Briefly Noted: Anderszewski's Central European Survey (CD of the Month)

Janáček, On an Overgrown Path (Book 2) / Szymanowski, Mazurkas (selected) / Bartók, Bagatelles (complete), Piotr Anderszewski (released on January 26, 2024) Warner Classics 5419789127 | 65'32"

Schedule conflicts prevented me from hearing Piotr Anderszewski's most recent area recitals at Shriver Hall, in 2023 and 2019, much to my regret. The Polish pianist's program last year included some of Karol Szymanowski's Mazurkas, which are at the heart of this new recital disc, combining sets of early 20th-century miniatures by three esteemed composers from central Europe. Anderszewski once summed up his approach to playing the piano by saying, "to be a musician is to make sense through sound." In performance, he continued, he allows himself "a certain incoherence," to be "in a world of feelings where strict logic is not the most important thing."

The sense of vivid storytelling in an uncomprehended language suits this compilation of pieces enlivened by dissonance and folk-inspired rhythm and harmony. The disc opens with the second book of Janáček's On an Overgrown Path, recorded in 2016 at Warsaw Radio. Anderszewski included the three pieces the composer never officially included in the in the second book, from 1911. Janáček eschewed the character titles he gave each movement in Book 1, providing only tempo markings. This choice gives some emotional distance from the subject matter Janáček ascribed to these pieces, a combination of memories of his childhood and the painful experiences surrounding the death of his 20-year-old daughter Olga in 1903.

The other two selections on this disc were captured last year in Berlin. Anderszewski has long championed the music of fellow Pole Karol Szymanowski, and he gives glowing accounts of six of the twenty Mazurkas published in the composer's Op. 50. Szymanowski went even farther than Chopin in his incorporation of folk elements in his Mazurkas, and Anderszewski brings out the blue-note touches, quintal drones, and imitation of folk instruments.

The complete set of Bartók’s Bagatelles, Op. 6, packs intense flavors into each of these fourteen pieces, most no longer than a minute or two. The experimental nature of this early score, completed in 1908, is announced in the very first piece, where Bartók notated the left hand in four sharps and the right in four flats. The mixture of modal colors, drawn from central European folk music, and atonal techniques revealing the influence of Debussy and Schoenberg, is bracing in Anderszewski's rendition. The final pair of Bagatelles reveal the influence of Stefi Geyer, the young violinist Bartók developed an unrequited love for around this time: a funeral elegy ("Elle est morte") and a madcap waltz ("Ma mie qui danse"), both containing a melodic motif associated with her.


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Briefly Noted: Schumann for Four and Five (CD of the Month)

Schumann, Piano Quartet/Piano Quintet, I. Faust, A.K. Schreiber, A. Tamestit, J.-G. Queyras, A. Melnikov (released on November 24, 2023) Harmonia Mundi HMM902695 | 52'42"

Many musicologists have described Robert Schumann's youthful piano quartet and piano quintet as twin works, not least because they were composed in the same key, E-flat major, and within a few weeks of one another. Neither of these pieces, early experiments by Schumann with pairing his favorite instrument, the piano, with different combination of string instruments, lasts over a half-hour, but the young composer, still only 19 years old, laid the foundations for many later examples of both of these still relatively rare genres.

This delectable new release assembles a dream team for these exemplary works: violinist Isabelle Faust, violist Antoine Tamestit, cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, and pianist Alexander Melnikov. All play on historical instruments, with the strings all made roughly around the year 1700, as early as 1672, in the case of Tamestit's Stradivarius viola. Melnikov plays on a historical fortepiano made by Ignace Pleyel (Paris, 1851), technically constructed after Schumann composed these pieces, but that is a minor point.

Even though it was composed slightly later, the quartet is the lesser work to my ears, but its slow movement, with ardent cello solos here played subtly by Queyras, is nothing short of gorgeous. Schumann's piano quintet, however, has always struck me as one of the most perfect pieces of chamber music ever written. This performance, with Anne Katharina Schreiber joining on second violin, is going to be rather difficult to improve on, and it is certainly in competition with Melnikov's own recording of the same pairing from a decade ago (with the Jerusalem String Quartet) and the version made around the same time by the Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin. The second movement surprises, both by the detached, somewhat brisk pacing of the funeral march and the understated rubato of the B section. The use of historical instruments and the individual strengths of each player put this disc a notch above.

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Briefly Noted: Tetzlaff siblings play Brahms Double (CD of the Month)

Brahms, Double Concerto / Viotti / Dvořák, Christian Tetzlaff, Tanja Tetzlaff, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Paavo Järvi (released on October 1, 2023) Ondine ODE1423-2 | 60'43"

Earlier this year, I singled out Christian and Tanja Tetzlaff's last recording with Lars Vogt. After the late pianist died last September, the Tetzlaff siblings recorded this program as a memorial to their dear friend in December. They turned to a piece they have played many times before, the Double Concerto of Brahms, as a tribute. The opening cadenza for cello, later joined by violin, is quiet and intimate, with a sense of plaint suitable to the tone of remembrance. The siblings do well in this unusual concerto, where the two instruments, after that opening cadenza, almost always play together, one finishing the thoughts of the other.

Brahms wrote this piece very late in life, for cellist Robert Hausmann and his old friend Joseph Joachim. At that point Brahms and Joachim were no longer on speaking terms, as Brahms had "gone with" (as Larry David put it) Joachim's ex-wife following their divorce. In a gesture of friendship, Brahms meant the piece as a reconciliation, even including a varied form of the F-A-E motif he had used in the movement of the collaborative sonata dedicated to Joachim 30 years earlier. The Tetzlaffs' rendition of the slow movement is especially free and elegiac. Järvi excels at keeping the musicians of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin together with the soloists, giving them room rhythmically and with careful dynamics. The third movement could perhaps be more daring from the soloists, but it has a fine seriousness about it.

