Yasko Plays Russian Piano Sonatas

PROKOFIEV: Sonata Op. 103, No. 9. SVIRIDOV: Sonata Op. 4. FEINBERG: Sonata Op. 48 No. 12. WEINBERG: Sonata Op. 56 No. 4 / Anastasia Yasko, pno / Ars Produktion ARS38581

Young Russian pianist Anastasia Yasko presents here four sonatas by four “Russian” composers of the 20th century. I put Russian in quotes because of Mieczysław Weinberg, who was actually a Polish Jew who had to flee to the Soviet Union after his country was invaded by the Nazis. Technically, he is Russian by adoption but not necessarily by style. In fact, Weinberg clearly had his own style, owing a little to Scriabin, a little to Szymanowski and a little to Shostakovich, with whom he became friends, yet was so idiosyncratic that it didn’t really sound like any of them.

Her performance of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 9, which opens this CD, is surprisingly lyrical in style for a Russian pianist. Comparing her to Sviatoslav Richter or the great Natalia Trull, one hears a more flowing, legato approach to this composer, particularly in the first movement. This is a legitimate approach, and she does play the more agitated passages with excellent energy, but one must adjust one’s ears to this approach. Even so, I felt that her playing of the last movement sounded a bit too episodic.

Since I don’t know the piano sonata of Georgy Sviridov, I of course could only assess it via this performance. It struck me as a pretty well written work, somewhat in the manner of Stravinsky’s Neoclassic period, but not really very deep or very creative. The first movement is built around a repetitive syncopated figure, with the left hand basically pounding out an ostinato in the form of a repeated figure that shifts upwards as the tonality changes. The second movement, however, is very interesting with its frequent changes of key and mood, though again Sviridov seems to love hearing that ol’ pianna banging out low notes.

Samuil Feinberg’s Sonata has a light, airy sound to it, but here I could imagine a more forceful and less romantically-inclined pianist making a bit more of it than Yasko does here. The third movement, titled “Improvisation,” is particularly atmospheric, reminiscent of the French Impressionist school.

And then he get to Weinberg, whose sonata is typically quirky and highly original. Here, Yasko finally seems to come into her own; her performance is well suited to Weinberg’s unusual style with its constant shifts in both tempo and mood, in particular his melancholy strain, though much of the first movement is relatively jolly-sounding by his standards. Every note and phrase of this sonata makes its proper impression; she even gets the quirky syncopations in the second movement right.

Thus this is, to my ears, an interesting but uneven CD. Yasko is quite good in the Sviridov sonata and excellent in the Weinberg, but her performance of the Prokofiev is somewhat uneven and the Feinberg work made very little impression on me.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter (@Artmusiclounge) or Facebook (as Monique Musique)

Return to homepage OR

Read The Penguin’s Girlfriend’s Guide to Classical Music

Advertisement

Gielen’s “Das Klagende Lied”

MAHLER: Das Klagende Lied / Brigitte Poschner-Klebel, sop; Marjana Lipovšek, mezzo; David Rendall, ten; Manfred Hemm, bar; Wiener Singakademie; ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orch.; Michael Gielen, cond / Orfeo C210021 (live: Vienna, June 8, 1990)

This is one Mahler performance by Michael Gielen not issued on any of the SWR Music sets devoted to the conductor, but since I’ve always liked this piece I jumped on it when it became available for review.

My readers know that I consider Gielen’s Mahler to be a mixed bag. None of it is conducted poorly, but more than half of it struck me as too “cheery” for this complex, often-tortured composer. Your perception of this reading of an early work not so frequently recorded as the rest of his output will undoubtedly depend on how you view it. Is it a pastoral presentation of nature, or should it be somewhat edgier? The recording I own, and for the most part enjoy, is the one conducted by Riccardo Chailly on Decca, an outstanding performance but for the often shrill singing of soprano Susan Dunn.

The first solo vocalist to appear is tenor David Rendall, and he has problems. His vibrato is so overripe that he sounds as if he’s constantly trilling, and that’s not good. Werner Hollweg, on the Chailly recording, is far superior. On the other hand, basso Manfred Hemm, a name hitherto unknown to me, is outstanding, to my ears even richer-sounding than Andreas Schmidt with Chailly. And I really liked Gielen’s conducting here: he binds the phrases superbly and brings out the structure of the work even a bit better than Chailly. In addition, soprano Brigitte Poschner-Klebel has a much better voice than Dunn, which helps in the ensembles.

