Wolf-Ferrari’s “I Gioella della Madonna”

WOLF-FERRARI: I Gioelli della Madonna / Natalia Ushakova, sop (Maliella); Kyungho Kim, ten (Gennaro); Daniel Čapkovič, bar (Rafaele); Susanne Bernhard, mezzo (Carmela); Peter Malý, ten (Ciccillo, Camorrista); František Ďuriač, bass (Rocco, Camorrista); Bratislava Boys’ Choir; Pressburg Singers; Slovak National Theater Opera Chorus; Slovak Radio Symphony Orch.; Friedrich Haider, cond / Naxos 8.660386-87, also available for free streaming on Spotify

I was going to review a new recording of Grétry’s once-famous opera, Richard Cœur de Lion, but after ten minutes of listening to the music I realized that it was absolute rubbish, so bad that it didn’t even sound like pop music of the time; it sounded like commercial jingles of the time.

But then, someone suggested that I look up this opera, which we had both read about in the old Victor Book of the Opera. For those of you who have never seen or heard of it, the Victor Book was published in various editions between 1919 (when Caruso was still alive and singing at the Metropolitan!) and 1968 before disappearing for good. In addition to covering many major operas with which we are all familiar, the various editions also covered operas no longer performed or even recorded, among them Franco Leoni’s L’Oracolo (a showpiece for famed Italian baritone Antonio Scotti, who performed it into the late 1920s) and this opera.

So I set out to discover a recording of it and, lo and behold, this one turned up on the Naxos Music Library. It is taken from live performances with this cast in November and December of 2015, and Naxos boasts that it is a “World Premiere Recording,” but that, it turns out, is not so. Back in the 1970s a similarly live performance from the BBC, conducted by Alberto Erede and starring soprano Pauline Tinsley, tenor André Turp and baritone Peter Glossop, was issued on BellaVoce LPs. Fortunately, this performance is available for free streaming on YouTube.

A review of this recording on MusicWeb International by Göran Forsling fails to understand Wolf-Ferrari’s music almost entirely because it lacks Puccini or Mascagni-like melodies, and its orchestration is far more advanced than the work of other verismo composers. But I actually found it more melodic than Wolf-Ferrari’s other well-known opera, The Secret of Susanna, though I like that opera a bit better because it is more modern and, to my ears, more original. Before his death in 1948, Wolf-Ferrari also wrote an exceptionally fine violin concerto for the ill-fated American violinist Guila Bustabo.

The plot is your typical verismo potboiler. In Naples, the leader of the Camorra (Neapolitan Mafia), Raffaele, tells Maliella that he loves her so much that he’d dare to steal the jewels from the statue of the Madonna. Gennaro, the local blacksmith who is also in love with Maliella (what else is new?), overhears this conversation and commits the theft himself. Maliella accepts Gennaro and his stolen swag, but when she tells this to Raffaele he rejects her, so she throws the jewels at Gennaro’s feet and drowns herself in the river. Gennaro brings the jewels back to the Madonna’s statue and stabs himself. Everyone dies happily ever after.

The opening music, bright and festive, reminded me of some other Italian operas, including one passage for the women of the chorus that sounded suspiciously like a passage from Verdi’s Otello, before moving off in different directions. Yet since this was Wolf-Ferrari’s one and only excursion into verismo, there’s just something about it that sounds like a pastiche. There is a slow waltz song for the male chorus set to mandolins that sounds very Puccini-ish indeed, among other things. Not too surprisingly, when one gets into the main body of the plot, Wolf-Ferrari’s music is more continuous, combining melodic lines with “conversational” music, shifting the rhythms more often than Puccini would have done while still leaning towards Italian folk songs and dances as his inspiration without actually quoting any real folk tunes. This style is closer to Giordano’s great Andrea Chenier than, say, to Tosca or Madama Butterfly. At one point in Act I, Maliella sings an original tarantella melody.

My general impression, then, is that the opera is very cleverly constructed but perhaps too cleverly. Wolf-Ferrari makes it sound as if he wanted to out-verismo all the other verismo operas written up to that time (1911). Parts of it are quite good, even fun to listen to, while other parts just sound as if he were making up tunes to please the audience without advancing the plot any. Thus, in the end, I would assess this as a work geared towards popular consumption without any attempt to create a true dramatic work. For all its flaws, and there are several, Puccini’s Butterfly hits closer to the mark of real music drama than I Gioelli della Madonna. There are a few flashes of Wolf-Ferrari’s true genius in this work here and there, but only a few.

In his quest to produce a “hit opera”—which, for about 15 years, it was—Wolf-Ferrari accomplished his goal but overwrote this score. The plot really doesn’t need or call for two hours’ worth of music. This is the kind of opera that could have had its say in 45-50 minutes and been a stronger piece for that. Think, for instance, of Puccini’s Il Tabarro, the one really dark, dramatic piece he ever wrote. Would you want to hear Il Tabarro dragged out to 123 minutes? I don’t think so.

