Arnold Cooke’s Organ Music

COOKE: Sonata No. 1 in G. Fantasia, Prelude, Intermezzo & Finale. Sarabande. Toccata & Aria. Suite in G. Impromptu. Prelude for Tudeley. Sonata No. 2 / Tom Winpenny, org / Toccata Classics TOCC 0659

When I first discovered Arnold Cooke three years ago, in an album of his violin sonatas, I had this to say about him:

The interest in Cooke’s music comes from his unfailing enthusiasm for his own work, which comes through in every page of his scores. This is not the same as saying that he was a narcissist although, as we have seen, even truly great narcissistic composers such as Wagner, Liszt and Sorabji could indeed turn out great works; rather, Cooke really enjoyed what he did and put his whole heart into it, and this is evident in the finished products. Soaring melodies—but not cloying or sugary ones—alternate with edgy fast passages using harmonies that move either stepwise or chromatically, all of it sounding natural in a way that flows. There never seems anything precious or self-conscious about this music. It just moves along at its own pace, giving great pleasure while stimulating the mind.

And that assessment clearly holds over into these organ works, most written in the 1960s although the first Sonata comes from 1971 and both the Prelude for Tudeley and the second Sonata come from the 1980s. Perhaps because he was writing for the organ, a complex instrument that could produce several “voices” at once, and not for violin and piano, his music here is more adventurous harmonically. Although never really atonal, it includes a great many passages in which the two hands play in conflicting keys and, even when it seems to establish a tonality, it constantly slithers in and out of it. The first movement of the Sonata No. 1 thus slithers around like snakes in a snake pit trying to escape. Of course I’m just being a bit fanciful by describing it thus; as usual, Cooke has a firm grasp on the musical structure, but its harmonic audacity is so arresting that it’s what impacts you most on first hearing.

Moreover, the enthusiasm that Cooke himself obviously put into writing these scores is redoubled by the playing of Tom Winpenny. You’d never guess from these recordings that he is not a world-famous organist, but “merely” Assistant Master of Music at St. Albans Cathedral, but then again, I’ve heard a few absolutely stunning church organists in my day, one of the vest being David Drinkwater who was organist at the very small Kirkpatrick Chapel on the campus of Rutgers University during the 1970s. Drinkwater could knock off organ works from J.S. Bach to Messiaen in his sleep, and I assume that Mr. Winpenny can do the same. His bio certainly suggests it, noting that he has played first performances of many contemporary organ works as well as giving recitals in San Francisco, Birmingham, Sweden and Germany.

Due to the nature of both the music, which is very legato, and the nature of the organ, which is to produce soft attacks and not hard ones, the slow movements on this album require more of your attention in order to catch all the numerous subtleties that Cooke put into his music. Yet it is surely in the faster pieces where Cooke allowed his imagination to run a bit wild, as these are fascinating fantasias, sometimes (as in the finale of the Sonata No. 1) using often varying meter. It is not music that would repel a casual listener, but it would certainly baffle him or her with its constant shifts. The most harmonically conservative piece in this set is the 1960 Sarabande, yet even this piece might raise the eyebrows of a musically conservative listener.

For any organ freaks reading this review, or those who simply have an interest in the instrument, the organ on which Winpenny played was built in 1958 by Peter Hurford, one of the most celebrated British church organists of his time. Using the then-latest organ designs out of Europe, it is, according to the liner notes, “based on the principles of open-foot voicing and relatively low wind-pressures that Ralph Downes (Hurford’s advisor)  had employed in his work on the landmark organ for the Royal Festival Hall, London, in the 1950s. Downes was closely involved with the scaling and voicing of the pipes, and he considered spatial separation of all divisions, with sufficiently wide scaling of wide-open flutes, important for the projection of sound.” In other words, it is not the kind of little squeezebox that poor Bach himself had to play, but the kind of larger, modern organs that he saw (and played) in other churches in his day and coveted dearly. Although not quite as bright in character as the 1960s organ of the Riverside Church in New York City which was played by Virgil Fox, it shares many of the same tonal qualities and characteristics.

If you listen carefully to the finale of the Fantasia, in which Cooke pits high crushed chords in the right hand against a booming, running bass accompaniment in the left, you’ll have a pretty good idea of its sonic capabilities. I heartily congratulate recording producer and engineer Andrew Post, apparently borrowed for this occasion from Vif Records, for his keen ear and highly intelligent microphone placement. Without making a big to-do of SACD sound, the St, Alban’s Cathedral Organ fills your living room with its sound, warm and as wide as a Cinerama movie. The miking is spacious enough to capture all of those low, warm tones yet bright enough to give “bite” to the upper range playing as well.

Listening to all of Cooke’s organ output at once, you do notice some musical trends (not re-used themes, but similar tempi and moods) running through them, but of course he himself never intended that you sit down and listen to his complete organ music in one long stretch as it is here. He wrote each piece at a different time for different organists and events, just as Bach and Messiaen did, and surely there are similarities in many of their organ works as well. Nonetheless, if you are a truly attentive listener, you will hear a great deal of invention, some of it quite subtle, going on in each of these pieces. Cooke knew what he was doing and was nobody’s fool. It is to his credit that not one of these pieces, not even the very short ones like the Sarabande, Impromptu and Prelude for Tudeley, are mindless trifles. Whether short or long, Cooke invested his full emotional and intellectual faculties into writing his music. He meant for it to last.

A very interesting album, then, particularly for organ-lovers.