As the performance goes on, Rendall’s excess flutter evens out a bit though it never completely goes away. Both mezzos—Brigitte Fassbaender for Chailly and Marjana Lipovšek here—are superb. Fassbaender’s voice is more pointed and focused in tone while Lipovšek’s is richer; both are expressive in their individual ways. Also, as the performance continues, I realize that the soprano has far more music to sing than the tenor, and that Poschner-Klebel’s far more secure high range works greatly to the score’s advantage, particularly in Part III where she has several lines that stay in the upper register and demand secure voice production. The power that Gielen brings to the latter part of the first movement is also more impressive, and better integrated into the music, than in Chailly’s recording.

The way Gielen conducts Part II (“The Minstrel”) put me in mind of the second part of the Eighth Symphony, but as the music continued it put me more in mind of the second half of the “Resurrection” Symphony. This is one of the defects of this work, that it is not stylistically consistent. As it moves from section to section, one notes that it is more episodic than usual for Mahler; he had not yet learned how to develop his music in a more seamless manner. (The first movement of the Symphony No. 1 is also a bit episodic, but not to this extent.) Interestingly, I also hear little snippets of Il Trovatore here and there in Part II—made to fit the surrounding material differently, but still, the phrases are the same (one of them is a line sung by Azucena in the Act II duet with Manrico…listen and you’ll hear it).

In the end, then, I found that I preferred this performance to that of Chailly’s. Neither are perfect, but I’ll trade the somewhat fluttery voice of Rendall for the shrill, even more fluttery singing of Dunn any day. The work is not really a masterpiece either, but as I said, Gielen brings out its structure better than Chailly. This is now my preferred recording of Das Klagende Lied.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter (@Artmusiclounge) or Facebook (as Monique Musique)

Return to homepage OR

Read The Penguin’s Girlfriend’s Guide to Classical Music

Zhao’s Haydn Concerti

5554002_cover.indd

HAYDN: Piano Concerti, Hob. XVIII Nos. 1-6, 8, 10 & 11 / Mélodie Zhao, pno; David Nebel, vln (No. 6); Camerata Schweiz; Howard Griffiths, cond / CPO 555 400-2

Having never heard Haydn’s piano concerti before, I thought I’d take a spin on this album of his complete output in the genre. I knew in advance that I’d have to put up with whiny straight-tone strings (it’s an addiction these musicians have as well as an affectation), but in sampling the album beforehand I liked what I heard of Mélodie Zhao: surprisingly powerful yet nicely-nuanced playing with both good phrasing and emotional commitment to the material.

The good news is that the music is indeed interesting and, yes, Zhao’s playing is all I expected it to be as well as having a certain suppleness that I liked very much. The bad news is that Camerata Schweiz is worse than the average straight-tone orchestra, and even the fine conductor Howard Griffiths could apparently not get much out of them. Their phrasing is so stiff and choppy that it actually works against Zhao instead of complementing her, and this is a serious defect in concerto performances where one ideally wants to hear ensemble and soloist on the same wavelength.

So I went a-hunting for good alternative performances. First I checked out the old recordings by Ilse von Alpenheim playing with Antál Dórati and the Bamberg Symphony. Von Alpenheim was almost as lively as Zhao, but is playing an earlier (more authentic) piano which has a much more limited range of dynamics—but she’s still quite good. The difference in the orchestral playing, however, was like night and day. Dórati, using a very reduced chamber orchestra, sings and bounces the music with a wonderful lilt, and interestingly, it is the orchestra that brings out the dynamics in the music that von Alpenheim either could not or would not play, so they complement each other very well.

Then there was pianist Sebastian Knauer with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra under Helmut Müller-Bruhl on Naxos. Here, too, the orchestra has a better tone and is more supple, but the tempi are just a little too slow and the orchestra doesn’t play very assertively. Knauer sounds about the same as von Alpenheim.

The problem is that von Alpenheim-Dórati only give you six of Haydn’s nine surviving piano concerti, Nos. 2-4, 9 and 11. Whoa! Did I say No. 9? Yes, I did: Hob. XVIII in G major…a concerto missing from the Zhao set. According to the notes, there are serious “doubts about its authorship” so it was left out. Interestingly, I did find recordings of concerti Nos. 1 played on the ORGAN by Helmut P. Tramnitz and No. 11 played on the piano by Jörg Demus, both with different orchestras and conductors on the same CD (Deutsche Grammophon 00028944507522) and these, too, were considerably livelier than Camerata Schweiz. Perhaps I should also point out, as noted in the header, that Concerto No. 6 is actually a double concerto for piano and violin, so technically this doesn’t count as a solo keyboard concerto.