Aside from the vast improvement in sound quality, there are some distinct differences in the performing style. Erede, a veteran Italian opera conductor who was particularly known for his work in verismo, conducts the music a wee bit brisker and gives it strong Italian accents whereas Haider, a German conductor known particularly for Strauss, gives the music more of a legato flow. There is no question that the little-known Kyungho Kim is a far superior tenor to the pinched tones of Canadian André Turp: his rich, warm voice sounds shockingly Italianate, with absolutely no hint of an Asian sound to his timbre. This is a good quality voice, with excellent breath support and not a hint of vocal defects, though to my ears he just misses that extra touch of greatness.

Pauline Tinsley, who sang Maliella on the Erede performance, had a firm but exceptionally ugly soprano voice. Her one and only good role was Lady Macbeth, because she always sounded like one no matter what she was singing. Natalia Ushakova, our Maliella here, has a lovelier tone but tends towards a loose vibrato. A few (but not many) of her sustained high notes also sound a bit pinched.

So that’s my assessment of Gioelli and specifically of this recording. Get ‘em if you like ‘em.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Quartetto Klimt Plays Mendelssohn

MENDELSSOHN: Piano Quartets Nos. 1-3. Piano Quartet in D min., MWV Q 10 / Quartetto Klimt: Duccio Ceccanti, vln; Edoardo Rosadini, vla; Alice Gabbiani, cel; Matteo Fossi, pno / Brilliant Classics BC95532

Despite their being named after a German artist, Quartetto Klimt is an Italian group, founded in 1995. Here they perform very early Mendelssohn; in fact, the numbered piano quartets bear his Opus numbers 1 to 3, while the fourth is an even earlier, unnumbered work. We are thus faced with a very young Mendelssohn, probably aged 12 at the oldest, writing in a style which leans heavily on Mozart, his early idol.

And yet, there are decided differences in style. The first piano quartet, in C minor, has some distinctly non-Mozartean elements in it, particularly the roiling piano accompaniment that runs through chromatic passages that Mozart would surely have avoided or simplified. I guess the point I am making is that although this is not quite as good as mature Mendelssohn, when compared to virtually any other composer of this time except Beethoven—who was also one of his influences—it is a remarkable piece. Not only does it have an excellent structure, it also shows a fertile imagination, a bit of risk-taking that was scarcely common in his time.

My assessment of Quartetto Klimt’s playing style is that it is gentle and lyrical, at least in these pieces. Yes, they follow the composer’s dynamics markings and inflect the music with some energy, but it is not in the common chamber music style of today in which phrases are given very strong rhythmic accents. You might say, then, that this is a very German reading of these scores by these Italian musicians. And at times, their approach works wonders on the music, particularly in the slow movements. The slow movement of the first, for instance, creates a feeling of mystery where Mendelssohn slides between keys with impunity. Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay this music, and their performance of it, is to say that they make it sound like one of Beethoven’s own early chamber pieces. The music flows rather than progressing in a very linear fashion, and I’m not so sure that this isn’t how early Mendelssohn of this vintage should ideally sound.

And yet, I found the second quartet to be not quite as good as the first. Could this have been a case like the Beethoven Piano Concerti, where he actually wrote No. 1 second but published it as his first because the second was a bit weaker? It’s not bad music, but it’s clearly less inspired than the first except for the last movement. The third quartet is an improvement over the second, and in fact a bit better than the first. The last movement is particularly interesting with its edgy string tremolos and lurching melodic line.

The unnumbered piano quartet is also an interesting work; like the other three, it is written in a minor key. The seated eighth-note figures in the piano’s bass remind one again of early Beethoven rather than Mozart.

This is a fine set of these four early works by Mendelssohn. I recommend it.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Raphaël Faÿs’ “Extremadura”

FAŸS: Extremadura. Primera Buleria. La Hija de la Arena. Raquelita. Ranger Rumba. Cuando Baila la Luna. La Marquesa. Solea Para Sabicas. Colombiana. Ballade a Tyranna / Raphaël Faÿs, Tito, flamenco gtr; Laurent Zeller, vln; Alejandro Gimenez, Clara Tuleda, voc; Raquel Gomez, dancer; Claude Mouton, bs; José Palomo, dm / Fremeaux & Associes FA 8577

This is the second release from Fremeaux & Associes for October devoted to a modern “take” on Django Reinhardt’s gypsy jazz quintet, the first being Fapy Lafertin’s CD which I reviewer earlier.

Raphaël Faÿs differs from Lapertin in that he is not a Manouche gypsy, but an Andalusian gypsy whose background is in both classical music and flamenco. Although flamenco guitar playing is a genre unto itself, it has some similarities the French-Belgian style played by the Manouche, particularly the use of hard, banjo-like downstrokes using a pick rather than politely playing the instrument with the flesh of the fingers. The flamenco style also incorporates passionate dancing and singing, both of which are folded into these performances here.

But perhaps the biggest difference is in the rhythm, which is “harder” than that of the Manouche players. Anyone who has heard actual flamenco records will know what I mean. In fact, I would wager that most of those who come to this recording may not even consider it a Django-type jazz album, yet there is improvisation aplenty along with handclapping, shouts of “olé!” and foot-stamping that almost drowns out the bass and drums on some tracks.

Faÿs also differs from Lapertin in that he is, like Django was, a bona-fide guitar virtuoso who can literally play anything that comes into his head. His technique isn’t just dazzling; it is almost beyond description. I would liken the speed of his playing to that of legendary guitarist John McLaughlin, except that Faÿs’ improvisations are actually interesting.

