London’s and Rysanek’s Fascinating “Dutchman”

WAGNER: Der fliegende Holländer / Leonie Rysanek, sop (Senta); Res Fischer, mezzo (Mary); George London, bass-bar (Dutchman); Fritz Uhl, ten (Erik); Josef Greindl, bass (Daland); Georg Paskuda, ten (Steersman); Bayreuth Festival Chorus & Orchestra; Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond / Orfeo d’Or C 936 1821 (live: Bayreuth, August 5, 1959)

When I was still a teenager, I recall listening, in my local library, to the 1955 live Decca recording of this opera with Astrid Varnay, Hermann Uhde, Josef Traxel and Ludwig Weber, conducted by Josef Keilberth, and I thought it was just the berries. It made such a deep impression on me that I never thought I’d hear a better performance in my life, and for years it was my favorite recording until I stumbled upon the early-1980s Philips recording. That version, also a live performance from Bayreuth, had an even more stunning Senta in Lisbeth Balslev (what on earth ever happened to her?), a great if occasionally unsteady Dutchman in Simon Estes, Robert Schunk’s passionate Erik, Matti Salminen’s sumptuously-sung Daland, and the taut, dynamic conducting of one Woldemar Nelsson (and what on earth happened to him?), and the Keilberth recording was gently nudged to the side, nevermore to be listened to.

Indeed, my loyalty to the Nelsson performance is such that, even with Estes’ occasional fluttery tone (he did bring the voice into better focus once he warmed up), I’ve come to think of it as the sina qua non of Holländer recordings, thus when I first saw this one going by in the Naxos catalog, I stopped only long enough to notice that the great George London was the Dutchman but then decided not to review it because it was, after all, in mono.

My mistake.

Next to the Nelsson version, this is clearly the most interesting and dynamic Dutchman ever released. One’s ears quickly adjust to the mono sound, in part because the unusual Bayeruth hall resonance makes up for it, although I do think that the recording needs to be brightened on the top end (neither Rysanek’s exciting high register nor the strings have sufficient “bite” the way it was processed here, but a decent audio editor will fix that for you). But it’s the singing and acting that will rivet your attention and hold it there.

Indeed, this performance made such a deep impression that, two years later, Decca-London recorded the opera commercially with the two main principals, substituting Giorgio Tozzi as Daland, Karl Liebl as Erik, Rosalind Elias as Mary and Richard Lewis as the Steersman, conducted by Antal Doráti. But gremlins were at work: Rysanek was in poor voice, wobbling and going flat (always a danger for her since her earliest years…Wilhelm Furtwängler refused to use her as Leonore or Sieglinde because he was worried that she’d sing flat) and London was recorded in a back bathroom somewhere.

In this performance, everything seemed to go right. Everyone except Res Fischer, as Mary, was in very good voice, the two principals exceptionally so. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Fritz Uhl was a much better Erik, both vocally and interpretively, than Robert Schunk in the Nelsson performance. Some European reviewers have had little good to say of London’s Dutchman, finding him exciting vocally but not penetrating the

London as the Dutchman

character. I would say that, while it is true that he doesn’t give us a world-weary Dutchman, he presents a character who is cynical and bitter, who yearns for death but doesn’t know how to bring it on himself, and who thus in turn takes out this bitterness on all those around him. In actuality, this is a more plausible interpretation when one considers how, later on, the Dutchman becomes cynical when he sees Senta with Erik and assumes that she will not keep her promise to join him. Moreover, he received glowing reviews from the German press at the time, e.g., “compellingly demonic in his singing and acting…George London…plays the character with the intelligence for which he is so often praised: he was an incarnation of the outcast, of inner restlessness (Badische Zeitung),” or that he remained “singularly without pathos…a kind of principled unapproachability (Kölnische Rundschau).”

Greindl as Daland

Josef Greindl also came in for criticism due to his oddly unsteady voice production. It was never a full-blown wobble, he had it as far back as 1944 and it never really got much worse, but it will upset those who like their Wagner bass voices firm and solid (although, in the age of Kwangchul Youn, Greindl sounds like Kurt Moll). I find him a very interesting Daland, in fact more interesting dramatically than Salminen in the Nelsson recording—possibly because Wieland Wagner insisted that he present himself as a bit of a hard-drinking rogue, not the epitome of naval morality he is usually shown to be.

