Briefly Noted: Triduum at Notre-Dame (CD of the Month)

Pâques à Notre-Dame, Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris, Yves Castagnet, Henri Chalet (released on April 1, 2022) Warner 190296396892 | 63'45"

On April 15, 2019, fire destroyed the spire and vault of the most beloved Gothic church in the world, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. This new release from Warner Classics is devoted to the last polyphonic works to be performed in the cathedral before the fire, which occurred in the days leading up to Easter. The children and adults of the Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris, under conductor Henri Chalet, recorded this program in the neo-Gothic Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde.

Since the fire, the Maîtrise has continued its liturgical service at the older Église Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. A training choir for young voices, from children up to age 30, they perform at the highest professional level. Various combinations of the group's voices sing music that was prepared for the feasts of the Triduum, from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday. Yves Castagnet accompanies many of the pieces on Sainte-Clotilde's venerable Cavaillé-Coll organ, once played by César Franck, Gabriel Pierné, Charles Tournemire, and Jean Langlais, to name just the most famous of the church's celebrated organists.

About half of the disc consists of music performed on these sacred days by choirs around the world, including two of Maurice Duruflé's celebrated Quatre Motets sur des thèmes grégoriens, proper to Holy Thursday and sung with gorgeous subtlety. Antonio Lotti's complex Crucifixus for eight voices, proper to Good Friday, revels in its massive pile-up of dissonant suspensions, balanced by the joy of Jehan Revert's metrical arrangements of the beloved Easter tune O filii et filiae and the Easter sequence Victimae paschali laudes. The concise Missa Octo vocum by Hans Leo Hassler goes nicely with a motet by Monteverdi and Dextera domini, César Franck's gentle, pastoral offertory proper to Holy Thursday and the Easter Vigil.

Quite pleasingly, the disc also features recent liturgical music composed by three living French composers. Two hymns on French texts and the intriguing Messe brève showcase the compelling style of Yves Castagnet (b. 1964), titulaire of the orgue de chœur at Notre-Dame, where he regularly accompanied Vespers. (From 2010 to 2013, Castagnet published seven books of his Heures de Notre-Dame, bringing together the music he oversaw for Vespers at the cathedral.) Jean-Charles Gandrille (b. 1982) is represented by a simple, rather hypnotic setting of the Marian sequence Stabat Mater for organ and treble voices, which cranks up in intensity towards its ecstatic conclusion. There is also a striking new piece by Lise Borel (b. 1993), one of the choir's assistant directors and a rather interesting composer. Her Regina caeli, for seven women's voices accompanying themselves with murmuring repetions of "regina regina," can be heard in the video embedded below.

Familiensache—Maisky Trio & Friends in Schumann und Franck: Latest @ Wiener Zeitung

Julian Rachlin entfesselte einen Funkenregen

Hochkarätig besetzte Kammermusik im Brahms-Saal des Musikvereins.

Kammermusikabend im Brahms Saal des Musikvereins mit dem Maisky-Familienklaviertrio, bereichert um Julian Rachlin und Bratschistin Sarah McElravy: Die vier Streicher - Sascha Maisky an der zweiten Geige und der unverwüstliche Mischa Maisky - bildeten eine Viererkette vor der hinten vom Steinway aus steten Rückhalt gebenden Lily Maisky.[weiterlesen]

Dip Your Ears No. 231 (Ben van Osten’s Compleat César Franck)

César Franck, The Organ Works Ben van Osten MDG

Ben van Oosten has recorded just about all the important romantic French organ literature – except that of the arguably most famous (or least organ-niche bound) one, César Franck. This empty spot on the escutcheon has now been filled in, with Oosten not only drawing on his wealth of interpretative and recording-experience but also on the majestic, newly restored Cavaillé-Coll organ of Saint-Ouen in Rouen.

The result is profoundly impressive. In the smaller works, he sets the standard either by default or with ease; in the grand works, he easily hangs with the best of them—whether Olivier Latry or Marie-Claire Alain. One might quibble with the decision to split the Six Pièces (opp.16 through 21) across two discs, but at van Oosten’s tempi, they would not have fit by a sliver. And if they had, that would still be nitpicky.

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CD Review: Divine Redeemer

Divine Redeemer (music by Bach, Franck, Gounod, Reger, et al.), C. Brewer, P. Jacobs (released on September 11, 2015) Naxos 8.573524 | 61'22"

Charles T. Downey, Divine Redeemer: Christine Brewer, Paul Jacobs
Washington Post, February 3

A new album of Christian devotional pieces by a major opera singer, while part of a long tradition, might turn off some listeners. On her new disc, “Divine Redeemer,” the celebrated soprano Christine Brewer, together with the equally celebrated organist Paul Jacobs, moves beyond cliche with a varied selection of music that she approaches with a sincerity that reflects her start singing in church in her Illinois home town.

There are only a couple of pieces that might set off chestnut alarms. César Franck’s “Panis angelicus” is offered, thankfully, in a version closer to its original form, in the “Messe à 3 voix,” than the schmaltzy arrangements with oohing chorus often heard now. Jacobs plays the organ arrangement in a way that recalls Franck’s original scoring for cello, harp, and organ, with the cello melody on a solo stop and the closing arpeggios rendered in a harp-like way... [Continue reading]

Divine Redeemer (music by Bach, Franck, Gounod, Reger, et al.)
Christine Brewer (soprano) and Paul Jacobs (organ)

NSO Organ Series Continues

Charles T. Downey, Kennedy Center’s organ series launches with fine performance
Washington Post, October 15

The acoustics of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall are not ideal. While it may be detrimental to the ensemble sound of the National Symphony Orchestra, the cavernous space is filled quite beautifully by the sound of the hall’s concert organ. The new season of the NSO’s organ series opened on Wednesday evening, with the NSO’s own organist, William Neil. Collaborative to the end, Neil invited along 10 colleagues from the NSO, offering a program of curiosities for brass, percussion, and organ.