And yet, despite the raucous opening shouts on the second track in this album, La Hija de la Arena, and the sound of a flamenco dancer (Raquel Gomez) with castanets, the underlying music is a jazz waltz of the type that one could easily imagine Django having played. Yet what makes this album so enervating and fascinating are not just all the things I’ve just mentioned, but the fact that Faÿs is a very serious musician. He’s not just having fun, Andalusian-style, with his flamenco playing, but creating his own music in the extended improvisations that he plays. The music is just accessible enough to Western ears trained on the Reinhardt sound to pass muster, but of course it will also attract the attention of flamenco fans (a much smaller group, alas) as well.

Another interesting feature of Faÿs’ playing is that he attacks the strings with such hard pick strokes that, at times, his instrument almost sounds like a lute rather than a guitar. Whatever strings he is using, they have a metallic sound that is quite unusual by our standards. In addition, our violinist, Laurent Zeller, plays in a style that bears no relationship to that of Stéphane Grappelli, but rather has a sort of folk-music feel about it. All of this comes to bear in the third track, La Hija de la Arena, where we hear the full band playing for the first time. The background handclapping is so insistent, however, that you wonder why Faÿs felt that he needed a drummer for this session.

I would also add that, because Faÿs’ playing is so strongly influenced by flamenco, it lacks one feature of Django’s playing, and that was the influence of the blues. Faÿs plays no “bent” or “blue” notes as Reinhardt did, for the simple reason that the flamenco style does not use them. In the guitar solos Raquelita and Solea para Sabicas, one can clearly hear the difference in style between Faÿs and Reinhardt. Occasionally, I got the impression in some of his improvisations that Faÿs was simply “showing off,” but not often enough to be troublesome. And let’s face it, sometimes Reinhardt was also showing off.

Cuando Baila la Luna is a fast-paced number in A minor that sounds the most like one of Django’s tunes from the early 1940s, and the band plays it very well. This is also just the second piece on the album where one hears Zeller playing the violin; he almost seems more like a guest artist who pops in once in a while than a regular member of the band. Here Faÿs bends a few notes, but not in a blues manner. Compared to most of the playing on this album, Colombiana sounds mostly gentle and relaxed, and it is the only track to feature the singing of cantatore Clara Tuleda. The album closes out with another slow piece, Ballade a Tyanna, a gentle goodbye piece reminiscent of the Beatles’ Fool on the Hill from a guitarist who has wound you up for nearly an hour.

This album is definitely one of the most stunning I’ve heard this year. If you love gypsy jazz guitar and/or flamenco guitar, you need to hear it!

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Bernius Conducts Cherubini’s “Messe Solennelle”

CHERUBINI: Messe Solennelle in D / Ruth Ziesak, Iris-Anna Deckert, sop; Christa Mayer, alto; Christoph Genz, Robert Buckland, ten; Thomas E. Bauer, bass; Kammerchor Stuttgart; Klassische Philharmonie Stuttgart; Frieder Bernius, cond / Carus 83.512 (live: Schleswig-Holstein, July 21, 2001)

Luigi Cherubini wrote two sacred works that have retained some popularity down through the centuries, his Requiem and this Messe Solennelle which is actually his Mass No. 2. But whereas the Requiem has had seven recordings, by Matthias Grünert, Giulini, Bernius, Martin Pearlman, Muti, Toscanini and Diego Fasolis, of which the Toscanini is my personal favorite, the Messe has (to my knowledge) only been recorded five times, by Newell Jenkins, Hans Zöbeley, Muti, Helmuth Rilling and this new one by Bernius.

Now, I haven’t heard every other recording of the Requiem, and it’s quite possible that it is the best of the modern recordings (Arkivmusic gives only his recording its recommendation), but in the cause of fairness in reviewing I did sample all of the other recordings of the Messe and this one is clearly the best—and I say that in full view of the fact that Bernius’ orchestra plays with consistent straight tone, which I don’t really care for a lot.

The reason? The musical style.

When Toscanini’s recording of the Cherubini Requiem appeared in 1950, many music critics lambasted it for not sounding “pious” or “religious” enough, but nowadays the only complaint one has is that he strengthened the music by including a few bits from Cherubini’s Symphony. Otherwise, sonics aside, it stands up very well.

But these other recordings of the Messe, even the one by Rilling who really should know better, all sound too legato in their phrasing and most of the orchestras just sound too plush and mushy. The result is not just that the music lacks excitement, it also lacks the kind of musical “pointing” that the score calls for. And because the orchestral and choral textures are so much thicker and the style more legato, those other conductors completely miss not only the pointing of rhythm but also the finely attuned dynamics changes that Cherubini called for. He was a composer influenced at least partially by Gluck, and we all know how dull Gluck’s operas sound when they’re conducted with too much of a late-19th-century sensibility.

And not only does Berlius’ musical approach help the orchestra and soloists—all of whom, miraculously, have good voices—but it also helps greatly to clarify the choral textures, bringing out the counterpoint in a much cleaner style and helping us hear the way Cherubini played the different sections of the chorus against each other. As a side bonus, Bernius’ conducting also brings out the falling chromatics in the score with more telling effect.