Rysanek as Senta

But the one thing everyone agrees on is that Rysanek, in this performance, is the finest Senta of all time. One thing that surprised me was the quiet way she began singing her ballad “Traft ihr das Schiff” and, even more surprising, the way she floated her soft high notes ã la Zinka Milanov. I didn’t know she had that in her, although in an interview, Rysanek was most proud of the fact that she was the “slimmest Senta around.” Like Lisbeth Balslev, Rysanek presents a Senta who is divorced from reality, a bit touched in the head, and fixated on “redeeming” the Dutchman. The difference is that Balslev sounds obviously crazy from her first utterance, whereas Rysanek almost seems to be living in a world of dreams, which results in her gentler reading of the words.

This is not the first release of this recording. Melodram first put it out on LPs (MEL-390) many moons ago, followed by a Charles Handelman cassette tape. Then came the CD issues: Melodram MEL-26101 (2004), Premiere Opera CDNO 1579 (2004) and Opera d’Oro OPD 7030 (2006). Like most of the Orfeo d’Or issues, this is its first “official” release, taken from the house master tapes and signed off by a member of the Wagner family (Katharina Wagner). Comparing it to the Opera d’Oro release, the sound is marginally clearer, although it definitely needs a treble boost of about 1.7 db to offset the top-range dullness.

And excellent performance, then. Whether it’s one for the ages depends, mostly, on your acceptance of London’s Dutchman. Everyone else is outstanding, and the performance is utterly fascinating.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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The Turning Point Ensemble Opens a Curio Box

CURIO BOX / HINDEMITH: Kammermusik.* BERIO: Folk Songs for Mezzo-soprano & 7 Instruments. ^# UNDERHILL: Cello Concerto* / *Ariel Barnes, cel; ^#Fides Krucker, mezzo-sop; Turning Point Ensemble / Orlando 0037

Following on the heels of the disc just reviewed (American Vistas by the Concordia String Trio) is this fascinating disc by the Canadian-based Turning Point Ensemble. They are a 17-piece chamber orchestra headed up by conductor and composer Owen Underhill, founded in 2002 in Vancouver. Their component members are violinist Mary Sokol Brown, violist Marcus Takizawa, cellists Ariel Barnes and Stefan Hintersteininger, bassist David Brown, trumpeter Al Cannon, trombonist Jeremy Berkman, French hornist Micajah Sturgess, flautist Brenda Fedoruk, oboist David Owen, clarinetists AK Coope and François Houle, bassoonist Ingrid Chang, harpists Heidi Krutzen and Janelle Nadeau, and percussionists Vern Griffiths and Aaron McDonald. Cellist Barnes is the soloist in both the Hindemith and Underhill works on this set.

They are clearly an enthusiastic young group of musicians who play with a lean tone and crisp, clean style, which is particularly apropos to the Hindemith work. The music simply sparkles in their expert hands (and lips), emerging in all its neoclassic glory, and their tight, incisive chords remind one of the way a technical master such as Rodziński would have conducted this music. Barnes’ cello tone, too, is lean and precise, eschewing the more luscious tone of those who specialize in Romantic-era music. To a certain extent, this works against him in the slow third movement, “Sehr ruhige und gemessen schreitende Viertel,” yet his legato is excellent enough to at least suggest the “quiet, measured walking quarter notes” that Hindemith intended. Interestingly, violinist Brown plays here with a nice vibrato, which I liked very much and which I think Hindemith would have appreciated as well. (He was, after all, one of the greatest violists of his day, and knew the violin and cello intimately as well.)

Berio’s folk song arrangements run the gamut from American to Jewish, French, Italian, Azerbaijan and three other cultures. They were written, of course, for his wife at the time, mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, and in the lines notes Fides Krucker tells of her utter fascination with Berberian’s performance and how she “spent hours listening to her transform the shape of her mouth, adjust her resonators, and widen or narrow her airflow as she recreated the sound of eight different vocal cultures.” Krucker does a splendid job on them, using her very pretty mezzo voice and, better yet, perfect diction (listen up, operatic mezzos! Her enunciation is as clear as a bell!) to limn the music with just the right feel in every piece. I was particularly impressed by Berio’s arrangement of “I Wonder As I Wander,” which is highly imaginative and surely the finest version of this song I’ve ever heard. Kruecker really gets into her work here, doing a fantastic job on the “Azerbaijan Love Song” as well on all the others.

