A Fascinating CD by the Auner Quartet

ZEMLINSKY: String Quartet No. 1 in A. WELLESZ: String Quartet No. 5. WEBERN: Langsamer Satz for String Quartet. KREISLER: Syncopation: Allegretto grazioso / Auner Qrt / Gramola 99220

The Viennese-based Auner Quartet is yet another young, spirited group of musicians who play with bright sonorities, rhythmic acuity, good legato and a lot of passion. This is both good and bad: good in that almost everything these young groups play sounds terrific, but bad in that you couldn’t tell one such string quartet from another if your life depended on it. Just saying.

Incidentally, for those readers who wondered why I was puzzled about the Khachaturian and Erkin Piano Concerto album not looking like a Gramola release, just compare that CD cover to this one. THIS is what Gramola CDs all look like, trademarked by the dark red band across the top of each cover with the Gramola name on the far right. It’s their logo, and both it and the usual darkish painting artwork were missing from that other release.

I was very happy to finally get to hear this first quartet by Zemlinsky, having performances of Nos. 2-4 by other groups (the Artis, LaSalle and Brodsky Quartets). It is typical of his earlier, post-Romantic style based strongly on Strauss and Brahms, although his musical construction is tighter than the former and rhythmically livelier than the latter usually is. One interesting feature of this quartet is that, although Zemlinsky was clearly inventing melodic lines that he thought would appeal to listeners, the internal construction of the music acts as if these themes were not tuneful, i.e., they are developed along the lines of mood contrasts, almost as when a modern composer bases a piece on the melodic composition of an older composer. It’s one of the reasons why I like Zemlinsky’s music: he didn’t waste time “bringing out the melody,” but got right down to brass tacks. With that being said, this early quartet is not really the equal of Nos. 2-4, the last two movements going on rather too long and repeating material.

Egon Wellesz is a name almost unknown to me—almost, but not quite, since there’s some guy on YouTube who constantly puts up interesting music under the name of “Wellesz Theatre.” Apparently he was born in 1885 to Austria of Hungarian-Jewish parents who later converted to Catholicism, originally studied law in accordance with his father’s wishes, but devoted his life to music after hearing a performance of Der Freischütz conducted by Mahler. His own music was heavily influenced by Mahler as well as Schoenberg—in fact, he was the first of Schoenberg’s pupils to achieve independent success—yet he also devoted much of his life to the study of Byzantine music. In fact, in his later life he was far better known as a musicologist and teacher in the fields of Byzantine music and 17th-century opera. He moved to England in 1938 and died at Oxford in 1974.

This string quartet, his fifth, was written 50 years after Zemlinsky’s, and it shows. Although obviously atonal, it is not 12-tone music; on the contrary, Wellesz creates actual melodic lines for the violins which at times sound quite tonal indeed were it not for the purposely edgy underlying harmonies. It’s such a good piece, in fact, that you start to regret that he abandoned composing in the pursuit of the Byzantine junk. I mean, when you can write a piece this good, just stick to it, man. Leave the Byzantine investigations to people who have no talent for composing. Indeed, Wellesz does not take a single wrong step in the creation of this quartet: not only is everything interesting, but everything fits into place, yet at the same time the music is not predictable or formulaic. On the contrary, it is much more tightly constructed than many a 21st-century piece I have had to review. In a way, in fact, this quartet sounds much more “Viennese” than the music of Schoenberg—listen in particular to the bouncy second-movement waltz, with harmonies that are clearly modern but not forbidding. Here, too, Wellesz subverts the listener’s expectations by suddenly throwing in a fast, edgy passage in 4/4 before reverting to the waltz. The slow third movement is mysterious and a bit edgy but not nightmarish as one often heard from Schoenberg or Berg.

Strangest of all, however, the CD includes an ultra-Romantic piece by, of all people, Anton Webern. If I hadn’t known the composer before listening to it, I would never have been able to guess his name, not in a million years, and not just because it’s tonal, but because it seems to go on FOREVER (though it’s only nine minutes) and keeps repeating the same sappy melody over and over and over again. I was actually relieved and delighted to hear Fritz Kreisler’s charming and unpretentious little “Allegretto grazioso” after this. It made a surprising and witty finish to an otherwise serious album.

Clearly the winner on this disc is the Wellesz quartet, a gem of a piece, although Auner’s performance of the Zemlinsky is also quite good.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

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A Strange Release from Gramola (I Think)

ERKIN: Piano Concerto. KHACHATURIAN: Piano Concerto in Db / Gülsin Onay, pno; Bilkent Symphony Orch.; José Serebrier, cond / Gramola/A.R. 025

This is one of two albums I downloaded for review this month that are ostensibly issued by Gramola, but as you can see from the front cover image it looks absolutely nothing like a Gramola CD, and the back cover—laid out in “typewriter” styled type—it has a catalog number of ARCD 925, so I don’t know what this is, but it’s available and here’s the review.

The first work on this CD is clearly the winner here, a previously-unrecorded piano concerto by Ulvi Cemal Erkin, one of the “Turkish Five,” and an outstanding piece it is, alternating between somewhat Bartók-like figures and more Romantic-sounding (but not insipid) passages. It also helps that Gülsin Onay, a name unknown to me, is an excellent pianist. It seems that she is a Turkish pianist of German descent who operates out of Cambridge, England. Accompanying her on this disc is the excellent conductor José Serebrier, so we have two first-class artists for a change.