Christian Tetzlaff ingeniously pairs the piece with something unexpected, Giovanni Battista Viotta's Violin Concerto No. 22, from the end of the 18th century. It is a piece that Brahms and Joachim both loved. Tetzlaff notes in his booklet comments that Brahms used it as a model for the Double Concerto, including the choice of key (A minor) and some motifs that are borrowed. Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann of the Viotti concerto as one of his "very special raptures," and by including it in the Double Concerto, it is a way to recall to Joachim one aspect of their early friendship through this music. The first movement may not much to speak of, other than some showy bits in the solo part, but the second movement is quite gorgeous, in addition to its significance in relation to the Brahms. The younger Tetzlaff gets her solo piece as well, an encore-like lagniappe of Dvořák's "Silent Woods," an Adagio arranged for cello and orchestra from From the Bohemian Forest.


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Briefly Noted: Pichon's 1610 Vespers (CD of the Month)

Monteverdi, Vespro della beata vergine, Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon (released on September 1, 2023) Harmonia Mundi HMM902710.11 | xx'xx

Claudio Monteverdi is a favorite composer, and there is no piece of his greater in my estimation than the Vespro della beata vergine. The Vespers of 1610, as the piece is sometimes known, has been reviewed in these pages many times, both in recordings and live. In other words, it would take a lot for me to be surprised by a new recording of this piece, but that is precisely what conductor Raphaël Pichon and his ensemble, Pygmalion, have done in their newly released recording. The opening movement, in which Monteverdi interweaves his brilliant brass fanfare from Orfeo with the opening versicle of the Vespers service, is adorned with added brass riffs. Then, just when I thought that Pichon was going to omit the final statement of "Alleluia" from this compact section, his forces delivered it, after a long pause, with expansive delicacy.

Pichon's St. Matthew Passion was a CD of the Month last year, and this release is no less fulfilling a listen. An older version of the Vespro, led by Frieder Bernius, remains my favorite because it is presented liturgically, rounded out with exquisitely performed chant. Pichon's approach could not be more different: where Bernius favors reserve and propriety, Pygmalion goes for spectacle, with a big chorus on many numbers, clarion brass, and splashy surprises of sound.

Not surprisingly, Pichon says in his booklet interview that he feels that "the Vespro is the first cinematic work in the history of music. Monteverdi’s dramatic genius means that each psalm (and especially the first three) is presented as a genuine scene of dramatic action. He sets the scene, and makes us feel, visualise, even touch it!" This situates the work in that most dramatic of stylistic periods, the Baroque, the same era that created the genre of opera. The experience Pichon wants is "immersive," and it is: as he puts it, "to attend a performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers is to experience ecstasy," in a way similar to a viewing of a room-filling work by Bernini.

Many elements will strike a listener familiar with the work as quite different. Pichon opts to eschew the "chiavette" system, by which the often high tessitura of some music of this period was transposed down by a fourth, as heard on many recordings. By not only adhering to the original keys, but also resorting to the high pitch standard of Italian tunings of the time (A set somewhere between 440 and 465 Hz), the singers add further virtuosic, one might say "operatic," intensity to many key climaxes.

Like most conductors, Pichon shuffles the order of numbers slightly in the work's final section. The most significant change is the interpolation of another piece by Monteverdi, Sancta Maria, succurre miseris (SV 328) from Promptuarium musicum, published in 1627, to serve as the "antiphon" to the Magnificat. (In his "liturgical" recording, Bernius added a chant antiphon with an almost identical text in this position.) The motet is followed by the litany-like Sonata sopra Sancta Maria, with which it shares intriguing melodic elements, as if the composer were alluding to one in the other. The concluding number is also a nod to cinematic style, as the Orfeo fanfare that opened the work returns, retrofitted to the closing formulas of Vespers.


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Briefly Noted: London, Circa 1740 (CD of the Month)

London, circa 1740: Handel's Musicians, La Rêveuse, F. Bolton, B. Perrot (released on August 18, 2023) Harmonia Mundi HMM902613 | 68'57"

Gambist Florence Bolton and theorbist Benjamin Perrot, who co-direct the early music ensemble La Rêveuse, continue to survey the lesser-known corners of 18th-century music in England. The concept for the first half of their latest release is to bring together music of Handel with other pieces by the virtuosos who performed under him during his English period.

Flutist Carl Friedrich Wiedemann and oboist (and flutist) Giuseppe Sammartini both became principal players in Handel's orchestra. Both were likely featured in humorous engravings by William Hogarth: Sammartini's notorious bad temper was lampooned in The Enraged Musician. Traverso player Oliver Riehl and soprano recorder player Sébastien Marq contribute remarkable solo playing in concertos by Wiedemann and Sammartini, respectively.

Violinist Pietro Castrucci, whom Handel met when they both worked for the Ruspoli family in Rome, later came to London and became the concertmaster of Handel's opera orchestra. Florence Bolton takes the solo part in a gamba sonata by Castrucci, as well as contributing a wide-ranging booklet essay giving a vivid portrayal of musical taste in the period. Handel is represented by a fine trio sonata, featuring the gorgeous, intertwined violins of Stéphan Dudermel and Ajay Ranganathan. As lagniappe, there is the Hornpipe that Handel wrote for the budding concert series at Vauxhall Gardens, organized by the entrepreneur Jonathan Tyers at one of the summer retreats from London for the nobility. (The Prince of Wales, who used his artistic patronage in his ongoing campaign for popularity against his father, King George II, was a patron and even maintained a Prince's Pavilion there.).

The second half of this pleasing disc goes in a completely different, folk music-influenced direction. Cellist and composer James Oswald, although not directly connected to Handel, was a Scotsman active in London from the 1740s on, later even becoming chamber composer for King George III. Born in Crail, a town in Fife (the region where my own Scottish ancestors lived for a time), he made many arrangements of Scottish folk tunes, beginning with a popular Sonata of Scots Tunes in five movements. The recording also features a selection of melodies from his Caledonian Pocket Companion, an anthology of twelve volumes, rounding out this diverting late-summer delight.