We then reach Underhill’s Cello Concerto, subtitled “The Curio Box.” It’s a well-written piece in the usual modern style of today: lyric themes stretched across biting, acerbic, bitonal background figures. What gives the first movement distinction is the lovely, elegiac melody he created for the cello, a haunting theme that will surely appeal even to the tonally-biased. It is also well-developed music, with Underwood using a variant of the cello theme for the oboe and allowing the soloist to stretch out in an extemporé fashion before the chamber orchestra returns to play syncopated figures that bounce around. As Underhill puts it in the liner notes, “The idea of the [Chinese] curio box seemed to me quite musical in the way that musical memory often contains music of different places, timeperiods, and expres­sions.” Underhill likewise plays with rhythms and motives in the second movement, “The Impossible Return,” using both the opening melody and end of the first movement in a new way, featuring the solo cellist. The third movement, “Assemblage,” puts pieces of the first two movements together in a sort of crazy-house manner. It’s a fascinating piece.

In toto, then, an excellent CD of well-chosen music, well-performed and holding the listener’s attention.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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The Concordia Trio Explores American Vistas

AMERICAN VISTAS / PISTON: 3 Counterpoints. HOVHANESS: Trio, Op. 201. LEWIS: Berceuse. HARBISDON: Trio Sonata. COWELL: 7 Paragraphs. COLSON: String Trio No. 1, “Zazen” / Concordia String Trio / Centaur CRC 3625

The Concordia String Trio, comprised of violinist Marcia Henry Liebenow, violist Leslie Perna and cellist Karen Becker, here tackles a program of 20th and 21st-century American composers. The two outliers in this list are Leonard Mark Lewis and David Colson, who I did not previously know.

Piston’s 3 Counterpoints are not as well known as his orchestral music, but they are typically fine works by this relatively neglected American composer. Lively and energetic, the music teeters on the brink of atonality but never quite arrives there; it is, more often, bitonal, yet one can almost always sense the underlying tonal base. Despite the somewhat over-ambient sound, I was impressed by the trio’s combination of warmth and incisive rhythms. These surprisingly late works, dating from 1973, still retain the stamp of Piston’s style; the middle piece is an “adagio sereno” sandwiched between two fast movements, and has a particularly yearning theme.

The Hovhaness Trio, from 1962, is particularly interesting in that it uses microtones in the manner of Julián Carrillo and Harry Partch. A strange piece, the opening features the violin and cello playing pizzicato figures while the viola slithers around chromatically, then they all sort of get into the spirit before returning to the format of the opening. The second movement, an “Allegro,” is more conventional in harmony, again featuring pizzicato scrambling by the violin and cello and allowing the viola to play the theme statement—but it’s very short, and in the final movement, “Lento,” we return to microtonalism.

Interestingly, Lewis’ Berceuse is much in the same vein; at first, I almost thought it was a fourth movement of the Hovhaness Trio, except that Lewis veers back towards tonality, thus this score opens with chromatic sliding but does not dwell in it. Most of the music is indeed a berceuse in the true sense of the word.

By contrast, John Harbison’s Trio Sonata is terse and to the point; the themes barely have time enough to establish themselves and develop a little before the music is over (the entire four-movement piece lasts only 4:47). Even more surprising, to me, was the first of the 7 Paragraphs of Henry Cowell, which sounded quite Romantic. The remainder of the pieces are in his normal atonal or bitonal style.

I was particularly struck by David Colson’s highly imaginative String Trio No. 1, subtitled “Zazen.” He, too, uses bitonality, but does so in a very dynamic manner, creating tension via the intensity of the string bowing and his subtle use of dynamics on sustained tones. The third movement, which is the busiest in terms of rhythmic movement and harmonic development, bears the odd title “The dolls in the window are doing perfect zazen but their eyes are not open.” In the fourth, “A forest of clouds,” Colson also introduces some rhythmic movement but at a much slower pace. Curiously, the last movement, titled “Stand still, stand still,” is the edgiest and most intense movement, indicating the constant busyness of one’s mind when one is trying to do perfect meditation.