Like many Masses written in the early 19th century, including Beethoven’s, the composers were not always really pious or devoted to Christianity. This was the Age of Enlightenment, when many around the world were realizing that the truly universal God was the God of creation and not some guy in the sky surrounded by angels and complicated myths set down in holy books to be read and believed without question. Thus this work is more of a dramatic musical creation than an act of piety. In fact, as you listen to this piece in this performance, you will realize sooner or later that it sounds pretty chipper for a mass, and not really solemn at all. As Wolfgang Hochstein puts it in the liner notes:

After a seemingly familiar beginning, melodic progressions and harmonic developments are led into new directions by means of unexpected twists, which for this very reason seem particularly imaginative and witty. In addition to familiar successions of sequences and cadences, dominant chords with a lowered fifth in the bass, diminished seventh chords, false cadences and sophisticated modulations are characteristic of the composer’s harmonic repertoire. No less important is the chromaticism, and subtle instrumentation lends many sections an exquisite sonority.

And Bernius brings all this out with his exceptionally clear, almost 3D conducting style without forcing the issue or making it sound as if he were exaggerating anything. Listening to the Muti or Rilling recordings is almost a chore; listening to this Bernius recording is a delight from start to finish. In addition, another startling fact about this performance is that it is the first issue of a live performance from 19 years ago. In a brief liner note, Bernius tells us how proud he was of this achievement and how much he wanted it to finally be issued. He also mentions that the total forces used in this performance was 80 musicians and singers. Somehow or other, he makes them sound like many more than that.

The only thing I felt lacking in this recording was bass response. The rather small chamber orchestra is clear in all of its sections, but the straight-tone basses inevitably lack richness of sound. Other than that, I was really delighted by this performance

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Cooke’s Music for Oboe

COOKE: Sonata for Oboe & Piano. Sonata for Oboe & Cembalo (or Piano). Intermezzo. Quartet for Oboe & String Trio. Sonata for 2 Pianos* / The Pleyel Ensemble: Melinda Maxwell, ob; Harvey Davies *& Helen Davies, pno; Sarah Ewins, vln; Susie Mészáros, vla; Heather Bills, cello / MPR 108

My regular readers know how fond I am of the fascinating music of Arnold Cooke. I reviewed no less than three CDs of his music in one month, September of last year, and raved about all of them.

This most recent entry presents his complete music for oboe in addition to his Sonata for 2 Pianos, written between 1937 (the 2-piano sonata) and 1987 (the Intermezzo). As in the case of his other music, it shows an excellent sense of construction along with a fertile imagination. One listens to Cooke’s music as much for the sheer pleasure it affords as much as for the way he handled his musical materials, and that makes it quite different from many modern composers for whom effect is the sole reason for their music. Cooke kept one eye on structure and the other on an imaginative use of musical materials.

There are so many little things one notices in these works that it is difficult to write of them all in a review. Not least among them is the way he balances the rhythm and harmony so that they follow one another in lockstep rather than trying to “impress” the listener by making them independent and discrete features of his scores. For me, personally, however, I’m not really partial to the sound of a solo oboe though Melinda Maxwell plays the instrument very well indeed. One of the problems I have with the instrument is its astringent tone, interesting in an orchestra but not so pleasant over long stretches of solo exposure. Another is that it doesn’t seem to have much to say in terms of dynamics contrasts. One can play it loudly or a little softly, but not much else. Nonetheless, the first two sonatas were composed for two of the finest English oboists of their day, Léon Goossens and Evelyn Rothwell, the latter of whom was Mrs. John Barbirolli. But bless Cooke’s heart, he tried to write interesting pieces for them and he succeeded.

With that being said, I enjoyed the Oboe Quartet better than the sonatas for the simple reason that you have three other instruments in the mix that can play varied dynamics and thus give some feeling to the music.

What I found interesting about the two-piano sonata, written when Cooke was only 31 years old, is already in his mature style that we recognize from the later works. Yet in a sense this piece has a more vibrant feeling for rhythm than one senses in the later pieces, and is quite upbeat despite the continuous use of bitonality. I really liked it, both as a composition and also the performance.

The reader will correctly assume that although I admired the oboe works I wasn’t all that enthused by them, but if your tolerance for oboe playing is higher than mine you will surely enjoy this disc.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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The Music of Nicola LeFanu

LeFANU: The Hidden Landscape / BBC Symphony Orch.; Norman del Mar, cond / Columbia Falls / RTÉ National Symphony Orch.; Colman Pearce, cond / Threnody / RTÉ National Symphony Orch.; Gavin Maloney, cond / The Crimson Bird / Rachel Nicholls, sop; BBC Symphony Orch.; Ilan Volkov, cond / NMC D255 (live: London, August 7, 1973 (1st work) & February 17, 2017 (4th work); Dublin, September 19, 1997 (2nd work) & January 13, 2015 (3rd work)

Nicola LeFanu (b. 1947), the daughter of Irish composer Elizabeth Maconchy and William LeFanu, studied at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford before going on to Harvard where she won a Harkness Fellowship. She later became Director of Music at St. Paul’s Girls’ School (why name a girls’ school after a male saint?), then taught and lectured on music at King’s College, London and the University of York. Although this is not the first release of her works on CD—there are several out there on which her music is included—it is the first time for these specific pieces and, from what I could glean online, only the second CD devoted entirely to her music (the other being Catena for 11 Solo Strings Etc. on Naxos).

