,” the one that was for decades ascribed to Roman Hofstetter but is now again accepted as authentic Haydn (mostly because none of Hofstetter’s other quartets are nearly as distinguished). Following this are the 10 Mélodies, “Album du Chant.” Comparato has a somewhat prominent vibrato, which was not something Viardot-Garcia possessed, and the recorded sound is also somewhat overly reverberant which exacerbates the vibrato, but they are all we have of these remarkable songs. In neither the downloads of the Bayrakdarian disc or in the hard copy of the Comparato CD are there any texts or translations of these songs, but do not despair. I highly recommend Emily Ezust’s stupendous “LiederNet Archive” at http://www.lieder.net/lieder/index.html, where she has at least the original texts of most of these songs and the English translations of many. But please do not overlook her request for donations to help keep the site up. This is a labor of love for her and she has spent hundreds of thousands of hours providing this invaluable information to art song lovers worldwide since the mid-1990s.

Following Bayrakdarian and Comparato, we then turn to another dark-voiced Slavic singer, Julia Sukmanova on Fontenay Classics FC1006. This album has texts in German only, but 13 of the songs here are duplicated in the Miriam Alexandra CD. Nevertheless, I strongly urge you to acquire these performances because of the richer, deeper quality of Sukmanova’s voice and her emotionally powerful delivery. She literally transforms this music, giving you more meat and less perfume, if you know what I mean. Moreover, her pianist is her sister, Elena, and she is absolutely terrific, a fit partner for her sister’s emotional delivery.

Viardot also wrote a Violin Sonatina in A minor, but this is disappointing. She really didn’t know how to write for the violin and so fell back on her song experience. It’s tuneful but not particularly interesting. Better are the 6 Morceaux for violin and piano, particularly Nos. 2-4 and 6. There are several recordings available of these, but the ones I enjoyed the most were the performances by violinist Laura Kobiyashi and pianist Susan Keith Gray on Albany TROY1081. Viardot also wrote a charming “chamber opera with piano” for children, Cendrillon. I found a few different performances of it on YouTube, but the best of them was the one given by singers of the Westminster Choir College. It’s also easier to follow because the copious dialogue is spoken in English. My thanks to David Hansel for bringing this work to my attention! It’s not a great opera, but it is remarkably charming, witty and very well written. Typical of Viardot, she wrote it in the mid-1880s but it wasn’t premiered until 1904, when she was 83 years old.

I absolutely guarantee you that you will not be disappointed in exploring the music of this remarkable woman. As Saint-Saëns said, even the “weakest” song is well constructed and lovely, while the majority of them are much more than that. Bon appetit!

—© 2017 Lynn René Bayley

Matthews’ Violin Pieces Engaging, Inventive

MATTHEWS: Fantasia on Paganini’s Second Violin Concerto. 3 Chants. 4 Australian Birds. Sonata for Solo Violin. The National Anthem. Song Thrust Fragment. Birthday Piece for Richard. An Album Leaf for Sally. Not Farewell. 15 Preludes for Solo Violin / Peter Sheppard Skærved, violinist / Toccata Classics 0309

My introduction to British composer David Matthews was his splendid album of piano trios (Toccata Classics 0369), and here we have an album of a cappella violin pieces played by his friend and colleague Peter Sheppard Skærved, for whom they were written. According to the brief promo sheet, Matthews enjoys challenging Skærved with technically difficult works while the violinist enjoys being pushed to the limit and responds with some of his most expressive playing.

Certainly, I was captivated by the Fantasia on Paganini’s Second Violin Concerto. Here is a piece that, unlike the majority of such pieces, does not quote too heavily from the original before taking off in its own very different direction. Matthews’ personality comes through clearly: his penchant for out-of-tonality outbursts, rhythmic daring and a level of adventure in everything he writes. And Skærved is the kind of violinist who pushes himself to the max, not only technically but also emotionally, which makes for some exciting, edge-of-your-set listening. In the 3 Chants, Skærved is asked to hum and whistle along with his own playing, to interesting effect. This music is not as technically challenging as the former piece, but strange and wonderful in its own way, evoking strange moods in its long, sustained notes and unusual melodic lines. 4 Australian Birds is written in the same vein as the Chants, but without vocalization. The music is evocative and charming without being sugary sweet or treacly. Matthews mimics the sounds of the birds with occasional portamento effects or high-range “twittering” on the violin strings. In the fourth piece, quarter tones are used to find notes “between the cracks.”