—© 2022 Lynn René Bayley

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Kubelik’s Oft-Neglected “Parsifal”

WAGNER: Parsifal / Kurt Moll, bass (Gurnemanz); Bernd Weikl, baritone (Amfortas); Matti Salminen, bass (Titurel); Yvonne Minton, mezzo-soprano (Kundry); James King, tenor (Parsifal); Franz Mazurz, baritone (Klingsor); Jukia Falk, mezzo-soprano (Voice); Regina Marheineke, soprano (Squire 1); Claudia Hellmann, mezzo (Squire 2); Helmut Holzapfel, tenor (Squire 3); Karl Heinz Eichler, tenor (Squire 4); Lucia Popp, soprano (Flower Maiden 1); Carmen Reppel, soprano (Flower Maiden 2); Suzanne Sonnenschein, soprano (Flower Maiden 3); Marianne Seibel, mezzo (Flower Maiden 4); Marga Schiml, mezzo (Flower Maiden 5); Doris Soffel, mezzo-soprano (Flower Maiden 6); Norbert Orth, tenor (Knight 1); Roland Bracht, bass (Knight 2); Tölzer Knabenchor; Symphonieorchester & Chor of Bavarian Radio; Rafael Kubelik, conductor / Arts Archives 43027-2 or available for free streaming on YouTube one CD at a time: CD 1, CD 2, CD 3, CD 4

Poor Rafael Kubelik was a good enough conductor to be signed to Deutsche Grammophon, but not famous enough to have any clout. This studio recording was made by DG with the intent to release it on LP and CD, but then along came Herbie the K with his recording of Parsifal with the same Gurnemanz but entirely different singers in the other roles (Van Dam as Amfortas, Peter Hoffmann as Parsifal, Dunja Vejzovič as Kundry and Siegmund Nimsgern as Klingsor), so of course DG bowed to the almighty Karajan and tossed this magnificent performance—the greatest of any Parsifal since the various Knappertsbusch versions—into the vaults. It didn’t see the light of silver disc until 2003, seven years after Kubelik’s death, on the tiny Arts Archives label. They don’t even appear to be in business anymore—the last release I could find by this label was from 2008—and even when this recording was issued, it got no publicity and very little press.

Yet it is magnificent.

Unlike Kubelik’s studio-recorded Die Meistersinger from the 1960s, which had good performances by the singers but merely routine conducting by Kubelik (he was one of those who seldom conducted as well in the studio as he did in performance), this Parsifal gets everything right. It also has something that none of the Knappertsbusch performances do: real, theatrical excitement. Although Kurt Moll sang Gurnemanz on the Karajan recording, he wasn’t nearly as involved with the character there as he is here. Bernd Weikl, one of my favorite Wagnerian baritones of that era (in my view, still vastly underrated), is an excellent Amfortas, just missing the pathos of Van Dam’s interpretation; and I am saying right now that Yvonne Minton is THE most exciting Kundy on records, even better than Martha Mödl of sainted memory. And my readers know how highly I value Mödl.

On top of this, I like James King’s Parsifal better than anyone else’s, and that includes such legendary names as Wolfgang Windgassen, Ranón Vinay and Jon Vickers. Not only is his interpretation the most dramatically varied and interesting of anyone’s, but he had an almost Italianate timbre which I feel suits the character better than the various “baritenors” who have sung it. For those who don’t know this, and there are many, Wagner was a huge fan of Italian opera singers, not most Germans. His favorite bass was Luigi Lablache,, his favorite soprano Adelina Patti and his favorite baritone Mattia Battistini, who he once said sang Wolfram in Tannhäuser better than anyone else. Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, the ill-fated first Tristan who died young of pneumonia, was supposedly one of those rare German tenors with a bright, ringing, Italianate timbre allied to strong projection, and his death put Wagner into a panic as he had planned for him to sing Siegmund and Siegfried in his Ring cycle.

And, to my mind. there’s another reason why the title role should be sung by a brighter, more silvery voice than usual, and that is that Parsifal is Lohengrin’s father—and Lohengrin, like Walther, is generally sung by a lighter, brighter tenor voice than most of the later Wagnerian Heldentenor roles. But just having the right vocal timbre isn’t enough. King gives us, in my opinion, the most complex and believable portrayal of Parsifal on records. Every word must have been carefully considered in his rehearsal of the role, yet he somehow manages to make everything he sings sound spontaneous. And so does Minton as Kundry. A perfect example of what I mean comes in track 9 on the first CD, where Kundry mentions that she knows Parsifal’s mother, and his response, “Mein mutter!” These lines are delivered dramatically but not melodramatically, and they made a great effect.

Yet perhaps the most amazing thing about King’s performance is that, at age 55, his voice was still in pristine condition after nearly a quarter-century singing as a tenor (he originally started as a baritone). This kind of vocal control is virtually impossible to find nowadays, and when you add to the voice itself his superb interpretation and impeccable diction, you have a perfect Parsifal.

Still, the most impressive feature of this Parsifal is that Kubelik keeps things moving. This is the closest I’ve heard of any “modern day” digital recording of Parsifal to the way Karl Muck conducted those long stretches of Acts I & III that he recorded back in the 1920s, and those are generally considered by experts to be the best readings of Parsifal’s music on records. One way that Kubelik accomplishes this is by having all of the singers, but particularly Gurnemanz who has the longest role and often the most boring music to sing, accent the rhythm of the notes. This doesn’t sound like much, but just listen: it makes a huge difference. In his hands, Parsifal is no longer just a quasi-religious singspiel but a real opera with real momentum. This is a living, breathing Parsifal. You never lose interest for a minute, and everything falls into place perfectly. Listen, to cite one example, to that little repeated five-note rising motif about a minute or so into track 2 of CD 2. Kubelik really crates a march rhythm to go along with it, and likewise insists on both his Gurnemanz (Moll) and the chorus to follow that rhythm without over-emphasizing it. When the volume increases (during the choral section), he creates an almost overwhelmingly powerful effect, far more dramatic than in any other recording. Perhaps the only weakness, if such it can be called, is that Mstti Salminen is the youngest and healthiest-sounding Titurel I’ve ever heard in my life. He sounds more like Gurnemanz’s kid brother. But of course I’m just tweaking you a little. He sings magnificently.