In César Franck’s Chorale No. 1 in E Minor, Neil applied every combination of rich color in the organ to Franck’s tangled chromaticism... [Continue reading]

William Neal (organ) and Friends
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

NSO ORGAN SERIES:
Thierry Escaich (May 15, 2015)
Iveta Apkalna (May 21, 2014)
Paul Jacobs (February 7, 2014)
Cameron Carpenter (October 18, 2013)

Olivier Latry in Georgetown

Franck, Chorales (inter alia), O. Latry (DG, re-released in 2013)

Charles T. Downey, French organist Olivier Latry delivers an excellent program (Washington Post, April 30)

A visit to Notre-Dame Cathedral to hear Olivier Latry play the organ at Mass should be a part of everyone’s trip to Paris. The celebrated French organist returned to Washington this week to perform as part of the Georgetown Concert Series at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Tuesday evening. The instrument and space are dwarfed in comparison to the last place I heard him play here, the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in 2009, but Latry delivered an excellent program centered on his strengths, late Romantic French music and improvisation.

Latry chose registrations carefully, reserving the loudest sounds for the big pieces ending each half... [Continue reading]

Olivier Latry, organ
Georgetown Concert Series
St. John's Episcopal Church

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, La Messe at Notre-Dame (Ionarts, March 21, 2006)

Jens F. Laurson, Dip Your Ears, No. 45 (In Spiritum) (Ionarts, September 22, 2005)

At the Slovenian Embassy

Slovenija! (Songs and Duets), B. Fink, M. Fink, A. Spiri

Charles T. Downey, Violinist Lana Trotovsek gives radiant performance in Embassy Series (Washington Post, September 11, 2014)

The concerts offered by the Embassy Series bring together the interests of music, cuisine and international relations in a way that seems peculiar to the nation’s capital. The group’s season opener was a recital by Slovenian violinist Lana Trotovsek on Tuesday evening at the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia.

Two standards of the violin repertoire were the main courses of this program, beginning with Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 5, Op. 24... [Continue reading]

Lana Trotovšek, violin
Anna Shelest, piano
Embassy Series
Embassy of Slovenia

KC Chamber Players in Terrace Theater

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

On Sunday evening in the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, the Kennedy Center Chamber Players, all principals of the National Symphony Orchestra, presented a polished program of music tied loosely together by the theme of contrast between sacred and profane.

The program began with Darius Milhaud’s four-movement Suite for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano, op. 157b (1936), for which pianist Lambert Orkis was joined by violinist Marissa Regni and clarinetist Loren Kitt. The piece’s prevailing lighthearted and danceable mood is tinged with tongue-in-cheek detachment and polytonal complexity, while a dreamy second movement reveals a heart of childlike simplicity. In a smooth and precise reading, Regni played with especially tender, almost vibrato-free purity in the second movement. Here as throughout the evening, Orkis was the most expressive performer of the group.

Next, Orkis joined cellist David Hardy for César Franck’s Sonata in A Major (1886), written for violin and piano and later arranged, with the composer’s blessing, for cello and piano. The piece gains expressive depth with the use of cello instead of violin, although in Sunday’s performance the cello was swallowed up by the piano in places where a violin would have soared above it. This was not helped by the placement of the cellist right next to the piano, making it hard to distinguish the two instruments. In this world-weary sonata, Franck’s nomadic chromaticism and cyclic rehashing of motifs create a sense of endless searching without finding. Orkis and Hardy brought an appropriately grand seriousness to the piece, while also injecting fire into its exhilarating fast passages. At times, though, this entailed a loss of some precision in the piano part. Hardy delivered the cello’s final gruff outburst with dramatic flair.

Orkis and Hardy returned for J. S. Bach’s Sonata in G minor, BWV 1030b. Bach reworked this piece in different keys and for different instruments; it is more commonly performed on flute or oboe than on cello. Bach’s unsettled chromaticism here recalled Franck’s, and Orkis and Hardy again grappled ably with this intricate music. However, they also succumbed to some of the dangers of playing Bach on modern instruments; it was generally too bright and insistent. Hardy’s higher register began to fray toward the end, sounding squeaky and not quite in tune. The players closed with Béla Bartók’s Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano (1938). This fiery piece was commissioned by jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman, and in it, Eastern European dances mingle with jazz riffs appropriate to Goodman’s style. The players reveled in its eccentricities, from the opening mock-serious military recruiting dance to the jarringly mistuned (scordatura) violin scratchings of the final movement.

Joshua Bell @ Strathmore

French Impressions (Franck, Saint-Saëns, Ravel) (2012)

Joshua Bell is a regular on the Washington Performing Arts Society season, a big name that fills a big hall. The American violinist, one of the few classical musicians whom most people would recognize by name -- if not by sight, at least not in a baseball cap at L'Enfant Plaza -- was just here in January, at the Kennedy Center. He was back with another program on Thursday night, this time in the Music Center at Strathmore, once again with pianist Sam Haywood. Not surprisingly, he stuck to the Romantic music that is his bread and butter, the music that spotlights his uncanny ability to draw forth a sweet, glowing tone from his 1713 Stradivarius violin, the Gibson ex-Huberman.