LeFanu’s mode of musical expression is highly unusual, combining as it does amorphous, often broken melodic lines and atonal harmony with slow-moving figures. This gives one the impression of “mood” pieces that express discomfort and unease rather than calm, peaceful figures. Nor is her music consistently calm: six minutes into The Hidden Landscape and we hear an orchestral explosion, including tympani, which is truly terrifying. In the liner notes, LeFanu admits that “the atmosphere becomes increasingly oppressive,” so clearly this is not an idyllic spot within the hidden landscape! LeFanu admits that she is an “outdoors” person who does not like urban living but, like Mahler, she sees nature for what it is—alternately peaceful and scary beyond belief.

LeFanu, then, is not a composer who will appeal to the masses. Her music is not melodic, tonal, nor comforting…but it is highly creative and, for those who are not prejudiced against modern sounds, it holds the listener’s attention. Even when things get extremely quiet, i.e. around the 14-minute mark of this work, there is something going on, a feeling of something not quite wholesome lurking around the next corner, that keeps you listening to hear what comes next. At 19:12, there is a complete dead stop; one thinks the piece is over; but surprisingly, very quiet wind and string figures enter to pick up the thread of the music and continue it to the end. This, by the way, is the actual world premiere performance.

Columbia Falls was commissioned for the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 1975. LeFanu describes it as “rather like looking at a broad landscape. You are aware both of the overall contour and of the balance of forces that shape it; you sense distant horizons whilst taking in a profusion of details. This is a metaphor; but for a composer, discovering a new work has all the wonder of literal exploration.” The music follows a similar profile to the preceding work, which is not terribly surprising considering that they were written only two years apart, yet even so the content is very different. There is more rhythmic movement in Columbia Falls, and here LeFanu assigns each “orchestral ‘family’” its own music and sonic landscape. As the composer puts it, the listener “can move between foreground and background, taking bearings from the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, ideas that are recurring, meeting, parting, changing. The perspective is always shifting, the music always growing about you.” As a listener, however, I found myself less involved in the music from that perspective than I was simply immersed in the peculiar ebb-and-flow of the piece. In general, Columbia Falls is louder than The Hidden Landscape and has more going on, though it’s true that one can focus on the foreground in one listening and the background in another. Another feature that both works have in common is their ability to make time “stand still” for the listener. Each note and phrase is an event in the here-and-now in addition to contributing to the larger progression of the music. It’s kind of a Zen thing. Yet I couldn’t escape the feeling that this piece went on about eight minutes too long.

Threnody is a brief orchestral piece (6:46 long) based on Brendan Kennelly’s The Trojan Women. LeFanu claims that her lament is for the young boy Astynax, who was murdered so that he might not grow up to be as brave as his father, Hector. Being more tightly written, I felt that this piece made a very good impression.

The final work, The Crimson Bird, includes a vocalist. This, too, was inspired by The Trojan Women, in this case using an original modern text by poet John Fuller. The summary of the text is given thus in the booklet:

1: A young mother at dawn. Nursing her baby, she gazes at the surrounding landscape. She rejoices in its fertility, but she also fears dispossession. The orchestration is light, the soprano part lyrical.

2: Her son has grown up and left home; his mother fears for him. Conflict comes to her country. Her city is besieged and bombarded; she is inside. The music is fast and assertive, for the soprano with the full orchestra.

3: Conflict and siege: the mother is outside the city. What part is her son playing? A ‘hero’ or a ‘murderer’? A dramatic soprano part, over the full orchestra.

4: Pietà: her son is dead. She can only pray for an end to the continuing conflict:
There is no end to a siege when both sides are besieged
There is no end to the suffering of each

A passacaglia for the full orchestra, with the soprano etching a lyrical line.

The music is, again, atmospheric, but here has a discernibly lyrical top line for the singer. Our soprano, Rachel Nicholls, has an absolutely dreadful voice, not only unsteady in pitch with a slow beat that screams “wobble” at the listener, but also with a particularly edgy, ugly timbre. But wouldn’t you know it, she is one of the composer’s favorite singers.

Considering my positive response to some of this music, however, I didn’t feel in the end that most of it would not “stick” with the listener in any way. It is music that entices and interests the listener while it is going on, but not music that “stays” with you. Nonetheless, I recommend this CD as a interesting if transitory listening experience.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Liss Conducts Andriessen & Berlioz

ANDRIESSEN: Miroir de peine.* BERLIOZ: Symphonie Fantastique / *Christiane Stotijn, mezzo; Philharmonie Zuidnederland; Dmitri Liss, cond / Fuga Libera FUG764 (live: October 27-28, 2017 & April 5-6, 2019)

Russian conductor Dmitri Liss, director of the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, here pairs an unusual work—Miroir de peine (Mirror of Pain) by Dutch composer Hendrik Andriessen—with an established classic, Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique. We all know the program behind the Symphonie; of Andriessen’s piece, not a single word is said about it in the CD booklet…nor is there a printed text or translation though it is sung! I had to go online to discover that it was written in 1923, set to a text by Henri Ghéon. Then I had to go to the LiederNet Archive to learn what the texts of the five songs are. You can discover and translate them from the original French HERE. To be honest with you, I’m not much encouraged by the fact that the titles of three of the songs are “Agony in the Garden,” “Flagellation” and “Crucifixion.” I’m not into sick religious legends myself.