But it’s really a shame. As this set continues, you appreciate von Zhao’s playing more and more with each movement you listen to—she has the full grasp of this music under her fingers, and clearly knows what to do with it—while appreciating the orchestra’s stiff, two-dimensional playing less and less. She might just as well have programmed the orchestral score into a computer and have that play behind her as to have these stiff cardboard characters spitting out notes like a machine, with little feeling and poor legato phrasing.

The music itself is clearly interesting if not the peak of Haydn’s output. All of the trademarks of his mature style are here, the playful exchange of ideas, the little unexpected twists and turns that delight as well as surprise you, but it is only Zhao who fully grasps all of this and brings it to fruition.

Thus I decided to post this review and not kill it. Mélodie Zhao deserves very high praise for her keyboard abilities and the way she re-imagines this music. I wish her well in her career and look forward to her future recordings. I just wish that CPO had chosen the orchestra and conductor more wisely.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter (@Artmusiclounge) or Facebook (as Monique Musique)

Return to homepage OR

Read The Penguin’s Girlfriend’s Guide to Classical Music

Levental Sings Medtner, Vol. 2

MEDTNER: 6 Poems, Op. 32. 6 Poems after Pushkin, Op. 36. 5 Poems, Op. 37. 4 Poems, Op. 35 / Ekaterina Levental, mezzo; Frank Peters, pno / Brilliant Classics BRI96061

Following on the heels of her very fine album of Medtner’s songs released last summer, Ekaterina Levental presents here Vol. 2 in her series. One thing I really appreciate is that she is recording his songs in strict chronological sequence rather than skipping around.

And as coincidence would have it, this album duplicates 3/4 of the songs included on Sofia Fomina’s album, which I reviewed in January. Comparing them shows considerable differences, primarily in tempo and phrasing: Fomina and her pianist, Alexander Karpeyev, take the songs faster than Levental and Peters, and although Fomina is a fairly good interpreter, Levental is just that much deeper. In addition, Levental’s handling of her voice is much more virtuosic: she shades her voice better and produces more “colors” as she interprets the texts. In general terms, then, Fomina is a good operatic soprano who can sing lieder, but Levental is a lieder singer of exceptional gifts, the kind of singer who grabs your attention with subtlety as much as the ability to open up when she wishes to. Listening to a song such as “Retrospect,” second of the 6 Poems, Op. 32, one hears an almost intimate presentation. Fomina, good as she is, is more of an “outward” singer whose interpretations as good in a general way, whereas Levental is an artist who communicates on a more intimate level.

As mentioned in my earlier review of Vol. 1, there are a few exposed high notes, particularly when Levental has to leap upwards in her range to reach them, which have a bit too open and edgy quality, but this is not a constant in her singing. What is constant is her ability to add or drain vibrato from the voice, to color her tones, and to get deep into the heart of the poetry that Medtner has set to music.

By now, I would think that most classical listeners have gotten used to Medtner’s idiosyncratic style, tonal and melodic but far from predictable. The harmonies he used were very Russian but they often change and move around in response to the changes in the melodic line. In this respect, he was as much a modern composer as was young Stravinsky, the difference being that he did not stray much further from this aesthetic as he aged. But the music is good because it is completely unpredictable. You can never say, as in the case of Rachmaninov, where the music is going; you can only hear that by listening, and often being surprised and even amazed by the wide scope of his music.

What I like most about Levental is that this intimacy is achieved without ever sounding coy or mannered. Every phrase has a natural feel to it, like a great poetry reader who just happens to also have an excellent singing voice. She never seems to be doing what she does for effect, as if to say to the listener, “Listen to all the things I can do.” She does them because that is her very personal response to the poem underlying each song.

Since the liner notes tell us that pianist Peters is a tireless advocate of Medtner’s music, and that in Levental “Frank found the ideal partner to fulfill his long cherished wish to discover, spread and record Medtner’s vocal work,” I would assume that he is the driving force behind this project. Despite his British-sounding name, he is a Dutch pianist who teaches at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. How a Dutch pianist became so enamored of the music of this wonderful misfit Russian, and how he and Levental met, is not explained, but I’m glad they did. Like the singer, the pianist also takes a more poetic view of these songs, thus I would assume that it was under his guidance that she developed this very intimate way of presenting the music. Yet both artists are listed as co-producers of these CDs, which means that they have put up their own money in order to disseminate Medtner’s music. How wonderful is that?