Briefly Noted: Lars Vogt swan song (CD of the Month)

Schubert, Piano Trios Nos. 1 and 2, Christian Tetzlaff, Tanja Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt (released on February 3, 2023) Ondine ODE1394-2D | 136'45"

I was lucky to have heard the late German pianist Lars Vogt at his one local appearance in recent years, an extraordinary Beethoven first piano concerto with Markus Stenz and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2016. We have noted a number of his fine recordings over the life of this site, most recently an odd but satisfying one of rarely heard Romantic melodramas, made with his daughter Isabelle. As recounted in a beautiful article by David Allen for the New York Times, Vogt delayed checking into a hospital in 2021 for further analysis of the cancer that would eventually take his life last September, in order to travel to Bremen to make the first part of this double-album of Schubert's chamber music with Christian Tetzlaff and his sister Tanja Tetzlaff.

The resulting set is a remarkable testament to Vogt's sensitivity as a chamber musician. At their sessions (the second was after Vogt had started chemotherapy) the group recorded all of Schubert's piano trios, except for the Sonatensatz, D. 28, a work of juvenilia, as he composed it when he was just 15 years old. This performance of Piano Trio No. 2 is distinguished by its restoration of a section later cut from the Finale by Schubert, among many musical qualities, especially in the dark-hued slow movement. (There is an odd sound I can't identify at the 10:52 mark in the finale of Piano Trio No. 2.)

In addition to the two numbered trios is the Notturno, a single slow movement possibly composed for and then removed from the first piano trio, with which it has a related home key. It is this piece that stands out on the first disc, especially the graceful, unhurried performance of the hushed main theme. The more heroic contrasting sections sound defiant and determined, but it is that hovering, bliss-filled lead subject that haunts the ears. Schubert composed all three of these works for piano trio in 1827 and 1828, not long before his death, adding an element of wistfulness. What I heard first in the performance was confirmed in the emotional recollections of the Tetzlaffs, included in the booklet:

(Tanja) When Lars listened to this recording, he wrote in our trio chat: “Now I immerse myself in the miracle, too. Feels a little bit like everything, at least in my life, has developed toward this Trio in E flat major.” What again and again was heard from him was this ‘Now we’ve done it, recorded these trios; now I could go too.’ And I find that in the recording one notices that deep inside he already knew that in all likelihood he wasn’t going to be able to live very much longer.

(Christian) The recording was made shortly before the diagnosis. But after every session he lay on the sofa and had horrible stomach pains. And he knew that something catastrophic had happened. When he mentioned this piece, then what went along with it was that it very clearly deals with departure and death, very differently than the B flat major trio.

Vogt also recorded Schubert pieces with each Tetzlaff individually: the Rondo brillant in B minor with violinist Christian and the "Arpeggione" sonata in A minor with cellist Tanja, from 1826 and 1824, respectively. The Tetzlaffs had intended to make a concert tour with Vogt this year, which included one of the Schubert trios. The tour will go ahead, with Kiveli Dörken, a beloved students of Vogt's, taking his place. The tour's local stop will be at Shriver Hall in Baltimore on March 26. shriverconcerts.org

Briefly Noted: Queyras and Tharaud go for Baroque (CD of the Month)

Marin Marais, Pièces de Viole, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexandre Tharaud (released on January 27, 2023) Harmonia Mundi HMM902315 | 62'24"

Alexandre Tharaud has not visited Washington since 2018, and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras was last here in 2017. The two esteemed French musicians have continued their long and fruitful collaboration in a striking new Baroque album, with delightful transcriptions of Marin Marais’s pièces de viole, originally for viola da gamba and continuo, for the cello and piano. The performances, in the spirit of Baroque elaboration but taking full advantage of modern dynamic range and harmonic content, are delightful.

The two longest tracks are celebrated works in Marais's oeuvre. About a third of the disc is given to Couplets des Folies d'Espagne, from the composer's second book of Pièces de Viole, Marais's epic variation set on the widely known tune "La follia." This version of the piece shivers with rhythmic vitality, including some folksy Spanish twists, not least Tharaud's guitar-like repeated notes in one variation.

The second-longest piece on the disc, though only a quarter the size of the Folies d'Espagne, is La Rêveuse, included in Marais's Suite d’un goût étranger in his fourth book and used crucially in the splendid movie about Marais, Tous les Matins du Monde. From the same odd suite is the single track performed by Tharaud alone, an arrangement of the viol piece "Le badinage" somehow rendered on the Yamaha grand piano. Queyras also has one solo track, an arrangement of "Les Regrets," a charming piece sometimes attributed to Marais, given a soulful rendering on Queyras's 1696 Gioffredo Cappa cello.

Also not to be missed is the truly bizarre "Le Tableau de l'opération de la Taille," a piece that describes the horribly painful operation to remove a stone from the bladder. Actor Guillaume Gallienne reads the descriptions of this surgery, which Marais himself underwent without anesthesia in 1720. Unfortunately for those who do not speak French, there is no translation of this brutal text in the booklet, but the vivid demonstrations by the musicians give more than enough sense of their meaning.

Briefly Noted: Dover Quartet ends Beethoven voyage (CD of the Month)

Beethoven, Complete String Quartets, Vol. 3, Dover Quartet (released on October 14, 2022) Cedille CDR90000-215 | 193'20" Vol. 2 (2021) Vol. 1 (2020) [Review]

This summer came some bad news for fans of the supremely talented Dover Quartet. Violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt has left the group, a decision that took effect in August, becoming the first of the group's founding members to depart. The reason given was that she plans to pursue other musical interests; whatever the reason, the personnel change presents worries for how this beloved group's sound will change.