The music is typical late-Romantic French style, in the same vein as Cesar Franck but without Franck’s brilliance. Our mezzo, Christiane Stotijn, has a terrible wobble and a timbre of no great distinction. Most of the interest in this piece comes from Liss’ sensitive handling of the orchestra. If he had a better singer, it might have come off better, but as it is it sounds pretty miserable to me. If you really want this piece, I advise that you get the recording by mezzo Cora Burggraaf with the Netherlands Youth String Orchestra conducted by Bas Wiegers on Challenge Classics.

But then we get the Symphonie Fantastique, and we might as well be in an entirely different world. This is an exceptional performance, brisk and taut with just the right Berliozian feel to it. Liss gets it right from start to finish; this is clearly one of the best recordings of this oft-performed masterwork I have heard. But is it better than the classic 1962 recording by Charles Munch or the more recent version by Gianandrea Noseda? No, although it comes close. One reason why it does not match Noseda’s recording is that the orchestral sound isn’t quite as clear in texture; that one has an almost 3D effect which I really enjoyed; but if you happen to pick this one up, you will not be disappointed. It’s better than most of the others, and believe me, I’ve heard a ton of Symphonie Fantastiques.

So there you have it. A very good but not super-great rendition of the Berlioz, and a sad-sounding rendition of Andriessen’s sad little orchestral song cycle.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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The Return of Fapy Lafertin

ATLANTICO / SÁNDOR: Torontoi Emlek. BROUSELLE-DISTEL: La Belle Vie. RODGERS-HART: My Romance. BANDOLIM: Vibracoes. C. RAYMOND: The Baltic. LAFERTIN: Turn. Cinzano. Platcherida. Carnation. TRIPODI-RAYMOND: Fantasie En Sol. PORTER: It’s Alright With Me. DARDENNE: Pixinguinha Em Lisboa. WHITING: Japanese Sandman / Fapy Lafertin & his New Quartet: Steve Elsworth, vln; Lafertin, Dave Kelbie, Pete Finch, gtr; Tony Bevir, bs / Frémeaux & Associés FA 8521

Fapy Lafertin (b. 1950) is the leading exponent of the Belgian-Dutch style of gypsy jazz guitar. Like his model (and every other European who follows him) Django Reinhardt, Lafertin is a member of the Manouche “tribe” of gypsies. Among the many musicians he has played with over the decades was a brief stint with Reinhardt’s former musical partner, violinist Stéphane Grappelli. In addition to the traditional six-string guitar, Lafertin has also played a 12-string instrument.

It’s easy for any guitarist with an excellent technique who can bend notes a little to proclaim themselves another Django, but in my experience very few actually play like Django (Frank Vignola being the best) for the simple reason that Django was actually always a composer at heart who used jazz as an expression of his astonishing abilities, not a jazz performer who dabbled in composition. And there is a significant difference between the two. Grappelli, whose personality was the exact opposite of Reinhardt’s, could have told you as much. It was this utter fascination with the complexity of Reinhardt’s musical mind that kept Grappelli returning to play with him, despite their temperamental opposition.

My judgment of Lafertin is that he is an excellent guitarist and a pretty good jazz musician. For the most part, he wisely sticks here to simple, elegant performances of simple tunes. In several surface ways, Lafertin apes his model faithfully; he has memorized many of the great gypsy guitarist’s licks and turnarounds, and he is a good enough musician that he knows how to put them together with some ideas of his own to produce a recognizably Django-like chorus. The second song on this collection, which will be immediately familiar to listeners by its English title, The Good Life, is an excellent example of this.

Violinist Steve Elsworth does a pretty good job of sounding like Grappelli in his elegance of phrasing and command of his instrument, but only occasionally like him in terms of musical invention. My Romance is a happy example of both Lafertin sounding like Django and Elsworth sounding like Stéphane, and I was delighted to hear that bassist Tony Bevir is a real swinger who easily surpasses the abilities of Django’s original bassist, Louis Vola. Thus here we almost experience a feeling of déjà vu, as if hearing the original Quintet of the Hot Club of France in digital stereo. Alas, when Lafertin tries to emulate Reinhardt’s impromptu improvised pieces in Vibracoes, we suddenly realize the gulf that separates the brilliant composer (Django) and the modern-day wannabe (Fapy).

Mind you, this doesn’t mean that Lafertin is at all bad; in fact, at times he is actually quite brilliant; but brilliance is not exactly the same as greatness. Reinhardt touched greatness fairly often in his live and recorded performances; Lafertin and Elsworth only do so occasionally.

Regarding the four original pieces on this CD written by Lafertin, they again point up the difference between a songwriter and a composer. Such Reinhardt pieces as Appel Direct, Mystery Pacific and Bolero show a real composer’s mind at work. The closest Lafertin comes on this disc is in the introduction to Cecil Raymond’s The Baltic. Lafertin’s Cinzano is a peppy tune in 12/8 but not really a great composition.