Although some of the first movement consists of fluttering figures in the right hand, most of the music is meaty and extremely interesting. There are fast eighth-note passages for both brass and strings, and yes, some of the harmonies used come from authentic Turkish music. Those of you familiar with Erkin’s music will know what I mean; he was a master at blending Eastern and Western musical motifs in his music, and it’s a shame that this concerto is not better known. Erkin had a definite flair for the dramatic gesture in much of his music, and that comes to the fore in the first movement. The “Andante” opens with slow, spaced-out notes played by tympani, to which a subtoned clarinet and low string figures are added, creating a somewhat ominous mood without overdoing it. The piano enters softly, almost tentatively at first, and when the orchestra re-enters we hear an extended cello solo set against fluttering string tremolos. The tympani also returns, playing a steady, funereal 4/4 beat, and the music takes on the aspect of a steamy night in the desert. At the 4:46 mark one hears a slowly rising chromatic figure that reminded me of La Mer. The choppy and irregular triad rhythm of the “Scherzo” is set in the minor, which also gives the music a somewhat unsettled quality, while the last movement opens slowly, with much the same feeling as the second, before suddenly moving into an “Allegro” at the 1:35 mark. The music becomes surprisingly frenetic from this point on, the only disappointment being the abrupt and rather formulaic-sounding ending.

The Khachaturian concerto, written in 1936, is one of that composer’s more interesting and less banal works, sounding in fact like a slightly less abrasive Shostakovich. Yet since his more consonant and peppier music is still a fan favorite, one understands why this piece has somehow fallen through the cracks. Indeed, there is little or nothing crowd-pleasing in this work other than the flashiness of some of the piano writing, and that in itself does not detract a whit from the surprising harmonic changes and melodic contours of the first movement. Even the sudden appearance of a viola solo, tonal but set against an atonal background, surprises one and disrupts the image of this composer as a populist. Perhaps he was forced to pay the price for writing this concerto by the “culture bureau,” and thus turned his attentions to the Gayne ballet and other popular drivel. There are hints of the Khachaturian to come in the fast section of this first movement, to be sure, but by and large this is a well-written piece that skirts the edges of modernism in a most unusual manner. But Khachaturian then uses a formulaic ending for the movement, which somewhat spoils the effect of the preceding music.

Like the Erkin concerto, the second movement of this piece is melancholy and somewhat mysterious, but evoking much more Russian than Turkish moods. This movement is full of surprise twists, turns and novel effects, all of which dovetail together splendidly. Only in the third movement do we hear the kind of ostinato rhythms and colorful orchestration that one normally associates with this composer, yet they are handled here in a skillful and interesting manner. When the musical explosions occur, they are modified by Khachaturian’s splendid design and are thus not really moments of empty effects.

A splendid release, then, and well worth seeking out.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

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Schmitt’s Piano Music

SCHMITT: Crépuscles. Pupazzi. 9 Pieces, Op. 27. Ritournelle. 3 Préludes, Op. 3: No. 1, Prélude Triste. Ballade de la Neige / Biljana Urban, pno / Grand Piano GP850

Sometimes the artistic quality of a composer’s or poet’s output does not jibe with the human quality of the person, and this was the case with Florent Schmitt. His music was utterly brilliant and original with a humanistic bent to it, but the man himself was a nasty little shit who was anti-Semitic and cheered the Nazis for suppressing the Jews. But then look at Ezra Pound, possibly America’s greatest poet of the early-to-mid-20th century, who went on the air extolling the virtues of the Italian Fascists.

In this recital, pianist Biljana Urban serves up some of Schmitt’s lesser-known works written for solo piano, starting with the Crépuscles or Twilights. These are mood pieces in the vein of Debussy or Ravel, except that Schmitt clearly had his own way of constructing them, with less of an emphasis on the opaque and a bit more on the side of concrete feelings. Although I admit to not having heard these works before, I sensed that there was something amiss in Biljana Urban’s performances, and that was an almost complete lack of legato phrasing. So I went online and looked for a comparative performance, and found one played by Laurent Wagschal on Timpani 1C1219m a disc released in January 2014. His performance of these pieces was clearly played with a good legato. Thus I am going to skip any further discussion of the pieces on this disc which are available elsewhere and just focus on those that were recorded here for the first time.

The eight pieces collected under the title Pupazzi or Puppets are entirely different from anything that Debussy or Ravel might have written; they are strongly rhythmic pieces, and these Urban plays very well. But the problem I have with much of this music is that it is light, airy and not very substantial; it just goes in one ear and out the other. In fact, most of it just sounds like a book of exercises, and piano exercises, no matter how cutely written, are just exercises.

The Op. 27 pieces are much more interesting music, laying somewhere between the French and German schools of impressionist music—but here, again, Urban’s clumsy legato phrasing gets in the way of one’s enjoyment. With all the hundreds of thousands of fine pianists out there today, I have no clue why Grand Piano signed her to record these works. They deserve better performances. Even so, she does a fine job on the faster, less flowing pieces such as No. 2, the Danse orientale.