Last summer, fortunately, the Dover Quartet was able to record the last installment in its three-part complete set of the Beethoven string quartet cycle, a sort of pandemic project for the group. Listening to the last volume feels even more like coming full circle: although the group has hardly played any Beethoven in live concerts, at least in Washington, their local debut concluded with the third movement of Beethoven's final quartet, op. 135, played as an encore.

The quartet has spoken about waiting to make a complete Beethoven recording until they had had the chance to play all the works in concert several times. In an group interview given near the start of the project, second violinist Bryan Lee said, "I feel like recording the Beethoven quartets is like having a child." To which Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt added, "You’re never truly ready, but at a certain point you just have to dive in and do it." If we extend the metaphor to include the group's "divorce," the fate of the "children" becomes even more poignant.

Pajaro-van de Stadt described the quartet's approach as trying not to think of making a final statement on the cycle for the ages, but rather "constantly reminding ourselves to play on this recording as if we’re performing in concert." This is an apt description of the liveliness of the sounds captured on the recording, with the same scrupulous attention to detail, ensemble tightness, and individuality of the four instruments that so impresses in their live performances.

Indeed, in few string quartets does one get the chance to hear the second violin and viola so often and so clearly - and find it so rewarding. At the end of the first disc, the Cavatina and new finale of Op. 130 are soul-warming in their burnished sound. As the fine program note by scholar Nancy November remind us, this new finale, composed by Beethoven to replace the unwieldy Grosse Fuge at his publisher's request, was the last quartet movement he completed before his death. The Grosse Fuge, which opens the second disc, is a daunting peak in the string quartet repertoire, chosen by the Emerson Quartet as the (somewhat shaky) final statement of their farewell tour, for example, heard earlier this month at Wolf Trap. The Dover's rendition takes no quarter.

While seriousness abounds in Beethoven's late quartets, there is also Haydnesque humor, which the Dover brings across with delightful wit, in the Presto of Op. 131, for example. Op. 132, itself a study in contrasts between sober reflection and earthy joy, shows the range of sound the quartet is capable of, from harsh and unforgiving to serene and silky. "Must it be?" that the Dover Quartet will not sound quite like this going forward? The answer, of course, is It Must Be. Happily, we will always have this Beethoven set, which may not supplant my current Beethoven favorites, the Takács Quartet and Quatuor Mosaïques, but is in their company.

Violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt will return to Washington this season, playing in a concert on the Fortas Chamber Music Concerts series on January 25. Washington audiences will be able to hear the Dover Quartet with their new violist, Hezekiah Leung, when they play a concert February 27 at the Kennedy Center, rescheduled from October, when it was canceled because of illness among the musicians. This remarkable Beethoven set may not be the last release from the quartet's original formation, depending on how much time they spent recording during the pandemic, but it feels like the valedictory capstone to over a decade of the group making music together.

Briefly Noted: Nisi Dominus (CD of the Month)

Vivaldi, Nisi Dominus, Eva Zaïcik, Le Poème Harmonique, Vincent Dumestre (released on September 9, 2022) Alpha 724 | 58'31"

The idea of this charming new disc, from Vincent Dumestre and the early music ensemble Le Poème Harmonique, is quite simple. It is anchored on two of Vivaldi's motets, Nisi Dominus and Invicti bellate, substantial works composed for the Visitation, July 2, 1716, an important feast for the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. What Dumestre has programmed with it, however, is much more rare and striking.

The concert opens with O vergin santa, the first of two laude spirituali by Serafino Razzi (1531-1613), a Dominican friar from Florence. Mezzo-soprano Eva Zaïcik and soprano Déborah Cachet divide the piece between them, joined in cantillation by florid improvisations from violinist Fiona Poupard. These pieces are in the same popular vein as "Giesù diletto sposo," by Francisco Soto de Langa (1534-1619), a Spanish-born castrato and composer employed by the papal chapel, who was among the musicians hosted by the Congregation of the Oratory, established by followers of St. Filippo Neri.

Zaïcik takes the two Vivaldi motets, her richly resonant voice freely elaborating the opening solo melismas of Invicti bellate, aptly recalling the laude spirituali. The heart of this poignant work is the slow movement, a prayer for the assistance of Christ in the strain of battle. Dumestre and his musicians accompany this and the longer Nisi Dominus with limpid clarity, especially touching in movements featuring the ensemble's bevy of plucked instruments (theorbo, guitar, colascione). A trio of male voices supports the treble voices in the polyphonic laude. Le Poème Harmonique contributes two strictly instrumental works made for sacred contexts: Vivaldi's Sinfonia in B Minor ("Al Santo Sepolcro") and Locatelli's Sinfonia funebre, composed for his own wife's funeral.

Briefly Noted: Jacobs and Schubert (CD of the Month)

Schubert, "Great" and "Unfinished" Symphonies, B'Rock Orchestra, René Jacobs (released on August 12, 2022) PentaTone PTC5186894 | 87'27" Symphonies 1 and 6 (2018) Symphonies 2 and 3 (2020) Symphonies 4 and 5 (2021)

Leave it to René Jacobs to come up with a daring new way to approach Schubert. In 2018 the venerated early music conductor began a complete traversal of the symphonies of Franz Schubert, whom he described as the favorite composer of his youth. In partnership with the B'Rock Orchestra, a period instrument ensemble based in Ghent, he has reached the end with this disc of the composer's last two symphonies. Only No. 7 (the numbering of the Schubert symphonies remains in flux) remains to be recorded, but as Schubert left only sketches of it, it is even more unfinished than the Unfinished (aside from sketches or fragments of other symphonic works).

The group's use of historical instruments reveals interesting qualities in both symphonies. The horn solo that opens the "Great" Symphony has a more rustic quality, and in the first thematic section that follows, the contrasts between the brash brass and percussion and the more frail woodwinds are more stark than with modern instruments. The steady amassing of sound makes the first movement's climaxes particularly exciting. Similar juxtapositions enliven the second movement, which Jacobs gives a jaunty, propelled tempo, and the prolonged scherzo of the third movement. Jacobs thinks Schubert's quotation of the "Ode to Joy" theme from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in the finale is "probably unconscious," an odd call to say the least.

