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CD Reviews
(2011)
THE 18TH CENTURY AMERICAN OVERTURE
THE RED VIOLIN CONCERTO / PHANTASMAGORIA -- music by John Corigliano
SYMPHONIES NOS. 5 and 6 -- music by Roy Harris
SYMPHONY IN F#/ MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING --
music by Erich Wolfgang KorngoldPIANO MUSIC I: CIRCLES OF FIRE -- music of George Rochberg
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The 18th Century American Overture
10 Tracks (68:25)
Music composed by James Hewitt, Benjamin Carr, and Alexander Reinagle. Orchestrations reconstructed by Bertil van Boer.
Siinofnia Finlandia Jyvaskyla conducted by Patrick Gallois. Album produced and engineered by Sean Lewis. Recorded at Hankasalmi Church, Jyvaskyla, Finland, May 4-8, 2009. Notes by Bertil van Boer.
Naxos 8.55965
Rating: ****
The title for this new Naxos CD might be the first of several things to make one pause. Musicologist Bertil van Boer has pulled together performing editions of the seven surviving works from three immigrants forging a life in the New World during the 18 th century. In some respects, the music would seem to have more in common with English tastes of the period. Where the fun, and uniqueness, comes in these pieces though is in their collections of popular tunes and marches of the time. While there were some immigrant orchestras beginning to appear in primary city centers, the orchestra societies were still a ways off. The pieces here mostly survive in piano transcriptions for parlor enjoyment and Boer needed to examine period documents to arrive at an essential sound for these works.
The pieces on the disc are of a particular type that is similar to a pastiche. The overtures are essentially musical themes strung together from a genre that was in vogue in London during the period. These “occasional” or “medley” overtures were to the 18 th century what pops arrangement of nationalist tunes might be to our own time. What is interesting is that the opportunity to hear these works helps create an early foundation for the sorts of nationalist music that would be an integral part of America’s musical heritage into the 19 th Century as the nation forged its identity. The pieces reveal political intentions as well by using titles such as “Federal” or “Federalist.” Of course the real tantalizing pieces, like a battle work, have been lost to history. Instead, we do get to hear any number of permutations of “Yankee Doodle” which at times border on the hilarious.
The CD opens with the 1798 Medley Overture in D minor-major by James Hewitt (1770-1827) which begins with a quotation from Mozart’s Piano Concertoin d. Some adjustments include shifting oboe parts to clarinets. The piece then moves on to a series of dance-like segments featuring interesting dotted rhythms—including a popular Irish jig that breaks up a slow waltz-like section. The effect is perhaps intentionally humorous with a sort of Haydn-esque wit shining through. If you know your early American folksong and popular tune book, there are plenty of them here to test yourself. The appearance of “Yankee Doodle” is inevitable. Imagine it in a late-Classical dress and you will get a sense of what this, and other works on the recording will be like. Hewitt’s New Medley Overture (1799) is essentially more of the same now in C-major. After all why would you perform the same piece from last season! The little snap rhythms are in abundance here with often simple melodies played against string accompaniment.
Benjamin Carr’s (1768-1831) Federal Overture from 1794 has Mozart in mind as well and its little take on “Yankee Doodle” is part of a near-Beethoven like opening. It includes an arrangement of “Le Marseillaise” as well. Whether some of the woodwind work is Carr’s invention or Boer’s arranging of parts remains to be seen, but they are in that late-18 th century style that was at least in the air. Imagine the song, “Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be” in this serious sounding clothing alongside “The Irish Washerwoman” and again you will get a feel for the thrust of the piece. Coming a couple years later, Hewitt’s New Federal Overture still inserts some Mozart into the plethora of popular tunes heard also in Carr’s work.
The Scottish immigrant Alexander Reinagle is represented by three works all saved for the final portion of the CD. As one would expect, Reinagle’s roots are on firmer display with more music from his own homeland being integrated into the new found melodies of America. His string writing wavers between an early Classical style and that of the later period often within the same piece. But, again it is the rhythmic vitality that makes the pieces fascinating to listen to and in a couple of spots the harmonic and melodic movement of the tunes is quite unlike anything heard in European 18 th century music. It creates room for more open harmonies and musical directions that seem rather odd for the period, though not in the context of the pieces themselves. At times, the suggestion of a drone appears briefly in the music as well. In the Miscellaneous Overture in D (1801—the “newest” work on the release), harmony surprises abound, especially in the first movement’s final folk tune. There is more work for solo strings and the paired winds have a greater function in this piece. The 1794 Occasional Overture and the Overture in G (1787) are cast more in a Mozart-ian orchestral style. All three of his works are cast in three movements. The 1794 work feels a bit more serious in tone but there are still those wonderful inclusions of Scottish and Irish folk songs that are simply fascinating to hear in this style. The transitions into and out of ideas is always well-handled in these pieces that feel less like strung-together medleys than the pieces that make up the first half of the CD.