This was certainly true of the two major works at the heart of this concert. Few violinists play Franck's A major violin sonata like Bell, with such radiance in the soft passages and a mercurial sense of rubato. He took the final movement at quite a clip, and Haywood, who is a sensitive partner at the piano (if not all that strikingly individual a player), did a fine job of staying with him. Although Prokofiev's second violin sonata (D major, op. 94bis, originally composed for the flute) was composed in the 1940s, it paired quite naturally with the Franck, especially the way that Bell played it, emphasizing its blithe and limpid qualities, as in the main theme of the first movement. Bell gave the second movement, taken very fast, some folksy rhythmic verve and bluesy touches, and a suave softness in the third, but the fourth movement lacked the fortissimo zing it needed, something like what the stronger arm of a Vadim Repin provides, to give the grotesquerie an uglier edge.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, At Strathmore, Joshua Bell puts on a trademark, moving performance (Washington Post, November 3) David Patrick Stearns, Orchestra rises to music of the Americas (Philadelphia Inquirer, October 28) Ivan Hewett, Academy of St Martin in the Fields / Joshua Bell, Cadogan Hall (The Telegraph, October 19)

Least successful was Schubert's Rondo Brillant in B Minor, which headed the program. This is a composer one does not associate with Bell (he has recorded at least one short piece, the Serenade), although there was much free and rhapsodic playing from both musicians. The fast sections sounded a little helter-skelter in terms of ensemble alignment, which brought to mind just how packed Bell's schedule is these days, since having added the directorship of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields to his already busy life. The unannounced last part of the program served also as encores, with Bell padding out the 19th-century part of the concert by playing Tchaikovsky's Melody and the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso in A Minor, op. 28, by Camille Saint-Saëns.

The next concert presented by WPAS will feature pianist Lukáš Vondráček (December 1, 2 pm), at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

Gregorian Chant Supreme

Charles T. Downey, Cathedral Choral Society opens 71st season
Washington Post, October 23, 2012

Duruflé, Complete Choral Works, Choir of Trinity College Cambridge

The Cathedral Choral Society opened its 71st season with a tribute to the flowering of late romantic music in France. This grand program, at Washington National Cathedral on Sunday afternoon, combined the cathedral’s imposing organ, multiple choruses and a vast orchestra, which are not always suited to the cavernous space.

In Maurice Durufle’s evanescent setting of the Latin Requiem Mass, a lush rethinking of the Gregorian chant melodies for the Mass of the Dead, the combined forces murmured and undulated. Durufle was perhaps the most skilled composer of the 20th century at setting Gregorian chant, a body of music that he revered; late in life, he railed against its removal from the Catholic liturgy in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. The composer’s original large orchestration sometimes came close to smothering the chorus, kept intentionally soft, but it made for transporting climaxes in the “Domine Jesu Christe” and “Osanna” sections. [Continue reading]

Cathedral Choral Society
Duruflé, Requiem
Saint-Saëns, Symphony No. 3
Washington National Cathedral

Mozart Woche Salzburg: “You must hear Ébène!”

Very few musicians are so good that a less-than-starry performance doesn’t affect how we think of them. Once we have identified them, though, we hear (or imagine) the difference between general ho-hum and a one-off. Mediocre Mahler won’t deter me from seeing Andris Nelsons as one of the conductors of our time. Non-committal Schubert will not alter my admiration for Alexandre Tharaud as the most wonderful pianist for musical miniatures of all sorts. And the Quatuor Ébène, since first hearing them at the Corcoran Gallery in 2006, have been favorites for their appeal to intellect and heart alike; for their combination of delicate refinement and raw energy. Even in a time of unprecedented talent and quality in string quartets, they still stand out as truly special to audiences and critics alike. Mitsuko Uchida, excitedly cajoling a New Yorker critic, summed it up: “You must hear Ébène!” She goes further than just ‘hearing Ébène’, too, she plays with them—as on this occasion—with great, visible delight.

Physical and mental exhaustion take a toll and the last time I heard the quartet (in that secret Bavarian chamber-music outpost Gauting) the musical results of Haydn et al., for all the underlying qualities, were smudged. Almost a year later, now at Salzburg’s MozartWeek, they re-emerged to my ears fresh, quickened, and in all their subtle glory.

W.A.Mozart, String Quartets K421 & 465, Divertimento K138, Quatuor Ébène Virgin Classics

Mozart’s Quartet K421 in d-minor was long-stranded and with furor behind a veneer of lightness and transparency; its dissonances more spice than tragic. The four Frenchmen then showed themselves to be truly at home in the furioso of the Menuetto: so not at all just a well behaved little Menuetto, sitting demurely on the chaise longue, entertaining until the finale arrives. No, this was an out-and-about kind of Menuetto, absconding at night to shoot dried peas at stray cats before running home again and pretending to be nicely tucked in come the Allegretto… only to continue mischief once we turn our back. The Allegro was back in church, all innocent with nothing to confess and prone to drift off into thoughts of roaming the fields: yearning, but calm.

It may not have sounded precisely like that to everyone in the sold-out Great Hall of the Mozarteum, but the music sure did come alive in these eight hands.