For the "Unfinished" Symphony, Jacobs bases his interpretation on a theory about the work first put forward by Arnold Schering in an essay published in 1938. If the symphony is indeed not unfinished at all, Schering attempted to understand its two movements in relation to an allegorical narrative, called Mein Traum (My dream), that Schubert drafted in pencil in 1822. Within a few months of writing this unusual document, perhaps based partly on an actual dream and also on some tragic events in his early years, he was working on the "Unfinished" Symphony. As Jacobs puts it in an extensive booklet essay, including a section-by-section analysis of both works, in Mein Traum "Schubert tries to put into words what he seems far more able to say without words in his music."

Jacobs introduces each of the two completed movements of the "Unfinished" with the corresponding portion of Mein Traum, read in German by Tobias Moretti (the booklet includes an English translation). The first section of the narrative provides an arc something like the sonata-allegro form of the symphony's first movement. Schubert argues with his father and is expelled from the family home (exposition); Schubert hears of his mother's death and returns, his father allowing him to see his mother's corpse and attend her burial (development); another quarrel with the father leads to a second banishment (recapitulation). These events occurred around 1812, the year Schubert's mother died, apparently of typhus after a long life of child-bearing (Franz was the 12th of her 14 children). The "feast" and "garden" in Mein Traum, offered by the father and refused by Schubert, could be metaphors for Schubert's father's ultimately failed attempt to force his son to follow in his footsteps as a school master.

In the conclusion of Mein Traum, Schubert sees the tomb of a "pious virgin" and a circle of youths and old men around her. Jacobs suggests this could be Saint Cecilia, the martyr who became the patron saint of music, and the circle around her the devoted composers of her art. By a miracle he finds himself within the circle, experiencing the lovely sounds in it and feeling overwhelmed with bliss. He even finds himself reconciled with his father, perhaps by having succeeded as a composer. Schubert wrote this mysterious document on July 3, 1822, which happens to be 200 years ago this year. Believing, like Schering, that the symphony was intentionally left unfinished by Schubert, Jacobs does not record the fragments of the third movement. There is no way to verify if there is a connection between Mein Traum and the "Unfinished" Symphony, but this recording certainly opens a new window onto that enigmatic work.

Briefly Noted: Mouton Mass and Motets (CD of the Month)

Jean Mouton, Missa Faulte d'argent / Motets, Brabant Ensemble, Stephen Rice (released on July 1, 2022) Hyperion CDA68385 | 72'53" Jean Mouton, Missa Tu es Petrus / Motets, Brabant Ensemble, Stephen Rice (2012)

Jean Mouton (c. 1459-1522) is not unknown among early music ensembles, with a number of fine recordings out there by the Tallis Scholars, among others. He was prolific enough, however, that all but one of the pieces on this second disc of the composer's choral music from the Brabant Ensemble are receiving their first recordings. Mouton's style is intricately contrapuntal, drawing comparison to the music of Josquin Desprez, with whom he was roughly contemporary.

For example, the two six-voice motets included in this recording are both notated in a single source in the Vatican Library (MS Capp. Sist. 38), one after another, for the use of the papal choir. The first of them, Confitemini domino, combines four voices in points of imitation on the outer text, proper to Easter. These unfold over a clever puzzle canon that enters later, set to a text from the Te Deum ("Per singulos dies benedicimus te"). The canon is notated in a single voice with the inscription "Preibis parare viam meam" as the only clue to how to realize it. Like St. John the Baptist, who was to prepare the way for Christ, the comes voice (follower) is supposed to enter first, followed by the dux (leader), an unexpected inversion of the normal canon process.

The Brabant Ensemble, a mixed choir of just ten voices, recorded these beautiful tracks in April 2021 in the Parish Church of St John the Baptist, Loughton, Essex. (Three of the Ashby sisters, familiar from their work with Stile Antico, populate the upper two sections.) Their conductor, Stephen Rice, has made some unusual choices in the editing of the sources, as in the conclusion of the motet discussed above, where some musica ficta additions create clashing cross relations and lead to a final chord modified to major with a raised third. The music editions, by Mick Swithinbank with some revisions by Rice and Mouton scholar Thomas MacCracken (editor of the composer's complete works), are available online in some cases.

This Mass paraphrases material from Josquin's secular chanson Faulte d'argent, with its text complaining of poverty and the complications it creates for one's love life. As Rice notes in his expert booklet essay, we should not be shocked by this juxtaposition of sacred and secular: Jean Richafort even used material from this chanson for his six-part setting of the Requiem Mass. The texture is limited to four voices, but sections in two or three voices add variety throughout. As expected of Mouton, the contrapuntal complexity is dense, particularly in the extended Agnus dei.

Briefly Noted: Great Venetian Mass (CD of the Month)

Vivaldi, The Great Venetian Mass, Sophie Karthäuser, Lucile Richardot, Les Arts Florissants, Paul Agnew (released on June 24, 2022) Harmonia Mundi HAF8905358 | 68'09"

One does not really need an excuse to make another recording of Vivaldi's well-known Gloria (RV 589), but it helps to have something that could set a new version apart. The distinguished French early music ensemble Les Arts Florissants hit on an ingenious solution, setting the Gloria as the centerpiece of a hypothetical reconstruction of a Great Venetian Mass by Vivaldi. The Redhead Priest, although he was required to produce several settings of the Latin Ordinary during his career at the Ospedale della Pietà, left no complete Mass that has survived. Paul Agnew, a long-time tenor with the ensemble and now serving as its musical codirector with founder William Christie, conducts a convincing interpretation that can only make the listener lament what such complete masses have been lost.