If nothing else, this release is yet another reminder that what often makes American music unique is that the “popular” and what we would now term “classical” music were always on an equal footing when it came to borrowing a tune. The blurred lines may seem quaint when we hear what we think of as children’s songs are in such classical music. “Yankee Doodle” was a hugely popular song so much so that we forget that it was essentially new when these pieces appeared and hearing it alongside Mozart and Beethoven is truly fascinating. But, what a great way for orchestras to introduce classical music today to a younger generation! Boer’s performing editions would make the perfect complement to orchestras involved in bringing classical music to young audiences. And for music educators, this disc will provide a great entry point to helping young people appreciate the style of the 18 th century and perhaps find some humor in the way familiar songs made their way into classical music.
Gallois and the Finnish orchestra are no strangers to the Mozart and Beethoven sounds being imitated in these works. It is in their fine performances of the folk rhythms that one notes how good this ensemble is and that the recording sessions must have been a bit of fun. Lest we be too dismissive, one is reminded that even in these early works America’s immigrant roots found ways to honor their heritage and their new home.
-- Steven A. Kennedy
Comments regarding this review can be sent to this address: stev4uth@hotmail.com
THE RED VIOLIN CONCERTO / PHANTASMAGORIA
Music composed by John Corigliano
5 Tracks (Playing Time = 61:02)
Performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta. Michael Ludwig, violin soloist in the Violin Concerto. Album produced and edited by Blanton Alspaugh. Engineered by Mark Donahue. Recorded at Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, NY; October 17-19, 2008.
Naxos 8.559671
Rating: ****
Naxos continues their fine series of Corigliano recordings with this entry featuring what is becoming one of the composer’s more popularized works, the violin concerto “based” on THE RED VIOLIN. The Buffalo Philharmonic continues there impressive string of releases under music director JoAnn Falletta which included an earlier release of the composer’s music. That Grammy-winning disc featured music derived from the composer’s first film score, ALTERED STATES, and an odd setting of texts by Bob Dylan.The first work on the disc is based on music from Corigliano’s opera The Ghosts of Versailles. A version of what is now Phantasmagoria premiered as a work written for Yo-Yo Ma and performed by him with Emanuel Ax in its solo setting on a Sony release now a decade old. The Ondine label premiered this orchestral setting about five years ago and we have Naxos to thank for finding a way to bring this work to more people at their reduced price. The spectal quality of the earlier moments of this work feature clusters and sliding harmonics, reminiscent of Corigliano’s ALTERED STATES score. It takes a few minutes for this suite to unfold before the varieties of musical quotations and borrowings begin to appear. The work has three main structural segments that move from ghostly atonal writing, to quotation music, to contemporary orchestral harmonic writing with a tendency toward more post-romantic qualities.
At its core, Phantasmagoria is one of those “musician’s” pieces that tends to create a sense of fun in the discovery of the various styles, thematic quotes or inferences, or harmonies. Things eventually take off in a more delightfully fun way which allows the orchestral sections and soloists to shine. As such, the piece tenuously holds its own between serious and pops-like musical space. It is a work that will grow on the listener and is far more impressive here in its orchestral guise, a wise move by the composer, in what is surely the finest performance it will receive. The final moments are exquisitely realized by the orchestra managing to recall the denser light textures of the work’s opening.
Though it has been seven years since Corigliano’s Violin Concerto based on his score for THE RED VIOLIN appeared, its premiere on Sony featuring Joshua Bell (who performed the music in the film as well) is evidently only part of a larger collection, though copies of the single disc must surely exist. The original film score release featured an adaption “bonus” work cast in the form of a Chaconne which now makes up the concerto’s first movement. The present interpretation by Michael Ludwig holds fairly close to Bell’s performance timings. The performance here is fascinatingly detailed with clearly-defined solo wind and brass lines in a drier acoustic. Falletta seems to let the music flow naturally lending it a freer quality that one tends to expect when a new piece has had some distance between the present and its first appearance.