The solo violin sonata, although very challenging technically, is surprisingly short, lasting only 13 minutes (and the third movement is the longest at 5:20). Here, once again, Matthews shows his mastery of form within the parameters of his own unique style, producing interesting, contrasting themes and lines for the soloist to play. Interestingly, in that slow movement, Matthews employs much the same sort of musical and technical effects that he used in the 4 Australian Birds, and Skærved responds with some deeply-felt yet intriguing playing.

The National Anthem is, of course, God Save the Queen (or King, depending on who’s on the throne), played with daring double stops and strong downbow attacks. The other very brief pieces which follow are all basically sound-snapshots in which Matthews pushes Skærved to the limit technically, although An Album Leaf for Sally incorporates these things into a plaintive and lovely melody that is wholly unique.

The 15 Preludes for solo violin alternate slow-moving pieces with rapid ones. Mood is uppermost in the performer’s mind, and Skærved responds with what is now his expected combination of perfect pitch and placement and emotional projection.

The music on this CD is not for casual listening, despite its intimate quality. Moreover, I feel that continuous listening to the complete CD does the music a disservice, as its density somewhat numbs the mind as the album progresses. I would, rather, recommend hearing it a few tracks at a time in order to better appreciate all the remarkable detail that Matthews has put into it.

—© 2017 Lynn René Bayley

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Natalia Trull Digs Into Prokofiev!

PROKOFIEV: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-9 / Natalia Trull, pianist / Sorel Classics SC CD 007/8/9

Here’s a rare case of a relatively unknown pianist, coming out of nowhere with a recorded set of major piano sonatas made two decades ago, who astonishingly pushes all contemporary competitors into the dust. If you Google Natalia Trull’s name, you’re going to be disappointed. There’s a pitifully small bio, mostly out of date, on Music Fest Perugia:

Nataliya Trull began studying the piano in St. Petersburg. She later moved to Moscow where she graduated from the Moscow Conservatory. Among her teachers were professors Y. Zak, M. Voskresensky and T. Kravchenko.

Her performance career was launched when she won first prize at the Belgrade International Piano Competition in 1983. However, the biggest success came in 1986 she won the silver medal at the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition. The public was swept off its feet by her interpretation of composers such as Schubert and Stravinsky. Her “Petroushka” suite left an everlasting impression on the public and critics alike. In 1993, Nataliya Trull was awarded the Grand Prix at the Piano Masters Competition in Monte-Carlo (where only winners of international competitions are accepted as participants).

Nataliya Trull’s complete control and fantastic virtuosity place her in a class of her own, and she is in great demand as a performer all over the world. Among the distinguished orchestras with whom she has performed are the London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Monte-Carlo, Tonhalle Symphony Orchestra and all of the major Russian Symphony Orchestras. Natalia Trull has also played with such conductors as Raphael Frubeck de Burgos, Raymond Leppard, Jean-Bernard Pommier, Eri Klas, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Vassily Sinaisky, Yuri Temirkanov and many others.

And then there’s this on a website called Quora.com:

Where is Natalia Trull?

Does she still play? Her Prokofiev 3 was stunning.

Posted by Lukasz Yoder, Been pianist in the making for the past 12 years:

My mother is a good friend of hers. Mrs. Trull presently teaches in the Moscow Conservatory of Music, and many of her students have won top prizes (relatively) recently. I recall my mother and her listening on Youtube to one of her students play on the final round of the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition—apparently her student was unaware he had made it to the final round from the semi finals until 24 hours before the competition—he practiced twelve hours non-stop! Unfortunately he did not get anything, but still, quite an accomplishment.

To summarize, she may be taking a break from concertizing, but she is definitely still active as a teacher/lecturer. I also hope she will play more concerts soon—but age takes a toll on everyone.

And that’s it. She came, she won competitions, she gave concerts, she went into teaching. And now, out of nowhere, we suddenly get her 1997 recordings of the Prokofiev sonatas.

In December of last year, I reviewed the second CD of a planned three by Russian pianist Ilya Yakushev on Nimbus Alliance of Prokofiev Sonatas Nos. 1, 2 and 9, and called the performances “stunning.” They were indeed. Yakushev played them with tremendous cohesion and “binding” of phrases, and he had a nice headlong momentum that compared favorably to the legendary 1956 recordings of sonatas 6, 7 and 9 by Sviatoslav Richter, though Richter was much more fiery in certain passages.

Upon first approaching the Trull set, I immediately noted that her movement timings were slower than Yakushev and slower yet than Richter. Normally, this does not bode well. It usually means slack performances that don’t penetrate the angst of the music or produce great dynamism. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Although I did note that Trull relaxed the tempo a shade more than Yakushev in slow passages, taken on their own these performances don’t sound slower than his, although both Trull and Yakushev sound much slower than Richter,. who bulldozes through them at an astonishing pace.