All in all, this is one of the finest albums of out-of-repertoire string music I’ve heard in a long time. The Concordia Trio should be commended for their desire to play music that is different from the usual Romantic blather that one hears over and over and over again. A real gem!

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Schumann’s String Quartets in a New Recording

SCHUMANN: String Quartets Nos. 1-3 / Engegård Quartet / Bis 2361 (SACD)

For better or worse, I’ve somehow managed not to have ever heard these string quartets before. Probably, I think, because Schumann was so much better known as a composer for the piano, and songs, and symphonies, they just somehow missed my radar. I’ve noticed that the recordings of these works by the Ying, Gringolts and Doric Quartets have garnered the most critical acclaim, but I’m going to do something unusual for me. I’m just going to review this disc without making comparisons with the others.

To begin with, the Engegård Quartet follows all of Schumann’s metronome markings faithfully. They also observe all of the little crescendo-decrescendo markings, the sforzandi and accents. By doing so, they play the music with the right feel and flow, and they also have a warm tone which works extremely well in this music.

Some nitpickers have complained that the string writing is very “pianistic.” Well, I would think that would stand to reason considering Schumann’s deep, lifetime involvement with that instrument, but so what? More to the point, Schumann also wrote these quartets rather like small symphonies, i.e., with the first violin playing the top line while the others fill the textures and rhythmic figures in behind it, rather than having the four instruments play against each other as in the mature quartets of Beethoven. Yet it is the overall effect of the music that matters, not the form so much. Schubert’s Grand Duo for two pianos is written orchestrally, but it’s still great music.

The important thing here is that it is mature Schumann, meaning that it is well-written and surprising in its shifts of themes and moods. Some musicians, such as the great cellist Steven Isserlis, feel that Schumann’s music “breaks your heart,” but I find that is only true in some works, particularly his great song cycle Dichterliebe, although I admit that the slow movements in these quartets are very heartfelt indeed. Most of the time, for me, the attraction of Schumann is that he always thought outside the box. His music is continually full of surprises, harmonic and well as thematic, and that is what keeps me coming back to him over and over again. It was also what separated his music from that of his wife, Clara, a good composer but one whose music was far more predictable.

As to a rating of the interpretations, all I can say is that the Engegård Quartet plays this music with a great deal of feeling—not surprising, considering all of the emotional guideposts put into the scores by the composer. String quartets nowadays are all so good for the most part that trying to place one above the other in any given repertoire is like splitting hairs, although some of them seem to be especially good in specific repertoire, for instance the Alexander String Quartet in Mozart and Beethoven. Engegård certainly plays the fast movements with considerable energy. I’d be very hard-pressed, following the scores along with them, to imagine better interpretations than these. They miss nothing in terms of expressive content.

To be honest, I didn’t care much for the second quartet. It’s good, but not great music. The third quartet, however, was much more interesting to me—not, for instance, the surprising fast, agitated passages in the second movement—and it, too, is played beautifully—and according to score—by this quartet.

Thus I would, personally, rate this as an outstanding recording of these works. Are they better than the Ying, Gringolts or Doric Quartets? You be the judge. I’d give this set five fish in the Penguin’s Girlfriend’s Guide!

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Satoko Fujii & Joe Fonda Play Hip Tunes

 

MIZU / FUJII-FONDA: Rik Bevernage. Long Journey. Mizu / Satoko Fujii, pno; Joe Fonda, bs/fl / Long Song Records (no number)

Unlike other reviewers, I had not heard Fujii and Fonda’s previous album, Duet, but I had heard her on a fascinating album with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith which deeply impressed me. To begin with, the title of this review is meant to be a bit humorous, since although free jazz can indeed be called “hip,” the music produced can scarcely be referred to as “tunes.” Fujii studied with Paul Bley, one of the pioneers of free jazz piano back in the 1960s, while Fonda played from 1984 to 1999 with composer-improviser Anthony Braxton. The music on this CD evolved during a 2017 four-city European tour.