Ludwig gets tremendous background support and gives a fairly impassioned performance that features a bit more interpretive sliding to reach higher pitch values and which at times features attacks and articulation that are less intense then Bell’s approach. Ludwig approaches this work as a solo concerto taking the thematic content within the context of the present work and allowing his interpretation to grow out the piece itself and not its precursors. This makes his “Chaconne” sound a lot more like a new twenty-first century concerto with the film’s themes feeling like quotation music. His performance of the first movement is perhaps not as “perfect” as Bell’s but somehow he manages to bring to the work a deeper sense of dramatic intensity that is matched by Falletta’s support with the Buffalo players who really shine throughout the entire performance.
The second movement scherzo is superbly realized by soloist and orchestra that continues to build on what is a more mature performance overall that allows things to unfold in such seeming effortlessness. The third movement really gives us a sense of Ludwig’s lyrical expressive musicality and it is a gorgeously realized performance captured here.
Overall this is a perfect introduction to Corigliano’s orchestral concert music. Falletta’s shaping of orchestral textures and tempi allow her to show off the amazing musicians of the Buffalo Philharmonic to be more than just another regional orchestra. Ludwig’s performance is equally valid and seems to relax a bit more as the work progresses. It is the performance of a mature artist interested in performing this piece as a solo concert work on its own terms rather than simply mimicking the work’s very first recording. The result is a valid interpretation that works its way through the tension between romantically-conceived themes and contemporary orchestral writing. It might even open the door for others to consider picking up the work as well. The problem with the piece is that one has to take the final three movements as the balance to an overlong opening one and this is easier to do when one feels the third movement as a long introduction to the work’s gradually accelerating finale.
Easily recommendable even to those who have grown accustomed to Bell’s performance for precisely the alternate approach needed to keep this work from becoming a sterile recorded monument.
--Steven A. Kennedy
Comments regarding this review can be sent to this address: stev4uth@hotmail.com
SYMPHONIES NOS. 5 anf 6 / ACCELERATION
Music composed by Roy Harris
8 Tracks (61:44)
The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop. Album produced and engineered by Tim Handley. Recorded in the Concert Hall, Lighthouse, Poole, UK, May 9 th and 10 th, 2008. Notes by David Truslove.
Naxos 8.559609
Rating: ****
Roy Harris is one of our great American symphonists. That said his music is sadly relatively unknown unless you happen to catch a musical survey course that focuses on American music history. Even then he tends to be overshadowed by Copland and a fairly dismissive snobbishness in academia to the continuation of the Romantic tradition. His name tended to rest on two works. Leonard Bernstein championed the truly superb Third Symphony which has seen a good number or recordings over the years (at least one performance tends to stay in the catalogue. The First Symphony was introduced in Boston under Koussevitzky and that performance was captured on tape (though the beginning was frustratingly cut off) and has appeared on historic reissues. Fortunately, Naxos has stepped in to correct a musical wrong by providing what looks to be a slow general overview of his music in their American Classics series.
Naxos has released four of Harris’ symphonies on two discs. It was Marin Alsop’s, which included the aforementioned Third Symphony that began to give music lovers hope that more was to come. It has been a bit of a wait, but we now have the present release with recordings of two important symphonies from the early 1940s. The earlier release was with the Colorado Symphony. For this one, Marin Alsop returns to Bournemouth where she is conductor emeritus. Alsop was a protégé of Bernstein, so no doubt gained a love for these pieces from someone who definitely understood their musical value. Her sensitive performances are a welcome addition to the catalogue.
The disc opens with one of Harris’ most powerful programmatic symphonies, subtitled “Gettysburg.” This sixth symphonic exercise has a truly cinematic scope that rises to the surface in its fascinating depiction of battle in its second movement titled “Conflict.” Musical tone painting is a hallmark of this work which begins quietly in “Awakening.” This opening movement features a perfect encapsulation of Harris’ symphonic style with smaller motivic ideas presented out of a mass of swirling sound that grows in intensity. There is an almost Sibelian quality to the way these motives swirl together for a long thematic line that closes off the movement (similar to Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony). The tension of war shifts into an elegiac third movement, “Dedication.” An arch-like formal structure gives the feel of a spun out melodic idea as the movement opens which gives way to a gorgeously scored central section with woodwinds and muted brass. It is an interesting exercise in motivic and harmonic movement over a pedal point as well. The concluding “Affirmation” brings brass to the forefront again in a massive triple fugue based on an earlier work of his (American Creed). Reminiscent of the climactic moments of the Third, the soaring brass bring the work to a rousing conclusion. The Sixth Symphony is one of American music’s treasures. It is a different sort of Americana than the one Copland was developing practically at the same time. It is a work that illustrates the hybrid nature of mid-century American composers with a foot in tradition and in contemporary harmonic language that perhaps finds it parent in symphonists like Bruckner. It is an important work with allegorical connotations to those who perhaps experienced it in such a way as World War II drove to a hopeful conclusion.