Wondering about this, I pulled up the score of the Sonata No. 7 to check for myself. Surprisingly, Prokofiev wrote no metronome markings, though the movements have unusual titles: “Allegro inquieto,” “Andante calorioso” and “Precipitato.” Here, see for yourself:

But please note that, although there are no tempo markings, there are numerous dynamics markings, including the opening bar played mp, changing to p in bar five, not opening up into a mf until bar 8, and not really roaring until the poco a poco crescendo beginning in bar 12. Richter doesn’t start mp but, rather, in mf, and his passing attempts at a true piano are mere lip service. Trull gives you all of these, and more; and she does this in page after page of sonata after sonata. After comparing Trull to Yakushev in Sonatas 1, 2 and 9, then comparing Yakushov to Richter in No. 9, and further comparing Trull to Richter in Sonata No. 7, I became more and more convinced that it was Natalia Trull who most closely penetrates the heart of this music. When needed, she has the fire and bold attack of Richter, and she makes more of the dynamics contrasts than both he and Yakushev in movement after movement.

This is, quite simply, an astonishing achievement. I can’t even think of another pianist who has played these sonatas better, and that includes Richter, whose performances I now view as a one-off, not necessarily what the composer called for (but still valid in its own way). Another good example of how fantastic she is is the final “Vivace” of the Second Sonata. Yakushev plays it with wonderful clarity of line, as does Trull, but Trull sounds as if she is setting the keyboard on fire and then eating it. She has a way of “dashing” certain passages off as if they were splashes in a pond, yet still articulating cleanly and clearly. And this woman only won the SILVER medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition? Who won the gold, God? (It puts me in mind of the 1935 Wieniawski Violin Competition, where the splendid Henri Temianka came in third. You scratch your head and wonder why until you find out that David Oistrakh came in second and Ginette Neveu came in first.)

In addition to all the musical excellences of her playing, Trull fully captures the dynamism and sense of surprise in every sonata. Absolutely nothing sounds static with her; this music is completely alive under her fingers. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think these were live performances and not studio recordings, so vivid and vital are they.

Overall, the best word I could find to describe her performances was smoldering. The fire is always lit, even in soft passages. There is no “coasting,” no riding on the laurels of her superlative technique, as Martha Argerich has done for 40 years. Argerich is a paper tigress. Trull could eat her alive for breakfast and still have room for a dozen of these efficient machines who win competitions nowadays. That being said, even Trull could not make the Fifth Sonata, which I consider the weakest of the nine, sound interesting to me, although she did her best in the last movement to wake the music up. I was also struck, for the first time, by how much the second movement of the Sixth Sonata sounds like some of the music in his ballet Romeo and Juliet. In the third movement Trull pulls much more out of the music, expression-wise, than Richter did, but here Richter didn’t fully seem to understand what “Lentissimo” meant. Trull’s performance is a minute and a half longer than his, and gains in expression from this.

In certain passages, such as the opening of the Eighth Sonata, Trull creates real magic in the way she phrases and articulates the music. In the second movement of this work, she caresses the line and makes it sing in a way I’ve never quite heard before, almost making it sound like a tune from a Viennese operetta. In the second movement of the Ninth Sonata, she finds much more in the shifting rhythms of the middle section than others. Watching her old performances on YouTube, I noticed a difference in posture between her playing and that of a real idol of mine, Annie Fischer. Petite as she was, Fischer sat bolt upright at the keyboard; all of her power was generated by her muscular arms and shoulders. Trull, who appears to be a small-boned woman, hunches over the keyboard so that you rarely see her face. She attacks here instrument as if she has been sent by a wrecking crew to demolish the keyboard. There may be some shoulder motion here, but a close-up photo reveals that she had small, sloping shoulders. I think all her power is generated by her forearms and full-body energy. It’s quite astonishing to watch!

Needless to say, this recording is a must if you like Prokofiev and particularly the sonatas. No one else even comes close. You could listen to this set of records every day for the next five years and never tire of them, that’s how good they are.