The Kyrie (RV 587) suits as a first movement, especially the second statement of "Kyrie eleison," with its playful rising chromatic scale, passed around the choir and orchestra, zipping along at a fleet tempo. A particularly nice touch comes in the motet placed between the Kyrie and Gloria, Ostro picta, armata spina (RV 642), surviving only in a manuscript in Turin. This piece, subtitled "Introduzione al Gloria," is something like a trope to preface the Gloria, because of its text likely sung for the Visitation of the Virgin on July 2, the convent-orphanage's patronal feast. Soprano Sophie Karthäuser gives a plangent edge to this solo piece, including the striking text painting of sudden silences in the main theme, "Linguis favete / Omnes silete" (Let tongues be still / Let all be silent), as the singer imposes silence so that only the words of the angelic hymn that follows can be heard.

Agnew helps his musicians shape a worthy interpretation of the famous Gloria, one of only two by Vivaldi that survive. The opening movement, adorned by two rustic natural trumpets, moves at a bubbly speed and with expressive, text-sensitive shaping of the choir's homophonic phrases. Karthäuser and steely mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot share the solo movements to optimal effect, and the aching suspensions of the "Et in terra pax" section are drawn out to languorous effect. The concluding fugue ("Cum sancto spiritu"), borrowed from another Gloria by one Giovanni Maria Ruggieri, a contemporary of Vivaldi's in Venice, is in the context of this mass reconstruction just another piece of the patchwork. Of Vivaldi's two surviving settings of the Credo, the group selected RV 591, the only one still confidently attributed to the composer. Its "Crucifixus" especially is quite lovely, a web of plaintive vocal lines over a detached walking bass.

No musical setting of the other movements of the Mass by Vivaldi survives, requiring this reconstruction to conclude with other pieces by Vivaldi retrofitted to the text of the Sanctus and Agnus dei (editions prepared by Pascal Duc). This makes perfect sense, as Vivaldi was known to cannibalize his own work in this way, as did most Baroque composers. The flowing strings of the Benedictus are particularly effective, adapted from a movement of the composer's Dixit dominus. In an apt echo of the return of the start of a cyclic mass setting at its conclusion, the final section of the Agnus dei is based on the solemn opening of the Kyrie (sadly not that zippy chromatic section of the second Kyrie). The sound, captured in 2020 in the resonant acoustic of the Église Notre-Dame-du-Liban in Paris, has a pleasing ring.

Briefly Noted: Polish Farewells (CD of the Month)

Polish Songs, Jakub Józef Orliński, Michał Biel (released on May 6, 2022) Erato 0190296269714 | 57'14"

Not surprisingly, countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński has recorded largely Baroque music, often in partnership with the historically informed performance ensemble Il Pomo d'Oro. For this new album, the Polish singer has partnered with Polish pianist Michał Biel, his longtime friend from their student days in Warsaw and at the Juilliard School. The program is the fruit of their collaboration in song recital repertory by more recent Polish composers, all from the last 150 years, recorded in September 2021 at the Nowa Miodowa Concert Hall in Warsaw.

Some of these composers may be familiar, particularly Karol Szymanowski, although his Songs from Kurpie may not be. The words are folk texts collected by Władysław Skierkowski, a musician and priest who died in 1941 in the Soldau concentration camp. His book, The Kurpian Forest in Song, is based on his time during World War I hiding in the swampy forests of Poland's Kurpie region. Szymanowski composed beautiful musical settings for these often cryptic texts, a sort of Polish counterpart to Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn songs. Orliński gives the folk-style cantillation a natural ease of bends and blue notes. In the beautiful bird song (no. 2) his voice reaches effortlessly up to high E.

The other composers are less known outside of Poland and yield fascinating discoveries. Henryk Czyż (1923-2003) may be better known as a conductor, especially for his championing of the music of Penderecki in many recordings. He was also a gifted composer, on display in Pożegnania (Farewells), a set of three gorgeous songs on Pushkin poems translated into Polish by Julian Tuwim. The style is unabashedly Straussian, with lush chromatic turns similar to the delectable music of Joseph Marx. Tadeusz Baird (1928-1981) contributes four songs on Shakespeare sonnets translated into Polish, in a pretty, neoclassical style but perhaps with serial techniques underlying it. As a teenager Baird did a period as a forced laborer for the Nazis, eventually surviving internment in a concentration camp. The last of these songs is somber and gorgeous, and Orliński plies his silken voice to the sighed downward portamenti.

Mieczysław Karłowicz (1876-1909) is represented by the largest number of songs, a dozen rather short piece, drawn mostly from two sets. His style is late Romantic and poignant, akin to Tchaikovsky, whom he admired. Some are especially fine, as the slow, aching melody of "Na spokojnym, ciemnym morzu." Sadly, Karłowicz died young, a victim of an avalanche while skiing in the Tatra Mountains. The only living composer included on this disc, Paweł Łukaszewski (b. 1968), has one song, "Jesień" (Autumn), on a striking text by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, the "Polish Sappho" active in the years between the two world wars. One hears the autumn rain falling in the long piano introduction, slowly dripping with splashing dissonances rebounding, just one example of Biel's sensitive work at the piano. The stark vocal writing features odd, jagged intervals, humming, portamenti, and other austere effects. The program concludes with two songs by Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872), often described as the "father of Polish opera."

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.

Briefly Noted: Pichon's Pygmalion Passion (CD of the Month)

Bach, St. Matthew Passion, J. Prégardien, Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon (released on March 25, 2022) Harmonia Mundi HMM902691.93 | 2h42

Raphaël Pichon's ensemble Pygmalion, founded in 2006, is another early music group I have been following closely in recent years. Although they have yet to make the trip to Washington, we have had plenty of chances to hear them via stream and recording. The group has released some fine Bach discs over the years, all with a specific goal in mind. As Pichon put it in an interview about their newest recording, "When I founded Pygmalion, I had a single certainty, one big dream: that we would give our first St. Matthew Passion for our tenth birthday." That is exactly what happened in 2016, with most of the musicians who ended up being recorded on this excellent set at sessions in April 2021 at the Philharmonie de Paris.

