Briefly Noted: Half-Adapted Bach Sonatas

J. S. Bach, Gamba Sonatas (arr. for viola and harpsichord), A. Tamestit, M. Suzuki (released on August 23, 2019) Harmonia Mundi HMM902259 | 44'32"

Johann Sebastian Bach's three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord are one of the curious delights of his catalog. The instrument, in the family of softer antecedents to the violin and relatives, was on its way out even in Bach's time. Thanks to the historical instruments movement, we now have plenty of excellent performances of these works available on the original instruments. That makes this arrangement for viola, but still accompanied by harpsichord, mostly a curiosity.

Although violist Antoine Tamestit has recorded and played some Bach in his career, he is not a musician often associated with early music. His sound here is quite luscious, using a Baroque-style bow (Arthur Dubroca, 2010) on the Stradivari viola ("Mahler," 1672) he regularly plays. He partners with harpsichordist Masato Suzuki, son of the pioneering early music conductor and keyboard player, who is carrying on his father's work with Bach Collegium Japan.

The musical chemistry is not always settled, pristinely balanced as each player solicitously makes room for the other's important lines but not always locked into place rhythmically. They present the three sonatas in reverse numerical order, which leaves the best, the G major sonata, for last. Besides the gorgeously rendered third movement, one of Bach's simplest and most moving, what the duo gives a charming surprise to the end of the first movement, which unwinds like a clock at the end of its spring. A single movement, an arrangement of the aria “Ergieße dich reichlich” from the cantata Wo soll ich fliehen hin (BWV 5), is the runaway favorite of the disc.

On ClassicsToday: World-Première Orchestral Songs From Ernő Dohnányi

World-Première Orchestral Songs From Ernő Dohnányi

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Artistic Quality: ?

Sound Quality: ?

Given its 1944/45 date, the Second Symphony that Ernő Dohnányi—a.k.a. Ernst von Dohnányi—wrote, is an arch-conservative, anachronistic, post-Brahmsian work: A behemoth of grand romantic gesture in four movements. Brass, wind, and timpani push the symphony into hard-edged action with the opening subject of a very properly constructed sonata-form first movement. It’s all a bit mighty and on the nose but it also has that late-romantic appeal that you know you either love or don’t, depending on how you react to Pfitzner or Zemlinsky (whose work is more chromatic) or Joseph Marx or the like... [continue reading]

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On ClassicsToday: John Eliot Gardiner’s Revolutionary Berlioz?

Gardiner’s Revolutionary Berlioz? Take The Good With The Ugly

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Artistic Quality: ?

Sound Quality: ?

Berlioz: “An acquired taste, but what a taste worth acquiring!” as David Hurwitz points out in his review of the “Philips 50” release of John Eliot Gardiner’s Messe solennelle. Indeed. And even if you think you’ve acquired the taste, Berlioz can still be unwieldy and brittle to the ears. In a way, this box of Gardiner’s Philips and Decca Berlioz recordings showcases both sides of the Berlioz conundrum: The invigorating side that makes you wonder why he is not played more often—and the elusive one, that makes you wonder why he is so famous... [continue reading] (Insider content)

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On ClassicsToday: Piotr Beczala’s Lohengrin from Bayreuth (Blu-ray)

Herr Tesla’s Adventures in Brabant—Piotr Beczala’s Lohengrin (Blu-ray)

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Artistic Quality: ?

Sound Quality: ?

This is neither a Lohengrin to seek out for its direction, nor to avoid because of it. As drama, it can’t begin to touch the rats of Hans Neunefels that populated Bayreuth’s previous Lohengrin, already a modern classic. Arguably it’s even a bit lame, but it’s also very pretty and (perhaps involuntarily) traditional. This leaves plenty room to focus on the performances—which is a good thing, as I will elaborate below... [continue reading]

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Briefly Noted: Accented Bach & Co.

J. S. Bach et al., Concertos, Les Accents, J. Brégnac, E. Laporte, S. Marq, T. Noally (released on August 16, 2019) Aparté AP206 | 70'18"

For many performers, any experience of the Baroque period was often limited to the music of J. S. Bach. Happily, the early music movement exploded the possibilities by opening up the repertory and the ways of understanding it. The historically informed performance ensemble Les Accents, founded by violinist Thibault Noally in 2014, provides an example.