—© 2017 Lynn René Bayley

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Bill Cunliffe’s “BACHanalia” a Fun Ride

J.S. BACH: Sleepers Wake.* Goldberg Contraption (arr. Cunliffe). CUNLIFFE: Afluencia. PROKOFIEV: Piano Concerto No. 3: I (arr. Cunliffe). C.P.E. BACH: Solfeggietto (arr. Cunliffe).* LEVANT-HEYMAN: Blame it On My Youth. DE FALLA: The Three-Cornered Hat (arr. Cunliffe).* PORTER: I’ve Got You Under My Skin* / Bill Cunliffe Big Band: Wayne Bergeron, John Daversa, Dan Fornero, Jamie Hovorka, Kyle Martines, Kye Palmer, Jon Papenbrook, Terell Stafford, Bob Summers, tpt; Ryan Dragon, Erik Hughes, Alex Iles, Andy Martin, Bob McChesney, Ido Meshulam, Ira Nepus, Francisco Torres, tbn; Ben Devitt, Cody Kleinhans, Bill Reichenbach, bs-tbn; Jeff Driskill, Nathan King, Brian Scanlon, Bob Sheppard, a-sax; Jeff Ellwood, Bob Lockhart, t-sax; Tom Peterson, Adam Schroeder, bar-sax/bs-cl; Bill Cunliffe, pn; John Chiodini, Larry Koonse, gtr; Alex Frank, Jonathan Richards, bs; Joe LaBarbera, dm; *Denise Donatelli, voc / Metre Records M1009

Here’s a fun CD, due out June 2, in which pianist-bandleader Bill Cunliffe mixes some classical themes of two Bachs—J.S. and his son C.P.E.—Prokofiev and Manuel de Falla with jazz. To alternate, he throws in an original tune, a rare Oscar Levant song and a timeless standard by Cole Porter.

I describe the album as a “fun” disc because although the arrangements are clever and swinging, they’re not as sophisticated as those done in the past by Gil Evans, Willem Breuker or Jack Walrath of classical pieces. (Check out Walrath’s great album The Serpent’s Kiss for an example of what I mean.) They are, rather, light and airy, with a lot of space in the big band arrangements, which emphasize a mellow rather than a bright timbral blend. So much is evident from the opening track, a takeoff on J.S. Bach’s Wachet auf, featuring the wordless vocal of Denise Donatelli who appears on four tracks. Cunliffe’s piano solos remind me a bit of Vince Guaraldi and a bit of Gordon Goodwin (whose work I think is vastly underrated by jazz critics). In the band arrangement, Cunliffe plays some nifty tricks with rhythm and key transitions.

This is followed by his own original, Afluencia, which ironically starts off with a dense atonal chord more startling than anything he did to Bach. Following this, however, we are in an irregular Latin-style rhythm (it sounds like 7/4 to me). I should point out that not all of the huge list of names in the header above play on every track, as the album was recorded over a three-year period in different venues with different personnel. On Afluencia and the Prokofiev Piano Concerto, for instance, the only trumpets are Bergeron, Palmer, Stafford and Summers, the only trombones Iles, Martin and McChesney, with Reichenbach on bass trombone, Sheppard and Scanlon on alto saxes and clarinets, etc. It’s too complicated for me to reproduce here, but the info is all in the CD liner notes. Sheppard’s soprano sax dominates Afluencia.

The principal theme of Prokofiev’s concerto is taken way down at a ballad tempo to start with, but quickly morphs into yet another uptempo Latin-styled piece, with Rob Lockhart’s tenor sax pushing the beat with an edgy solo, but this extra-long track (17 minutes), which slowly continues to build in tempo and excitement, is largely a showcase for the ensemble with spot solos. The Latin beat shifts from samba to cha-cha for Cunliffe’s own solo, then relaxes into a swinging 4 for some band ensemble with spot drum breaks. All in all, I felt this was one of the real highlights of the album, a fascinating joy ride on the back of a very serious composer. The multiple tempo changes put me in mind of some of the Boswell Sisters’ great tracks of the 1930s.

Denise Donatelli

Despite my being a huge fan of C.P.E. Bach, I admit not being able to positively identify the Solfeggietto used here, but then again, the man wrote even more music than his father, which is saying something. This puts us back in a definite and very uptempo swinging 4/4, again focusing on Donatelli’s vocals and Cunliffe’s piano. I was rather amazed to learn that Donatelli was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, not too far from my own birthplace of Shamokin, and that she was originally a classical pianist for 15 years, winning first place in the National Federation of Music Clubs competitions three years consecutively! No wonder she has such great pitch and style.

Levant’s Blame it On My Youth is by far one of the most advanced and sophisticated charts on the set, the tempo taken way down and substitute chording provided to make the piece sound almost contemporary. This is a vehicle for some lovely floated brass-reed combinations and an even lovelier trumpet solo by Terell Stafford which dominates the tune. Following this, Cunliffe creates some fascinating interwoven lines which then fall away into quietude for Larry Koonse’s guitar solo.