Bottom line: the Crépuscles, 9 Pièces and the lively Ritournelle are pretty good music, but much of it is ineptly played.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

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One More From Perelman-Shipp

PERELMAN-SHIPP: Nineteen. Thirteen. One. Seven Fourteen. Two. Six. Three. Four. Ten. Eleven / Ivo Perelman, t-sax; Matthew Shipp, pno / ESP Disk’ 5070

I’m sure that, at this point, some of my readers may think that I’m getting paid to review as many Ivo Perelman releases as I’ve done, but for better or worse I don’t get a cent for any of my efforts. It is strictly a labor of love and a chance for me to introduce or continue to promote artists whose work I find to be of musical value, and although I’ve had some disagreements with some of the things Perelman has played on records I still consider him a serious and sincere artist who is trying to communicate something inside of him.

Thus when the saxist sent me a Facebook message saying, of this release, that “We believe it’s our best effort so far,” I took him at his word and agreed to review this new album as soon as I could. Although it’s not planned for release on September 9 of next year (2022), Mr. Perelman wanted my immediate feedback in order to judge its intrinsic worth.

I’m not sure if there were more than 19 takes, but as you can see from the header, 11 of them are on this album, arranged in an order that pleased the performers. And judging from the first track, which appears to be the last, Perelman was right in his judgment. Every rhythmic and melodic gesture that tenor saxist and pianist feed each other in this remarkable duet is met with a musically and emotionally appropriate response from the other. And somehow or other, this entirely free jazz somehow coalesces and takes shape in a way that is absolutely perfect.

In the face of such musical perfection, it’s difficult to analyze musically simply because so much is going on. Shipp clearly plays in a steady rhythm at times, but not consistently so; he feeds Perelman a series of both tonal and atonal chords and single-note motifs, and the thing I liked most about it was that the saxist plays lyrically through most of it, leaving the percussive qualities to the pianist.

Nor is this quality restricted to the opening track. Thirteen is rhythmically faster and busier than Nineteen, with Shipp playing an almost unbroken series of complex single-note figures to which Perelman responds in kind. And once again, the saxist’s willingness to restrain some of his most outré playing pays dividends. The few times he does extend into the upper register, the results sound much more grounded in what he has played before and will play after; they don’t sound as much like angry or wounded outbursts so much as they do an extension of the lyric line that runs like a golden thread throughout the piece. By the 3:30 mark, both Shipp and Perelman have slowed things down and at times the resulting music sounds more tonal if no less spontaneous.

Yet even when Perelman plays some abstract figures, as in the opening of One (obviously the first take of the session), these figures take on a rhythmic shape that one can follow with the ear. If I may make an attempt to describe it in words, it’s as if both artists know that they are creating something new and different but at the same time have realized that being able to follow the thread of the music from first note to last, as a composition, is more important at this stage of their musical relationship than just prodding and pushing each other. I don’t know if the idea was Shipp’s or Perelman’s, but whichever one it was hit the nail squarely on the head, musically.

And I would go further. All this music is, to use a graphic analogy, both linear and curved rather than jagged and wayward. If one were to notate each piece, one would be able to see, on paper, the shape of the music. It would no longer appear to be a series of random explosions that sound interesting in the moment but do not always relate to the before and the later.

In Seven, the rhythms are more angular and the harmonies more “open” as Shipp continually uses more widely-spaced intervals, resolving the tonality in open intervals (fourths and fifths) and then only occasionally, but his keen ear for musical structure keeps the piece from becoming disorganized. And once again, everything Perelman plays fits into what Shipp is doing like a hand in a glove. Fourteen uses an almost playful rhythm, yet one that is asymmetrically spaced and uses short moments of silence between notes here and there to further extend the time. This is obviously a tricky piece for Perelman to fit into, particularly since he had no clue when Shipp would introduce these time-expanding moments, yet he plays in a consistently lyrical fashion, just letting Shipp “do his thing” while he improvises. The result is a fascinating musical cat-and-mouse game, with the pianist teasing and toying with the saxist, and I almost didn’t mind the sudden excursion into sharp, shrill high notes on the saxophone at around the 2:45 mark because they fit in and they caused Shipp to “cool it” a little, bringing the tempo and the temperature down just a bit.

Each track in this remarkable album is a highlight in itself and different from every other track. These two artists have played and recorded together so often that they do indeed almost seem to read each other’s mind, and at this stage the psychic communication is so complete that it almost sounds as if we, the listeners, are eavesdropping in on a very personal and intimate conversation. Perhaps the biggest difference, or as Perelman insists, improvement in this recording over all the others they’ve done together is that the saxist is more willing to lay back on his more explosive and aggressive moments with superior musical results. There is a more consistently calm, almost meditative quality in all the pieces in this set, regardless of tempo, that invite the listener in rather than scare him or her away. Even in the fast-paced, scalar activity one hears in Six, there is a calm underlying their musical storm. The violence and angst heard in their previous releases has been defused.

Modern classical composer Meredith Monk, whose work I value very highly, once said that after years of trying to find one great place in the world to be to find inner peace, she at last found it in the humble kitchen of her own apartment, sipping tea or coffee and just enjoying being where she was. I think that’s what Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp have found here in this album. They’ve traveled the world, figuratively and literally, in their musical travails over the past several years, and now they have discovered an inner peace just being with one another, not trying to “prove” anything or set the world on fire. This music just…Is. And it’s wonderful.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

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The Dover Quartet’s Beethoven

BEETHOVEN: String Quartets Opp. 59 Nos. 1-3, 74 & 95 / Dover Quartet / Çedille 90000

This is the second installment in what is to be a complete set of the Beethoven String Quartets played by the relatively young Dover Quartet. Having not heard the early quartets in Vol. 1, I wasn’t sure what to expect but I took a chance on them, and I’m glad I did.