Free jazz at its best simply comes from throwing out a few notes and chords, then exploring them together. It very seldom works with groups larger than a quartet or quintet; Ornette Coleman’s famous “double quartet” recording, titled simply Free Jazz, ended up being quite confused-sounding in places because the two quartets were operating not in tandem with each other but independently (though there were a few really good moments in it). On the opening track, Rik Bevernage, named after the late Belgian concert producer and label owner, the duo shows just how this method of operation works. Both musicians are bold enough to be able to work in an atonal setting, although, to my ears, it is the bassist who “grounds” the music more in tonality by emphasizing specific notes and working around them as a foil to Fujii’s more atonal style. Some of her single-line runs put me in mind of Lennie Tristano at his most advanced, which is not a bad thing. What amazed me was that Fujii never got lost in her work, i.e., she actually develops her themes, building in tension before releasing it; even her wildest keyboard arpeggios and runs fit into an overall scheme. The music, naturally, is difficult to describe in words because what they are doing goes beyond language, but they’re definitely on each others’ wavelength and manage to complement each other while playing very diverse lines. As a bassist-improviser, Fonda seemed to me influenced strongly by the late Charlie Haden, among others. He has a very clear bass tone, making his notes ring out with crystalline purity. As the track progresses, Fonda uses a variety of devices: bowing, sometimes on the edge of the strings to produce an edgier sound, whistle tones, etc. to vary his approach.

Much the same approach is taken in the following two tracks although, ironically, Long Journey isn’t nearly as long a musical journey as the opener, which runs close to a half-hour. Here, Fujii plays mostly rhythmic figures, chorded and solo, while it is Fonda who goes a bit more out on a limb. The title track, Mizu, is by far the most impressionistic, with Fujii playing her piano strings in such a manner that it almost sounds like a gamelan. It is also the most full of effects, mostly rhythmic, without much structure, although Fujii tries to develop what little material there is at the keyboard. The tension builds via a long crescendo, to which Fonda adds some shouts. Fonda then, surprisingly, switches to flute while the pianist sprinkles some chords around his improvised melody.

This music is quite a trip, one well worth taking. It is music of tremendous imagination and power. Not a touch of “soft jazz” or “ambient jazz” in sight!

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Cambreling Explores Debussy

DEBUSSY: Images pour orchestre. Danses pour harp et orchestre. La Mer / SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg; Sylvain Cambreling, cond / SWR Music 19508CD

Sylvain Cambreling, who was chief conductor of the SWR Sinfonieorchester from 1999 to 2011, is actually two different musicians: the one who made a specialty of conducting the updated edition of Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann during the 1980s at excruciatingly slow tempi (for whatever reason, never explained) and the much more outstanding conductor of the last 20 years. Why or how he changed his aesthetic from stodgy and uninteresting to brisk and lively, I have no idea, but these recordings, made in 2001 and 2004, are clearly among his better ones.

This album starts out with a particularly atmospheric reading of “Gigues,” the first part of the Images pour orchestre, and builds from there. As in his superb set of the complete orchestral music of Olivier Messiaen, Cambreling shows a fine grasp of structure and brings out a considerable amount of detail in these scores. Indeed, in the incisiveness of his rhythmic attacks, passionate playing and fairly quick tempi, his conducting here resembles the work of such past conductors as Charles Munch, Artur Rodziński and Arturo Toscanini, for whom “Ibéria” from the Images was a staple of his repertoire. I was also amazed by the way this orchestra, which also sounded lean but played with a more Germanic feeling under Michael Gielen, takes on a more French character in this repertoire. Indeed, I found his reading of “Ibéria” to be somewhat of a cross between Munch and Toscanini, having a more Gallic sound quality but only a bit less crispness and energy of the Italian conductor. The middle section, “Les parfums de la nuit,” is played with a surprisingly “snaky” sound that I can’t recall any other conductor replicating. He also does an outstanding job on the “Rondes de printemps,” and if the Danses for harp and string orchestra may seem a little feathery, it is still an interesting reading.

Although I am not quite prepared to put Cambreling’s interpretation of La Mer on the same high pedestal as Bernard Haitink’s early version with the Concertgebouw (surely the finest stereo recording of this work ever made), it is a surprisingly jaunty version. The opening movement, taken at Toscanini’s earlier, faster tempo (with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra) is much jauntier in feeling, sounding like the seaside on a happy summer’s day. This same feeling carries over to the “Play of the waves,” and appropriately so in this case. By contrast, the “Dialogue of the wind and the sea” is quite menacing, indeed. In all, then, a very unique version of this magnificent symphony and, again, the orchestral detail is exquisite.