I can’t get over how great this performance is. It goes right to the top of my stereo recommendation for this complex and often problematic opera.

—© 2022 Lynn René Bayley

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Arthur Lourié’s Chamber Music

LOURIÉ: Sunrise for Solo Flute. Pastorale de la Volga for Oboe, Bassoon, 2 Violas & Cello. Regina Coeli for Contralto, Oboe & Trumpet. La Flûte à travers le Violon. Dithyrambes for Flute. 2 Études on a Sonnet by Mallarmé: No. 1, Phrases for flute & piano. The Mime for Clarinet Solo. The Flute of Pan. Funeral Games in Honor of Kronos for 3 Flutes, Piano & Cymbals* / Birgit Ramsl, flautist; *Raphael Leone, piccolo; Paolo Beltramini, clarinetist; Candy Grace Ho, contralto; Gottlieb Wallisch, pianist; Egidius Streiff, violinist/violist; Musicians of the Arthur Lourié Festival, Basel: *Lucie Brotbek Prochaskova, alto flautist; Hansjurgen Wädele, oboist; Nicholas Rihs, bassoonist; Simon Lilly, trumpeter; Nicolas Suter, percussionist; Agnès Mauri, violist; Mateusz Paweł Kamiński, cellist / Toccata Classics TOCC0652

Up until about a dozen years ago, Russian-born Arthur Lourié (1892-1966) was pretty much a forgotten composer, but the CD series of his piano works by Moritz Ernst and Czech-born pianist Giorgio Koukl have brought him back into the limelight. Here, Toccata Classics initiates a series of his chamber music, starting with an album focused on works for the flute.

Like several other composers of his era, which was rich in talent but only had room at the top for a select few, poor Lourié was kicked to the curb long before his death in 1966. Born in Russia, he initially chose to stay and contribute to what arts activity there was in the early Soviet Union, but during a state-approved visit to Berlin in 1921 he simply stayed out and never returned, marking him as an expatriate and, of course, an “enemy of the State” along with all the others who got the hell out (Chaliapin, Rachmaninov, Medtner, Milstein, Horowitz, etc.) As I noted in my earlier reviews of his music, he wrote in a style aligned with the French Impressionist school which he combined with some elements of Stravinsky and Busoni, both of whom he befriended upon his escape from Lenin’s Communist hellhole.

What I found odd about this release, considering how little-known Lourié is in the classical music community, is that only three works on this disc—the opening Sunrise, The Flute of Pan and the rather bizarre Regina Coeli for Contralto, Oboe & Trumpet, are recorded here for the first time. but truthfully, I don’t have the time to go hunting around the Internet for earlier recordings of all the other pieces. I’m a good music critic, but I’m not your mother. Go look them up yourself.

Sunrise is a perfect example of how Lourié infused the French style with stronger, somewhat Russian rhythms, but the ensuing Pastorale de la Volga is even better. This is an utterly fascinating piece that seems to consist of unrelated musical gestures in contrasting rhythms, at least at first, using bitonality throughout. It sounds something like Igor Stravinsky played in reverse. Yet strangely enough, this is the earliest piece on this album, written in 1916, the year before the Revolutions, when Lourié was only 24 years old! It may indeed sound a bit fragmented, but it is surely one of the most interesting and original pieces he ever wrote.

Interestingly, the Regina Coeli also sounds like something written around the same time although it dates from eight years later. Interestingly, the vocal soloist, Candy Grace Ho, has a timbre that sounds like a male tenor rather than a female contralto (shades of Ruby Helder!). What I didn’t like on this track was the weird acoustic: both Ho and the instruments are recorded very closely, yet there seems to be some sort of metallic-sounding “whine” around them that gives them all an artificial sound.

La Flûte à travers is in Lourié’s more recognizable style, combining French lyricism with Stravinskian harmony and his own quirky sense of rhythm. The second-movement “Adagio” also has its own quirky rhythms within an essentially tonal base. By contrast with these works, the 1938 Dithyrambes for Solo Flute sound very Debussy-like indeed! Lourié apparently reworked the 2 Études on a Sonnet by Mallarmé over and over for 17 years, because it’s dated 1945-62. but it, too sounds like French Impressionist music meets Stravinsky.

In fact, the later the pieces the more rhythmically and structurally conventional they sound…not that they’re not original in style, but that they’re derivative in form from other works. An exception to this, however, is the fascinating Funeral Games in Honor of Kronos, which almost harks back to his more experimental work of the 1920s. This, perhaps, is what has hampered Louié’s posthumous reputation. Nonetheless, all of the pieces on this CD are played brilliantly and give a good indication of what he was all about.

—© 2022 Lynn René Bayley

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Jim Self Celebrates America!

FISHER: Chicago. WEBB: By the Time I Get to Phoenix. Medley: RODGERS-HAMMERSTEIN/LIEBER-STOLLER: Kansas City. JOEL: New York State of Mind. R. MILLER/B. TROUP: King of Route 66. ORBISON/DORHAM: Blue Bayou Bossa. NEWMAN: I Love L.A. HANLEY: (Back Home Again in) Indiana. GORDON-WARREN: Chattanooga Choo Choo. CORY-CROSS: I Left My Heart in San Francisco. SOUSA/SCHARNBERG: Washington Postmodern. CARMICHAEL: Georgia on My Mind. SELF: S.L.O. Blues. / Jim Self, tuba/CC tuba/F “jimbasso”/Bb cimbasso tuba; Ron Stout, tpt/Fl-hn; Bill Booth, tb/euph; Scott Whitfield, tb; Phil Feather, a-sax/E-hn; Tom Peterson, s-sax/t-sax/ John Chiodini, gtr; Bill Cunliffe, pno/melodica; Ken Wild, bs/el-bs/fretless el-bs; Kendall Kay, dm; Brian Kilgore, perc; Kim Scharnberg, cond / Basset Hound Records BHR 102-20

Although this CD won’t be officially released until January 6, it arrived in my mailbox the day before Election Day 2022, a day of intense hatred and division between our two major political parties. It was extremely pleasant for a change to not get a CD that was ideologically liberal, with the artist sticking his or her chest out and proudly crowing about how Enlightened they are to be pushing a liberal agenda. No, this CD is all about celebrating America through the cultural diversity of its popular music-turned-jazz: songs identified with black artists served up cheek by jowl with songs identified with white ones. Howard De Sylva meets Wilbert Harrison. Roger Miller intersects with Nat “King” Cole. Roy Orbison and Kenny Dorham mix it up. And that’s the way it should be. If we all just stop hating each other and talk things over, we might actually discover that we have more in common with each other than the media would like us to.