These are very fine modern performances of the quartets, in line with the excellent set made many years ago by the Emerson Quartet: brisk tempi with only very slight modifications to the tempo but also with minute attention to the detail of the dynamics changes, always important in the playing of Beethoven. In comparing them to my favorite set of the complete quartets by the sadly defunct Colorado String Quartet, which I wrote about on this blog as being one of the bargains of the century—you can download the entire set for 99¢(!!)—I found a great many similarities in their approach but one. The Colorado Quartet plays with a bit more breadth in their phrasing, meaning that their moments of rubato are a shade more pronounced, and in that one respect I find their recordings more satisfying upon repeated listening because you never really remember where they slightly elongated a note or two to add some depth to their performances.

The other difference is the recorded sound, and of course in this respect neither the Colorado nor the Dover Quartets probably had much say in this. The Colorado Quartet’s recordings have a warmer sound without defusing the bite of the strings in important moments; it almost sounds as if they were in the room with you. The Dover Quartet’s recordings have a tighter, drier acoustic, which is actually quite good in and of itself, but they tend to sound more like recordings (I’m speaking now of aural ambiance and not of the vitality of their approach) than as if they were in the room with you.

Thus the consumer has a choice between what will undoubtedly be two excellent sets of these important works when the Dover set is finished. If you like your Beethoven with more evident rubato touches—and I admit that the Colorado Quartet’s approach strikes me as the best of both worlds, combining a linear approach with a bit of rhetorical phrasing—the Colorado set will please you more. If you like your Beethoven played somewhat more directly but not lacking in expression or nuance, the Dover recordings will satisfy your desire. If you have infinite shelf space, you may want both sets, since there are obvious contrasts in the shaping and coloring of the music in each. As for me, though I like the Beethoven quartets very much I really don’t listen to all of them very often, but I’m looking forward to hearing what the Dover Quartet will do with the late quartets, which along with the early Op. 18 set always seem to need a somewhat tighter approach than the middle quartets.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

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The Dover Quartet Plays Schumann

SCHUMANN: String Quartets Nos. 1-3 / Dover Quartet: Joel Link, Bryan Lee, vln; Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, vla; Camden Shaw, cel / Azica ACD-71331

The Dover Quartet is a relatively young group of musicians who, like 90% of classical performers, stick to playing the old-timey stuff because it continues to sell. Nonetheless, this CD is a very welcome one as Schumann’s string quartets aren’t nearly as well known as those of Beethoven, Schubert or Brahms.

The group uses the by-now-patented style for modern string quartets: relatively brisk tempi with only a few subtle modifications in terms of rubato or portamento, and a bright, clear sound profile with taut, edgy attacks in the more aggressive passages. As it turns out, however, this is absolutely perfect for Schumann, whose music was not only edgier than that of Schubert or Brahms but also far less predictable in its musical direction. Because he suffered from cognitive and mental problems for most of his short life, Schumann never thought in a crystal-clear, linear fashion; his music contains sudden mood shifts and a more discursive musical pattern than that of his contemporaries, which is the one feature in it that relates to modern music.

I was utterly captivated by the Dover Quartet’s readings of this music. Their performance style makes sense, pays close attention to dynamics markings and mood shifts, and in addition to all this is emotionally committed. In addition, I really liked the sound quality of this recording: very forward miking but with just enough space around the instruments to give the quartet a realistic sound.

Some listeners prefer the Pacifica Quartet on Çedille, and they’re very good but not quite as gripping as Dover. In general, these performances are closer in style to the equally touted versions by the Emerson Quartet on Pentatone Classics. Comparing the two groups, I found only a few minor differences in phrasing an approach, certianly not enough to give Emerson so high of an edge over Dover. Just listen, for instance, to the second-movement “Scherzo” in the first quartet for an example of what I mean. The Dover players do a superb job of contrasting the lively, rhythmically edgy main theme to the more lyrical and discursive middle section, allowing themselves to indulge in a slightly broader portamento than the more famous Emerson players, and believe it or not, this IS historically correct (the constant straight tone is not). This more relaxed (but not insipid) approach can also be heard in the slow movements, which Dover caress with the care of a lover. You can almost feel that these movements were written as love paens to his beloved Clara. And in the last movement of this quartet, Dover brings out a quality I’d never noticed in the music before, more Czech than German.