The Fifth Symphony hails from 1942. This is the absolute music of symphonic writing with nothing to guide us except our own program. But its numerical position suggests the potential for seriousness and Harris intended to reference the Russian’s triumphal defeat of the Nazis. The opening movement features a number of calls-to-arms and a rhythmic figure suggesting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. It is a rich textural opening that comes with great force, though seems to have a bit of difficulty wrapping up. The central movement is cast in three sections beginning with a funeral march, moving into a central string section in search of a theme, and concluding with an almost chorale-like finish between brass and strings. It is here where one recalls Shostakovich’s symphonic struggle with World War II and a need to represent in music the terrors, hope, and ultimate overthrow of invasion. Fate comes knocking in a four-note motif that appears in the opening bars of the final movement. Then we are off and running as Harris moves through a series of fascinatingly orchestrated variations on this little motive culminating in a heroic conclusion reminiscent of Beethoven.
In addition to the two symphonies, the disc is rounded off with a recording of Acceleration from 1941. The interest in this miniature is its condensed presentation of Harris’ style. It also would be recycled for the Sixth Symphony. That might be the reason why American Creed was not added to this disc, though it would have been a worthy inclusion. The 14-minute piece would have really filled out this disc. No doubt it will appear soon if Alsop continues the survey of symphonic pieces.
The performance of the Sixth Symphony is simply amazing. The Fifth is likewise a worthy recording and performance. The shaping of thematic lines, while sometimes quite angular, tend to have a sensitivity that allows them to feel less disjointed than might otherwise be the case. The orchestra seems to respond well to her direction in committed performances. These are richly-recorded in a warm acoustic that allows for interior details to be heard. The balance is truly fascinating. If you listen carefully to the central portion of the Fifth Symphony’s second movement, you can discern the various instrumental choirs vying within the texture. There is a flute line that matches the strings at times that never is artificially enhanced allowing for the subtlety of the scoring to be greatly appreciated.
Any release of American symphonic music is an event to be celebrated. There is only one other hard to find release of the Sixth from Albany Records featuring the Pacific Symphony with Keith Clark conducting. Alsop’s tempos are fairly close to Clark’s though she takes slightly more time in “Conflict” and “Affirmation.” For the Fifth, you need to hunt down a re-issue of an old Louisville Orchestra recording (which is worth acquiring for the recording of Harris’ Violin Concerto).
Alsop continues to provide fantastic performances regardless of the nationality of the music she espouses but here we have two important works worthy of attention.
Too often fans of American symphonic music are so happy to have a recording of this music that they will put up with anything. Fortunately, Naxos is providing us with an opportunity to truly hear this music in committed performances given the same loving attention that we would expect from European masters. Even casual listeners will find much to admire in the Sixth. The rest is simply more of a wonderful thing. Highly recommended!
--Steven A. Kennedy
Comments regarding this review can be sent to this address: stev4uth@hotmail.com
Symphony in F#, Op. 40/Much Ado About Nothing
Music composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold
9 Tracks (Playing Time = 67:41)
Album produced and edited by Wolfram Nehls. Performed by the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Marc Albrecht. Engineering by Philipp Knop. Surround mix by Wolfram Nehls and Philipp Knop. Design by Netherlads.
PentaTone Classics 5186 373
Rating: ****
The music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold is finally getting its due, something which the composer never would have thought possible perhaps. Having created classic film scores for Errol Flynn films in the 1930s, the composer slowly tried to recapture some of the attention of the concert world. Unfortunately, the rich post-romantic music of the likes of Zemlinsky and Richard Strauss was already being somewhat overshadowed by a host of composers exploring atonal music and jazz rhythms. But, the communicability of Korngold’s music in and out of the concert hall perhaps meant that inevitably its day would come.
While the Violin Concerto appears to have now entered the standard repertoire, his other orchestral pieces are only slowly doing so. His one work in the genre, the Symphony in F#, Op. 40, has five-six current recordings in the catalogue each with its merits. This new release on PentaTone comes with the added multi-channel super audio stereo approach. It features the same coupling as Andre Previn’s superb Deutsche Grammophon recording now over a decade old!