J.S. Bach’s principal theme from the Goldberg Variations becomes the impetus for Cunliffe’s arrangement, which he calls Goldberg Contraption. By and large, however, this is a more genial and less complex arrangement than the Prokofiev concerto, despite some nice spot solos and occasional ensemble licks. Much tighter, and more impressive, is his wonderful conception of the theme from de Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat ballet. Here Cunliffe pulls out all the stops insofar as rhythmic subtlety and timbral blends are concerned, with a centerpiece of the arrangement being a sudden tempo and theme shift to a fast-moving flamenco-styled passage and back again. Donatelli again appears in spot vocal passages. The tempo is suddenly suspended for a brief trombone appearance by Ido Meshulam, then again for Jon Papenbrook’s trumpet. This is a terrific rewriting of this piece.

The closer is Cole Porter’s I’ve Got You Under My Skin, once again in an asymmetric tempo (basically in 3, but with added beats), and once again with Donatelli on vocals, this time singing the words. It’s a warm, relaxed ride-out to this basically fun album.

Recommended for the Prokofiev and de Falla arrangements, Cunliffe’s Afluencia, and some of the very fine solos.

—© 2017 Lynn René Bayley

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Monk’s “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” Released at Last

MONK: Rhythm-a-Ning (2 tks); Crepuscle With Nellie (2 tks); Six in One; Well, You Needn’t. Pannonica (2 tks). Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are. Light Blue. TINDLEY: By and By / Thelonious Monk Quintet: Charlie Rouse, Barney Wilen, t-sax; Thelonious Monk, pn; Sam Jones, bs; Art Taylor, dm / Sam Records/Saga SRS-1-CD

A few years ago, when I was reviewing for a music magazine, I had the pleasure of writing about the jazz-influenced American and European film scores of the 1950s and early ‘60s being released in outstanding boxed sets by Jason Lee Lazell of Moochin’ About records. The only score he missed, I mentioned to him, was Monk’s for Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Lazell told me that the only way you could get the music was from a print of the actual film, which had only been issued on VHS back in the 1980s, was out of print, and very expensive (it was selling, at the time for roughly $200 on eBay). He said that there appeared to be no stand-alone recording of the actual music.

Well, here it is—a whopping 58 years after it was recorded, due for release on June 16. The good news is that Thelonious Monk is still considered a major figure in jazz history, so there are definitely aficionados who will buy it. The sad thing is that, to most younger jazz listeners, Thelonious isn’t even a blip on their musical radar. Tupac Shakur and Louis Armstrong are in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Who’s Thelonious Monk?

For those who don’t know, he was one of the greatest yet fussiest geniuses in jazz. He was notorious for flipping members of his working groups between gigs and even in the middle of a recording contract. Orrin Keepnews recalled a time when he was supervising a Monk album; the leader showed up one week after the first session with three new musicians in tow. He was that fussy. But he was also as hard on himself, and could be very difficult to get to approve takes because he didn’t like his solos. As a composer, he was wholly unique, not fitting into either the swing or bop schools, although his own model as a pianist had been Duke Ellington. He wrote jagged, angular melodies, often with irascible countermelodies pushing hard against them. The late jazz critic Ralph Berton once aptly described him as “the Stravinsky of jazz.” Polyphony was his thing: just listen to Rhythm-a-Ning, Little Rootie Tootie or especially Four in One.

Yet it was as a pianist that Monk drew the most fire from critics. He attacked the keys in a flat-fingered, splayed-hands style that looked for all the world like a rank amateur who never took a lesson in his life, but he knew exactly what he was doing. Behind his back, some musicians referred to him as “Melodious Thunk,” but tt was part of his musical conception. In order to produce music that was rhythmically angular, he had to play the piano in a similar manner. Monk attacked the keyboard the way he did in order to dislocate stress beats and place them in wholly unexpected places: sometimes on 2 and 4, other times on 1 and 3 ½ , elsewhere in the middle of a measure where it made musical sense only to Monk. And it isn’t true that no other jazz pianists admired him. Count Basie adored him; witness that TV jazz special from 1957 where an obviously happy Basie is sitting on the opposite side of the piano, grinning from ear to ear as Monk plays. On the ride home in the cab, Monk turned to his wife Nellie and exploded. “Did you see that m*-f* staring at me?” Nellie replied, “He likes your playing, Thelonious! Be happy!”