This recording is now my favorite of these not-so-popular works, and I recommend it highly.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

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Gielen Conducts Modern Music

ZIMMERMANN: Requiem für einen jungen Dichter / Isolde Siebert, Renate Behle, sop;  Richard Salter, bar; Michael Rotschopf, Bernhard Schir, spkrs; SWR Vokalensemble; Rundfunkchor Berlin; SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg / LIGETI: Requiem / Liliana Poli, sop; Barbro Ericson, mezzo; SWR Vokalensemble, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks München, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR / CRUMB: Star-Child / Irene Gubrud, sop; Armin Rosin, tb; Christophorus-Kantorei Altensteig, SWR Vokalensemble & Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR; Clytus Gottwald, Manfred Schreier, Marinus Voorberg, co-cond / J. LÓPEZ: Breath – Hammer – Lightning. NONO: Variazioni canoniche. A Carlo Scarpa, architetto, al suoi infiniti possibili. No hay caminos, hay que caminar…Andrej Tarkowskij. FELDMAN: Coptic Light. KURTÁG: Stele. BOULEZ: Rituel – In Memoriam Bruno Maderna. Notations I-IV & VII  / SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg / GIELEN: Vier Gedichte von Stefan George. Pflicht und Neigung / SWR Vokalensemble & Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg / KAGEL: Ein Brief / Klára Csordás, sop; SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg / CAGE: Piano Concerto / Claude Heiffer, pno; Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR / SWR Music 19111CD

Vol. 10 of the Michael Gielen Edition features him in his real element, conducting contemporary music: the Zimmermann and Ligeti Requiems, George Crumb’s Star-Child, Feldman’s Coptic Light plus works by Jorge E. Lopéz, Luigi Nono, Pierre Boulez, György Kurtág, John Cage, and himself. In short, this is the kind of music I couldn’t wait to dig into. The Zimmermann and Ligeti Requiems are first releases of these specific live performances, even though recordings of these works by Gielen have been available for years (the first on Sony Classical, the second on Wergo).

The Zimmermann Requiem is one of his later, edgier pieces, using microtones and close chords to create an ominous atmosphere. The problem is that there’s a lot of cross-talk in German throughout the opening section, and SWR failed to include the text for this. But since I’m such a little sweetheart, I’m going to give you a link to a webpage where you can find the English translation: http://audiolabo.free.fr/revue1999/content/libretto.pdf. To be honest, however, I can’t quite decide whether or not Zimmermann was on drugs when he wrote this piece; it certainly sounds like a bad LSD trip, with spliced-in recordings of Hitler and Neville Chamberlain speaking as well as a soprano (Behle?) singing parts of the “Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde. Later on, there’s a snippet of the Beatles singing Hey Jude, and later still a jazz combo. Some of it is a screed against capitalism. Despite all this, Gielen conducts a gripping performance that certainly makes an impression. This first section lasts 40 minutes; none of the following five sections lasts more than 8:49, and most shorter than that, and in the second section we finally get some actual vocalizing by our three singers, at cross-purposes to one another. The last section begins with a pre-taped recording of the opening section of the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, quickly followed by yet another snippet of Hey Jude, then more of Hitler screaming into a microphone. After that, the chorus really begins screaming and the percussion ramps up. Really a jolly piece, great for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Gielen’s performance of the Ligeti Requiem is a classic. Listeners unfamiliar with his version are really missing something. So too is this performance of Crumb’s Star-Child; in fact, the wonderful ambience of this live performance adds a nice dimension to the work, making it sound even more surreal than it normally does. Soprano Irene Gubrud is also excellent, which also helps.

Before listening to this recording, I was completely unaware of the music of Jorge E. López (b. 1955), but it clearly fits into the Zimmermann-Ligeti-Crumb axis. It is atonal, edgy, almost violent in its emotions. (As David Hurwitz of Classics Today put it, Gielen was a master of “doom and gloom” music.) In addition to its complex harmonic structure, López exacerbated the “doom and gloom” by using mostly low, dark orchestral sonorities, focusing on low brass and strings as well as heavy percussion. In fact, one hears the trombones and basses in this music far more than the upper strings and winds (are the latter even present in his orchestration? I had a hard time hearing them). Dome Peak, of which this performance was the world premiere, is in much the same vein except that you hear a lot more of the trumpets and violins in this one. I’m not giving too much technical description of this music because, to my ears, the music is not linear but amorphic; it doesn’t really have a “shape” although there is form buried beneath its outré effects. It’s much more in line with the symphonies and tone poems of Leif Segerstam, except more percussive. To be honest, I really didn’t much like them.

CD 3 mostly features the music of Luigi Nono, modern but not ear-splitting. His Variazioni canoniche were based on Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon, and is both more lyrical and a bit less strictly dodecaphonic than his model. Gielen’s reading of the score is delicate and sensitively phrased, even though the second half of the piece has a louder and more aggressive sound. Indeed, all of the Nono pieces presented here are not only very well constructed but give one a reprieve from the aggressive, explosive quality of the music on the first two discs. Yet as much as I liked the Nono pieces, I enjoyed Morton Feldman’s Coptic Light even more, an outstanding piece somewhat in the George Crumb vein.

Next up are two pieces written by Gielen himself. I had always heard that he was a composer, but never heard any of his own music (he never performed it when he was music director of the Cincinnati Symphony). Vier Gedichten von Stefan George for chorus and orchestra is clearly a modern work with advanced harmony, but only about as far out as Stravinsky and not a 12-tone piece. The orchestration in the opening piece consists of the clarinets, and mostly in their low or chalumeau register. By the third piece, low trumpets and rumbling basses, also playing softly, are added to the mixture. One thing I found interesting is that it is the vocal part, written for chorus and not a solo singer (although there is a brief but telling soprano solo in song No. 4), which is more atonal than the accompanying orchestra. His second piece on this set, Pflicht und Neigung, is also written for clarinets, but in their upper range, along with brass and percussion (celesta as well as drums). This is more of an atonal romp in syncopated rhythms; if you can get over the atonal part of it, it’s a rather lively piece albeit with strange, slow interludes that frequently interrupt the flow. Eventually, it’s the other way around as the general tempo of the music becomes more of a largo with fast, syncopated interruptions, and later still one hears a fugue for percussion and another for saxophones. It’s a very interesting piece.