Korngold’s symphony was composed in the first part of the 1950s. He had returned to Austria hoping to restart his concert career only to find that no one wanted to go back to the “good old days” and that he and his music were a relic of the past. Even the committed premiere performance by Wilhelm Furtwangler of the Symphonic Serenade by the Vienna Philharmonic in 1950 was not enough to help Korngold’s hopes come to fruition. He had already begun a symphony while in Vienna and there is a lot of the drama of opera and his film works that can be heard in it. The work bears a dedication to Franklin Delano Roosevelt suggesting his own appreciation for his refuge in America. There may have been some sense that the symphony as a genre was dead by 1950. Copland’s Third Symphony had essentially sealed the genres Americana possibilities. Vaughan-Williams’ massive Sinfonia Antarctica would be completed in 1952 and is a bit interesting with its film music connections as a companion work of far differing style. Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony was also being completed and Shostakovich’s film-like Tenth Symphony was still on the horizon. Korngold’s work then can stand by itself against any and all of these.
It is obvious from the opening bars that Albrecht has spent some time trying to get at the heart of this difficult work and hears it perhaps as an anguished extension of Mahlerian proportions. The visceral edge of the opening brass and percussion punctuations are quite crisp and when this moves on to the more Romantic, lush chromaticism, the contrast is stark and quite dramatic. It is as if these two sounds are truly fighting it out with one another: Austrian symphonic tradition versus Hollywood. The second movement’s scherzo opening zips by at breakneck speed like someone rushing with excitement only to be stopped dead by the starkness of its central section which might be like someone looking at the devastation of a huge battlefield, and yet as the scherzo returns there are moments of great hope that seems to be bittersweet before its massive final bars.
One of the great moments of the symphony is its gorgeous slow movement with recognizable themes from THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX, CAPTAIN BLOOD, and ANTHONY ADVERSE. The minor cast and foreboding shifts make one wonder if these great musical moments from Korngold’s past were being looked at as somehow tragic with a sense of what could have been darkening the composer’s lived reality.
Albrecht’s performance is simply astounding. From the taut opening to the depth of the slower moments of the score, it is obvious that he takes this work on its own merits fully informed of its intended connection to its Austrian predecessors and firmly rooted in the style of Korngold at the same time. This is not a performance that tries to make this a “nice” film music symphony, nor does it try to overstate this as a concert work, instead the performance manages to grab your attention and never hesitates to move through the various episodic moments with great dramatic musical sense. You may not find a better performance of this work and the recording quality is simply amazing. The huge orchestral sections are just overwhelmingly powerful and still clear.
A quick timing comparison of other recordings of the work shows that Albrecht tends towards some faster tempi overall, though nothing ever feels rushed or out of place. Instead one gets an emotionally powerful performance. I have not heard Werner Andreas Albert’s recording of this work in his overview of Korngold’s orchestral music for comparison. The Delos was one of those great appearances of James DePreist on disc (with the Oregon Symphony) and both the Previn (with the London Symphony) and Welser-Most (with the Philadelphia Orchestra) have their plus sides as well. Albrecht’s tempi though seem to work very well as a whole making the structure of the symphony work without collapsing.
Albrecht
DePreist
(Delos 3234)Previn
(DG 453 436)Welser-Most
(EMI 556169)Moderato, ma energico
14:59
15:20
15:55
12:50
Scherzo: Allegro molto-Trio
10:04
10:33
10:32
9:48
Adagio: Lento
15:27
16:57
16:09
14:45
Finale: Allegro gaio
10:30
11:04
10:31
10:11
By itself the performance of the symphony would be enough to recommend this disc. But the companion piece, the incidental music for Much Ado About Nothing will be of interest as well,. This 1918 work for the stage, and a chamber ensemble, was then arranged (1920) as a 5-part concert suite which has been fairly popular in concert halls. Here is where Albrecht’s recording takes on a slight lead over Previn’s in that this release includes the “Overture” for the work (Previn’s recording only has 4 of the movements. Otherwise, the timings and performance are quite similar to that earlier release. The music is simply delightful and is superbly performed and recorded about as well as one could hope.
This is easily one of the best recordings of symphonic music you will hear and it is hard to imagine a better performance of the Korngold symphony. Listener’s may be quite curious to explore the other five releases, especially those with the Strasbourg orchestra which really seems to respond to his leadership. Highly recommended!
--Steven A. Kennedy, 13 November 2010
Comments regarding this review can be sent to this address: stev4uth@hotmail.com
Music composed by George Rochberg.