Quite a pleasant surprise, then; surely one of the most interesting Debussy CDs I’ve heard in a long time!

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Kevin Short’s Dark Bass Shines in New Recital

MEPHISTOPHELES & OTHER BAD GUYS / GOUNOD: Faust: Le veau d’or; Vous qui faites l’endormie. BOITO: Mephistopheles: Son lo Spirito; Ecco il mondo. BEETHOVEN: Song of the Flea (orch. Shostakovich). Fidelio: Ha! Welch ein Augenblick!* MOZART: Die Entführung aus dem Serail: Wer ein Liebchen hat gefunden; O, wie will ich triumphieren. WEBER: Der Freischütz: Schweig, schweig, damit dich niemand. OFFENACH: Les contes d’Hoffmann: Dans le roles d’amoureux langoureux; Scintille diamant. VERDI: I Lombardi: Sciagurata! Hai tu credeto. BERLIOZ: La damnation de Faust: Voici des roses; Devant la maison. GETTY: Mephistopheles to Faust. MUSSORGSKY: Song of the Flea (orch. Stravinsky). STRAVINSKY: The Rake’s Progress: I burn, I freeze! MEYERBEER: Robert le Diable: Nonnes, qui reposez. WAGNER: Das Rheingold: Bin ich nun frei? / Kevin Short, bass-bar; *Opéra de Marseille Male Chorus; Orchestre Philharmonique de Paris; Lawrence Foster, cond / Pentatone Classics PTC 5186 585

A great deal of information is given on Kevin Short’s background, the competition prizes he has won, the venues he has sung in and the conservatories he studied at, yet his principal voice teachers (except for his very first, Betty Ridgeway) are nowhere mentioned. This is a pity, because a voice this solid in production—not the slightest hint of unsteadiness—is so rare nowadays, especially among singers of his range, that had this teachers been mentioned  I’d urge all of his wobble-sounding bass and baritone brethren to go running to them forthwith. And is this ever a dark-sounding voice! Short is perfect for roles of this type because he sounds, no joke, like an American version of Gustav Neidlinger with a touch of Jerome Hines (although, judging from the microphone placement, it doesn’t seem to be as huge of a voice as Hines’ was—but few are).

I was a bit disappointed, however, by some of the conducting in this set, particularly in “Le veau d’or,” where Lawrence Foster takes it at a rather slow pace—and, worse yet, introduces the old-fashioned ritard in the middle of the aria that singers like Pol Plançon and Marcel Journet used to do. Foster is also just a shade slow in Boito’s “Son lo spirito.” But no matter: Short makes you sit up and take notice. It’s just that good of a voice. His only deficiency is the lack of a trill, most noticeable in Gounod’s “ Vous qui faites l’endormie.” But no matter; someone (Pentatone, perhaps?) should record a complete Mephistopheles with Short, tenor AJ Glueckert and a soprano like Juliane Banse or Maria Bengtsson forthwith (possibly with a conductor like Marc Albrecht).

As for interpretation, he needs a little work. He sounds appropriately sinister in everything he sings, but it’s a generic sort of sinister, like a loving father who puts on a scowl and grumpily tells his son to eat his Brussels sprouts. Of course, nearly every aria in this collection is an over-the-top snarl-fest, and Lord knows that the late Boris Christoff also gave fairly generic readings of this kind of music, too. Short does modify his tone somewhat in “Ecco il mondo,” to good effect, and in an aria like Beethoven’s “Ha! Welch ein Augenblick,” subtlety goes out the window anyway. And he’s certainly a terrific Don Pizarro and Lindorf/Dappertutto. His Osmin in Mozart’s Abduction put me in mind of the way Gottlob Frick sang it (there’s another bass he somewhat resembles), except that “Wer ein Liebchen” seemed to me a bit too much shouted. Foster also conducts “O wie will ich Triumphieren” too slowly, as Beecham did, although Short does interpret this with appropriate subtlety and even more appropriate low notes, which many a bass simply cannot reach.