Monk was also very self-critical of his own compositions, which is why he wrote so few of them. Considering the length of his career—ranging from his early days at Minton’s Playhouse in 1941 until his last tour with Dizzy Gillespie and the Stars of Jazz in 1971-72 (a tour on which he rarely said a word, even to Dizzy who was one of his closest friends)—Monk’s output is incredibly small, only about three dozen pieces, of which nearly a third are jazz classics (none more so than ‘Round Midnight). Thus this surprisingly wonderful, relaxed session, in which we have complete performances of one new composition (Six in One) and a complete studio performance of Light Blue, is particularly welcome to those of us who still love and honor this quirky but gentle giant of jazz.

It was altogether typical of Monk that even after he agreed to create music for a film, he didn’t bother to look at a script or care where the music fit in. He did sit through a private screening of it in New York a few days before the recording session, but when the time came he and his band just played whatever he wanted which the director then had to cut-and-paste to fit in into the finished product. The session was made, filed away after being snipped up for the film, and then promptly forgotten. Sad to say, this is typically French. Back in 1919, the legendary soprano Emma Calvé made about a dozen records for the French Pathé company, all of which were issued. Evelen years later, they were out of print, so an enterprising classical record collector visited their offices in Paris and asked if they could reissue them. “Calvé?” asked the Pathé executive. “Oh, no, she never recorded for us…she only recorded for La Voix son Maître (His Master’s Voice).” They didn’t even bother to check their own files to see if they had issued those records 11years ago.

Thus producer Zev Feldman, visiting Paris in December 2014, was told that François Le Xuan of Saga Jazz had discovered master tapes of a preciously unissued studio session by Monk made by French producer Marcel Romano. The tape box simply said “Thelonious Monk.” Feldman was duly impressed and thus spent the next two years working with the Thelonious Monk estate to gather in the photos and produce this release. And here it is.

Art Taylor during a break. Man, that’s one relaxed session!

The sound is warm and clear. For whatever lucky reason, the tapes were taken very good care of and did not deteriorate as so many reel-to-reels have over the years. (Even some of the RCA Victor “Living Stereo” tapes oxidized over time, and they had pretty good care.) Of course, I haven’t a clue where this music fit into the film, having never seen it, but it is certainly one of the most relaxed, laid-back Monk sessions I’ve ever heard. Thelonious was obviously in a carefree mood that day. Now, in his case laid-back does not equate to smooth jazz, but by and large this is as close as you’re ever going to get to a late-at-night, deep in the blues Monk album. the playing is so transcendent that it zones you out. You get into the Now listening to these tracks, and the sound quality is so magnificent that it almost sounds as if the band is right in the room with you. I can almost pretend that I’m up at Baroness Nica’s New York apartment around one in the morning, sipping a cocktail and digging this set. Had the band played ‘Round Midnight on this set, that would have made a perfect title for the album. It’s got that kind of vibe about it. Even Well, You Needn’t, normally a very uptempo piece for Monk, is played at a nice medium tempo of the sort that has since disappeared from jazz. Charlie Rouse still has that bluesy edge to his solos that were his trademark, but the rest of the band just floats. Like, way out, man!

And if you want proof of what I stated earlier in this review about Monk’s piano playing, listen carefully to Six in One. This is what I meant about his ability to subtly add or shift the stress beats within a bar to suit his mood. (One other thing: if Monk’s pianism was as bad as they said, why did he almost never slip up or hit a klunker? He always played exactly the “right” notes than he wanted to play.) The two brief takes of Pannonica almost sound shy in comparison to some of his other performances/recordings of this well-known piece. Yes, indeed, Monk was in a relaxed mood for this session.

The recording session sheet reveals other tunes played and recorded that day which, for one reason or another, didn’t make it to CD. Among them is a minute and a half rehearsal of Off Minor, three stabs at Epistrophy (only one of the takes longer than 49 seconds), and two off-the-cuff improvisations. All were false starts or breakdowns. This was a typical Monk recording session: what came out well came out, the rest was to be scrapped. Interestingly, I found his playing in the quartet version of Pannonica even better and tighter than his playing in the two solo takes. Oddly, Barney Wilen misses a note or two here and there, as in the theme statement of Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues Are, but then again, he wasn’t a regular band member.

Baroness Nica von Konigswarter, left, and Monk during a session break.

Seventeen pages of photos from the session, eight of them in a sort of faded color (they almost look like tinted B&W pics), shows how relaxed the session really was. There are two glimpses of Nica, both times sitting in a corner watching and listening, and two of Nellie, one a close-up and the other a shot of her back as she stood off to the side.