Pichon calls this "a consciously choral performance," with the solo singers also serving as section leaders in what is an exquisite choral sound. As the finishing touch, fifteen young singers from the Maîtrise de Radio France take the chorale tunes woven into the complex textures of the opening and closing movements of Part I, a part marked by Bach as "soprani in ripieno." The solo parts range from very good to excellent, with soloists from each choir taking the arias as Bach indicated and some of the characters named in dialogues given to other chorus members. The two superb sopranos, Sabine Devieilhe (whose solo album with Pygmalion has also been in my ears recently) and Hana Blažíková, lead the topmost sections of Choir I and II, respectively, as well as splitting the soprano arias.

Mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot is sublime in "Erbarme dich," as she was when she sang with Ensemble Correspondances recently. (She sang with the Maîtrise de Radio France in her youth, which is a nice connection to the young performers in the group now.) Julian Prégardien takes the part of the Evangelist with authority and beauty of tone, while baritone Stéphane Degout brings a plangent resonance to the part of Jesus, wreathed in its halo of strings. The instrumental contributions are all lovely, especially the soft flutes. The continuo realization has a pleasing variety, split among organ, harpsichord, and theorbo, all used quite inventively. Pichon has thought deeply about this massive score, which he has spoken about in interviews. There is no small chorale or bit of recitative that does not reflect the conductor's care for it, such as the last chorale in the work, "Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden," performed by the singers alone after the death of Christ. This marvelous rendition is both full-textured and brimming with the intimacy of historically informed performance practice.

Briefly Noted: Christophe Rousset (CD of the Month)

Le Manuscrit de Madame Théobon, C. Rousset (released on February 18, 2022) Aparté AP256 | 122'

The story behind this delightful disc is almost too good. First, Christophe Rousset is the musician, one of the most exciting harpsichordists playing today, last heard live in Washington in 2013. Second, he is playing two discs of music drawn from a newly rediscovered manuscript, now in the private collection of Rousset, who managed to acquire it from a bookseller over Ebay. Third, he is playing this wide array of brief pieces, arranged in the order of their key centers, on a harpischord made by Nicolas Dumont in 1704, around the same time that the music was likely copied. David Ley restored this instrument, which Rousset owns, from 2006 to 2016. It is one of only three Dumont harpsichords known to have survived.

Rousset has identified the manuscript's first owner as Lydie de Théobon, a one-time attendant on Queen Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV. The king began a two-year affair with her at the Château de Chambord in 1670, shortly before Molière and Lully premiered Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme there. The king's powerful mistress, the Marquise de Montespan, ousted Lydie from the queen's retinue in 1673, after which Lydie moved to the household of the Princesse Palatine, wife of the king's brother. She died at the Château de Marly in 1708, still in the orbit of the Sun-King. Although there is no record of her having been a great lover of music, the collection was likely compiled by her clavecin teachers.

The pieces copied into the book represent a sort of favorites list for the period. Music by prominent composers (Lully, d'Anglebert, Chambonnières) rubs shoulders with less known names like Ennemond Gaultier, Jacques Hardel, Nicolas Lebègue, and Pierre Gautier. Rousset identified some of the pieces because of his wide knowledge of the period, but others remain anonymous. Quite a few have been recorded here for the first time, at sessions in November 2020 at the Hôtel de l’Industrie in Paris. All are fairly brief, some as short as thirty seconds in duration. Rousset notes in his program notes that only one of the pieces in the manuscript ("Les Échos") explicitly requires a two-keyboard instrument, with the echo effect written out on the page.

The Dumont instrument has a big, brash sound, heard to orchestral effect in the Overture from La Grotte de Versailles, for example. That piece is one of many arrangements of excerpts from the most popular operas at the French court, including Armide and Atys. In a time without recordings, this was the only way to relive one's favorite past performances. Rousset also reveals the intimate side of this harpsichord, with delicate registrations in pieces like the "Sommeil d'Armide." A charming little Menuet by an unknown composer is recorded here for the first time, along with its "doubles," written-out ornamented repeats that give a glimpse into the ephemeral art of embellishment. As he often does, Rousset brings out many unexpected sounds, as in the "Branle des gueux," a pugnacious, folksy tune over a raucous drone pattern in left hand, made to twang almost like the timbre of a mouth harp.

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

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.

Briefly Noted: Christie's latest, best "Poppea" (CD of the Month)

Monteverdi, L'incoronazione di Poppea, S. Yoncheva, K. Lindsey, S. d’Oustrac, C. Vistoli, Les Arts Florissants, W. Christie (released on August 30, 2019) Harmonia Mundi HAF8902622.24 | 186'38"

Claudio Monteverdi is something of an obsession of mine, particularly his final opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea. It is a work under review here in myriad versions, somehow never tiresome to these ears. William Christie and his ensemble Les Arts Florissants have performed and recorded the work before, not among my favorite interpretations. This live recording, made at the Salzburg Festival in 2018, finally captures the American conductor's best work on this seminal piece. Its release coincides with the ensemble's 40th anniversary celebrations.

Christie has assembled a cast this time that is not merely optimal for each role but that blends together in a pleasing whole. As the amoral principal characters, Poppea and Nerone, soprano Sonya Yoncheva and mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey have a collective vocal luster that seduces, especially in the famous duet "Pur ti miro" at the opera's conclusion. Mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d’Oustrac makes a biting Ottavia, with baritone Renato Dolcini as a resonant, moralizing Seneca.

