CD Reviews | CTD (Briefly Noted) | JFL (Dip Your Ears) | DVD Reviews

29.1.22

Briefly Noted: MAH takes on CPE

available at Amazon
C.P.E. Bach, Sonatas and Rondos, Marc-André Hamelin

(released on January 7, 2022)
Hyperion CDA68368 | 141'01"
The keyboard music of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach can be a hard sell, often rendered either too understated or too flashy. It is music that tends to work best on instruments more like what the composer heard when he played it. Marc-André Hamelin has done something quite difficult, recording over two hours of selected pieces, mostly sonatas and rondos, on a Steinway last January and doing so with consummate style. Hamelin's impeccable virtuosity gives him the range of touch to capture the quicksilver emotional shifts in this music. For example, the varied movements of the Fantasia in C Major, with its comic back-and-forth of buffo repeated-note gestures, never descend into glibness. Hamelin approaches the more sentimental slow movements with equally earnest sincerity, which is also an advantage in the way he plays Liszt. It works so well because he wears his heart on his sleeve.

The best tracks on these two stellar discs are the curiosities, like the Sonata in E Minor, which is actually a five-movement suite of dances based on and quite reminiscent of his father's prelude-less French Suites. Another highlight is the Abschied von meinem Silbermannische Klaviere, in einem Rondo, a musical leave-taking of his beloved Silbermann clavichord, bequeathed to his pupil Ewald von Grotthuss in 1781. In one sign of how recently appreciation for this Bach son's music has come, this piece was not widely known until it was finally published in the 1980s. It explores the expressive possibilities of this gentle instrument, the contrasts of loud and soft, the pointed accents, even the ornamental vibrato effect possible on it, which Hamelin can only approximate.

Hamelin mines a number of odd character pieces for their beguiling quirks, vivid portraits of people who mostly cannot be identified. At first one wonders if the C Major Arioso with nine variations was worth including, but it heats up wonderfully around the charming fourth variation, set in the parallel minor. Hamelin delights in the circus-like tricks of the subsequent variations, too. Finally, added like encores are two miscellanea likely familiar to all denizens of after-school piano lessons: the rollicking Solfeggio in C Minor and the perky March in G Major (a piece of juvenilia, once wrongly attributed to the elder Bach, included in the Anna Magdalena Notebook).

22.1.22

Briefly Noted: Sandrine Piau Enchants (CD of the Month)

available at Amazon
Handel, Opera Arias and Concerti Grossi, S. Piau, Les Paladins, J. Correas

(released on January 7, 2022)
Alpha 765 | 72'08"
This new release from Alpha had me at Sandrine Piau, whose recordings and live performances we have followed for twenty years (last reviewed in Washington in 2016). Add to that the programming, which allows Piau to incarnate some of Handel's notorious seductresses, sirens, sorceresses, and wronged women: Alcina, Lucrezia, Cleopatra, Melissa, Almirena, Adelaide. One final point to recommend it even before listening: this is the fourth collaboration of Piau with Jérôme Correas and his ensemble Les Paladins. Correas, a bass-baritone known from several blockbuster operas recorded by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, founded this group in 2001. In these tracks recorded at the Théâtre de Poissy, "on the eve of a lockdown" in October 2020, is the sense of urgency that Correas describes, as the musicians "raced against the clock to bring this recording to life." Piau adds that the location was also the site of her first recital recording, an auspicious return.

The musical relationship is one of comfort and trust, judging by the ease in Piau's voice, as Correas and his musicians move as one with her every whim, from soaring antics down to breathy depths in an amazing cadenza and embellished da capo adorning "Da tempesta" from Giulio Cesare. In "Piangerò la sorte mia" from the same opera, taken at a lush crawl, Piau's plangent floating tone is matched by warm strings and active continuo from Benjamin Narvey's theorbo. Correas, taking the harpsichord part himself, accompanies the brilliant, tortured gem "Alla salma infedel" from the cantata La Lucrezia. In the equally unfamiliar "Desterò dall'empia dite" from Amadigi di Gaula, there are amazing acrobatics among Piau, trumpet, and oboe. Instrumental selections, including movements from Handel's concerti grossi and one sparkling overture (from Amadigi di Gaula), round out a phenomenal disc, complete with authoritative program notes by Barbara Nestola, head of research at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles.

18.1.22

In Very Loving, Admiring, Cheery Memory of the Wonderful Roger Tapping

Roger Tapping was instrumental in my falling in love with the viola. I owe Roger countless hours of peerless chamber-music education, courtesy #TakácsQuartet (and a bit of @theJSQ). I admired him as a person and as a player. Roger Tapping has passed away. I will always remember him very warmly.

Here's a conversation with him from a few years back that hopefully conveys a small bit of how much I have cherished Roger Tapping.