The Debussy Quartet that followed is musical home-turf for the Ébènes; their debut-recording for Virgin of it a new reference. The work itself is so fine, too, that one doesn’t get tired of hearing it often… still, one cannot help to think what a delight (and what a service to music) it would be if the Ébène also took on quartets off the well-played path—like those of, say, Joseph Jongen. But then again they played Debussy so different and afresh on this occasion, that it sounded like a new-yet-familiar quartet. Wonderfully lithe and with enormous flow rather than ruthlessness, there wasn’t a stale note heard.

The Franck Piano Quintet is a quintessential “bear” in music: long and massive and not easy on the performers. Ursine tendencies notwithstanding, I have yet to hear a more graceful bear than the one the Ébènes and Uchida performed. Not emaciated, certainly not de-clawed, but capable of gentle caressing and careening between the roaring moments, and relentlessly driven. Afterwards Uchida announced that there was a birthday boy in the quartet and performed an encore for the cellist, which ended a matinee of rare quality on a wonderfully light, Mozartean note.

WPAS Presents Kathryn Stott

Saturday afternoon, the Washington Performing Arts Society presented English pianist Kathryn Stott at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Widely known for her long pianistic collaboration with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who was honored the following day at the Kennedy Center Honors, Stott has a wide-ranging career as a soloist, chamber musician, and arts manager. Beyond one's initial reaction to her use of scores in a program she is repeating half-a-dozen times this season, her program began auspiciously with Fauré's Nocturne No. 4 in E-flat, op. 36, which opens gently and poetically builds up and then down.

The bulk of Stott's program was French -- she was a pupil of Nadia Boulanger and appointed Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres -- and Ravel's three-movement Sonatine was beautifully voiced, colorfully graphic, and Romantically flexible in tempo. The "Mouvement de menuet" was taken at a uniquely broad tempo that allowed for heightened expressivity, while the "Animé" sparkled, with the exception of the moments when in seeking ultimate tone, harshness was found. Her modest use of the damper pedal enhanced overall clarity throughout the program, reminding one of Walter Gieseking's playing. The program included two more nocturnes: Debussy's in D-flat, and also Fauré's in D-flat (no. 6, op. 63) that began to feel contrary to a bright winter's afternoon in Washington. However, it was worth waiting for Franck's hauntingly mysterious Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue.

Franck has the imagination and chops of Liszt, yet more coherent harmony in this work. Stott, with arpeggiating arms flowing about, savored each of Franck's phrases to its fullest length. The Fugue's serious subject has a descending chromatic sighing subject similar to Bach's "Crucifixus" from the B Minor Mass and Cantata No. 12, which Liszt also uses in his "Variations on "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen." Franck majestically works the chorale tune into his fugue, and one hears bell-like clusters at its conclusion. Unfortunately, Stott and the Steinway were not quite getting along at a few more moments of peak intensity; the outcome of her resorting to hitting the keys was a harsh reduction in resonance.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, British pianist Kathryn Stott returns to Kennedy Center (Washington Post, December 4)

Stott brought the audience out of the "French cocoon" in the second half of the program, remarking on having heard Arthur Rubinstein perform and always program works by Latin American composers Alberto Ginastera and Geitor Villa-Lobos. Stott was at her best navigating through the angular, gurgling intensity of Ginastera's Sonata No. 1, regardless of split notes. Villa-Lobos' Valsa da Dor or Waltz of Sorrow sounded reminiscent of the earlier turn of the 20th-century nocturnes from earlier in the program, yet a few generations newer. Stott characterized Graham Fitkin's Relent, commissioned by the artist in 1998 as a concert finale, by stating, "It is relentless." Its dark industrial hues were further polluted by left-hand rumbling in the lower register. There was an intentional linear wall-paper of urban hustle and bustle, without a context of harmonic dimensional images. Stott's page turner looked especially nervous during this virtuosic tour-de-force of thousands of notes, making one wish she was playing at least this one by heart: the artist and instrument alone, with music rack removed. Due to programming and execution, Garrick Ohlsson's recent WPAS program was more memorable.

The WPAS piano recital series continues next month with concerts by Orion Weiss (January 7) and Simone Dinnerstein (January 29).

Sofya Gulyak

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Pianist Sofya Gulyak
Washington Post, January 24, 2011

The Washington Performing Arts Society brought Sofya Gulyak back to Washington for a recital on Saturday afternoon in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. After the Russian pianist's dramatic win at the William Kapell International Piano Competition in 2007, she went on to become the first woman to win the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2009. Strangely, for a competition regular to play a program centered on romantic music, this was a performance that seemed curiously restrained.

In Schubert's "Three Piano Pieces," D. 946, Gulyak went for poetry by narrowing the tone of her right hand to a sometimes spidery thinness, without making her left hand transparent enough to complement it. Even in the moody middle piece, this reticence seemed to chop up the melody, preventing a smooth legato from spinning out. The results were disappointingly similar in Chopin's Second Sonata, where a reserved quality made technically challenging passages exciting without the thrilling feel of being pushed to the edge of safety. [Continue reading]

Sofya Gulyak, piano
Washington Performing Arts Society
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

Other reviews:
Kapell Competition (2007)

Seraphic Teen Harpists Pedal Their Wares

Read my review published today on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, Teen harpists show their pluck
Washington Post, July 2, 2010

Defying the Limits, American Youth Harp Ensemble

The desperate concert-goer in the summer months may consider a performance that at other times of the year might not seem worthwhile, and that can be a good thing. One might be among the fifty or so intrepid audience members who discovered the American Youth Harp Ensemble, which played a concert at the Austrian Embassy on Wednesday night.