More to the point, this CD is a triumph of heavily mixed jazz styles, ranging from 1920s Charleston beats to post-bop modern jazz and funk—an egalitarian view of the jazz spectrum instead of the usual “this is my jazz camp and I’m not budging” posture. Some readers, like myself, may be wondering about the designation “My America 2.” It turns out that Self, a veteran of thousands of movie and TV soundtracks and recordings—he’s sort of the modern-day, West Coast counterpart to the East Coast’s tuba player extraordinaire of the past, Don Butterfield—made “My America,” now considered Vol. 1, 20 years ago. Self considered it a “novelty” record, but surprisingly it took off in sales, so now here is Vol. 2. Both feature the very creative arrangements of Kim Scharnberg, the invisible member of this wonderful 11-piece band.

None of the solos on this CD, not even Self’s. which are wonderful (or those of the excellent trumpeter Ron Stout or trombonist Scott Whitfield), will bowl you over with their innovative approach, but they don’t have to be. Scharnberg’s arrangements are so clever and creative, sometimes in an obvious way and sometimes subtly. that they both delight and surprise the listener, and since virtually every American knows all of these songs (although I admit not knowing the Richard Rodgers version of Kansas City), the end result will bring a smile to your face—something we can all appreciate in these tense times.

Among the excellent solos on this disc I should also add  guitarist John Chiodini. Even in the obviously rock-based arrangement of the Lieber-Stoller Kansas City, he maintains more of an R&B than a rock feel in his solos, and of course R&B, like bop, was an offshoot of swing. (Just ask Lionel Hampton, Louis Jordan or any of the Kansas City bandleaders if you don’t believe me.) But even here, when the band departs from Lieber-Stoller and returns to Rodgers-Hammerstein, Scharnberg’s razor-keen ear for thematic and rhythmic relationships between songs makes the shift sound seamless…and he continues this high-wire balancing act throughout the CD. The opening melody of Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind is played by Bill Cunliffe on the melodica, an instrument that sounds like a cross between a harmonica and an accordion, but Ken Wild’s bass solo is the real standout on this track. And is there another post-1955 song in American history as beautiful as Roy Orbison’s Blue Bayou? Kenny Dorham’s Blue Bossa, though using minor-key harmony, is almost as pretty, yet somehow the switch-over from the first to the second is a bit of a shock. But no matter. The arrangement is, as usual, beautifully voiced by Scharnberg, and Stout’s short trumpet solo is a little gem. And, surprise of surprises, the arrangement ends in 3/4 time!

I admit not being thrilled with the heavier rock influence on Randy Newman’s I Love L.A., but I know that millions of “jazz” lovers just adore the mixing of jazz and rock. In the middle section, they throw in a cute little circus-music beat for a few bars, but not quite enough to save it. Happily, Scharnberg makes up for this with a creative fugue introduction to Indiana, taken at more of a swing than a Dixieland beat. Self’s tuba solo on this one is wonderful; Joe Tarto would definitely have applauded it. (If you don’t know who Joe Tarto was, look him up…he had a legendary career as both a jazz and a classical musician.)

I was curious to hear what Scharenberg did with the Glenn Miller hit Chattanooga Choo Choo. Imagine my surprise to hear it given a soft of funky soul-jazz beat! It doesn’t quite match the melody line of the song, but acts as an effective contrast, as does the alto sax counterpoint to Self’s tuba playing, just before one of his best solos on the record. Who says you can’t make good jazz out of this tune? This band proves you can do it! Later on, during Cunliffe’s piano break, it briefly becomes a boogie-woogie piece. Nice job! Scharnberg scores the opening chorus of I Lift My Heart in San Francisco as a trombone-English horn duet which becomes a trio when Self adds tuba counterpoint. But Scharnberg saves one of his funniest and most innovative ideas for the next track, introducing John Philip Sousa’s Washington Post March with the opening bars of Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra—then turns Sousa’s march into a slow waltz before adding a sort of samba/milonga beat. Seriously…you HAVE to hear this one to believe it! Following this, Georgia on My Mind is reduced to a tuba-piano duet, and quite a fine one, too. The program closes with M.L.O. Blues, a sort of soul/funk/jazz piece.

This will surely be one of my favorite jazz releases of 2023. Go for it!

—© 2022 Lynn René Bayley

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Unknown (and Unfinished) Enescu Pieces

ENESCU: Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A, Op. 11 No. 1 (arr. M. Stern). Impressions roumaines for Solo Violin (arr. R. Lupu). Sonata Torso. Impromptu Concertante in Gb. Regrets (compl. Lupu). Suite No. 1 in G: Dans le style ancient, Op. 3: Adagio (arr. Sandu Albu). Valse Lente “l’Enjôleuse.” Caprice Roumain (compl. Cornel Tăranu) / Sherban Lupu, vln; Ian Hobson, *pno/⁺cond; ^#Viorela Ciucur, pno; ⁺Sinfonia da Camera / Toccata Classics TOCC 0647

Completing unfinished works by dead composers is always a tricky business, largely because the one doing the completing must be fully immersed in the composing style of the original creator—and those who have succeeded the best in such ventures are actually quite rare. Among the best of these have been Deryck Cooke (Mahler Symphony No. 10), Larry Austin (Ives’ “Universe Symphony”), Robert Orledge (Debussy’s “Poe” operas) and the duo of Nicholas Cook and Hermann Dechant (Beethoven’s one-movement Piano Concerto No. 6). Although it has its moments, Alexander Nemtin’s reconstruction of Scriabin’s Mysterium is not altogether convincing.