As the album progresses, you’ll have a hard time believing that this is mostly the same material in the Fomina album…it all sounds so different when played and sung in a poetic, less strict manner. What was an interesting experience in the Fomina album is here converted into a deep and meaningful presentation of music and text.

The booklet tells us that this series will run to five volumes. I look forward to the remaining three.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter (@Artmusiclounge) or Facebook (as Monique Musique)

Return to homepage OR

Read The Penguin’s Girlfriend’s Guide to Classical Music

Richter’s Lively Monteverdi

MONTEVERDI: L’Orfeo: Prologue. Scherzi Musicale: Zefiro torna;* Et è pur dunque vero. Quarto scherzo della ariose vaghezze: La mia turca; Lamento della Ninfa;⁺ Si dolce è il tormento; Ohime ch’io cado. Lamento d’Arianna. L’Incoronazioone di Poppea: Pur ti miro.* Confitebor tibi Domine / Anna Lucia Richter, sop; *Dimitri Sinkovsky, ctr-ten; ⁺Ciro Aroni, Teo Aroni, ten; ⁺Alessandro Ravasio, bs; Ensemble Claudiana; Luca Pianca, dir / Pentatone PTC 5186 845

This is, ordinarily, the kind of CD I pass by for review, 1) because I know the instrumental ensemble is going to play with constant straight tone in the strings, which is HISTORICALLY INCORRECT though they continue to do it, and 2) because a countertenor is used in the two duets, and COUNTERTENORS DID NOT EXIST IN MONTEVERDI’S TIME (or in fact, except for a natural countertenor like Henry Purcell or Russell Oberlin, not until the mid-20th century).

But I listened to Anna Lucia Richter sing on YouTube, and she had three qualities that immediately appealed to me: an excellent voice, a bit of natural vibrato, and wonderful interpretive skills allied to crystal-clear diction. So I took a chance, and I’m glad I did.

Richter is the best new singer of old music since Emma Kirkby came up in the late 1970s, but unlike Kirkby her voice does not resemble that of a superannuated boy soprano. Actually, she sounds like a brighter-voiced version of Carole Bogard, the outstanding American soprano who can probably be called the first bona-fide historically-informed singer of early music of her time (the mid-1960s onward).

Even better, and more of a surprise to me, Ensemble Claudiana is one of those very rare early music ensembles who really kick butt. I was more than a little surprised to hear Zefiro torna taken at a blistering tempo since I’m used to the recordings by Nadia Boulanger’s singers and the New York Pro Musica (specifically, countertenor Russell Oberlin and tenor Charles Bressler). You may laugh at me for saying this, but the music goes by so quickly, and Richter’s splendid voice dominates so much, that countertenor Dimitri Sinkovsky didn’t annoy me all that much, in part because he has a full-sounding voice (like Randall K. Wong) and not a “hooty” sound.

But this CD is clearly one of the finest I’ve heard of any of Monteverdi’s music since the recordings by Gabriel Garrido or Reinhard Goebel. The entire CD takes off like a firecracker; even the slow pieces, such as the Lamento d’Arianna, have an underlying drive to them, aided by Richter’s rich and highly expressive voice, that grabs your attention and doesn’t let go. In fact, this performance is even better than the one the late Cathy Berberian recorded with Nikolaus Harnoncourt back in the 1970s, and up until now Berberian was my gold standard in this work. In her liner notes, Richter extols the work of conductor Luca Pianca for his passion and enthusiasm. You bet he is! and how I wish that Richter and Pianca would record Monteverdi’s least-well-served opera, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria. The Garrido recording is pretty good, but hearing Pianca conduct, I think his would clearly eclipse that one. Pentatone, are you listening?

And who is Anna Lucia Richter? She’s a German soprano, born in Köln in 1990, who studied voice with her mother from age nine before going to conservatories at Basel and Cologne. She has also done some coaching with Edda Moser and Christoph Prégardien (both first-class singers). So she’s still fairly young (29 at the time of recording), had great training, and apparently an inner drive to kick butt in everything she sings.

I paused to consider whether or not I should give detailed descriptions of each track on this stupendous CD, and in the end I decided not to. After all, none of this music is new to lovers of Monteverdi; what is new is the fresh approach that Richter and Pianca take; thus I decided to let the listener acquire the album, put it on, and be as surprised and delighted as I was.