Based in Richmond, this touring ensemble of ten teenage harpists (and one versatile percussionist) is the most visible component of a program of music education, youth mentorship, and volunteer service created by Lynnelle Ediger-Kordzaia, a harpist and former public school music teacher. The background story provided the feel-good part of the evening, listening to talented kids who had absorbed so clearly the lessons of commitment, diligent practice, and self-discipline that music can teach. One of the musicians, Ian McVoy, even celebrated just having completed eighth grade by taking a solo turn in a piece he arranged himself for the ensemble. [Continue reading]

American Youth Harp Ensemble
Austrian Cultural Forum
Embassy of Austria

Chamayou Champions Franck

Franck, Les Djinns (inter alia), B. Chamayou, O. Latry, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, S. Denève (released on April 27, 2010) Naïve V 5208 | 1h13

We missed the one Washington concert by French pianist Bertrand Chamayou but did take note of his debut CD on the Naïve label a couple years ago, some lesser-known pieces by Mendelssohn. Although he has recorded at least one other disc, Liszt's Transcendental Etudes for Sony, it has not reached the U.S. yet. So, after a couple years, it was a pleasant surprise to have his second recording for Naïve cross my desk. This one is devoted to the music of César Franck, again not something one sees many pianists going out of their way to play. This is yet another disc whose inspiration is owed at least in part to the Centre de musique romantique française, whose research also led to recent discs of music by Onslow and Boëly. From the Palazzetto Bru Zane in Venice -- where Chamayou gave a concert earlier this week, with a program of Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Franck, and Alkan -- the Centre's Scientific Director, Alexandre Dratwicki, authored the authoritative and informative liner notes of this disc. Chamayou gives urbane and color-filled performances of all the pieces on the disc, some more familiar than others: as noted in the liner essay by the pianist, these are works that used to be much more a part of the performing repertory of the world's great pianists.

Certainly, the two works with orchestra could be a worthy alternative to late Romantic concertos: Jean-Yves Thibaudet should think about it instead of playing one of the Ravel or Liszt concertos for the umpteenth time. Put together, the Variations symphoniques and the brilliant, mysterious Les Djinns, the latter inspired by a poem from Victor Hugo's exotic collection Les Orientales, would make an exciting bit of programming. The Prélude, choral et fugue (also recorded recently by Jens Elvekjær) and Prélude, aria et final are more familiar but still rarely heard on recital programs (indeed, I believe, either work has been reviewed live only once in the history of Ionarts). The most savory discovery, however, is the final set of three short tracks, the Prélude, fugue et variation, op. 18, in Franck's unusual arrangement for piano and harmonium. None other than Olivier Latry plays the evocative 1926 Mustel harmonium -- a sound that reeks of Frenchness. Indeed, all of Chamayou's collaborators are top-notch, including conductor Stéphane Denève and his Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

NSO and Maazel Work Well Together

We welcome this review from guest contributor Sophia Vastek, who was helpfully filling in for your ailing moderator.

In many ways, the National Symphony Orchestra’s concert last night, conducted by Lorin Maazel, showcased a musical return to true sincerity and a lack of presumption. It was a delightful program all around: Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg was the featured soloist, performing Barber’s Violin Concerto, which was matched with Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, Franck’s Symphony in D minor, and a work by Maazel himself, based on Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. The concert opened with Rimsky-Korsakov’s time-worn arrangement of Mussorgsky’s programmatic work, and with startlingly tight ensemble playing. Maazel is certainly a minimalist when it comes to his conducting style, and, like it or not, the orchestra responded with crisp rhythmic integrity, making for an exciting performance of a work that might otherwise leave something to be desired in the way of substance.

Salerno-Sonnenberg played the Barber Concerto with utmost earnestness, passionate and so clearly intelligent, albeit a bit messy in a few places (but notes aren’t everything after all). Her ability to communicate with and weave in and out of the orchestra was truly remarkable, especially in the beginning of the second movement. She emerged from the orchestra from nothing – literally nothing, leaving the audience clinging to their seats until her sound gained more substance and gracefully exited the orchestra’s aural fold. She was a collaborator in the truest sense of the word, and it was refreshing to see in a soloist.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Maazel and National Symphony: No Technical Difficulties (Washington Post, October 16)

The orchestra’s rendition of Franck’s Symphony was admirable but never gave way to what can be (or should be) full-blown Romanticism. The piece never really gained momentum, perhaps due to Maazel’s meticulous approach? But it was the two Maazels (yes, two of them) that left the most lasting impression with The Giving Tree for orchestra, solo cello, and narrator. Maazel’s piece is a dark and moving interpretation of Silverstein’s popular children’s book, and Maazel’s wife, Dietlinde Turban-Maazel, a German actress, brought the story to life through her acute and powerful narration. The final words, “and the tree was happy” (after the boy has taken everything the tree has to give), were accented by a tragically dissonant, over-Romanticized orchestra that left much to the imagination in what exactly the word “happy” meant. Despite the apparent simplicity of the text, Maazel deftly crafted a multifaceted and refined orchestration that swirled around the narrative in a way that surely left audience members pondering this simple children’s story and its implications.