I hope that the reader does not think I am trying to be hard on Lafertin, but whether he likes it or not, he sets himself up for such comparisons by emulating the string quintet format and musical style of Reinhardt; and when you set yourself up for comparisons, you really ought not to complain when you are thus compared. My assessment, then, is that he is a fine guitarist with a few moments of brilliance (his arrangement of Dick Whiting’s old 1920 tune Japanese Sandman is actually quite imaginative and beautifully done) but more pleasant than inspiring to listen to.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Sibelius’ “Kullervo”: A Tale of Two Finns

SIBELIUS: Kullervo. Finlandia. / KORTEKANGAS: Migrations / Lilli Paasikivi, mezzo; Tommi Hakala, bar; YL Male Voice Choir; Minnesota Orch.; Osmo Vänskä, cond / Bis SACD-9048

SIBELIUS: Kullervo / Soile Isokoski, sop; Tommi Hakala, bar; YL Male Voice Choir; Helsinki Philharmonic Orch.; Leif Segerstam, cond / Ondine SACD ODE-1122-5

Here are two digital, SACD recordings of Sibelius’ early masterpiece Kullervo. The first is a relatively new recording (2019) conducted by Osmo Vänskä while the second is a 2008 recording by Leif Segerstam. Both are Finnish conductors, thus both should be expected to understand the work and its deeper meaning better than a non-Finn, as for instance the Estonian conductor Paavo Järvi, whose recording on Virgin Classics is often highly praised.

Yet there are considerable differences between these two interpretations, both of which, ironically, use the same baritone and chorus. The pivotal movement is the third, in which the title figure, a sort of Finnish Oedipus, attempts to seduce a beautiful woman who he does not realize is his sister. She rebuffs him the first two times but gives in the third, and when she and Kullervo learn, too late, that she is his long-lost sister, she jumps in a lake and drowns herself. Kullervo attempts to atone for his crime by dying on the battlefield. Unsuccessful at this, he returns to the site of the rape, “marked by dead grass and bare earth where nature refuses to renew itself,” and falls on his sword.

Thus this is not just a dramatic work to be interpreted with energy and excitement, though much of the music is indeed exciting; rather, it is a tragic tale to be interpreted along the lines of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, and the allusion to Stravinsky is quite apt. Here, in 1892, Sibelius was already using an advanced harmonic language that drew criticism in its day for being too dissonant, yet which sounds eerily like Stravinsky’s music from his neo-classic period.

I should point out that this release is Vänskä’s second recording of this work for Bis, the first having been made in September 2000 and issued on Bis CD-1215. In that recording, Paaskivi is also the mezzo soloist but the baritone was Raimo Laukka. The difference between the two performances is minimal, the first being a mere one minute and five seconds longer than the second. In terms of expression, however, the new recording is a distinct improvement over the first. Even in the opening movement, Vänskä sounds much more engaged and energetic, digging into the music with much more drama than in his first reading. Listening to these two performances, even from the outset, I would say that it’s time for Bis to “retire” Vänskä’s older recording permanently. I honestly don’t see the point in keeping it around now.

Yet as much as I liked this new Vänskä version, I felt as if I were in another world when I switched over to Leif Segerstam’s performance on Ondine. Just as the second Vänskä version was a distinct improvement on the first, from the very first notes of the Segerstam performance we are almost listening to different music. There is a tragic note here from the opening; not a single phrase or gesture is taken for granted. Segerstam gets so deeply under the skin of the music that it almost raises goosebumps in the listener. And ditto the pivotal third movement. Despite taking it at a much faster clip—it runs 24:38 to Vänskä’s 25:55—there is not only more drama in Segerstam’s performance but also greater tension. You can just feel that something portentous is about to happen, and moreover, that it’s not going to end well. Moreover, Ondine’s sound is clearer and more forward than Bis’s. You can almost feel the “grit” in the brass here, and this, too, adds to the tragic feeling of the piece.

To be fair, baritone Tommi Hakala doesn’t sing any better on either recording. He has a pleasant baritone voice but a somewhat fluttery one, but since both conductors chose him for this important role I suppose he must have something “Finnish” about him that they like for this work. Both Soile Isokoski (Segerstam) and Lilli Paasikivi (Vänskä) sing well. But Segerstam sounds like Rodsiński, Fricsay or Toscanini compared to Vänskä, and in this work—and, I would say, in all of Sibelius’ works—this makes a crucial difference.

As for the additional pieces on the Vänskä CD, Migrations by one Olli Kortekangas (b. 1955) was commissioned by Vänskä for the Minnesota Orchestra and premiered by them in 2014. The music, though modern, is more bitonal in places than a resolutely atonal work. Vänskä wanted a piece that could be paired in performance with Kullervo, and to this extent he succeeded. The text it is based on was written by poet Sheila Packs, who writes, “Migration has long been a metaphor for me as a poet. All of my grandparents are from the western side of Finland.” This is said of a country that is 210,306 square miles, not even as large as the state of Texas. Some migration. It sounds more like “up the road a piece.” Although it is sung in English, our mezzo soloist has poor diction and cannot be understood. Yet despite all this, the music is pretty good—not great or earth-shaking, but fairly well written although many phrases were predictable to me. Vänskä closes out the program with a rare choral version of Finlandia. Again, this is a fairly good performance but lacks bite. Listen to Segerstam’s version, which also uses the male chorus.

