Mark Padmore returns to Washington

Beethoven, An die ferne Geliebte, M. Padmore, K. Bezuidenhout (2015)

Charles T. Downey, Mark Padmore displays sublime artistry at Library of Congress
Washington Classical Review, October 18

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, Mark Padmore and Jonathan Biss give intoxicating performance (Washington Post, October 13, 2014)

---, Briefly Noted: Padmore's HIP 'Dichterliebe' (Ionarts, August 9, 2012)

---, Mark Padmore's Dowland Songs (Ionarts, January 23, 2008)

Andreas Staier Waxes Saturnine

...pour passer la melancolie, A. Staier (Harmonia Mundi, 2013)

Early keyboard specialist Andreas Staier got his start as harpsichordist of the excellent historically informed performance ensemble Musica Antiqua Köln, sadly now defunct. Staier has released a series of excellent recordings on the Harmonia Mundi label, which we have followed with great interest at Ionarts. He always plays on interesting and historically appropriate instruments, whether in Mozart concerti or an especially delightful Beethoven Diabelli Variations. Although Staier has played somewhere in Washington some years ago, our first opportunity to review him in a live concert finally came on Wednesday evening, in a beautiful recital at the Library of Congress.

Staier played the same program as on his 2013 CD, ...pour passer la melancolie, devoted to the subject of melancholy as found in musical representations of the theme of Vanitas — down to the Courante of Clérambault's first book of Pièces de Clavecin, left off the program but definitely played. Thomas and Barbara Wolf brought their harpsichord built in 2005, modeled on a Nicolas Dumont instrument from 1707, loaned by the University of Maryland; happily, Staier did not play any part of the program on the Landowska Pleyel in the Library's collection. One obvious side of musical melancholy came in the rhapsodic freedom Staier took in the preludes and other free pieces, taken with a free sense of rubato that had the feel of improvisation. This was balanced by dance pieces in more strict rhythm, as well as fugues and other contrapuntal pieces that were more cerebral.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Contemplating mortality, with pleasure, at harpsichord recital (Washington Post, March 10) James R. Oestreich, Andreas Staier on the Harpsichord, Coaxing Gravity and Gloom (New York Times, March 7)

Minor finger slips or places where the key did not quite make the key sound only served to underscore the contemplation of the fleeting nature of human endeavor, in music or anything else. As he did with the instrument on the recording, a reconstructed historical instrument, Staier brought out a charming range of sounds from the Wolf harpsichord, by combining stops in unexpected ways. A full registration in the prelude from the first book of d'Anglebert's Pièces de Clavecin set up the more mellow Tombeau de Mr. de Chambonnières that followed.

In all of these lament pieces, like Louis Couperin's Tombeau de Monsieur Blancrocher and Froberger's plaint on his own misfortunes during a trip to England, Staier used the hesitations and slow pacing to create a sense of ineffable nostalgia. Never did the concept of the Doctrine of the Affections, espoused by late Baroque theorists, seem so relevant as this music in this performance steeped a room in sympathetic gloom. Insufficient applause prevented Staier from playing an encore, which may possibly have been the only piece from the CD he did not play, Froberger's lament on the death of King Ferdinand IV.

'Muß es sein?': Joel Krosnick Departs

Carter, String Quartets 1-5, Juilliard String Quartet (Sony, 2014)

When Ionarts came into being in the early part of the millennium, the Juilliard String Quartet was still in residence at the Library of Congress. The group has continued in various formations, returning to play at the National Gallery in 2008, for example. This season is the last for cellist Joel Krosnick, the only current member who played with founding violinist Robert Mann. The group returned to the Library of Congress on Saturday afternoon for Krosnick to take a valedictory lap, cheered on by many listeners who remember the good old days.

Things are looking up for the Juilliard, since the new additions are encouraging. Joseph Lin, who joined at first violin in 2011, had an overall powerful primarius sound, especially pretty at the high end. Violist Roger Tapping, formerly of the beloved Takács Quartet, joined in 2013, and although he was largely invisible in the opening piece, Schubert's Quartettsatz, he came to the fore in many solo moments in the middle work, Elliott Carter's first string quartet. (Tapping joined the Juilliard after the group had recorded Carter's fifth string quartet, released in a set in 2014, with the earlier recordings of the first four.)