Stele by György Kurtág – still alive as of this writing at age 95 – is another excellent piece, beginning in a “moody” vein and incorporating a bit of microtonal writing, yet with explosive moments as well. This, too, reminded me strongly of Segerstam, this time in a much more positive way. Mauricio Kagel’s Ein Brief is a much darker work, right up Gielen’s alley of “doom and gloom” music, but extremely interesting and featuring a mostly wordless vocal by a superb soprano, Klára Czordás. It put me in mind of some of the horror movie background music I used to hear as a child (Daughter of Horror or Carnival of Souls), only much more sophisticated in its construction.)

The last CD opens with the music of Pierre Boulez. Most of his scores were pretty forbidding for most classical listeners, but although Rituel – in Memoriam Bruno Maderna is somewhat grim, it opens quietly and is quite fascinating in the way he creates polyphonic textures for the orchestra. Boulez preferred bright sonorities and clear, uncluttered textures, here focusing on the oboe and other winds mixed with soft brass and percussion, but only a few string passages, mostly the violins. (Let’s put it this way: I’d rather listen to Boulez than to Elliott Carter or most of Milton Babbitt any day of the week.) By the 12-minute mark, however, the music has become quite congested and remains so for roughly a half-minute before a pause clears the air and returns us to the edgy wind/brass mixtures. The only problem with this piece is that it goes on far too long and gets repetitive in the second half. Gielen’s recording of Boulez’ Notations is a famous one and has been available previously; this is tauter, less ruminating music, brilliantly written and played.

The set ends with John Cage’s Piano Concerto, a work I’ve never heard before because I generally consider Cage to be a fraud as a composer. He was constantly putting the musical establishment on with very sophisticated musical jokes, yet the musical establishment embraced him as a serious composer which ticked his funny bone to no end. This concerto is no exception, only that for the life of me I can’t figure out how anyone with half a brain could take this for anything but a musical joke. But at least it’s a really amusing piece, so funny that I almost couldn’t stop laughing. (Anyone who has ever seen that clip from Caesar’s Hour where Sid Caesar, dressed up as a concert pianist, comes out and plays one of the goofiest piano concertos you’ve ever heard in your life will completely understand what I mean.) In fact, Cage even throws in a few actual laughs from one of the musicians in case you didn’t realize from the outset that he was putting you on—not to mention a bit of “laughing” trombone and other novelty effects. (As a matter of fact, I even think the title Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was a gag since you only hear the piano once in a while, playing a few isolated low notes; most of this piece is for laughing trombone and clarinet as well as percussion.) It’s a wonderfully funny way to end this otherwise very serious set.

So, to recap: CDs 1 and 3 are ones I will never willingly listen to again because I didn’t like the music, but you may disagree with me. CD 2 is a gem but if you, like me, already have Gielen’s recordings of these pieces in your collection you won’t necessarily need it. The last three CDs are all interesting and mostly very good modern music. By and large, a good set that certainly gives one a different perspective on Gielen’s considerable talents as a conductor.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

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Tansman’s Piano Music

TANSMAN: 24 Intermezzi. Piano Sonata No. 5 / Hanna Holeska, pno / Dux 1688-1

Alexander Tansman, whose first name is sometimes spelled Alexandre, was a Polish-Jewish composer who thrived in Paris during the 1920s and ‘30s, but like most Polish Jews (add to that list violinist Bronislaw Huberman, pianist Artur Rubinstein and composer Mieczysław Weinberg), he was ignored or marginalized during his lifetime in his own country. The arts community in Poland has changed over the years, but not the government or the general public, which remain virulently anti-Semitic.

Tansman’s music, though modern and using both modes and bitonality, is not nearly as challenging as much of what was being written in those days. Even Czech composer Tibor Harsányi, who also worked in France during those years, wrote edgier and more complex music; but this doesn’t mean that Tansman’s scores were inferior, just easier for the public to digest.

The 24 Intermezzi, which fill up the bulk of this CD, are pieces that lay halfway between the light, entertaining style of previous pianist-composers and the more complex music of Tansman’s peers. They are clearly not as difficult to digest as the short piano pieces of Szymanowski, for instance, but they just miss being “entertaining” by virtue of their musical complexity. Although Tansman skirted the most challenging aspects of the modern music of his time—his rhythms are steady, and for the most part he at least bases his music on tonality—there is always something thorny going on under the surface, even in the slow pieces such as Intermezzo No. 5 (“Adagio cantabile”) that pulls the music just few inches out of the reach of the average concertgoer. The Intermezzo No. 7, marked “Moderato,” is probably the most immediately attractive and least edgy of those in the second set whereas No. 12 (“Allegro barbaro”) is the most abrasive. Written in 1939-40, a watershed period for the composer (just before he emigrated to the United States in 1941), they are an advance on the music he wrote previously such as his “Transatlantic” Sonata. He had also moved away by this time from the jazz influence one can hear in some of his late ‘20s-early ‘30s works; perhaps he felt that if he presented himself as a genuinely modern composer he would be more readily accepted in the United States.