But I will say one thing, and hark my words: the liveliness of the instrumental playing, with its accent on rhythm and great textural clarity, will put you in mind of the New York Pro Musica, an organization which has been derided and scorned for decades. So maybe Noah Greenberg was onto something, whether or not he had access to all of the historic materials that Pianca did…at least, his instincts seem to have been right. Early music should not sound like some dead, dry-as-dust material that only old white people would listen to. This music was written by an Italian composer, one whose letters show a typical Italian temperament, and God knows the Italians can BE passionate in everything they do. And, apparently, so is our young, feisty German soprano.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter (@Artmusiclounge) or Facebook (as Monique Musique)

Return to homepage OR

Read The Penguin’s Girlfriend’s Guide to Classical Music

Wallfisch Plays Martinů

MARTINŮ: 7 Arabesques. Cello Sonatas Nos. 1-3 / Raphael Wallfisch, cel; John York, pno / Nimbus NI8105

A full CD of Martinů’s music is always welcome, even if there are several other recordings to choose from…and particularly if the cellist is Raphael Wallfisch, who always attacks the music he plays with energy and understanding.

Wallfisch’s lean, pointed cello tone, as it turns out, is perfect for this music. Though written in 1931, after the end of the “Jazz Age,” there is not so much of an allusion to jazz rhythms in this music as there were, oddly enough, in other Martinů works from the later ‘30s and ‘40s, but there are some ragtime rhythms here (particularly in No. 4) and both cellist and pianist catch the feeling nicely. Though he was not really a jazz-classical hybrid composer, Martinů always kept his ears open to new styles of music, and particularly after he moved to America he would incorporate a few jazz elements in his instrumental compositions from time to time. Perhaps because his music was a bit more harmonically conservative than that of Bartók, Martinů was, I think, taken for granted in his lifetime rather than being recognized as the fourth and last great Czech composer after Smetana, Dvořák, and Janáček.

Upon beginning the cello sonatas, both Wallfisch and York play with a somewhat more serious tone but no less of a lively approach to the music. They catch the syncopations in the first movement of the first sonata flawlessly—would that more classical pianists and cellist could do as well!—and thus their performance, though clearly long practiced and extensively detailed, somehow sounds spontaneous.  In the second movement of the first sonata, Martinů indulges in some very strange harmonic movement, given to the piano as a solo before the cello enters.

But it is in the slow movements that Wallfisch really shines, bringing out so much emotion that one is left spellbound. This is where he excels over many of the others who have recorded these sonatas, even those cellists who have richer, warmer tones than he does.

This is an excellent CD, well recommended to Martinů aficionados.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter (@Artmusiclounge) or Facebook (as Monique Musique)

Return to homepage OR

Read The Penguin’s Girlfriend’s Guide to Classical Music

Music by the Mayers

JOHN MAYER: Violin Concerto No. 2, “Sarangi ka Sangit.”* Concerto for the Instruments of an Orchestra. JONATHAN MAYER: Sitar Concerto No. 2.⁺ Pranham⁺ / *Sasha Rozhdestvensky, vln; ⁺Jonathan Mayer, sitar; BBC National Orch. of Wales; Debashish Chaudhuri, cond / First Hand Records FHR88

How wonderful to have more music by Indian-British composer John Mayer, who way back in the early 1970s created a fusion between Western and Eastern forms—particularly, in this case, new music never before recorded commercially. And how interesting to have music by his son Jonathan, a master sitar player.

Immediately, from the first notes of the Violin Concerto No. 2, the ear is struck by strange sounds—not merely Eastern, but microtonal in character—as the violin plays a sort of free fantasia over the odd chords. This is the only piece on this album for which there is a prior recording, but a live performance and not a studio taping. Mayer was a master of form, so much so that by the time of this concerto (1978) he was easily able to fuse the two styles of music seamlessly. Interestingly, this concerto is in five movements, of which the third is a “Raga (Cadenza senza misura)” which was quite extraordinary for its time, but interestingly, this first movement is more than eleven minutes long while the entire rest of the concerto totals only about 15 minutes. One might almost say that the first movement creates a sort of dream state in the listener, despite the increase in tempo around the 5:45 mark.

The six-minute Raga is preceded by a two-minute “Ragatal,” taken at a fast pace in a very irregular meter with odd percussion sounds behind the soloist. In the midst of the “Raga – Cadenza” the music suddenly stops and we hear a development of the melodic line played by the French horns, with a sitar joining them in the background. The fourth movement, titled “Prashna – Uttar” continues in the same slow, moody vein as the one preceding, but here Mayer brings in the flutes and some unusual timbral blends using the trumpets in their mid-range. The recorded balance, however, is somewhat thin and shrill, which slightly distorts the upper harmonics one hears from both the soloist and the higher orchestral instruments. In the brief (1:37) final movement, Mayer suddenly moves to a very fast tempo and a regular 4/4 meter, but with edgy figures that permeate both the soloist and orchestra.