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Life After Takács – Roger Tapping’s Washington Recital


Roger Tapping is a known quantity among chamber music aficionados in Washington – especially those who have followed the Takács Quartet’s performances when he was on violist-duty for that formidable group. Since leaving the Takács Quartet in 2005 to spend more time with his family, Roger Tapping has continuously shown up in performances with (often very young) quartets at the Corcoran Gallery and Bethesda Music Society where he performed all of Mozart’s String Quintets with the JupiterParkerDaedalus, and Auryn Quartets. Last January he joined the Klavier Trio Amsterdam for the Fauré Piano Quartet.

available at Amazon Beethoven, String Quartets op.18,
Takács Quartet
Decca

UK | DE | FR

available at Amazon Beethoven, String Quartets opp.59, 74,
Takács Quartet
Decca

UK | DE | FR

available at Amazon Beethoven, The Late String Quartets,
Takács Quartet
Decca

UK | DE | FR

available at Amazon Bartók, The String Quartets,
Takács Quartet (II)
Decca

UK | DE | FR

available at Amazon Korngold / Schoenberg, Sextet / Verklärte Nacht,
Raphael Ensemble
Hyperion

UK | DE | FR

available at Amazon Dvořák, Quintet, Sextet,
Raphael Ensemble
Hyperion

UK | DE | FR
Retiring from playing in a professional chamber group must be tantamount to enjoying a new life. Instead of being on tour four, five weeks at a time, Tapping – who had previously served in the Raphael Ensemble and the Allegri Quartet – is now away from home for only a few days at a time. This not only means that Tapping can enjoy family life and focus more on teaching at the New England Conservatory but also that he can observe other string quartets he performs with from a detached point of view. Being one step removed, the intricacies of quartet–life become “sociologically interesting”: to see how four young players approach musical problems or react to new music; to observe how veteran groups resolve their differences in as many different – and the same – ways as, for example, married couples might approach theirs.

Though the occasional, wistful pangs of nostalgia for the Takács days still occur, Tapping – who recently spoke to me about his current activities and plans – seems to quite enjoy his newfound peace and the ability to moonlight with great chamber groups, both young and established. For example the Pražák Quartet which Tapping attested to feeling immediately comfortable with – perhaps because their wonderful balance of vigor and warmth is, at least to my ears, related to the playing of the Takács.

For the future we can expect lots of Mozart, Brahms, and Beethoven Quintets with Tapping and a host of fine string quartets but also the Beethoven String Trios, the type of chamber music formation that Tapping generally considers the ‘scariest’ to play because they offer no place to hide. Beethoven’s op.9, specifically, he described as particularly honest, unsentimental exponents thereof – in short: “The real thing”. (In so elucidating these works – works that I have hitherto not responded to with much enthusiasm – Tapping makes me want to seek out the Leopold Trio’s recordings that he recommends.)

Roger Tapping also plans on doing more viola recitals – such as will take place this Friday, the 29th at La Maison Française (7.30PM) where Tapping and pianist Judith Gordon will present a diverse program of Bach (a Gamba Sonata) , Fauré (Après un rêve), Hindemith (Sonata for solo iola), Schumann (Adagio & Allegro op.70), and Shostakovich (Sonata op.147). These recitals (and concerts) are an aspect of a non-chamber violist’s life he finds most pleasing, not the least because getting to play the melody for more than just two bars at a time is a completely new experience.

After talking about his present and future plans, I could not help harking back once more on his time in previous chamber groups. With the Raphael Ensemble from 1983 until 1990 he played alongside composer/performer Sally Beamish and participated in highly regarded recordings on Hyperion, including the BrahmsDvořák, and KorngoldSextets. With the Allegri Quartet he got to play next to the Pablo Casals student Bruno Schrecker who Tapping recalls fondly as the best bass line player he’d met. With this longest continually performing of British string quartets he played from 1990 until 1995 when, seeking a clean break in his private life, he auditioned for the Takács Quartet who needed to fill the violist’s seat after Gábor Omai had passed away.

He joined Károly Schranz, András Fejér, and Edward Dusinberre (who had himself just become a Takácsi 18 months before Tapping’s arrival), and contributed what was doubtlessly a golden age for the quartet, culminating in CD surveys of the complete Bartók and Beethoven quartets. They are widely considered first choices among modern digital recordings of either. Tapping mentions both when asked about his favorite recordings from that time. When he recently put on the Beethoven (which he had not listened to for a while, in part to avoid overt nostalgia) to see how his group had solved certain problems back then, he found himself “pleasantly surprised” how, despite the continuous development and evolution of how the Quartet approached these works, very nicely the Beethoven still held up. When pressed to chose between them, though, he points to the Bartók as their proudest achievement. (I’m not surprised: I fell in love with that recording nearly four years ago and that love has never ceased.)

The finest way to enjoy Mr. Tapping’s art, short of attending his recitals and concerts in the region, is through his recordings with the Takács Quartet and Raphael Ensemble. On the right I have listed some of my favorites in which he participates – none of which I would want to be without.



The recital at La Maison Française will be recorded by WETA and broadcast later in the year.