This concert will be repeated this evening (October 17, 8 pm), in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Jens Elvekjær's Debut CD

Franck, Ravel, Debussy, J. Elvekjær (released on April 18, 2007) Classico ClassCd 711

As another preview to this evening's concert by Trio con Brio Copenhagen at the Library of Congress (February 18, 8 pm), with violist James Dunham, we have been listening to the first solo CD debut by the group's Danish pianist, Jens Elvekjær. You may recall from my exclusive review of Elvekjær's American solo recital debut last month at Dumbarton Oaks that his playing struck me as a little hard-edged, reminiscent at times of the big-boned sound of Daniel Barenboim. The same weightiness comes across on this recording: not that the aquatic parts of the Ravel (Ondine) and Debussy (L'Isle Joyeuse) selections do not have a silvery sparkle, but there is a certain percussive crunch heard even in the soft passagework (these tracks were actually recorded back in 2004, in Birkerød, Denmark).

Perhaps because of the seemingly innate francophilia of many Russians, recent performances of Gaspard de la Nuit by Yevgeny Sudbin (live) and Anna Vinnitskaya (CD) have hit closest to the version truest to the mark, Alexandre Tharaud's complete Ravel recording. What Elvekjær lacks in a certain Gallic transparency he makes up for in athletic energy, with a whitewater Ondine, a clanging Gibet, a spastically tumbling Scarbo. One could lay similar charges against Elvekjær's Debussy, the second book of Images and L'Isle joyeuse, that it is not necessarily music he "gets" -- meaning not that he cannot play it (he certainly has the chops), only that it would not be my first choice for ideal listening -- unlike his Nielsen, which was utterly convincing (and more recent, after the pianist has undergone fairly extensive testing on wide-ranging concert tours). A similar formal seriousness makes the Franck selection on this disc, the Prélude, choral et fugue, so intense, dense, and well-voiced. At the Library of Congress tonight, we will hear how Elvekjær and his colleagues in Trio con Brio Copenhagen handle Mendelssohn.

63'54"

Trio con Brio Copenhagen's new Mendelssohn CD will reportedly be released this month, and Mendelssohn will feature prominently in their performance tonight at the Library of Congress (February 18, 8 pm), which will include the 12-year old Mendelssohn’s Piano Quartet in B minor, op. 3, and his only Song without Words written for cello, as well as Beethoven’s "Archduke" Trio.

Joshua Bell

Joshua Bell, violinist (photo courtesy of Sony Music)

It was Nicola Benedetti's misfortune to have had her recital scheduled the evening before that of Joshua Bell, hosted by Washington Performing Arts Society at Strathmore on Wednesday night. The comparison was damning, as Bell's technique is practically unassailable and he was playing a program of late 19th- and early 20th-century music, in which he excels as an interpreter. If it is Romantic, ardent, passionate, sweet, Bell at his best will draw the perfect soaring or sotto voce line from his Gibson ex-Huberman, a 1713 Stradivarius instrument that is matched beautifully to his strengths. Of all of his recent appearances in the area -- his 2008 recital at the Kennedy Center, his unannounced concert in the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station in 2007, and his 2006 concerts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra -- this was the best program and the strongest performance.

One criticism that could be raised against Bell's approach to music is that his tone is too consistently pretty, that after listening to him play for two hours, one's teeth hurt from all that sugary legato. Indeed, the strongest works of the evening were the more bitingly dissonant ones, especially Leoš Janáček's violin sonata, which opened the concert. With fewer long-breathed melodies to indulge in, Bell embraced the impetuous speech-like character of this music, like so much of Janáček's music influenced by his study of the rhythms of Czech speech and his study of folk music. The chattering motifs of the first movement were balanced by the profound calm of the second, and the raucous roulades and modal, clownish tunes of the third. Bell's attention to using a full range of dynamics and tone colors was matched by his expressive partner, pianist Jeremy Denk, who kept pace with Bell through it all. One hopes that a recording of the work is being planned.

Franck Sonata, with Jean-Yves Thibaudet

Bell, in his breezy Midwestern way (being from Michigan I can say that), spoke about the A minor sonata by Eugène Ysaÿe (op. 27, no. 2) he played to start the second half. My guest for the concert was my doctoral dissertation adviser, an authority on Gregorian chant, and we were both tickled to hear Bell explain the composer's use of the Dies irae sequence that runs through this sonata, even playing the opening section of the chant melody. This was everything that Benedetti's Ysaÿe selection was not, from the suave multiple-stop passages to the eerie Dies irae quotations to the tone-filled pizzicati, all of it adding up to a technical tour de force of Mephistophelian proportions.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Violinist Joshua Bell, Pretty Darn Good (Washington Post, February 6) T. L. Ponick, Bell, Denk share their virtuosity (Washington Times, February 6)

The third Brahms sonata (D minor, op. 108) -- which also put Benedetti's Brahms to shame -- and the Franck A major sonata veered close to treacle but, while definitely sweet, were not so saccharine as to be indigestible. A pervading hushed quality kept the Brahms from disappearing over the edge, as did Bell's tendency to push fast tempi to the breaking point, with Denk happy to follow him off the cliff. The same qualities prevailed in the Franck, which was composed for Ysaÿe as Bell pointed out in his remarks, also noting that one of Ysaÿe's students was Josef Gingold, who happens to have taught Joshua Bell. After a mostly delicate first movement, the rhapsodic excesses of the second caused some well-deserved applause to break out in the audience. The third movement was the most affecting, a tense, interior monologue that blossomed into that recurring melody, played sotto voce against the pastel-hued piano's shimmer. Bell drove the final movement too quickly, leading Denk to miss a few notes here and there in the rush, a rapidity that cheated the sonata's sense of closing. A single encore, the famous "Meditation" from Thaïs, was just the guilty treat cloying that my sweet tooth needed.