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, A changed sound is heard in Juilliard Quartet’s concert at Library of Congress (Washington Post, February 28, 2016) Zachary Woolfe, Juilliard String Quartet Shows Agility at Alice Tully Hall (New York Times, November 24, 2015)

Neither of these pieces showed the quartet's new formation in the best light, however, due to some intonation issues in the first violin in the Schubert. One does wish that the Juilliard had chosen something other than the Carter, a work hard to love in spite of Lin's long, purple-prose introduction. The listener does come across moments of beauty here and there, like the lovely muted duet for the violins in the slow movement or the "boogie-woogie" passages in the third movement, here from a composer who had actually heard boogie-woogie.

At the cello Krosnick is not up to his former standards, but he seemed most at home in Beethoven's final string quartet, op. 135. Rather than the autumnal solemnity of some late Beethoven, the piece takes many jovial turns, brought out with a flexible sense of ensemble in the first movement. The bright-eyed, rollicking Vivace was nimble in all parts, with a sense of eye-twinkling from Krosnick's seat, and the slow movement showed off Lin's warm low-string sound. To the cellist's insistent repetitions of the head motif in the finale ("Muß es sein?", or Must it be?), the quartet took comic delight in chattering (musically) the response ("Es muß sein"). The latter is a reference to a comic canon Beethoven composed in 1826, informing a patron, who wanted to have a performance of one of Beethoven's string quartets in his house, that yes, the patron must pay the required fee to have a copy of the score ("Es muss sein! Ja ja ja ja! Heraus mit dem Beutel!," or It must be! Yes yes yes yes! Out with the wallet!). An encore, the slow movement from Mozart's K. 465 ("Dissonance"), offered a final moment of farewell.

Handel and Haydn Society, Still Kicking

Haydn, The Creation, Handel and Haydn Society, H. Christophers (CORO, 2015)

The Handel and Haydn Society is still around. In fact, the group celebrated its 200th anniversary last year and marked that achievement with a concert on Saturday night at the Library of Congress. In the ongoing takeover of American choral institutions by British choirmasters, Harry Christophers, founder of The Sixteen, has led the organization since 2009. The program offered here, ranging from Gregorian chant to a new piece commissioned from Gabriela Lena Frank, aimed to prove that the group, now reduced to twenty-some singers, has expanded beyond the stylistic boundaries implied by its name.

The quality of voices heard varied, with excellent solo contributions here and there, especially from soprano Margaret Rood, heard in pieces by minor composers like James Kent (1700-1776) and Thomas Linley (1756-1778), from the Society's 1823 music publication The Old Colony Collection of Anthems. Tenor Stefan Reed gave a gorgeous rendition of William Byrd's tear-soaked lament on the death of his beloved teacher, Thomas Tallis, ending with the poignant lines, "Tallis is dead, and Music dies." A quartet, led by Rood on soprano, gave an elegant performance of the "Agnus Dei" movement from Byrd's Mass for Four Voices, skilfully layering all those aching suspensions in the "Dona nobis pacem" section.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, America’s oldest ensemble offers a taste of the new (Washington Post, February 22) Steve Smith, Handel and Haydn holds a night of festivity and history (Boston Globe, November 24, 2015)

The results were not as felicitous in the choral performances, with a lack of unity in the male voices especially, noted right from the opening of the first piece, the plainsong hymn Veni creator spiritus. The balance of voices was uneven in Renaissance selections by William Byrd, but there was plenty of volume for the climaxes of Gabriela Lena Frank's My angel, his name is freedom. The chorus seemed the most confident on two double-chorus motets by Bach, although the fast tempos chosen by Christophers in Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied required the sacrifice of some clarity in the melismatic passages. Given the considerable intonation and ensemble woes of the string players in this performance, two pieces for strings by Purcell should have been omitted from the concert entirely.

Alban Gerhardt @ LoC

Britten, Cello Symphony / Cello Sonata, Cello Suites, A. Gerhardt, S. Osborne, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, A. Manze (Hyperion, 2013)

Charles T. Downey, For cellist Alban Gerhardt, a strong start but a weak second half (Washington Post, January 18)

Many themes unified the concert that German cellist Alban Gerhardt played Saturday at the Library of Congress. All of the music he performed was from the 20th century, most of the composers were American and many of the pieces were composed for Mstislav Rostropovich. The choices were to Gerhardt’s credit, but as in his last appearance with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in June, the results were mixed.