In Book 4, it is Intermezzo No. 21, “Adagio lamentoso,” which is very thorny in its harmony, using downward chromatics to impart a feeling of gloom on the piece, but No. 22 (“Allegro scherzando”), though faster and more technically complicated, is no walk in the part despite its use of a steady syncopated rhythm. And interestingly, the next piece, “Hommage à Brahms,” reverts to Tansman’s earlier, jazz-inflected style and is harmonically consonant throughout.

The Piano Sonata No. 5 is a late work, from 1955, and dedicated to the memory of Béla Bartók. It is very Bartókian indeed with its angular rhythms and spiky modal harmonies, mirroring the folk music that the older composer, along with Kodály, heard and recorded in the field. It reminds one of some of Bartók’s most aggressive compositions, yet there are many touches in the piece that tell you that Bartók was not its creator. Yet for all its brilliance, there’s just something about its construction that, to my ears, make it sound more like a suite than a sonata. Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating piece and quite engaging in its own way.

Piano Hanna Holeska does an admirable job on these pieces, combining a lyrical flow with rhythmic and technical precision to put these works in their best light. She plays elegantly but not too softly or ambiguously to defuse the occasional excitement in these pieces; and speaking as someone who very much appreciates many modern pianists who play in a more angular style with less ambience in their sound, I was not put off by this approach. Tansman worked in France, and French pianists of his time certainly played in a similar manner.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

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Yang’s Dazzling Prokofiev

PROKOFIEV: Violin Concerti Nos. 1 & 2. Solo Violin sonata in D / Tianwa Yang, vln; ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orch.; Jun Markl, cond / Naxos 8.574107

I wanted to review this recording because I was so deeply impressed by Tianwa Yang’s recording of the Ysaÿe Violin Sonatas, performance which I considered peerless until Maxim Brilinsky’s recording came out on Hänssler Classic (I now have both of them in my collection). To this point, my gold standard in these concerti have been Jascha Heifetz in No. 2 and Vadim Gluzman (on Bis) in both of them.

Interestingly, Yang’s performances are considerably longer in the first and third movements of both concerti but shorter in the second movements, even in the Concerto No. 2 where the second movement is marked “Andante assai.” But there are other differences in their recordings as well. Gluzman plays with a very light, bright tone, very close to straight tone, and his recording is absolutely swimming in reverb (something that Bis seems addicted to, although Naxos has also been brought to task for such sound in some of my other reviews). The less “mushy” aural perspective of Yang’s recording thus gives not only a richer sound to her violin, which I like very much, but also more “bite” in the fast passages, and despite the slower tempi conductor Jun Markl does not let the grass grow under his feet (or on his baton). As a result, there is both vigor and sweetness in her sound as needed for the various changes of tempo, volume and mood, and I should also add that the cleaner, closer sound pays dividends in one’s hearing the orchestral parts clearly.

Judging her solely by this disc, Yang seems to be the heir apparent to Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, who I believe was the greatest violinist of the latter decades of the 20th century. Nadja is still playing occasionally, and teaching, but she has fallen off the radar of recording companies and apparently neither she nor her manager care to pursue recordings on smaller labels, which is a shame. Nadja recorded several concerti during her career but only a handful of violin sonatas, mostly in live performance with her wonderful piano partner, Anne Marie McDermott; I saw then perform live in the early 2000s and they were absolutely spectacular together.

Of course I haven’t heard Yang play live, but these performances are nothing short of mesmerizing. The music sparkles in the light like glittering diamonds, and she takes nary a wrong step musically in these performances. Listen particularly to the first concerto’s second movement, and tell me if you’ve ever heard it played better. I can’t even imagine it being played better. As good as Gluzman was, Yang outdoes him in both richness of tone and rhythmic vigor. Her playing is so good that it reminded me of Michael Rabin’s landmark recording of the Paganini Caprices.

In fact, this recording is so good that after the halfway mark in the second movement of the first concerto I stopped listening critically and just sat back and enjoyed it as any other listener would. Yang’s combination of sweetness and glittering steel will absolutely bowl you over; at least, it did me.

The second concerto has a mysterious feeling to the slow portions which reminded me of Heifetz’ first recording, made in the 1930s with Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony. (He rerecorded it more than 20 years later with Charles Munch and the same orchestra.) The difference is that Markl’s phrasing is tighter and a bit less relaxed than Koussevitzky’s, so in a way it’s almost like a hybrid of Heifetz’ two conductors. One thing I found interesting is that although Yang plays with great feeling, she just misses the greater color that Heifetz was able to elicit from his instrument in the 1935 recording—but then again, so do all other violinists, so I won’t hold it against her. Let’s just say that Heifetz’ early performance was very subjective whereas Yang, like most modern violinists, is more objective. But this is splitting hairs. Taken on its own merits, it’s as fine a performance as the first concerto.

Yang also tears through the solo violin sonata with so much passion, you’d think it was written expressly for her. Perhaps a bit more surfacy in the first movement than her readings of the concerti, but then again, this is technically brilliant and not necessarily introspective music. She clearly has a handle on the emotions of the second movement.