The next great virtuoso invited by Washington Performing Arts Society is pianist Evgeny Kissin, who will play a recital in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall (March 1, 4 pm).

Ionarts-at-Large: Minkowski & Pernoo With an Offenbach Surprise

Marc Minkowski is not a conductor known for conventionalism, whether it be his interpretations or the repertoire itself. Guest-conducting the Bavarian State Orchestra (the opera’s orchestra) in its Fifth Akademiekonzert of the 2007/2008 season, he underlined that perception by opening with Stanislaw Moniuszko’s Halka Overture, a lovely little, bubbly curtain raiser that whets the appetite for more music of Poland’s largely forgotten ‘national composer’. Then followed the whacky, oversized cello concerto of Jacques Offenbach.

Yes – Jacques Offenbach wrote a cello concerto, and it’s not just the one-movement Concerto Militaire, seldom enough played in its own right and actually the first movement of the Grand Concerto. The concerto has been reconstructed from fragments that have floated about since the 1940s, but the completion could not take place until 2006 when Jean-Christophe Keck, the publisher of the critical, complete Offenbach edition found Offenbach’s handwritten score in the Library of Congress and an archive in Cologne. Now we know that the Concerto rondo is the finale of this Grand Concerto, and its nickname “militaire” makes more sense as it did when it was applied to the rather un-martial stand-alone first movement.

That first movement opens gently, softly with timpani touches. It quickly swells, hitting a sporting and gay stride until the cello enters – solo – with a double-stop studded opening statement and then giving away to something altogether more hysterical.


The sounds convey one thing before all: Someone who knew the cello, its abilities and possible abuses intimately wrote this to have all the fun imaginable with the instrument. Jérôme Pernoo, the young French cellist that Minkowski brought with him, succeeded in conveying this impression not only about the composer (said to have been the Franz Liszt of the cello), but also about himself.

Given the sometimes ridiculous challenges that this work presents – high register double stop-sequences especially – it wasn’t by means of technical perfection that Pernoo achieved this, but through buoyant joy, verve, and plenty spunk. Listening to him play this concerto, one could not help but expect it to take cellists’ repertoires and concert halls by storm… despite its considerable length (~45 minutes) and the downright silly technical demands it places on the soloist.

Generous and decidedly knowing applause after the first movement was the just reward and about as high a praise a soloist can get nowadays, when applauding between movements is usually scoffed upon as boorish and ignorant. Indeed, my seat neighbors glared into the program notes where three movements were indicated and muttered that this errant applause was “not at all in accord with concert etiquette”. Indeed it was not (nor was the concerto itself) – and thanks be to that.

Very little military attitude in the highly lyrical, flute-twittering and cheery second movement Andante – the only entirely new music in this work. The duo between cello and first violin (Markus Wolf) must surely be among the most immediately and widely pleasing moments in cello concerto history.

J.Offenbach, Grand Concerto for Cello et al., M. Minkowski / Le Musiciens du Louvre / J.Pernoo Archiv

Between the artillery and infantry shots from the third movement’s percussion ranks, the cello and the strings put down such an infectious romp that a sort of Beer-hall joviality threatened to erupt in the dignified surroundings of the Munich opera house. Admittedly that might be over-interpreting the smiles and rhythmic twitching of the audience – young and old in equal measure – but not overstate the character of the music. The back and forth between those percussion batteries and the soloist had – in the good sense – moments of absolute hilarity, concluding with a particularly harsh that leaves the cello – metaphorically – limping off stage. Chock full of lust for composing and playing the cello, unbridled fantasy, like an excited puppy blissfully running about the orchestral stage: this concerto cares not about convention, only entertainment. Had a composer of lesser stature than Offenbach attempted this, the result might have been an embarrassing disaster. As it is, there are more moments in this work that made me smile broadly than I can count. A feat not possible had it not been for the willing and sympathetic support from the Staatsorchester.

Pernoo clearly found his vehicle here – a thankful one for everyone, though I suspect that for all its entertainment value also one vulnerable to overexposure. Until then, though, there was and is no reason not to join in the trampling, hollering, and incessant applause the was the response at this performance. The Barcarolle was promptly encored, with Pernoo as soloist extraordinaire.

The second half was given to César Franck’s Symphony in d-minor, which made for interesting comparison with the performance of Riccardo Muti. Now conducting with a regular baton, not the thick, piano-lacquered black wand from his collection of historical ‘instruments’, Minkowski got a much more French sound than Muti from this utterly un-French symphony that is organ-like as Bruckner’s symphonies are, chromatically akin to Wagner-Liszt-Reger, and structurally more like Brahms than anything else. Minkowski – throughout the evening – also elicited an excellent, unusually deep and sonorous sound from the orchestra which played with musicality and humanity that it never reaches under Kent Nagano, whose cold musical photorealism is more akin to a Ron Kleeman or Ralph Goings painting rather than organically unfolding, musical joy.

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Ionarts-at-Large: Muti & Rota

Just seven weeks after Riccardo Muti had presented choral rarities of Schubert, Petrassi, and Berlioz in Munich, he was back with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in a concert of the music of Nino Rota and César Franck -- intermittently the BRSO had toured Japan with Mariss Jansons and Richard Strauss – and judging from the reviews with the usual, extraordinary success.

With Arcadi Volodos occupying the Herkulessaal on Thursday, the BRSO played in their second home, the Philharmonie at the Gasteig. (This choice between the smallish 1300 seat Herkulessaal and the too-big, acoustically challenged 2400 seat Gasteig is the reason why Mariss Jansons is so engaged in the BRSO getting a new, dedicated 1800 seat concert hall which is tentatively planned at the former royal stables, right behind the opera.)