The two surprises in this collection, for me, were Beethoven’s Song of the Flea, a piece I didn’t even know he had written, and, of course, Gordon Getty’s song Mephistopheles to Faust, which is probably a fairly new piece anyway. Pagano’s aria from I Lombardi is also a piece not often heard, mostly because so much of the opera is sort of in-one-ear-and-out-the-other except for the most magnificent trio Verdi ever wrote. Short tries his best to soften his tone for Berlioz’ “Voici des roses,” but really should work on that a bit…it’s still somewhat too loud, though gloriously sung. (Listen to Mack Harrell in the famous broadcast with Toscanini or Gabriel Bacquier in the EMI studio recording with Prêtre for an example of what I mean.) By contrast, “Devant la maison” is just perfect (though, again, just a shade too slow). The Getty piece is superb—what a wonderful composer he is!—and Short is really in his element here, possibly because he is also singing in his native language. He also has some fun with Mussorgsky’s Song of the Flea. The last track, Alberich’s curse from Das Rheingold, reminds us once again of Short’s tonal resemblance to Neidlinger, the most famous Alberich of his day. It’s a very outward, angry reading of the curse. I would suggest that Short listen to Eduard Habich, the greatest Alberich of the past, as an example of how one can sing these words with more meaning.

No two ways about it, though: Kevin Short has the kind of voice that makes you sit up and take notice. A little coaching in subtlety, and he’d be fantastic as Bluebeard in Bartók’s opera, too. This is a terrific recital by any measurement.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Lazarev’s Fascinating Prokofiev

PROKOFIEV: Violin Concerto No. 1.* Symphony No. 3. Chout (The Buffoon). Rêves / *Vadim Repin, vln; Simon Callow, narr; London Philharmonic Orchestra; Alexander Lazarev, cond / London Symphony Orchestra 0107 (live: London, November 28 & 30, 1997)

Here’s a strange release of 21-year-old performances on the LPO’s own label, with absolutely no explanation in the booklet as to why the long wait. Although I cannot say that Vadim Repin’s playing of the violin concerto can compete with Vadim Gluzman’s outstanding recording of the same work (plus the second concerto) for Bis, it is still a first-rate interpretation, and Lazarev’s conducting is crisp and energetic. At the time of this concert, he was principal conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, a post he held from 1997-2005.

I am still not convinced, even by this fine performance, that Prokofiev’s Third Symphony is a great piece of music. Lazarev does his level best, paying great attention to detail and pacing the music in a much more spacious manner than other conductors, but for me the music says very little. To me, it sounds more like a movie score, but not a terribly good one: his Ivan the Terrible film score is much better than this. The loud, blaring finale is a real hodgepodge of themes and orchestral explosions—sound and fury, signifying nothing.

On the other hand, the Ballets Rousse ballet score with narration, Chout (The Buffoon) is clearly one of Prokofiev’s best pieces, not only witty but well-written, with real connective tissue between its episodes, and although Simon Callow’s narration is a bit old-school-Shakespearean in tone, it works well in context. Lazarev again conducts deftly, making the most of his material, and in this case his effort is well worth it. One section sounded a bit like the polka from Shostokovich’s The Golden Age…I wonder if the younger composer got his idea for it from this? Indeed, as the work progressed, I was amazed by Prokofiev’s powers of invention in this work. (Why, oh why couldn’t he have done the same in his Third Symphony?)

We end, oddly enough, with the orchestral piece Dreams, one of the composer’s most impressionistic pieces. This, too, is conducted beautifully by Lazarev, with a wonderful grasp of opaque colors to limn its Ravel-like melody. All in all, then, an outstanding release, particularly for the second disc.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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The Halíř Trio Plays Granados & Dvořák

GRANADOS: Piano Trio in C, Op. 50. DVOŘÁK: Piano Trio No. 3 in f min., Op. 65 / Halíř Trio / ArcoDiva UP 0203

In a nutshell, these are absolutely exquisite performances by the Halíř Trio, with which I was completely unfamiliar. The music flows from their fingers with a legato smoothness so complete that you’d think you were listening to a trio from 60 years ago, when musical subtlety and legato meant more than just slamming through the score. From the first phrase of the Granados Trio, they have you in their thrall and never let go. Moreover, their numerous large and small rubato touches give the music an extraordinary amount of color and atmosphere. It is simply an extraordinary performance, one that almost transcends criticism because it is of the sort that you just listen to and enjoy, not sit and analyze phrase-by-phrase (though that is certainly possible).