On the group's new disc, two of Bach's violin concertos (BMV 1041 and 1056R) are set against an array of similar concertos for various solo instruments by composers Bach admired: Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729), Johann Gottlieb Graun (1703-1771), Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758), and Christoph Förster (1693-1745). The last composer's Violin Concerto in G Minor receives its premiere recording, and two fine concertos by Georg Philipp Telemann round out the program. Bach does not so much stand out from his surroundings as fit right in.

The playing is all technically superlative and full of character. Noally takes the violin solos, shadowed by his colleague Claire Sottovia in the double-violin concerto of Telemann. The other soloists are even more polished: Jean Brégnac's subdued traverso, Emmanuel Laporte's perky oboe, and the snappy recorder playing of Sébastien Marq. The sound, recorded by Little Tribeca in the Eglise de Bon Secours in Paris in 2017, feels close, so that you get the grit of bow against string, sharp inhalations of the traverso and recorder players, and the sensation of sitting in the front row.

On ClassicsToday: Sibelius of the Rising Sun. Watanabe's Denon Cycle

Akeo Watanabe’s Sibelius Cycle On Denon

by Jens F. Laurson

Amid the Japanese embrace of Western classical music, certain composers seem to resonate particularly well with Japanese conductors and audiences: notably Beethoven, Bruckner, and Sibelius. This might be gleaned from the fact that Takashi Asahina alone recorded six Bruckner and seven Beethoven cycles while the... Continue Reading

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See also the Sibelius Symphony Cycle Survey.

Dip Your Ears, No. 250 (Knob-Fiddling Beethoven from Wolfgang Mitterer)

W.Mitterer + Ludwig v. B., Nine In One, All mixing, editing, composing, re-arranging Mitterer Original music performed by the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano & Trento (G.Kuhn) (col legno)

Didn’t Glenn Gould tell us that a child’s fiddling with the knobs of the home stereo was the first step in a creative act? He might have loved Wolfgang Mitterer. Or maybe not. But on the album “Beethoven: Nine in One”, that’s pretty much exactly what Mr. Mitterer, organist, composer, and “electronics specialist”, delivers. Take briefest splashes of Spanish guitar. Electronic sound bits that might be from another TRON remake. Abbreviated e-guitar riffs. And themes from Beethoven Beethoven Beethoven symphonies. All nine of them. Every major theme from every movement, ordered by movement and crammed into 56 minutes: An Attention Deficit Disorder suffering listener’s digest of the symphonies infused with the spirit of the Electric Light Orchestra’s take on Roll Over Beethoven.

The result is unnerving and annoying one minute, then titillating and cute the next… then enervating again. At its most intriguing, it sounds like flickering aural visions of Alex DeLarge, the protagonist from Clockwork Orange. Most of the rest of the time it sounds as though several recordings of Beethoven Symphonies are being simultaneously fast-forwarded in an audio show-room. If you have always wanted to experience that, this CD – I hesitate to call the arrangement on it a “composition” and, in fairness, so does its creator – is the easiest way to come by it. Concentrated listening to it gets old quickly; as a background track at night it’s weirdly transfixing, given sufficient tolerance for the weird. Wolfgang Mitterer’s symphonic source material for the mix is Beethoven Cycle from that the disgraced Gustav Kuhn’s recorded for the same label and which is at last put to some good – or questionable… depending on your view – use.

5/9

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Briefly Noted: Refined Brahms

Brahms, Violin Sonatas / C. Schumann, Romance No. 1, A. Ibragimova, C. Tiberghien (released on August 30, 2019) Hyperion CDA68200 | 71'06"

Both Russian-born violinist Alina Ibragimova and French pianist Cédric Tiberghien have impressed these ears in recital and on disc. Their recording and performing history as a duo goes back a decade, too, including discs devoted to Beethoven and Mozart. This year they have branched out into the Romantic period, first with a disc of French composers (Ysaye, Franck, Vierne, and Lili Boulanger) and now with the three violin sonatas of Brahms, officially released later this month.

Tiberghien's interpretation of Brahms has already struck me as on exactly the right wavelength, an assessment borne out by the transparency, smoldering burn, and rhythmic verve of his playing here. Ibragimova floats above the turbulence of the keyboard part with limpid tone, spot-on intonation, and impeccable awareness of contrapuntal interplay. In particular, the way that the two musicians let go together in the extended hemiola-complicated passages affords a suspended freedom from the barline that is just delightful.