As the set goes on, there are some wonderful surprises, particularly this unusual reading of Light Blue. Art Taylor sets up a backbeat tom-tom rhythm, which gives the piece a wacky sort of feel as if the rest of the band was trying to wrest the tune away from the drum kit…and it ends in the middle of nowhere. Another is the alternate take of Rhythm-a-Ning that starts CD 2, as tight and exciting a performance as you’re likely to hear, considerably different from the tone of the rest of the music. Wilen is terrific on this one while the leader just plays a repeated two-note lick for his first chorus before opening up in the second.

The second CD ends with a 14 minute, 13 second outtake of the making of Light Blue. A lot of time is spent on Taylor playing his weird drum lick. At one point Monk says, “Just keep doin’ it, I’ll come in!” But it’s obvious that neither the drummer nor the rest of the band could figure out what the heck was in Thelonious’ mind. “Just keep counting to yourself!” he shouts at one point, when one of the tenor saxists plays the melody but then drops out. “The…the bass has got to play on the upbeat,” Monk explains to Taylor at one point. “You know when you’re coming in on the downbeat, you’re wrong!” Only Monk could keep this kind of rhythmic oddity clear in his mind. I recalled the old story about Monk rowing a boat in the pond at Central Park one afternoon. The ducks on the pond were quacking in one rhythm, he was rowing in another, and the New York traffic was honking and squealing in their own. “Man, that’s polyphony!” he suddenly exclaimed.

All in all, then, a good set with at least three outstanding performances. Would we think as highly of it had it been originally released in 1960 or ’61? Hard to tell. Sometimes just having a rare set by a jazz legend (witness Bill Evans’ Black Forest set) is enough to spark waves of adulation and awards. But for me, personally, it’s always great to hear Monk play, particularly during this period of time when he was still in his prime.

—© 2017 Lynn René Bayley

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Fascinating Songs by a Singing Legend

 

VIARDOT: Mein Fluss. Der Gärtner. Er ist’s. Nixe Binsefuß. In der Frühe. Das Verlassene Mägdlein. Die Soldatenbraut. Agnes. Morgenlied. Im April. Zwei Rosen. Der Gefangene. Auf die Rose. Die Meise. Auf Grusiens Hügeln. O Sing, du Schöne, Sing mir Nicht. Märchen. Verlangen. Des Nachts. Die Kapelle. Die Klagende. Rätsel. Das Blümlein. Das Vöglein. Allein. Die Sterne. Die Beschwörung / Miriam Alexandra, soprano; Eric Schneider, pianist / Oehms Classics OC 1878

Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821-1910), the kid sister of opera legend Maria Malibran, grew up to become as accomplished an artist—possibly even more so—than her sibling. By age six she was fluent in Spanish, English, French and Italian, and in later life added German and learned Russian so perfectly that when she sang Russian songs she was mistaken for a native. Originally an accomplished pianist, she took lessons with Franz Liszt and counterpoint-harmony classes with Anton Reicha, but her mother moved her in the direction of singing once her father, Manuel Sr., died in 1832. By the 1850s she was considered the most musically superb and dramatically interesting mezzo-soprano in all of Europe. She created Fidès in Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète. She sang the mezzo part in the performance of Mozart’s Requiem at Chopin’s funeral in 1849. Hector Berlioz wrote his arrangement of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Eurudice specifically for her, which she performed with him in 1858, and he had her in mind as Dido in his opera Les Troyens, which she strongly encouraged him to compose. Unfortunately, by the time Troyens was to be performed at the Paris Opéra in 1863, Viardot’s voice was in serious decline despite her relatively young age (she was only 41 years old), thus he assigned the role to another singer. But losing her voice didn’t stop her from teaching singing, just as it didn’t stop her older brother Manuel Garcia Jr., who had been a baritone, when he lost his voice before the age of 36. She taught a great many famous singers and pedagogues and died, full of honors, in 1910.

This superb collection of her own songs is a revelation. There’s not a single dull, uninteresting, or poorly-written piece on this album. If you were to hear this disc in a blindfold test, you would swear that these were songs by Schubert or perhaps even Schumann. That’s how good they are. The lively rhythms, lyrical melodies, interesting chord changes and ways of capturing the mood of each song bespeaks a master composer. So why haven’t we heard more of her work?