Despite the draw that is Riccardo Muti’s name and likely because of the lack of familiarity with the name Nino Rota or the association of him with film music (e.g. The Godfather, 8½, La Strada), the BRSO played to a less than sold out house.

A shame, because those who stayed away missed a spectacularly bold concert of music that only the most hardened music-snobs would not have embraced wholeheartedly. Perhaps it is part of the irony of the concert business that people stay away when the fare is too difficult and when it is not ‘serious’ enough. Even Claudio Abbado can’t fill the Gasteig in Munich when he adds as harmless a piece as Pelleas et Mllisande onto a Mahler program, just because the name “Schoenberg” is astutely avoided. Similarly, if it isn’t “Beethoven” or “Strauss” or “Mozart” that’s on the program but ‘only a film composer’, large swaths of the audience won’t think it classy enough.

Il Gattopardo, Luchino Visconti’s 1966 melancholic film about the decline and fall of Italian aristocracy and noblesse with Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, and Alain Delon, got Nino Rota’s most romantic and wistful music. The story is a throwback to a bygone, allegedly better, time – full of romantic melancholy and reminiscences. That’s exactly how the music sounds, too. And listening to it, the argument that Nino Rota was only to happy to compose this music under the guise of making it suitable for the film, while really yearning to write exactly that kind of music, anyway, sounds unassailable. Here he did not need to hide behind irony or hints of a modern idiom – he could brazenly wallow in all the schmaltzy, lush, thundering, glory-touting, somber, introverted, and pensive instincts that came to him and that he was not able to put into the abandoned symphony upon the sketches of which the music to Il Gattopardo is based.

There was not a moment in which it did not sound like a matter of luxury to have this music played by the BRSO under Riccardo Muti’s caring leadership. That Muti, not known for frivolities of any kind, thus champions Rota not only has to do with the better-than-suspected music of the Milan-born composer who taught at the South Italian conservatory in Bari, but also with Rota having been Muti’s teacher whose recommendation got the then 17-year old conductor-to-be into the conservatory in Naples.

C.Franck, Symphony in d-minor, Muti/Philadelphia Rota, La Strada, Gattopardo Dances, Cto. for Strings, Muti/La Scala Phil Rota, Piano Concertos, Muti/Tomassi/La Scala Phil Rota, Music for Film, Muti/La Scala Phil Rota, La Strada, Il Gattopardo, Concerto Soirée, Pons/Granada City Orchestra

Muti seems to pay back his dues with enthusiasm and passion: Swelling and moving, the orchestra dug into this score, as well as the following Piano Concerto’s, with fury. The brass boomed, the timpani thumped, and the strings swooned. There’s little I find more tiring than the typical conductor’s platitude of every piece of music, no matter its inherent worth, having to be played like it is the “best piece ever written”. On Thursday with the BRSO, the statement finally came true. It shows the respect that Muti wields from the players – and his ability to share his passion – that both of the Rota works were played as if they were the finest music that Beethoven has to offer.

They are not, mind you, but that’s not to say that we shouldn’t hear the symphonic suite or either concerto much more often in concert! The more archaic and romantic is clearly the Piano Concerto E-major ”Piccolo mondo antico”. A pianistic showpiece that starts out like Rachmaninov, then moves through a slow movement of clouded joy and longing smiles that sounds more like Ravel than anything else, and ends with a flashy bang after much of its third movement reminded of the Prokofiev of ”Romeo & Juliet” and ”The Love for Three Oranges” (as well as more Ravel), it seems to travel though all the more harmless romantic styles of the 20th century. There is obscene deliciousness here, and more swells and climaxes while the irony in it is scarcely noticeable. At least not in the confident rendition of Muti who seems to think that this music needs no irony for its self-defense.

The young French pianist David Fray, whose recent album of Bach and Boulez on Virgin found the warm praise of Anthony Tommasini, played along with Muti, milked the concerto to the hilt, and his perfectly placed last chord coincided with the thundering applause of the audience.

The second half of the concert was reserved for a dominating, all-stops-pulled, Symphony in d-minor by Franck. I don’t blame the audience of the work's premiere for not having quite understood the work. After founding the Société Nationale de Musique with Fauré, Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, etc. to open a new, decidedly French front against the dominance of Wagnerian music, to champion a music that breathed the spirit of ”ars gallica”, and after being a teacher to d’Indy, Chausson, Pierné, Dukas, and the brilliant, mad Duparc (to whom the symphony is dedicated), it should seem odd to present a symphony that could not be any less French. In fact, it’s a work that seems to combine ideas and themes of Wagner, Bruckner, Brahms, Liszt, and even Beethoven, just not an ounce of French idiom. A few very simple motifs are turned into a grand symphony of three movements that sounds to me like the very rejection of everything he had worked and faught for... but instead like..., well, like Bruckner vacationing on the Côte d'Azur.

No complaints from me. And Muti, too, did not seem to be interested in adding anything dainty or croissant-flavored to the symphony. This was a militaristic and swift performance of complete cohesion and sonority, impressive at every point, though driven too hard in some places. Not only bold and muscular, but blaring and not bothering much with subtleties, either. A particular delight amid all this was the pizzicato-burdened Allegretto with its famous cor anglais-solo where the soloist gets to snarl like depressed, moaning duck to the harp’s diligent plucking.