There is force where force is needed, but always in balance between the two musicians so that neither has to over-compensate. The emotional vulnerability hidden in the violin sonatas, through references to some of the composer's intensely personal songs, comes across well. The program is capped by a lovely lagniappe, the first of Clara Schumann's Romances, op. 22. It is worth noting that Clara Schumann, who had received a manuscript copy of the first Brahms violin sonata from the composer in 1879, later told him “she wished the last movement to accompany her into the beyond.”

Dip Your Ears, No. 249 (Cologne Mahler Cycle, Take Two)

Gustav Mahler, Symphony No.5, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne / F.X.Roth (Harmonia Mundi)

Ten years ago, the Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchestra released a recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with their then-Music Director Markus Stenz. It turned out to be an excellent new recording (of a whole cycle) by the orchestra that premiered that Symphony in 1904. Now the same orchestra has recorded it again with their new music director François-Xavier Roth, also beginning a new Mahler cycle. Again the result is excellent. Interestingly enough it is Roth, who often flirts with period performance, who delivers the more slightly more conventional, slower reading. Most notably in the Adagietto where Stenz takes under nine minutes; Roth two minutes longer. But the transparency is top-notch; there is a pleasant and elegant lightness to the playing: The scoring never feels thick (nor anemic). Of course there are a good number other fine recordings of this symphony available, too. But if you have any inclination or rationalization to try this new cycle-in-the-making, there’s no reason not to start here.

8/9

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Briefly Noted: New Music for Contrabassoon

Music for Contrabasson, H. Agreda, M. Racz, A. Kirichenko, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, P. Muñoz-Toledo (released on August 9, 2019) Ars Produktion ARS3826 | 63'35"

The contrabassoon has been around since the 18th century, but it was not featured in orchestral music widely until it reached a more reliable form in the 19th century. It does not have much solo repertory, either concertos or chamber music: Gunther Schuller wrote the first solo concerto for the instrument, for contrabassoonist Lewis Lipnick, who still plays with the National Symphony Orchestra and also premiered the Contrabassoon Concerto by Kalevi Aho. (Lipnick switched from the contrabassoon to a new instrument called the contraforte a decade ago.)

Hans Agreda, principal contrabassonist of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, has made this disc of music for the finicky instrument, with all but one of the pieces recorded for the first time. Listeners likely think of the contrabassoon's potentially comic low range, the feature of the instrument generally exploited by orchestral composers, but it can also sound more melodic, like a bassoon in its high range.

The composers of the works are worth getting to know, including Kees Olthuis, former bassoonist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Gerhard Deutschmann, who wrote a sonata for contrabassoon and piano; the Russian Victor Bruns, former bassoonist with the Staatskapelle Berlin; and Germany-based Efraín Oscher. The Bruns concerto for contrabassoon is the highlight, performed with Agreda's colleagues from the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and conductor Paulo Muñoz-Toledo.

"Dear Evan Hansen" comes home to Washington

Ben Levi Ross (Evan Hansen) and Jessica Phillips (Heidi Hansen) in Dear Evan Hansen. Photo: Matthew Murphy.
Four years ago, the Dear Evan Hansen phenomenon was born at Arena Stage right here in Washington. Washington Post theater critic Peter Marks recognized it as a winner early on and continued to report on this compelling new musical's meteoric success on Broadway. Last year the show went on its first North American tour, which landed at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater Thursday night.

The story (book by Steven Levenson) lies at the nexus of many issues facing young people today: social alienation, anxiety, and the social media sites that can make them worse. Evan Hansen is an intensely awkward high-school student being raised by a singer single mother. As part of his therapy, he writes a support letter to himself (thus the title of the musical), trying to improve his mood and ease his worries about the new school year.

Through a series of accidents, without spoiling most of the details, the letter involves him with the family of a classmate of his, a troubled, rage-inclined student named Connor, who takes his own life. Although Evan and Connor did not really know one another, Evan pretends to be his friend, feeding a series of lies to Connor's parents and sister, a ruse fueled by Evan's intense longing for a friend and for a family more present than his mother can be.