15 Tracks (70:20) Performed by the Hirsch-Pinkas Piano Duo ( Evan Hirsch and Sally Pinkas). Album produced and engineered by Joel Gordon. Recorded at Spaulding Auditorium, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, December 1998. Notes by George Rochberg and Evan Hirsch. Originally released as Gasparo GSCD-343
Naxos American 8.559631
Rating: ****
George Rochberg (1918-2005) was one of those composers whose name you ran across back in the 1980s and 1990s. Depending on what coast you studied on his music was either raised up, or dismissed. This had a lot to do with ones experience of American serialist composers of which Rochberg was originally one and whether or not one was willing to follow his embracing of more tonal expression after the mid-1960s. By the time Rochberg came to write Circles of Fire in 1996-1997 he was quite capable of discovering ways to meld both expressively. Sometimes serialists who stray from strict writing tend to create music that is more pointillistic aurally. The result can be a series of seemingly disjoint musical phrases but often of a highly expressive nature. It can also result in what seems like utter chaos. Rochberg also was an early proponent of quotation and collage; that is borrowing segments, themes, or ideas from past classics and inserting them in different ways into his own work. All of these things are on display in the present work. The expressiveness of this particular piece in the hands of the Hirsch-Pinkas duo is what helps create the bridge necessary to enter into this strange mostly atonal world.
Rochberg’s piece is filled with 15 mostly brief sections. The work is bookended by a “Solemn Refrain” which helps delineate larger segments of the piece in three interior placements. The first “Chiaroscuro” is an arch-like piece of mostly atonal writing which is followed by a strictly serial “Canonic Variations.” The fourth movement, “Gioco del fuoco” has a great deal of Bartokian playfulness and flirts with tonality in what is the first of the four longer segments at 7 minutes. It is one of the more engaging and stronger movements of the piece. Overall the longer movements are signposts of a sort, this one seeming to focus on chaos of which pianist has the more important material. “Nebulae” is a “free” chance composition with the music allowing both performers and listeners a lengthy repose from the nervous energy that has come before it. It is at the center of the piece and is composed without meter or note values with the duration being determined by the performers. “Sognando” is a slow-moving piece of semi-quotation music with quotations from BrahmsClarinet Sonata, Op. 120, no. 1 and the Intermezzo, Op. 118, no. 4. Here the music is stretched out beyond imagining with a rather dreamlike quality that sometimes is reminiscent of a pianist working slowly through a piece of music. The post-romantic feel of this movement seems out of place in its surroundings but Rochberg’s structural need for this anchor in Romanticism is a perfect match for the fugue (with quotations from Bach), canon, ricercar (a rather short piece of repetitive music that continuously loops until the performers tire of it, hence its title “The Infinite Ricercar”), and other suggestive musical titles and forms explored in the monumental work.
In short, Circles of Fire is a monumental and essential work that encapsulates he different musical expressions of Rochberg’s output. It manages to traverse various musical periods from the Renaissance to the present through the way individual movements are structured or even in the musical language used to communicate Rochberg’s ideas. It may not be the first piano disc you turn to, but there is much to be discovered in this music that a score will help reveal to music students. Though deeply-conceived, the piece still is more than a cerebral musical exercise.
Naxos has managed to snatch up the Gasparo catalogue of which this is a part (originally appearing on Gasparo 343). It might have been nice to have more separation between the two instruments but this is a minor quibble.
Evan Hirsch and Sally Pinkas recorded 5 volumes of Rochberg’s piano music and this launching of that important addition to the Rochberg discography is quite welcome. Once again, great music, well-performed and at a price that allows for trying something new and different—hallmarks of what makes Naxos such a fine label.
-- Steven A. Kennedy
Comments regarding this review can be sent to this address: stev4uth@hotmail.com
5 Tracks (65:04)
Music composed by William Schuman. The Seattle Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Album produced by Adam Stern and Dmitriy Lipay. Engineered by Dmitriy Lipay and John Eagle. Recorded at the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, WA, on October 21 st, 2008 (Symphony); October 3 rd, 2007 (Night Journey); and at the Seattle Opera House, October 15 th, 1991. Notes by Joseph W. Polisi.
Naxos 8.559651
Rating: ****
Back in the 1990s, Delos enticed us all with the expectation of a complete cycle of William Schuman’s symphonies. Gerard Schwarz’s work with the Seattle Symphony on a Hanson cycle in warm sound made the prospect of his Schuman approach quite interesting. A release of the third and fifth was as far as they got until Naxos revived the project of which this is the crowning and final achievement of this five-disc cycle. Schuman’s music wavers between astringency and accessibility and this disc allows for a bit of both sides of this great American composer.