In a booklet interview, Christie explains why he does not always want to use countertenors in castrato roles, although he has found an alluring examplar of this voice type in Carlo Vistoli for his Ottone. The instrumental component, reduced to minimal forces, turns on a dime to move with the singers, with Christie leading from the harpsichord rather than conducting. Operas in this period rely so heavily on recitative that it can be quite boring if not performed with instrumental variety and lively unpredictability. For example, in the third scene of the first act, when Poppea and Nero waken after a night of love-making, Yoncheva's handling of the lines beginning "Signor, deh, non partire" purrs with sleepy desire.

Besides the rich continuo section, pleasing and virtuosic solos come from a few instruments added to the texture, especially Sébastien Marq on recorder and crisp, focused cornetto playing by Jean-Pierre Canihac and Marie Garnier-Marzullo. While occasional misalignments are to be expected in a live recording, especially in this chamber-like arrangement without a conductor, the verve of live performance makes up for the occasional problem. Although the pictures of the production by Jan Lauwers are beautiful, it was clearly not for everyone.

Briefly Noted: More of Rousset's Salieri (CD of the Month)

A. Salieri, Tarare, C. Dubois, K. Deshayes, J.-S. Bou, J. van Wanroij, Les Talens Lyriques, Les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, C. Rousset (released on July 12, 2019) Aparté AP208 | 2h45

Among Christophe Rousset's major accomplishments as a conductor is his revival of the operas of Antonio Salieri. We took note of his recording of the composer's Les Danaïdes a few years ago. The latest in the project, Tarare, coincides with Alex Ross's on-point reconsideration of Salieri's place in music history. The superlative playing of Les Talens Lyriques, especially the whisper-fine traverso flutes, reveals this melodically rich score in its best light.

Tarare has some interesting overlaps with Mozart's career at the same time. Beaumarchais himself wrote the libretto for the French premiere in 1787, the version recorded here. Then Lorenzo da Ponte reworked it in Italian as Axur, re d'Ormus for the Viennese premiere the following year. (In the film Amadeus, Salieri is seen conducting the finale of the Viennese version, its success earning Mozart's scorn.)

Beaumarchais drew the story from a curious literary source, a collection of English exotic tales published as The Tales of the Genii, or The Delightful Lessons of Horam, the Son of Asmar. The author, James Ridley (the pseudonym of Sir Charles Morell), claimed to have translated the stories from a Persian source, but they are decidedly European visions of the East. Salieri, master of the dramatic gesture, has the orchestral intro to the Prologue interrupted by entrance of the soprano Judith van Wanroij as Nature, accompanied by the chorus of unchained winds. In the frame narrative of the French version, the shades nominate one of their number to become the despotic ruler Atar and another the soldier Tarare. The five acts that follow are the account of what became of them in their lives.

The king, jealous of the happiness and popularity of the soldier, orders Tarare's wife, Astasie, to be kidnapped and transferred to his harem. In a twist of reversal from stories like The Magic Flute, the slaves in Atar's household are Europeans -- and singers to boot. The chief eunuch, Calpigi, is even a castrato from Ferrara, who reveals his king's evil plan to have Tarare killed. Tarare manages to elude all of the plots to torture and kill him and is eventually named king after the suicide of Atar. Salieri uses jangling Janissary sounds throughout the opera, starting with the loud overture that introduces Act I. One unusual facet of the plot involves the disguise of Tarare as a black slave, who is then to be married to his own wife, who ends up sending another servant in her place. Such wife-swapping aspects crop up in Figaro and Cosi, among other works of the period.

Dip Your Ears, No. 239 / Ionarts CD of the Month (Pathétique Heroin)

P.I.Tchaikovsky, Symphony No.6 - Pathétique MusicAeterna Sony

So over-the-top, so permanently electric, so much current running through it… so doubling down on anything Tchaikovsky may have even just insinuated… so extreme in going to the full logical extent (and perhaps further—who knows, who cares) on color, effect, emotion, that Tchaikovsky’s lumbering-romantic grand Pathétique arises anew and horrifically awesome.

In this world of extremes, though, sweetness doesn’t translate into the saccharine: it translates into heroin. “Currentzis’ expressive intensity borders on the extreme” says David Hurwitz on ClassicsToday and thereby engages in an exercise of understatement. Sighing, heaving, crying; fits of anger, pouting, bristling, foaming, snarling (so hard that you fear the brass instruments may fall apart at the seams): There isn’t a gerund you can throw at this performance that it won’t swallow hole and make its own.

In the Adagio, MusicAeterna—Currentzis’ orchestra of willing Nibelung slaves—go from a scowling crocodile with halitosis to the beauty of a Bach chorale in under 2 seconds. And instead of being interminably long, this Pathétique is over before you know it. The sound is resonant and rich—tubby even—and yet overtly detailed: A telltale sign of microphone-pointing in the best tradition of Soviet symphonic recordings. Not the latest in high-fidelity but helping Currentzis to make his musical points.

This release makes it three borderline-great Pathétiques just in the last few years – and each very different from each other. There’s this OTT approach, then the broad, richly rewarding caramel-cream and custard approach of Bychkov’s with the Czech Philharmonic (Decca) that bathes you in sound (much like his Manfred Symphony; see “Forbes Best Recordings of 2017”), and the excellence-without-exaggeration of Manfred Honeck’s with his Pittsburgh band (Reference Recordings).

Is it superficial? Sure it is. But isn’t Tchaikovsky also? (Maybe not to you, in which case you have my apologies.) Be that as it may, superficiality and glamour and glitz can be Damian Hurst-esque… appallingly empty, The-Emperor-Has-No-Taste-in-Arts-style. Or it can be wildly fun and a manifesto for living in the moment. Currentzis’s Tchaikovsky is the latter. Out for effect instead of nuance; Jackson Pollock over careful coloring and shading of a well-behaved musical topography? Yes and yes again and who cares. This is weird, Wagnerian, wonderful. One of the necessary Tchaikovsky Sixths to have heard, if you are at all into classical music!

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