Beats me. There are collections of her music by Ina Kancheva (Toccata Classics), Isabel Bayrakdarian (Analekta), Julia Sukmanova (Fontenay Classics), Marina Comparato (Brilliant Classics) and Gyorgyi Dombradi (Ars Musici), and only the latter has a voice so fluttery as to detract from the quality of the music. In all of these, one is consistently impressed by the force of this woman’s writing, particularly in the piano parts which are generally even more brilliant and difficult than those in Schubert’s songs. In addition, violinist Ulf Schneider has recording her Violin Sonatine and 6 Moreceaux for violin on Ars Musici.

One of the most impressive songs on this album is Die Gefangene with its loping, “walking” tempo and feel, which in the second chorus morphs as the piano suddenly begins playing little fluttery 16ths on the second beat of each bar (the song is in 3/4) to break up the tempo a little. This is also a rare minor-key song for her, being in E minor.

As to the performances, pianist Eric Schneider is superb, able to make even the most difficult passages sound easy, and soprano Miriam Alexandra has a pure, clear soubrette voice. She only gives a generalized feeling of each piece, however; not for her the probing, brooding interpretations of Kancheva on Toccata Classics. This is a small drawback but a drawback nonetheless. Considering what an emotional, full-blooded woman and singer Pauline was, I would have liked rather more feeling in these performances, but it’s nice to have them sung by a soprano who at least has a fine voice and crystal-clear diction. Her only real drawback is the lack of a good, rich low range, which is a bit ironic considering that Viardot was a full-blooded mezzo-soprano. Other than that, these performances are clearly good enough to give one a good impression of these songs, each of which is a little gem.

In this particular song group, none of them really touch upon darker moods, but I’ve listened to one or two of Viardot’s Russian songs and those are much moodier. She was just a fine composer, plain and simple, and someone out there should be programming an entire evening of her songs…perhaps interspersed with some piano and violin pieces!

—© 2017 Lynn René Bayley

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Rathaus’ Unusual Violin Sonatas Recorded

RATHAUS: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2. Suite for Violin & Piano / Karolina Piatkowska-Nowicka, violinist; Bogumiła Weretka-Bajdor, pianist / Dux 1347

How many classical listeners have ever heard, or heard of, Karol Rathaus? Well, OK, the name doesn’t really suggest a fun experience. You almost expect the kind of well-written but turgid music that Max Reger churned out by the double handful. But, as it turns out, Rathaus wrote music that was both angular and modern on the one hand and rhythmically buoyant on the other. A strange combination, to say the least.

One of Franz Schreker’s favorite pupils at the Academy of Performing Arts and Music in Vienna, Rathaus followed him to the Berlin Music Academy. Upon graduation, Rathaus accepted a position as a teacher of composition and music theory at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he stayed until Hitler and the Nazis assumed power (pace Wikipedia).

Rathaus’ music combines superb form with deep feeling. It’s difficult to listen to these pieces without being emotionally drawn in; in this respect he was different from the equally brilliant Erwin Schulhoff, whose music is brilliant and fascinating but works strictly on a surface level. Of course, the emotional impact of any music is as much dependent on the performer as the composer, and in this case Rathaus is fortunate yo have two such passionate champions as violinist Piatkowska-Nowicka, whose lean, brilliant timbre explores these scores with great intensity, and pianist Weretka-Bajdor, who plays with a wonderful feeling for line and mood. Because of these scores’ angular construction the music is difficult to describe in words, but one thing I particularly liked about them was the fact that the musical construction is clear and easy to follow even when the melodic line and harmonies are not. This helps considerably in making a connection with any listener who is not immediately negative towards them due to their style.

Indeed, as these works progress, the depth and profundity of Rathaus’ music grabs you more and more. It’s so rare to find works of this quality in such great performances nowadays that I almost lost track of my “critical faculties” and just listened for the sheer enjoyment of it. To me, that’s the mark of a truly great recording. You don’t even feel the need to analyze because every note and phrase has a meaning and a message. One detail I particularly loved, though, was the way the third movement of the second Violin Sonata followed so quickly on the heels of the mysterious, brooding final note of the second movement. That was sheer genius on Rathaus’ part.

The Suite for Violin & Piano takes a deliberately less serious tone than the sonatas. Rathaus’ musical syntax is pretty much the same, but here he penetrates less emotionally, preferring to ride the surface of the music. Ironically, this would be a powerful violin sonata for almost any modern composer I can think of, because despite the less penetrating insight the music is extremely well written and fascinating. The last movement is a virtual moto perperual of modern harmonies in a bouncing rhythm—at least until the final E major chord on the piano, outside the home key, which suddenly ends the piece in the middle of nowhere!

Despite the brevity of this review, I cannot praise this album highly enough. You need to hear these performances of this music.

—© 2017 Lynn René Bayley

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