Other Reviews: Peter Marks, Welcome home, ‘Dear Evan Hansen.’ You’re back where you belong. (Washington Post, August 8)

For readers like me, the corny plotlines and sappy endings of most musicals are a non-starter. Only those rare tragic musicals are tolerable: someone getting shot (West Side Story), the grim reality of the Holocaust (Fiddler on the Roof), or separation by the war in Algeria (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg). This musical follows a crushingly sad story, especially because just about all the characters need something happy in their lives so desperately that they eagerly accept Evan's rather implausible tale. In a sense, the fake happiness on display every hour of every day on social media filters into reality.

Ben Levi Ross was aloof and even unlikeable in the title role, handling reasonably well the role's vocal demands but without the grain and intensity of Ben Platt, the first Evan. Strongest in singing were the moving performances of Jessica Phillips as Evan's exasperated mother and the vulnerable but emotionally armored Maggie McKenna as Connor's sister, Zoe. Dear Evan Hansen has its laughs, particularly from the comic foil of Evan's friend Jared, who is complicit in the deception, played with biting edge by Jared Goldsmith.

The music and lyrics, by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are snappy, in an easy rock style with a few moments of ensemble harmony. The song that ends the first act, "You Will Be Found," is the major hit of the show, with lesser contenders in "Waving Through a Window" and "For Forever," but not much else left an impression. The small band, elevated on a platform at the rear left of the stage, mixes two guitars, drums, keyboard, and bass with three string players from the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, led capably from the keyboard by Alex Harrington.

The scenic design by David Korins is ingenious, with video projections constantly embodying the flashing, beeping notifications of social media that invade the characters' lives. (It was probably what Santa Fe Opera's production of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs wanted to be but was not.) There were some technical details not quite worked out: Ross's microphone came on late at one point, microphone levels were not optimally adjusted here and there, and Aaron Lazar seemed to have a couple minor memory slips as Connor's father.

Dear Evan Hansen runs through September 8 at the Kennedy Center.

Dip Your Ears, No. 248 (Three American Symphonies)

American Symphonies W.Piston, S.Jones, S.Albert Symphonies 6, 3 & 2 L.Friedel / LSO (BIS)

Walter Piston, Samuel Jones, Stephen Albert are all fine American symphonists of the 20^th century. Anyone who likes – or even likes to champion – tonal orchestral music that is ultimately more beholden to beauty than musicological ideology, should want to hold up these composers as an example for classical music that never allowed itself to be divorced from (potentially) popular music. Stephen Albert has a chapter in Surprised by Beauty – A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Music; Samuel Jones should, and even without such a mention Piston is part of a group of “American Classics” to which also belong Samuel Barber, Copland, David Diamond, Roy Harris, and William Schuman.

When Stephen Albert, student of the wonderful George Rochberg, died in an automobile accident at 51, the Washington Post perceptively wrote that his death “deprived American music of one of its most luminous talents”. Albert had just finished the short score of his Second Symphony which the New York Philharmonic had commissioned. Sebastian Currier tended to the tart, vigorous orchestration. Along with its Pulitzer-Prize winning sibling, the First Symphony, it has previously been recorded by Paul Polivnick and the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra for Naxos. His influences are Strauss, Stravinsky, Sibelius, and he had a penchant for good tunes (first movement) packed with a robust punch and zero treacle. While one is listening, there’s enjoyment to be had. It would work still better in the concert hall, though.

His music, like that of the two other composers here, is often more easily admired and proselytized than it is loved. All three works contain many good things upon closer inspection but too few merits at the all-important just-below superficial level. Those who listen closely may find much to admire, but the rest scratches their heads. Very little of Piston, for one, is memorable at all. I don’t mean memorable in the literal, “whistle in the street afterwards” sense, which very little music is, but even to remember having had an impression while listening. The most gripping account of that rarely recorded Sixth Symphony may still be Munch’s visceral reading, ahead of the serviceable rest (Slatkin/St. Louis, Schwarz/Seattle, Fridel, LSO).

Samuel Jones’ “Palo Duro Canyon” ends up the most worthwhile inclusion on this disc. His symphony wasn’t, unlike the others, commissioned by big-shot orchestras (Boston and New York, respectively), but by the humble Amarillo Symphony Orchestra. (Which goes to show what important work the easily-overlooked orchestras in the country do.) It’s a colorful and evocative work, between Roy Harris, Carl Orff and a very conservative Messiaen. After a windswept opening (literally, with the help of pre-recorded sounds of gusts in the canyon), it develops a Carmina-Buranaesque energy. Its penchant for the lyrical comes out in the second segment of this nominally one-movement, six-partite symphony No. 3: an awfully sweet, certainly delicious short interlude.