Here we have a variety of musicians and composers who have attempted over the years to complete some of George Enescu’s many unfinished works. During his relatively long life (1881-1955), Enescu only gave opus numbers to 33 of his compositions, leaving a huge body of music either unnumbered, incomplete, or both. Part of this was due to his extremely busy career as both violinist and conductor; in a way, I’ve always thought of Enescu as the 20th-century Mendelssohn, a composer who was so busy as a performer that his creative life often took second place, but even Mendelssohn left us more finished music than Enescu. And indeed, during his lifetime only a handful of his works were ever programmed and performed in concert. Oddly enough, Mahler was a fan, performing Enescu’s First Orchestral Suite during a tour of the U.S. with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony in 1911.

Musicologist Valentina Sandu-Dediu’s dense, wordy, dry but curiously uninformative liner notes will not help either the music critic or casual listener understand the chronology of these works’ reconstruction. She provides scant hard information on them, choosing rather to dance around the edges of her subject. I’m hoping that someone boils her in oil for this, as it makes individual investigation of each and every piece a chore for the inquisitive listener. Sandu-Dediu gives us no information at all as to who completed the 1903 Impromptu Concertante, and there is no information on who Marcel Stern or Sandu Albu, who completed Enescu pieces decades ago, are or what their contribution is. So I can’t tell you either.

We thus must simply rely on our ears and determine how good or effective this music is. Since the opening Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 has an opus number (Op. 11, No. 1), I would have to assume that this was a published work. Like other Romanian rhapsodies, it’s a charming but lightweight piece, with a middle section reminiscent of Fritz Kreisler’s Viennese bonbons, but of course there’s always a place for music like this provided it is well composed, and this one certainly is. It also doesn’t hurt that Lupu has this style in his blood, as Kreisler (but few if any others) had for his music; it is played with life, verve, and infinite gradations of tone color.

Indeed, it is as much Lupu’s strong emotional connection to these scores, as much as the music itself, which lead one to consider this album favorably. The Impressions Roumaines, for instance, is not one of Enescu’s strongest or most original pieces by a long shot, but the way Lupu completed the score and plays it almost convinces you that it’s a masterpiece.

As one might expect, a strong flavor of Rumanian folk music permeates these scores, and although Enescu never quite took this music to the harmonic extremes that Bartók did with Hungarian folk music, he was a good enough composer to continually add little harmonic twists and turns, often stepwise chromatic changes, to enhance one’s listening experience. This is clearly audible in the Sonata Torso from 1911, which is played exactly as he left it. It was written down sometime between Enescu’s Second and Third published violin sonatas. This one has apparently been known for some time; this is one of only four pieces on this CD that are not first-ever recordings. Although Enescu begins this one-movement sonata with a characteristically Rumanian melody (and harmonies), it becomes much more serious and rather different in its development section, utilizing a very deliberate formal rhythm, quite different from the “swing” of his more strongly folk-influenced scores.

As one goes through the album, it’s fairly easy to decide just from listening which are the earlier works, since before about 1908 nearly all of his music was of a lighter character, more in the nature of encore pieces, with the Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 being among the most complex. The 1903 Impromptu Concertante is so lightweight as to sound like a trifle, even in Lupu’s very skilled hands. Regrets (1898) has a few interesting harmonic touches in it, particularly in the opening section for the piano, but again, not enough to commend it. Indeed, this entire middle section of the CD between the Sonata Torso and the Caprice Roumain pretty much consists of these early fluff pieces. Some people really like this stuff. I don’t.

Happily, we end with a good piece from Enescu’s late days, the Caprice Roumain for violin and orchestra, completed by Cornel Tăranu and Lupu. It’s another one of those “Rumanian Rhapsody” sort of pieces, only with somewhat more sophisticated harmonies than the ones he was using in 1901. Parts of the first movement almost have an Arabian feel to the music although it is clearly based on Rumanian sources.

A bit of a mixed review, then. All of the music is superbly played by Lupu, who does his best to sell the product, but the over-sweet and undernourished gumdrops in the middle of the disc rather degrade it a little for me, but you may feel very differently about these pieces.

—© 2022 Lynn René Bayley

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Peter Donohoe’s Brilliant Haydn

HAYDN: Variations on “Gott er halte den Kaiser.” Keyboard Sonatas: in D, Hob. XVI:42; in A, Hob.XVI:26; in D, Hob.XVI:51; in C, Hob. XVI:48; in F, Hob. XVI:29; in Eb, Hob. XVI:28; in Bb, Hob. XVI:18; F, Hob. XVI:23; in Eb, Hob. XVI:49. Divertimenti: in Ab, Hob. XVI:46; in Bb, Hob. XVI:2d  / Peter Donohoe, pianist / Signum Classics SIGCD 726

As I put it in my “throw down the gauntlet” article, I’m pretty much through with reviewing new recordings of old-timey classical except for a very few composers whose music I really like and for those very few performers who I know I can trust to give me something worth hearing when playing or singing it. British pianist Peter Donohoe is one such, and he earned my trust by making the ONLY recordings of Bartók’s Piano Concerti in which he plays the instrument in a manner very similar to the way the composer played…and that is an exceedingly rare event.