As for the music, the Granados Trio is quite charming; clearly not one of his most complex works, but well-written as usual. Yet the Halíř Trio plays it as if it were great music, holding the listener’s attention from start to finish.

The Dvořák Trio is an entirely different case; this is clearly one of the composer’s greatest pieces, and although Halíř doesn’t quite match the intensity of Trio Solisti on Bridge, they play it with their own particular sense of involvement and make even more, I think, of the more lyrical passages. I could say a great deal about their subtlety of inflection in this work as well, but I will leave it to the listener to discover these little treasures for themselves.

A short review, then, but a very positive one. I really wish this trio good luck in the future, and look forward to hearing them again on records!

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Korstick’s Fascinating Rachmaninov

RACHMANINOV: Piano Concerto No. 3.* Corelli Variations. Piano Sonata No. 2 / Michael Korstick, pno; *Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra; Dmitry Liss, cond / Oehms Classics OC 1896

Before we get into the meat of this review, a point of order regarding the spelling of the composer’s name. Is it Rachmaninoff or Rachmaninov? This is an interesting question because, as you know, Cyrillic does not really translate literally into English. During his lifetime, the famous Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin’s last name was variously spelled Schaljapin at times (mostly by the British). I had a long, knock-down, dragged-out argument with my “fellow critics” at a well-known classical review magazine over the spellings of various Russian names. They called me a heathen when I told them that, frankly, it doesn’t matter how many names are spelled in English as long as, when you read them, the pronunciation is right. Although this pianist-composer was generally spelled Rachmaninoff in English-speaking countries, Rachmaninov is actually closer to the correct pronunciation of his name. So there.

Happily, the music speaks louder than a name spelling, and in this program Michael Korstick has wisely chosen the deepest and most interesting of his four concerti. The best recording of it I’ve ever heard was by the phlegmatic, often brutal-sounding Vladimir Horowitz. It was his first concerto recording, made way back in 1930 with the Russian-British conductor Albert Coates. He had coached his interpretation with the composer, which I think made a great difference, because his playing is wonderfully atmospheric, muted in color rather than splashy and loud, which was his normal way of playing almost everything else. Rachmaninov was very pleased with his reading, which he felt was equal or superior to his own, thus I was interested to hear how Korstick approached this score.

He is superb. Like Horowitz, Korstick has a generally bright piano tone, though, unlike Horowitz, he can mute it wonderfully in the music of Debussy. Even better, Korstick’s way of binding the phrasing, a trait accumulated from decades of playing Beethoven, is superior to Horowitz. There are moments when he, too, plays with an exuberance that sounds wholly Russian, and this is to his credit, for this is Rachmaninov’s darkest and most Russian-sounding score. I was similarly impressed by Dmitry Liss’ handling of the orchestra, which also manages to replicate the muted colors that Coates drew out of the London Symphony all those decades ago. The important thing to understand is that Korstick does not just play the music as if he understands it; he plays it as if he loves it, and thus brings it to life. Yes, I still have problems with some of those virtuosic passages, which always sound to me superfluous in music of such general depth of feeling, but Korstick managed to make them sound less so. Needless to say, his technique is so good that can absorb all of these passages within the overall framework of the music, presenting them as an outgrowth of the music’s themes rather than as mere “filler.”

Korstick plays the second movement in a particularly dreamy manner, almost giving it his “Debussy touch,” which again works splendidly. The third movement, which is the sunniest and most exuberant, receives an appropriately energetic reading from both pianist and conductor.

I admit to not being as familiar with the Corelli Variations or the Second Piano Sonata as I am with the concerto. The former are quite interesting, again calling at times for what I feel is overdone virtuosity but generally good music. Korstick plays them with an easy swagger that suits the score. In the latter portion of the work, which alternates exuberant, virtuosic passages with light interludes of half and whole notes, Korstick makes an effective contrast.

The Piano Sonata, by contrast, seemed to me too much flash and glitter. Korstick tries his best to modify this via his sensitivity of phrasing in the quieter passages, but even here the music lacks character and interest. It’s the only musical let-down in this remarkable album, however, which I highly recommend for the concerto and the variations.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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