Now if these three works were great-sounding knock-out performances, performed with passion and a hint of desperate communicativeness – rather than being tossed off out with enormous technical skill in a neutral, unimpressive acoustic – this might be a perfect primer for discovering the beauty of American symphonic music. As it is, it’s just a good recording of three good symphonies in a field where “good” is simply not good enough. Any of the Naxos recordings with these works – usually coupled more logically with other works of the respective same composers – are as good or better. That said, the disc is worth it for the discovery (to whomever it would constitute a discovery) of the Samuel Jones symphony alone!

7/7

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On ClassicsToday: Melissa Galosi Playful with Mozart and Kurtág

Playing Games With Mozart And György Kurtág

by Jens F. Laurson

Pianist Melissa Galosi’s recording titled “Games” is a clever recital mixing Mozart and György Kurtág at their most playful selves. The title refers both to the whimsy of a variety of Mozart’s Variations and Kurtág’s series of miniatures collectively named “Játékok” (Hungarian for “Games”) that... Continue Reading

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NSO accompanies screening of "E.T."

Among the summer offerings of the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap was a screening of the classic film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial on Friday night. It was a beautiful evening for it, with a cool breeze that could have been a little stronger to make up for the heat of the receding day at the Filene Center. It was heartening in a way to see that the crowd for this supposedly popular offering, in both the house and on the lawn, was smaller than the straight-classical program the NSO had played here last weekend.

The NSO's longtime associate conductor, Emil de Cou, continued his leadership of most NSO events at Wolf Trap for the screening. The Steven Spielberg film, released in 1982, was much funnier than I had remembered, and my son and I both enjoyed watching it again. John Williams, who has provided so much of the soundtrack of American cinematic lives for the last fifty years, may not be remembered principally for this film. In fact, there is not much to the score except some memorable moments created with papery piccolo solos, tingling celesta and harp, and quirky, almost mechanical loops.

That is with the noteworthy exception of the two flying bicycle scenes, the two places in the film where the NSO could really open up and soar. The effect with live orchestra was an exponential increase of the gooseflesh effect of Williams's full-orchestra treatment of one of his distinctive melodies. If some people who do not normally attend orchestra concerts experienced that feeling, this aspect of the NSO's "popular outreach" effort will have been worth it.

Briefly Noted: Late Medieval Polyphonic Masses

Messes de Barcelone et d'Apt, Ensemble Gilles Binchois, D. Vellard (released on August 16, 2019) Evidence Classics EVCD060 | 63'35"

As you move through the 16th century, you can hear European sacred music crystallizing around the foundations of tonality. In most cases earlier than that, it is still the modes, non-triadic harmonies, and parallel voice movement that are most prevalent. That austere sound is what is refreshing to the ear in this new release from the outstanding all-male choir Ensemble Gilles Binchois.

The anchor of the program is two compilations of the Mass Ordinary, disparate musical movements by different composers writing in the musical style favored by the papal court in Avignon, the so-called Ars Nova, but associated with other southern courts. The movements are all found in two polyphonic sources, ms. 971 in Barcelona's Biblioteca de Catalunya and ms. 16bis in the chapter library of the Cathedral of Sainte-Anne in Apt. Extravagant tropes are woven into the Ordinary texts, particularly in the Barcelona Sanctus.

Motets from these two sources, as well as a couple from ms. 1361 from the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, round out the selection. The pieces, composed in three or four parts, are spread in various ways among the six male voices. Dominique Vellard's direction emphasizes harmonious balance among the voices, as well as a pleasing variety of articulation, from choppy to velours-smooth. The sound, recorded in the resonant Benedictine abbey church at Vézelay, is scrumptious. Medieval instruments, two bowed vielles and a gittern, complement the texture in the sung pieces; a couple of the motet pieces have been arranged entirely for these instruments.

On ClassicsToday: Sonia Rubinsky (think Villa-Lobos!) plays Bach

Rubinsky & Bach: A Grand Suite of Dunces

by Jens F. Laurson

Sonia Rubinsky might be known to piano music lovers—or to admirers of Villa-Lobos—for her recordings of the latter’s complete piano music on Naxos. Now she has set her sights on Bach and offers an album grandiloquently titled “Magna Sequentia I – A Grand Suite of... Continue Reading