Of course we have absolutely no idea how Haydn played the piano, but there are clues inherent in his music. Nearly everything Haydn wrote (there are exceptions, of course) is not only well constructed but also has a certain quirkiness in its construction as well as a puckish sense of humor that he simply could not repress. It is because of this that his operas are just about the only works in his oeuvre that don’t work very well, since he simply had no real talent for matching music to the dramatic mood of the situation. He wrote Haydn-esque music; it was charming and somewhat interesting, but not dramatic in the operatic sense. (The same was true of his friend, J.C. Bach.)

Imagine my surprise, upon starting the first CD, to hear Donohoe playing the tune we now know as “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles”!! But apparently in those years, it bore the alternate title of “God save the Kaiser [Emperor]”…similar, but not identical. And of course, in those days, the Kaiser wasn’t stomping all over Europe as Kaiser Wilhelm II did during World War I. So I guess it’s politically harmless in context.

Donohoe’s pianistic approach to Haydn is entirely different from his approach to Bartók. Here he uses a brighter, leaner-sounding piano to achieve crystal clarity in the voicings, and also plays the music with a wonderfully insouciant rhythmic lilt wholly appropriate to Haydn.  Occasionally, in slow passages, he also introduces slight but telling moments of rubato, which is also stylistically appropriate. And I will go further: the presence of so many (good) recordings of Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart and Haydn keyboard music played on modern pianos gives lie to the rigorous academic religion of “straight tone” in string playing. If you are to be truly authentic, none of this keyboard music should be played on anything but a harpsichord or one of those dinky-sounding “tangent pianos” of the era, yet the very same cultures (mostly British, German, Austrian and French) who absolutely insist on solo string players and orchestral string sections all playing with constant straight tone, without rubato or portamento which they ALL used back then, is historically incorrect. And I will go to my grave trying to impress on you that 18th- and 19th-century string players almost always used a light vibrato on sustained notes (with portamento and rubato), only resorting to straight tone to aid facilitation in the fast passages.

But back to Donohoe’s Haydn. These are absolutely magical performances. Except for Wanda Landowska (on both harpsichord and piano) and Imogen Cooper, these are absolutely the finest performances of Haydn’s keyboard music I’ve ever heard. One can easily delve into each and every movement of each sonata and describe in detail what Donohoe does here, but on the one hand that would be self-defeating because it would take away the element of surprise you will get from listening to this recording, and on the other it would be tedious to read whereas it is delightful to listen to.

Indeed, Donohoe is having so much fun with these pieces that je keeps you engaged from start to finish, much like Michael Korstick’s recent set of Scarlatti sonatas (to which I gave a rave review). In fact, Donohoe’s sense of rhythm is even a bit “springier,” if you know what I mean, than Korstick’s; there is almost always a hint or a touch of syncopation in his playing, certainly not in a jazzy way but in a way that makes every note and phrase bounce. And interestingly, even when Donohoe suddenly introduces a moment of rubato or a ludtpausen into the music, one never feels that he is slowing things down because even these moments have an underlying bounce to them, thus it all holds together. This proves especially important in the slow movements, such as the first-movement “Andante con espressione” of the Sonata in C, Hob.XVI:48, where Donohoe also uses interesting volume shifts in the accented notes to hold one’s interest—and make the movement less soporific. And in the ensuing “Rondo: Presto,” Donohoe almost makes the music laugh as well as sing! There’s clearly a touch of Chico Marx in his approach, and believe it or not, it works.

One will also note that Haydn, like his colleague Mozart, had a talent for playing some serious moments against the lighter ones: chiaroscuro, they called it. And there are so many passages in these sonatas where Haydn suddenly indulges in harmonic shifts, either from major to minor or vice-versa, as well as those into neighboring keys or using chromatic passages and/or modal scales, that he continually holds your interest. You simply cannot predict exactly how he is going to develop a movement; he always has an element or two of surprise up his sleeve.

I would also like to praise the recorded sound on this album. Unlike Donohoe’s Bartók concerti, which had a somewhat dry sound, these Haydn sonatas have just enough natural reverb around the instrument to give it a nice ring without becoming too much like an echo chamber. But imagine my surprise to discover that these recordings were made in December 2019, three years ago! Why on earth did they wait so long before releasing them? Possibly because this is listed as Volumes 1 & 2 of Haydn’s piano works. They may have wanted to wait until he had another volume or two in the can before releasing this one, and with the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 it might have been difficult, if not impossible, to safely record another volume.

Of course, Haydn never intended that you should sit through five or six of his sonatas at a time, as you will do when listening to these CDs, and although Donohoe does indeed make your listening worthwhile, I suggest taking a break every three sonatas just to clear your mind for the next sequence. Otherwise, this is an absolutely stunning achievement, and I surely look forward to Vols. 3 & 4.

—© 2022 Lynn René Bayley

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Nastasi Plays 20th-Century Flute Music

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DEBUSSY: Syrinx. KARGELERT: Sonata Appasasionata in Bb min. HONEGGER: Danse de la chêvre. FERROUD: 3 Pieces: 1. Bergère captive. HINDEMITH: 8 Pieces for Flute. DE LORENZO: Suite mythologique: Pan. LAUBER: Prelude et Fugue: Prelude. RIVIER: Oiseaux tendres. BOZZA: Image, Op. 38. IBERT: Piece. VARÈSE: Density. JOLIVET: 6 Incantations: No. 3, Pour que la maisson soit riche; No. 4, Pour une communion sereine. STERN: Deux pieces: Iberica. KOECHLIN: Flute Sonatine, Op. 184: Lento. SCHNEIDER: Flute Sonata, Op. 53: Allegretto. RAPHAEL: Flute Sonata No. 2, Op. 46: II, Sehr launisch und schrullig. DRESSLER: Sonate Op. 10: Allegretto. ESCHER: Sonata Op. 16: Largo-vivace. V. MARTIN: Deux Incantations: II. SZERVÁNSZKY: 5 Konzertstudien: Scherzo. FUKUSHIMA: Requiem. BERIO: Sequenza I / Mirjam Nastasi, flautist / Ars Produktion ARS 38104

Here is Miarjam Nastasi’s Vol. 4 of flute music through the ages, this one concentrating on 20th-century flute music written between 1913 and 1958. In addition to the “usual suspects,” Debussy, Honegger, Hindemith, Ibert, Jolivet, Koechlin and Berio, she includes a piece by the enormously talented but sadly short-lived Pierre Octave Ferroud, the oft-mentioned but seldom-played Edgard Varèse, and such obscure names as Sigfrid Kargelert, Leonardo de Lorenzo, Joseph Lauber, Eugène Bozza, Marcel Stern, Willy Schneider, Gunter Raphael, Johannes Dressler, Rudolf Escher, Victor Martin (born in 1940 and still with us; this piece was written when he was only 18 years old), Endre Szervánsky and Kazuo Fukushima.