All in all, a major achievement for this young, quite serious violinist. I’d love to hear her tackle some more modern pieces in the future…I think she had more than enough talent to make them communicate to her listeners.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

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Sol & Pat Hit the Music Trail

LECLAIR: Tambourin in C. WIDMANN: Duos for Violin & Cello: XXIV. Toccatina d’inglese; XXI. Valse bavaroise. C.P.E. BACH: Keyboard Sonata in E min., Helm 66 No. 6: Presto. COLL: Rizoma. RAVEL: Violin-Cello Sonata in A min. MARKOWICZ: Interlude. ZBINDEN: La Fête au Village. XENAKIS: Dhipli Zyla. LIGETI: Hommage à Hilding Rosenberg. KODÁLY: Duo for Violin & Cello in D min. J.S. BACH: Well-Tempered Clavier: Prelude No. 15 in G, BWV 860 / Patricia Kopatchinskaja, vln; Sol Gabetta, cel / Alpha Classics 757

Although cellist Sol Gabetta and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja are close friends as well as frequent performance partners, this is their first duo album. The liner notes, which consist solely of a dialogue between them, suggests that they couldn’t wait to put this album out, yet for some reason they waited three years, since the last tracks for this disc were recorded in August 2018.

The liner notes consist of a conversation between them, and whether real or contrived it’s got a lot of warmth and humor in it. The point they make is that they often meet for “coffee” and spend hours going over scores together, old and new music, and for whatever reason the Tambourin in C by the obscure Baroque composer Jean-Marie Leclair is one piece that grabbed them. But so did works by such modernist as Jörg Widmann, Francisco Coll (one of Kopatchinskaja’s friends), Marcin Markowicz, Julien-François Zbinden, Iannis Xenakis and György Libeti, three of whom (Widmann, Markowicz and Zbinden) I’ve never heard of before.

Well, I can see why the Leclair piece grabbed them…it gives Pat a chance to whack the ol’ tambourine for all it’s worth, and the two of them a chance to tear through the piece with double gusto. I just wish they had used a little light vibrato for sustained notes, which is true historically-informed performance practice. Interestingly, Widmann’s Duos for Violin & Cello have the same sort of wild sound at the outset as the Leclair piece, just set to bitonal harmonies. And there is clearly a simpatico between these two musicians; they sound as if they’re having so much fun playing together than the audience is merely an afterthought. Would that all classical musicians had this kind of energy when they performed; it might actually popularize the music instead of confining it to stuffy old concert halls.

I couldn’t figure out how two string instruments would play a piano piece like the “Presto” from C.P.E. Bach’s Keyboard Sonata in E minor. The answer is: pizzicato. By contrast, Coll’s Rizoma is all legato, built around sustained tones, some of which bend the notes out of their tonal center, at least until the 4:53 mark when the tempo increases and the music virtually explodes.

For those familiar with older recordings of the Ravel Sonata for Violin & Cello, such as the one by Arthur Grumiaux and Hermann von Beckerath, this performance will galvanize you. It’s light, bright and fleet, yet still has emotional depth to it. It just sounds a bit odd because 1) they’re using straight tone (not altogether historically correct although a few French violinists, like Henry Merckel, did play with next to no vibrato) and 2) they emphasize the rhythmic aspects of the work over the melodic, even in medium or slow passages. Indeed, the fast second movement almost sounds like the latter half of the Coll piece. The music practically bounces off their strings, particularly in the fast final movement. This may seem off-topic, but I’m wondering: since Kopatchinskaja’s father was a cimbalom player—and an excellent one at that—does she sometimes think of her violin as a percussion instrument? I would consider it a possibility.

Marcowicz’ Interlude is a quiet but exceedingly strange piece, with the violin playing fast, strange atonal figures with the edge of her bow while the cello plays a sort of atonal fast continuo underneath. It almost sounds as if the pair were tuning up to some bizarre rapid étude. Interestingly, Gabetta points out in the conversational liner notes that they made four mistakes when recording it, and points them all out bar by bar and note by note…but then admits, “Despite that, I think it sounds quite nice the way we played it!”

In Zbinden’s La Fête au village, the duo simulates the sound of a harmonium (or perhaps even a hurdy-gurdy, the harmonium’s sidewalk cousin). The first movement begins slowly and mysteriously, but also explodes in the middle, while the second is a sort of clumsy peasant dance led by the cello galumphing in the foreground, followed by a very drunken-sounding violin solo. Apparently this village festival had a little too much wine flowing. Incidentally, the composer was still alive when this duo recorded the piece, so they sent the sound file to him. He emailed them back—at the age of 101!—to tell them they were right in considering it an “affectionate caricature.”

I’m not normally a fan of Xenakis’ music, but his Dhipli Zyla is a lively piece set bitonally with some nice fugal interplay between the two instruments. I was startled to read that Kopatchinskaja believes that Ligeti’s Hommage à Hilding Rosenberg could “come from any era”; its harmonic structure, which constantly leans in and out of the tonal center, clearly mark it as a 20th-century composition. Indeed, their less legato and more edgy approach to the Kodály Duo make it sound almost like a late-20th century piece simply due to their razor-edge playing and rhythmic accents. Kopatchinskaja’s high, screaming notes at the 3:35 mark in the second movement almost sound like cries of pain. The recital ends with their transcription of yet another piano piece, this one charming and lyrical rather than fast or edgy.

This recording is much more than just a great duo-recital. It is a true fusion of minds, one brain with four hands playing two different instruments, a sort of psychic performance in which everything falls into place as if by magic. By all means, get this one. You won’t believe your ears.

—© 2021 Lynn René Bayley

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