Bottom line: the new Vänskä recording is a great improvement over the first, but it’s just not in the same class as Segerstam. This is a performance for the ages.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Andreas Haefliger Plays “Modern” Concerti

AMMANN: The Piano Concerto (Grand Toccata). RAVEL: Concerto for the Left Hand. BARTÓK: Piano Concerto No. 3 / Andreas Haefliger, pno; Helsinki Philharmonic Orch.; Susanna Mälkki, cond / Bis SACD-2310

I was curious to review this recording not merely because the music looked interesting, but also because Andreas Haefliger is the son of one of my all-time favorite tenors, Ernst Häfliger, a superb musician who could sing anything from Mozart to Stravinsky and make it sound good. Just as a small sample size of Häfliger’s extraordinary talent, I have recordings by him of Beethoven’s Fidelio (Fricsay), Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (Karajan), Frank Martin’s In Terra Pax (Ansermet) and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Walter), and all are among my top-tier performances of these works. Andreas was born in 1962, when his father was 43 years old, sort of a change-of-life baby.

Dieter Ammann’s concerto is the most recent work on this disc, having been written in 2016-19. The opening is sparse, with the piano playing repeated single-note A’s, which eventually move into chords and then into a sort of minimalist repetition of that note in different rhythms with other notes around it before branching out into a sort of cadenza that expands exponentially. The orchestral accompaniment is sparse and geared mostly towards the higher, brighter instruments. Thus we have moved in the space of a few minutes from minimalism to very complex writing within a relatively narrow range of notes and harmony. This work, of which this is the premiere recording, was written for Haefliger. In the liner notes, Ammann admits that when Haefliger approached him to write it he was somewhat reluctant, not only because he is a slow, meticulous composer but because he waits for inspiration and that is something that cannot be forced along a timeline. One of the things I personally liked about this first movement is that, among other things, the music incorporates a bit of jazz rhythms (note, for instance, the passage around the 6:28 mark), yet there were also some moments where I felt that perhaps Ammann had to stop and re-start in writing the piece, which caused a bit of disjunction. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating piece and, overall, I liked it very much. It’s actually a sort of “web of sound” in which the pianist is caught up, with the orchestra being an active rather than a passive partner.

In the second movement, which follows the first without a break, Ammann indulges in some “ambient” writing for orchestra, but since he maintains an edgy rhythmic pattern and now engages in some edgy harmonies as well it is far from sounding soft or relaxing. This movement is particularly active for the orchestra, which flits through some extraordinarily difficult passages, and I would be remiss if I did not extend my praise to Susanna Mälkki, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite modern conductors (I have her recording of Bartók’s The Wooden Prince and his Miraculous Mandarin Suite, which are stupendous performances). To put it generally, Ammann’s concerto sounds like a music box which its owner has dropped down the stairs, making it go awry in all manner of strange yet fascinating ways. With its emphasis on rhythm as the basis of the score, it almost sounds as if shards of brightly-colored glass are flying in all different directions at once. Thus it is not going to please the listener who wants a Piano Concerto to have “tunes” they can hum on the way out, but will certainly appeal to more adventurous listeners and musicians.

The last movement also opens with a sustained atonal orchestral chord, with the pianist nudging things along with rhythmic gestures, until a series of repeated wind chords get the orchestra moving as well. These chords, however, eventually “fall” through the harmonic spectrum chromatically, leading to a real explosion of trumpets playing rapid eighth-note figures while the horns and trombones play around it. The music then “crashes” to a halt, after which soft, edgy chords are heard, accompanied by chimes from the percussionist, before the pianist returns to play some gingerbread around the edges. I particularly applaud Ammann for coming up with his own, very personal concept of orchestral “sound.” After a dead stop, the pianist suddenly, surprisingly, plays a somewhat lyrical, Romantic-sounding melody for a while, to which the orchestra responds in kind, before the winds help to pull the music apart as the tempo again increases, then recedes again. The concerto ends quietly, suddenly stopping on a piano chord.

Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand was, of course, written on a commission from pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I. The irony of this was that, even as just a left-handed pianist, Wittgenstein was a terrible artist who missed notes and didn’t play the music at all to Ravel’s satisfaction (there’s a performance of it by him on YouTube if you don’t believe me). I have two good performances of this piece in my collection, one by Andrei Gavrilov with Simon Rattle conducting and the other by Florian Uhlig with Pablo Gonzalez on the podium. This one is clearly competitive, with both Haefliger and Mälkki presenting an exciting and highly musical reading of the score. Although written in Ravel’s late style, after he discovered American jazz, there aren’t any jazz references in this score as there are in his Piano concerto in G.

I’m very fussy about performances of any of Bartók’s piano music since I have a fairly good-sized collection of the composer playing his own works. He played them with much more of a legato feeling, less angular than most modern pianists. Haefliger takes a halfway view towards the music here, phrasing the slower or more melodic passages elegantly while playing the more angular music with a more staccato touch. Yet it’s still a valid interpretation of the music, and I liked it. The second movement, in particular, is exquisitely played.

My general impression of Haefliger’s playing is that it is very dynamic and colorful. Like his father, he understands the importance of rhythm, even in slow passages, and knows how to maximize what the composer has written.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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