It was wise of her to start with Debussy’s Syrinx, not just because it’s the earliest piece in this set but because it’s so well known that one can easily gauge Nastasi’s skills going forward. As usual, she plays it more structurally and less romantically in feeling than most other flautists, emphasizing the music’s structure more than its “ambient” qualities. Interestingly, Kargelert’s Sonata Appassionata sounds like a somewhat more angular cousin of Debussy, using interesting arpeggios in various modes that lay just a shade outside of normal tonality yet tying them in to connecting passages that are quite tonal indeed.

One lesson to be learned in the earliest of these pieces, like the Kargelert Sonata, is the way that early 20th-century composers grew the flute-writing tradition out of the 19th century format and adapted it to more thoughtful and less “pleasurable” musical forms. In this context, even Hindemith’s 8 Pieces for Flute are, for him, much more lyrical than his writing for solo string instruments around the same tine (1927). Bozza’s Image opens with a figure that could have been borrowed from Asian flute music. Much to my surprise, Varèse’s Density is even more lyrical and less intentionally shocking and edgy than most of his output at that time (1936), although there are a few moments of edginess in it. In context, I found Jolivet’s Incantations to be the weakest pieces on the album. Stern’s Iberica is the most charming, a happy little piece that almost hearkens back to the 19th century, while Koechlin’s Flute Sonatina is clearly the most solemn and serious in both structure and mood. Schneider’s flute sonata, though a bit lighter in mood, uses chromatic stepwise arpeggios as a means of creating his theme and its variants.

This is an extremely interesting and, for the most part, very accessible album of “early modern” flute pieces, played by a master.

—© 2022 Lynn René Bayley

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Nastasi Plays Romantic-Era Flute Music

DROUET: 3 Cadences. Préludes Nos. 3 & 4. KUHLAU: Divertimento in G. 3 Fantasies, Op. 38.  KELLER: Fantasia in G min. FÜRSTENAU: 4 Amusements for Solo Flute. Flötenschule, Op. 42 Nos. 78, 79, & 83. KUMMER: Fantasies, Op. 33: No. 1 in D; No. 2 in C. MERCADANTE: Variations in F on an aria from Rossini’s “Armide.” BRICCIALDI: Adagio in C. GARIBOLDI: Capriccio sopra un tema arabo in A min. DONJON: Élégie. KÖHLER: Adagio patetico / Mirjam Nastasi, flautist / Ars Produktion ARS38103-1

Several years ago, I reviewed Vol. 5 of Dutch flautist Mirjam Nastasi’s series of solo flute CDs, “Modern 1960 through 2000,” and gave it a rave review, but at the time I was less inclined to review her recordings of pre-1900 flute music. Since her focus has always been on contemporary music, however, I decided to give Vol. 3, “Romantik,” a spin, in part because the list of composers she plays here is a highly unusual one. Indeed, the only two names here I was previously familiar with were Friedrich Kuhlau and Saverio Mercadante, and I really only knew the latter as an opera composer. In fact, I wonder how many of those reading this review are familiar with the music of Louis Drouet, Charles Keller, Anton B. Fürstenau, Kaspar Klimmer, Giulio Gariboldi or Jean Donjon.

One thing I noted when reviewing Vol. 5 was Nastasi’s bright, large tone and crisp, no-nonsense phrasing, and this is what she brings to these pieces as well. This is no wimpy, breathy, “pretty” flute player tiptoeing through the tulips of the flute accompaniments and cadenzas of Donizetti, but a serious musician who emphasizes the structure of each piece she plays. Although Mozart wrote two flute concerti, he was said to have disliked the instrument because it was pretty but not expressive. Had he heard Nastasi, I think he might have changed his mind. She can even play subtle gradations of volume in these pieces, which gives them a more interesting profile. This is playing on the level of the two greatest flute players I ever heard, Claude Monteux and James Galway, who also might have pleased Mozart.

Melodically, of course, these are still pieces based on nice tunes to please the masses, but by emphasizing rhythm and nuance, Nastasi is able to bring out more of the music’s structure. The first piece in which I was aware of this particular focus was in Kuhlau’s Divertimento No. 5 in G, a fairly interesting work with sections in different tempi. As in the cases of both Monteux (who I only saw once) and Galway (who I saw twice), her large, penetrating sound and outstanding musicianship allows her to get to the heart of each piece. At times, as in Kuhlau’s Fantasy No. 1, one can almost hear the music as a reduction of a piece written for an orchestra rather than a solo instrument; using one’s imagination, it is not terribly difficult to mentally “fill in” other parts, of which this seems to only be the top line. In any case, this piece clearly has an interesting structure. And Ariette No. 3 is, of all things, a set of variations on Mozart’s “Batti, batti, o bel Masetto” from Don Giovanni! (As variations go, they’re nowhere near the level of Beethoven’s or Art Tatum’s, but they’re not as overly-ornamented as Liszt’s.) In some of the other pieces, one can hear different composers’ attempts to write music of substance that just happened to be written for the flute, such as the Kummer Fantasies.