His son Jonathan’s Raga Concerto also fuses Eastern and Western elements, but due to the nature of the solo instrument and the kind of modes and scales it can play it leans a bit more towards the former than the latter. The first movement, in fact, is based on the Marwa, Puria and Sohini ragas, all of which, the booklet informs us, share the same material. Like his father’s Violin Concerto, Jonathan’s Sitar Concerto is as much concerned with setting moods as with development of musical material. Overall, however, I felt that Jonathan’s sitar concerto often stayed too much in one chord, despite its clever and varied development—except in the last movement, where things become very complex very quickly. It ends on an unresolved chord.

John Mayer’s Concerto for the Instruments of an Orchestra also begins slowly and again introduces Eastern ideas in a Western orchestra. Suspense is built up by the use of suspended chords with a few faster figures played above them by various instruments; at the 3:10 mark, a regular rhythm is established and Mayer begins introducing various themes, played first by high winds as Indian rhythm comes in a little later and the piece begins to move to its unusual beat. This is a very clever and engaging piece, establishing and maintaining a happy mood as it wends its way along. In the second part of the first movement, the tempo slows a bit and we get what I can only describe as a slow caravan beat as more and more instruments come and go, playing against one another in an intriguing fashion. In the third section, the tempo increases yet again, and here it is the brass section that has a field day playing against the odd harmonic configurations and quirky but steady rhythm.

In the relatively brief second movement (part V), Mayer gets into some really strange blends; This is more of a straight orchestral movement than a sinfonia concert ante. Things pick up again in the third-movement scherzo, where a couple of violins play against one another as the winds interject their own little ideas. The last movement begins with slow but edgy music, but in the second half things become energetic and quite jolly.

We end with Jonathan Mayer’s Pranham for sitar, table (played by Shahbaz Hussain) and orchestra. Here, in this more concentrated piece, Mayer’s music ideas are more concise. As the orchestra comes in behind them, he employs some interesting timbral blends including the use of a tuba in the brass section. The tempo picks up and a jolly time is had by all.

This is a fascinating and mind-expanding disc, clearly one of the most interesting of the year so far.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter (@Artmusiclounge) or Facebook (as Monique Musique)

Return to homepage OR

Read The Penguin’s Girlfriend’s Guide to Classical Music

Will Liverman’s Dreams of a New Day

DREAMS OF A NEW DAY / SNEED: I Dream a World. BURLEIGH: 5 Songs of Lawrence Hope. ADAMS: Amazing Grace. M. BONDS: 3 Dream Portraits. KERR: Riding to Town. OKPEBHOLO: 2 Black Churches. OWENS: Mortal Storm. FARIÑA: Birmingham Sunday / Will Liverman, bar; Paul Sánchez, pno / Çedille CDR 200

African-American baritone Will Liverman gives here a program of songs written and/or arranged by black composers. Although there are a few familiar names here—Henry Burleigh, Margaret Bonds and Robert Owens—most of these composers are unfamiliar to me. Conspicuous by his absence is William Grant Still.

Liverman has an extraordinarily rich and powerful voice with just a bit of loose vibrato, enough to notice but not enough to yet be a problem. He also has pretty clear diction, thank goodness. My readers know how frequently I chastise modern singers, particularly British and American, whose English diction simply cannot be understood when they perform. Since they’re singing words, diction is important.

Interestingly, the first song, by young (b. 1979) Damien Sneed, is quite tonal and lyrical in form. Burleigh’s music is also tonal, of course, since he was a member of an earlier generation of composers, but there is considerable tonal interest in the construction of these five songs. I found this interesting since Burleigh himself, who also went by the name of Harry T., was himself a baritone who recorded spirituals. Burleigh’s own voice, at least as it comes across on acoustic recordings made when he was around age 50, was thinner and more nasal than Liverman’s. As I listened to these songs, I was deeply impressed by Liverman’s musical sensitivity and vocal control. Unlike so many modern baritones, he has a gorgeous mezza-voce which he uses to great effect to underscore the sensitivity of several lines in these songs. Here is a singer who I hope to also hear someday in opera; he clearly has great musicianship and a personal style in which he uses the full range of his voice, both in terms of its compass and in its superb control of dynamics. (He was scheduled to make his Metropolitan Opera debut this year as Leporello, Papageno and Horemhab in Akhnaten, but Covid-19 has scotched those plans.)