Two excellent sonatas filled the first half, beginning with Cello Sonata, Op. 6, by the young Samuel Barber. Gerhardt filled the Coolidge Auditorium with an ardent tone, especially on the high strings, slashing upward on the first movement’s main theme but infusing the second theme with Brahmsian tenderness... [Continue reading]

Alban Gerhardt (cello)
Anne-Marie McDermott (piano)
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Charles T. Downey, C Major Is C Major Is C Major? (Ionarts, June 18, 2015)

Apollo's Fire @ LoC

The Power of Love (Handel, opera arias), A. Forsythe, Apollo's Fire, J. Sorrell (Avie Records, 2015)

Charles T. Downey, Cleveland’s Apollo’s Fire short of greatness
Washington Post, November 21

How do historically informed performance ensembles from the U.S. stack up against those in other countries? On Thursday night, the 90th anniversary season of the Library of Congress’s free concert series offered the chance to hear a leading American ensemble, Apollo’s Fire from Cleveland, in the same month as the renowned international group Bach Collegium Japan. While this concert was certainly good, the American ensemble fell shy of the greatness heard earlier in the month.

This program was at least a marked improvement over the last Washington appearance by Apollo’s Fire, in 2009... [Continue reading]

Apollo's Fire
With Amanda Forsythe, soprano
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Aaron Keebaugh, Amanda Forsythe shines with Apollo’s Fire (Boston Classical Review, November 21)

David Schulenberg, Glowing Orb Shone Brilliantly (Boston Musical Intelligencer, November 21)

Mark Satola, Apollo's Fire lavishes delights with 'Beowulf' and tour preview double-header (Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 16)

Charles T. Downey, Apollo's Fire Has Fuel, Does Not Ignite (Ionarts, November 11, 2009)

Anne Sofie von Otter @ LoC

Sogno barocco, A. S. von Otter, S. Piau, S. Sundberg, Ensemble Cappella Mediterranea, L. García Alarcón (released on August 28, 2012) Naïve V 5286 | 71'

As noted yesterday, Anne Sofie von Otter is a versatile singer; but maybe not able to do everything. Her recital at the Library of Congress on Tuesday night, in a packed Coolidge Auditorium, had some high points, but it raised eyebrows, too, and not just mine. Her renditions of John Dowland's pearl-like lute songs came nowhere near the artful grace of Iestyn Davies in his Dowland recital, when he also partnered with lutenist Thomas Dunford last year. There were moments of vocal strain, probably related to being at the end of an American tour with this program, which exposes Otter's voice at the top in not always pleasant ways. The instrumentalists, Dunford on theorbo and Jonathan Cohen on harpsichord and organ, even got into the act, singing the part-song versions of some of the pieces, in a way that recalled Sting's excursion into Dowland territory a few years ago. This added a certain roughneck charm on Dowland's Fine knacks for ladies, with its wares-hawking text rendered in a street vendor's broad accent.

The later Baroque selections often suited von Otter's voice better, except for when some odd musical characterization drove her to excess, as in the shivering repetitions of Purcell's What Power Art Thou from King Arthur. The composer's more conventional pieces, like Music for a While and especially Venus's Fairest Isle, also from King Arthur, were lovely. At least a partial reason for von Otter's choice of repertory seemed to be based on the oddity of some pieces, beginning with Francesco Provenzale's cantata Squarciato appena havea, which interpolates Neapolitan street ballads, of extremely low, even ribald content, into an artful lament by the Queen of Sweden Maria Eleonora over her dead husband. Recorded on her Sogno barocco album, it is a truly weird piece, and von Otter brought out all its eccentricities, reaching for a tambourine and other percussion instruments to heighten the shift between learned and popular.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Anne Sofie von Otter has chosen to be a singer who is expressive, not excessive (Washington Post, November 19) James R. Oestreich, Review: The Mezzo-Soprano Anne Sofie von Otter at the Frick Collection (New York Times, November 15) David Patrick Stearns, Anne Sofie von Otter at the Perelman: Warm, expansive, charismatic (Philadelphia Inquirer, November 13)

Dunford's solo contributions were some of the best parts of this concert, especially a heartfelt performance of Dowland's Lachrimae Pavan, the instrumental version of his wrenching song Flow My Tears. It reduced me to tears, an unspoken tribute to the victims of the Paris terror attacks the previous Friday, something that Dunford did not need to say aloud. His version of Robert de Visée's D Minor Chaconne was equally touching, a nice connection to the theme of ground bass tunes in the French part of the program -- including Michel Lambert's Vos mespris chaque jour, composed on the same bass pattern as Monteverdi's famous Pur ti miro from L'incoronazione di Poppea. While Cohen provided beautiful continuo playing, his solo pieces, composed for harpsichord by Couperin (Les barricades misterieuses) and Rameau (Les sauvages) became slightly odd with accompanying parts improvised by Dunford on theorbo.