Although Mercadante’s variations on an aria from Rossini’s Armide is not all that musically interesting as a theme, he cleverly worked it into a virtuoso tour-de-force, complete with those little rhythmic figures in which the flute player appears to be performing a duet although he or she is only one instrument.

Indeed, as the CD plays on, you realize that several of these pieces are quite good, among them Charles Keller’s Fantasia in G minor and the second and third of Fürstenau’s Amusements, with their quirky syncopations, all of which Nastasi plays as if in her sleep.

The bottom line is that Nastasi is one of those very rare top-tier flautists who knows how to make her instrument “talk,” thus nearly everything she does is worth hearing. This disc is no exception.

—© 2022 Lynn René Bayley

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McGill Plays “American Stories”

DANIELPOUR: Four Angels. J. LEE III: Quintet. SHIRLEY: High Sierra Sonata. COLEMAN: Shotgun Houses / Anthony McGill, clarinetist; Pacifica Qrt / Çedille CDR 90000 216

Here is an interesting album of contemporary American music played by veteran clarinetist Anthony McGill, who has worked as a soloist with various American orchestras as well as being an active chamber musician. He is paired on this album by the well-known Pacifica Quartet.

First up is the best-known composer of the four, Richard Danielpour, who tends to write in a tonal, accessible style yet who always seems to include in that music elements of subtle yet advanced harmonies to make it interesting. Four Angels, composed specifically for McGill and the Catalyst Quartet, is no exception: a lyrical, melodic theme that suddenly morphs a couple of minutes into the piece as edgier harmonies and rhythms suddenly erupt. Yet the music always seems to return to its lyrical roots as it continues to develop. An interesting feature of this piece is that Danielpour has scored the string quartet in a generally lower range than usual. Another is that he includes brief solos for cello, violin and viola to interact with the clarinet, which generally meanders through the piece. It is more of a “mood” piece than one designed to engage an active musical mind, but as I say, there are those edgy moments that keeps one listening.

I was not previously familiar with James Lee III (b. 1973), who studied both composition and conducting. His works have been performed by the Detroit, Baltimore, Soulful, Philadelphia, Memphis, Indianapolis and National Symphony Orchestras. In the liner notes, the composer indicates that his Quintet was “inspired by historical aspects of indigenous Americans,” yet the first uses a shofar which is not historically an instrument of indigenous Americans but of the Jewish people (of which I am technically one since my mother was Jewish). But as I’ve said many times, the inspiration for any piece of music means very little if the piece is not a good one. Lee’s music is rather interesting, using unusual rhythmic and harmonic figures including a fair amount of syncopation (but not really jazz syncopation). Nonetheless, the movement inspired by the shofar actually sounds more inspired by klezmer music, and is quite interesting. (In the notes, Lee also indicates that this “inverted shofar theme” can be heard in both Nathaniel Dett’s The Ordering of Moses and William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony.) At heart, however, this music too is relatively tonal and tuneful. The second movement, which supposedly alludes to the Choctaw people, contains no Native American themes but is also rhythmically lively and fun to listen to, including some upward swoops (fast portamento notes) played by both the clarinet and the strings. In the third movement, the music becomes more hectic and disjointed, representing the uprooting of native Americans from their ancestral homelands. but in the end Lee celebrates the ethnic diversity of America by concluding with a brief, happy dance which he references to “An Emblem of America.” It is indeed joyous, but in a quirky, irregular meter as if danced by someone with wobbly legs!

Ben Shirley, a composer born in Berlin but also raised in California and Texas, contributes the High Sierra Sonata. This is a somewhat (but not entirely) more conventional clarinet quintet, using the strings like a small orchestra behind the wind soloist. This piece was inspired by Shirley’s experiences as a volunteer at an “aid station” in the High Sierra mountains. It, too, is largely tonal with some interesting rhythmic devices. As the first movement moves from its slow opening to its livelier second half, Shirley uses open harmonies similar to those employed by Aaron Copland in his “Americana” pieces. No composers ever go broke writing in this style! My complaint about this piece, however, is that it goes on too long and says very little—yet says very little over and over and over again. Shirley has some good musical ideas, and we must consider that to Shirley these passages may be more meaningful by helping him recall his experiences than they are for us, but I think he needs an editor to cut the superfluous passages out. I also got the impression that the music would have been much more effective if it had been written for clarinet, piano, and perhaps one string instrument. The quartet just didn’t seem to me to have the exact right “feel” for this music.

Shotgun Houses by Valerie Coleman, another composer I was not previously familiar with, is described as the first of “three installments that celebrate the life of Muhammad Ali, a man who carried the pride of Louisville with him everywhere throughout his career.” to which I would also add that he was a Republican and loved country music (believe it or not)!! The three movements, titled “ShotGun Houses,” “Grand Ave.” and “Rome 1960” refer to places and incidents in his early life. Coleman’s music, though also tonal and not terribly complex, struck me as some of the most creative in the entire album—creative in the sense that it sounded much more the product of inspiration and not merely working out themes in one’s mind. Coleman captures her moods as well as Danielpour and Lee, but the musical progression is more varied and unusual. There are also moments here where she “spreads out” the string quartet writing, placing the cello very low in its range while the violins play fairly high. The clarinet most often occupies a space in the middle, and here it gets much “meatier” music to play—music that morphs and develops and really says something. I was most impressed with “Rome1960,” where Coleman uses fast, rhythmic figures on the cello as a springboard for the movement, though eventually breaking up the meter with some apposite figures that seem to run backwards. It’s quite an inventive as well as a thrilling piece!

This, then, is a very nice album, the kind one can use to take a mental break from the more convoluted modern music out there. McGill has a rich, luscious tone and outstanding musicianship if not quite a real personality like Don Byron or Richard Stoltzman. The sound is also outstanding, giving a bit of natural room reverb to the instruments without having them wallowing in an echo.

—© 2022 Lynn René Bayley

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