The CD opens with an intense and near perfect performance of Schuman’s Symphony No. 8 from 1962. Schuman eschews traditional orchestral melodic writing instead creating an almost overwhelming study in orchestration, texture, and tempo acceleration. The piece has a distant cousin in the composer’s monumental fourth string quartet from 1950 whose elements are further explored and extended in this piece.
The first movement is a study in dissonance and very close harmony that opens with a slow pulse that Schwarz allows time to flow into the silence with amazing power. As the movement builds in temporal intensity, the intervallic proportions begin to alter slightly and are almost pulled apart by the increased tempo. The movement essentially segues into an arch-like central slow movement with a faster central section. Here longer string lines ebb and flow in an angular idea that along the way is harmonized with extended chordal structures. Once again the music tries very hard to push its way faster into the center but is reigned in to its breaking point. Schwarz manages to create shape to Schuman’s seemingly disjointed lines here and the engineers have managed to capture the different instrumental groupings so that they can be easily heard in the overall texture. The third and final movement moves at a “Presto” tempo but aurally the effect of static motion still occurs. Skittish strings and brass alternate along with some truly fascinating pitched percussion work always referring back to those clashes of slow dissonance from the opening movement. Dissonance seemed to take over the first movement, but here tempo rules insistently driving to the close with the orchestra seeming to want to veer out of control. The winds get a chance to show off here for the first time winding their way around a small pitch level in fits and starts that gradually builds throughout the orchestra in a textural crescendo.
There is but one other recording of this symphony made by Leonard Bernstein back closer to the works premiere. The recording is available with Schuman’s 3 rd and 5 th symphonies and is worthwhile listening, but Schwarz’s new recording will be the one to beat if ever one decides to record this work again. Both performances are quite similar in their timings with Schwarz getting the better of a warmer acoustic and improved digital sound. Though playing to 32 minutes, the symphony is easily one of the composer’s finest pieces.
Bridging the gap between later-century symphonic writing and the post-Americana movement of the 1930s and 1940s is Night Journey. Written for Martha Graham in 1947, the first of four ballets he would compose for her company, Night Journey is perhaps the most familiar and played. The story takes the point of view of Jocasta, the lover and mother of Oedipus. It is both a seminal piece of American Ballet and a defining piece of music in Schuman’s career that allows us to see the fruition of his style in this miniature orchestral form. There are intriguing melodic ideas that spin out endlessly with an almost melancholic turn in the music. The scoring is quite intimate and introspective. Most fascinating for fans of other ballets commissioned by Graham is the overall shape the music takes. Consider comparing this to the more familiar Americana stories scored by Copland and there is a general dramatic structure that begins to emerge. Again, one is always amazed at the way Schuman can manipulate his orchestral textures so effortlessly.
There have been a few recordings of this work that come and go in the catalogue. The most recent was a Koch release from 1991 that featured additional ballets by Menotti and Hindemith also written for Graham. That version of Night Journey ran to nearly 30 minutes under the direction of Andrew Schenk. Both appear to have chosen a 15-instrument version of the score which Schuman prepared in 1981 for smaller ensembles which removes extra repeats and bridges necessary for stage production.
Finally, the disc closes with perhaps one of Schuman’s most popular arrangements from 1964, Ives’ “Variations on ‘ America’.” The piece was premiered at a New York Philharmonic Concert conducted by Andre Kostelanetz and had rarely flagged in popularity. It makes for a delightful and ear-relaxing encore to a quite satisfying performance. (This performance originally appeared on a Delos release of Schuman’s music with these same forces.)
No fan of American music will want to be without this quintessential series of music by one of our great composers of the 20 th century.
-- Steven A. Kennedy
Comments regarding this review can be sent to this address: stev4uth@hotmail.com
Violin Concertos by Miklos Rozsa and
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Violin concertos composed by Miklos Rozsa and Erich Wolfgang Korngold,
Additional music by Manuel Ponce, Arthur Benjamin, and Stephen Foster.9 Tracks (Playing Time = 68:04)
Album produced by Jeremy Hayes.
Featuring Matthew Trusler, violin. Performed by the Dusseldorf Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yasuo Shinozaki.
Ponce and Foster pieces arranged by Jascha Heifetz.
Benjamin piece arranged by William Primrose.
Recorded at Dusseldorf Tonhalle, June 2008.