Listen particularly to Burleigh’s Till I Wake for an example of what I mean. Your average modern baritone would perhaps try to modulate his voice in a song like this, but Liverman colors and shades his tones with the assurance of a master. He is a artistic and as communicative in his own way as was the late, great Jon Vickers. Like Vickers, Liverman has worked so much on his voice that he makes the difficult sound easy which, as Vickers once said, he considered to be “true bel canto.”

I’m sure that, since this is a recital designed to represent emancipation of African-Americans and hopes for a bright future, Liverman is simply attempting to communicate these songs as well as he can, but as a listener twice removed in time and space from the recording experience, I am absolutely in awe of what he can do with his voice. I was surprised and delighted by Leslie Adams’ Amazing Grace, a quite complex song that is not the more familiar and very simple-sounding spiritual that has been done to death.

Pianist Paul Sánchez is also excellent, playing with fervor and commitment even though most of these songs do not have the most challenging or complex accompaniments. One exception is Thomas Kerr’s Riding to Town, which puts more of a demand on the pianist. Shawn E. Okpebholo’s Two Black Churches, which has even more modern harmony, is a world premiere recording. The second of these, The Rain, addresses the shooting up of black churches and the sickening continuation of racism in America. The program ends with Liverman’s own excellent arrangement of Richard Fariña’s Birmingham Sunday.

The only real criticism I can make about this recording is the excess reverb around Liverman’s voice. This seems to be a technique that far too many record labels enjoy using nowadays, and for me it is a bit too much. I would have preferred a little less cavernous sound on the CD.

But folks, let me tell you, this is an extraordinary display of singing and interpretation. Liverman is a great communicator, and this album should put him at the very top of young American baritones.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter (@Artmusiclounge) or Facebook (as Monique Musique)

Return to homepage OR

Read The Penguin’s Girlfriend’s Guide to Classical Music

Roth’s Strauss Set

STRAUSS: Ein Heldenleben. Tod und Verklärung. Till Eulenspiegel. Don Quixote.* Macbeth. Also Sprach Zarathustra. Aus Italien. Eine Alpensinfonie. Don Juan. Symphonia Domestica. Metamorphosen / *Frank-Michael Guthmann, cel; Johannes Lüthy, vla; SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg; François-Xavier Roth, cond / SWR Classic SWR19426CD

French conductor François-Xavier Roth, who assumed the directorship of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg after Michael Gielen’s retirement, here attempts to assume the mantle of Richard Strauss interpreter in a boxed set that is not quite as complete as the legendary one that the late Rudolf Kempe made back in the early-to-mid 1970s. Ironically, Kempe resented recording the complete Strauss oeuvre because he didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a Strauss specialist; though he liked the composer’s music, he was much more committed to Beethoven, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Wagner, and he felt that the raves from the critics over his Strauss recordings made him an “expert” in that field when he was not.

Although I own the Kempe set (it was reissued by Brilliant Classics several years ago), certain pieces in it didn’t thrill me, particularly Also Sprach Zarathustra. I much preferred the 1954 Fritz Reiner recording to Kempe’s, and now I have added Thomas Dausgaard’s stunning new version to my list of favorites. In addition, I don’t much like Metamorphosen or the Symphonia Domestica, no matter who conducts them, and I’m not all that crazy about the Alpine Symphony.

Although this boxed set is just being released now, the recordings therein are not new. In fact, Roth began making these recordings with the SWR Baden-Baden/Freiburg orchestra in 2013, even before he succeeded Gielen as the orchestra’s music director. I reviewed Vol. 1 of this series for a major classical record magazine when it came out (it contained two of my favorite Strauss works, Ein Heldenleben (forever identified in my mind with Willem Mengelberg’s stupendous 1941 recording with the Concertgebouw Orchestra) and Tod und Verklärung (best performed, in my view, by Toscanini and George Szell), and wasn’t altogether bowled over by his performance of the former piece but was by his Tod und Verklärung. Having not listened to those performances in eight years, however, I was able to approach this reissue with fresh ears.