Recording engineered, mastered, and edited by Patrick Allen. CD Design by Ken Koch.Orchid Music 100005
Rating: ****
The great Jascha Heifetz inspired many composers and a future of hopeful virtuosi. His name and legacy perhaps are a far distant memory with those in a younger generation more focused on the like of Joshua Bell or Gil Shaham. Matthew Trusler is the soloist on this new release from his own label and playing a 1711 Stradivarius. The disc features music identified with Heifetz (who premiered the Korngold after its dedicatee declined) including three little encores to round off a full album. Both the main works on this release come from the pens of two of Hollywood’s giant Golden Age composers. With a talent such as Heifezt’s definitive RCA recordings on the books, it has taken a while for the pieces to gain a new generation of performers. The steep climb to awareness this recording has (new label www.orchidmusic.com, unknown artists) should not deter anyone from what is a truly amazing release featuring great performances and an awesome recorded sound.
The Rozsa Violin Concerto is familiar to fans of the film THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1970) where its material played a key part in the score. Robert MacDuffie with the Atlanta Symphony is a good contemporary yardstick with a Naxos release allowing for a cheaper, though no less finer introduction to the work. Rozsa’s piece is melodically engaging and comes out of a strong Hungarian music tradition that melds the folkish romanticism of Kodaly with Bartok’s more angular writing. It is a harmonically fascinating work which holds its own against the virtuosic displays of its soloist. Trusler’s performance enfolds a bit more lyrically than MacDuffie’s which adds about a minute more to its total playing time. His playing is as committed as one could hope for and the Dusseldorf Symphony is captured in perfect clear sound in committed and near perfect performance support. The performance of this 1956 work is commanding and Shinozaki proves to be a formidable and nuanced conductor. The Rozsa concerto deserves its place among other mid-century post-romantic violin pieces. In Trusler’s committed performance we get to hear how great a piece this really is—strong enough to stand next to more performed Shostakovich and Prokofiev concerti from the period.
Trusler has a lot more competition in the Korngold concerto which seems as if it cannot receive a bad recording and continues to be featured in unique couplings often with standard repertoire. Korngold’s concerto, unlike Rozsa’s, is constructed from thematic ideas from several of his film scores from the 1930s (ANOTHER DAWN, JUAREZ, ANTHONY ADVERSE, and THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER). His rich orchestral style is part of his Post-Romantic Austrian roots, the like of which are paralleled in the music of Richard Strauss. The word is still out on just how one approaches this concerto. Previn, the conductor in both the Mutter and Shaham recordings preferred much faster tempi. John Mauceri’s approach on the Entartete Musik series for Decca, featuring Chantal Juillet, is a closer companion to Trusler’s interpretation as can be seen by a quick comparison of the playing times of the four performances below:
Movement
TruslerChantal Juillet
London 452 481Anne-Sophie Mutter
DG 0003526Gil Shaham
DG 439 886
- Allegro
10:14
10:05
8:40
9:03
- Andante
8:56
8:54
7:58
8:41
- Presto
7:47
7:23
7:05
7:22
After the Rozsa, one gets literally dropped into the gorgeous soundworld of Korngold. The magical flourishes and gorgeous orchestration just grabs a hold of the ear and draws the listener in as the soloists has an almost improvisational obbligato idea that occasionally floats above the orchestral sections or takes on parts of the melody. Trusler’s high register playing is simply flawless here with remarkable tone control. The little emotional slides to pitches, a hallmark of the style, are dexterously performed without overemphasizing them. The music’s impassioned first movement structurally feels like a big improvisational arabesque that continues the dissolution of form we can hear in Strauss. The recording here is helped by a remarkable clarity that places the soloist in a comfortable audio placement against the orchestra allowing it to blend into that texture when needed or soar above it as well. Once again, the orchestra provides perfect accompaniment with great acoustic detail in the recording making this one of the better recorded Korngold concerto releases.
To round off the already impressive album, Trusler has chosen three miniatures. Two of these are Heifetz’s own arrangements of popular pieces: Ponce’s Estrellita and Foster’s Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair. These are sandwiched around the pops-like Jamaican Rumba by Arthur Benjamin as arranged by William Primrose.
If you missed the Telarc label’s Rozsa disc, or even if you think you have your favorite Korngold concerto recording, the present release will be a welcome addition to fans of these two great Hollywood composers. This is beautiful music making impeccably performed and taken on its own merits. Highly recommended!
--Steven A. Kennedy
Comments regarding this review can be sent to this address:
stev4uth@hotmail.com
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