Kempe’s Ein Heldenleben was also not on the level of Mengelberg, but it had a nice sweep and cohesion, and as usual he drew some absolutely gorgeous playing out of the Staatskapelle Dresden Orchestra (Kempe always had a sound profile somewhere between Karajan and Toscanini, less Romantically rich than the first but not quite as clear and brilliant as the latter). Comparing Kempe to Roth rather than Mengelberg, one hears an even leaner sound. I’m not altogether certain that this is as much Roth himself as it is the orchestra, since Gielen, who was still music director at the time, also preferred a lean orchestral sound. I find that if I don’t pull out my Mengelberg recording as a comparison, Roth does pretty well with the music but, once again, he just misses some of the sweep that even Kempe gave to it. Mind you, it’s not at all a bad performance, but my bar is set very high to begin with. He does have his moments, but there are spots where it lacks just a bit of sweep that I miss, e.g., the wind ensemble at the beginning of band 2, where he doesn’t really “bind” the sound as well as Kempe did. In addition, Roth’s pauses in the music are invariably just a bit too long, which makes the piece sound even more episodic than it is. (Incidentally, Toscanini also left us a very fine reading of Heldenleben that also just misses the peak that Mengelberg set.) So as of right now, Kempe’s recording is still my favorite among the stereo versions. By contrast, I again found Roth’s Tod und Verklärung to be superb—but again, not quite on the level of Szell or Toscanini.

Moving on to CD 2, one hears an absolutely splendid rendition of Till Eulenspiegel, in fact one of the very finest recordings of it I’ve ever heard—even as good as Strauss’ own. (Although Strauss made a decent but very primitive-sounding recording back in the 1920s, I generally prefer his 1944 performance taken from a German film.) Roth misses absolutely nothing here; all is lively, pointed and humorous. Don Quixote is taken at a much more relaxed pace than Strauss conducted it back in 1936, a classic recording with the great Italian cellist Enrico Mainardi, but this is a viable alternative; both Kempe and Toscanini, in his late studio recording, also play it a bit on the slow side. Roth certainly does not fail to bring out the orchestral detail—indeed, at the four-minute mark in the opening movement, one can hear the cross-playing of the brass instruments even clearer than in Toscanini’s recording—although Frank Michael Guthmann is not as stellar a cellist as Mainardi, Paul Tortelier (with Kempe) or Frank Miller (with Toscanini). Roth actually makes much more of the tilting at the windmills than did Kempe. This performance goes straight to the top, for me, among stereo/digital recordings of this work.

This CD ends with the not-well-known Macbeth, a piece that Strauss tinkered with for years. It has some very good passages in it but, like most of his music after Der Rosenkavalier, there’s a lot of empty, bombastic filler material. Nonetheless, Roth’s performance is again first-rate.

On CD 3, Also Sprach Zarathustra starts out like a house on fire. Could this be another great performance to compare to Reiner (1954) or Dausgaard? Yes, indeed it is, and closer to Reiner than even the Dausgaard recording, with its leaner sound and crisp brass and wind attacks. The phrasing is also like Reiner’s, a bit more staccato and less flowing than Dausgaard, but that doesn’t bother me much. The only defect I heard in this performance was his stiff phrasing in the section titled “Der Genesende”; that alone put it second to Reiner in my estimation. Aus Italien is not one of Strauss’ strongest works, but Kempe made it sound pretty good. Roth tries but cannot quite pull it together as well. Not bad, but not a great performance either. Kempe just got more out of the music than Roth did.

By contrast, however, Roth clearly gets more out of the uneven Ein Alpensinfonie (CD 4) than Kempe did by virtue of his darker, leader textures and slightly faster tempi in every section but one. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever really enjoyed a performance of this piece, although, to be honest, I’ve avoided listening to too many other recordings because I didn’t like it. Roth almost makes it sound like a masterpiece, and that’s going some. His Don Juan is also played with great gusto and plenty of textual clarity.

The fifth and last CD consists of two works I’ve never liked, the Sinfonia Domestica and the Metamorphosen for 21 strings. The latter, in fact, I consider to be one of the worst pieces Strauss ever wrote, goopy, over-sentimentalized and overlong, but the Sinfonia is pretty awful, too. Roth does his best to breathe some life into the former, and indeed manages to punch up some passages nicely, but the music is just empty bombast and says nothing. If you like this work, however, this is the recording for you. Roth’s performance of the Metamorphosen is typically leaden and he doesn’t make the music any more interesting.

So. If you want the whole set, go for it, but my recommendation is to acquire Vols. 2 through 4 of the individual releases: SWR Music 93304, 93320 and 93335. You’ll be very happy with those.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter (@Artmusiclounge) or Facebook (as Monique Musique)

Return to homepage OR

Read The Penguin’s Girlfriend’s Guide to Classical Music