One of the highlights was an austere rendition of Arvo Pärt's My Heart's in the Highlands, from 2000, which introduced a concluding section of recent popular songs (not reviewed). Pärt's original organ part was here split between Cohen playing the longer notes on the Baroque organ and Dunford taking the arpeggiated notes on theorbo. In a twelve-measure pattern, with four measures of the voice declaiming the text on a single note followed by eight bars of instruments alone, the piece has a mesmerizing quality and the combination of these three musicians created a sense of timeless stasis. Since my family's trip this past summer to see where our Downey ancestors came from in Scotland, this poem by Robert Burns and this musical setting have greater meaning for me.

The Library of Congress's 90th anniversary season continues this evening with a concert by Apollo's Fire, the Baroque ensemble based in Cleveland, and soprano Amanda Forsythe (November 19, 8 pm).

Michelangelo Quartet @ LoC

Haydn, String Quartets, op. 77 ("Lobkowitz"), Quatuor Mosaïques (Naïve, 2000) Shostakovich, String Quartets, Mandelring Quartet (Audite, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, Too many weak moments for the skilled Michelangelo String Quartet (Washington Post, November 9)

The 90th-anniversary season of free concerts at the Library of Congress introduced a new ensemble to the Washington area on Saturday afternoon. The Michelangelo String Quartet, formed in 2002, had somehow eluded my notice up to this point. With its relatively new second violinist, Daniel Austrich, who replaced founding member Stephan Picard in 2012, the group’s weaknesses temper enthusiasm for its strengths.

Beethoven appears to be one of the quartet’s specialties, as it has performed the complete cycle of the composer’s string quartets and recorded some of them. The F major “Razumovsky” Quartet (Op. 59, No. 1) was the highlight of this concert, as the group negotiated the music’s complexity and breadth with skill. A reduced and balanced tone from all four players produced a playful second movement, while the third movement had the patience and intensity that were missing in some of the other pieces on the program, as Beethoven peeled apart the layers of his music’s themes to inspect them from all sides... [Continue reading]

Michelangelo String Quartet
Music of Haydn, Shostakovich, Beethoven
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Ben Hogwood, Michelangelo String Quartet at Wigmore Hall (Classical Source, February 8, 2010)

---, Michelangelo String Quartet (Classical Source, October 9, 2006)

Bach Collegium Japan

Bach, Brandenburg Concertos / Orchestral Suites, Bach Collegium Japan, M. Suzuki (BIS, 2009) Handel (attrib.), Gloria (HWV deest), E. Kirkby, Royal Academy of Baroque Music, L. Cummings (BIS, 2001)

Charles T. Downey, A triumphant return for Bach Collegium Japan
Washington Post, November 5

Many historically informed performance ensembles perform on original instruments. Some play with exceptional virtuosity; a few expand our understanding of a work by playing it. Bach Collegium Japan, which returned triumphantly to the Library of Congress on Wednesday evening, does all of these things. Beyond that, as demonstrated at this concert perhaps even more than on its last visit here, in 2006, the ensemble is never willing to sacrifice musical instinct and ensemble cohesion on the altar of authenticity.

At the heart of the program were two soprano blockbusters, both sung with limpid clarity and sensitive phrasing by Joanne Lunn... [Continue reading]

Bach Collegium Japan
With Joanne Lunn, soprano
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Lawrence A. Johnson, Bach Collegium Japan makes intimate Chicago debut at Rockefeller Chapel (Chicago Classical Review, October 30)

Mark Swed, Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan's impeccable taste shows at Disney Hall (Los Angeles Times, October 27)

Jens F. Laurson, Bach Collegium Japan: Non nisi mota cano (Ionarts, March 28, 2006)

Pavel Haas Quartet @ LoC

Smetana, String Quartets, Pavel Haas Quartet (Supraphon, 2015)

Charles T. Downey, Engaging new voice with Kennedy Center Chamber Players (Washington Post, October 20)

The members of the Pavel Haas Quartet have said in interviews that they do not think being Czech helps them play the music of Czech composers. Nevertheless, that is where this excellent string quartet has had its greatest triumphs on disc, for the Supraphon label. At a Friday night concert, the Library of Congress, not surprisingly, featured them in quartets by Bohuslav Martinu and Antonin Dvorak. Since the group had to cancel its last U.S. tour, in 2013, this was its first local appearance since 2008.

Since that concert, also at the Library of Congress, the group has gone through a couple of changes for second violin... [Continue reading]

Pavel Haas Quartet
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Jeremy Eichler, Pavel Haas Quartet makes local debut (Boston Globe, October 24)

Stefanie Lubkowski, Martinů’s music provides the highlight with Pavel Haas Quartet (Boston Classical Review, October 23)

Chloe Cutts, We do not believe in a Czech tradition of playing, says the Pavel Haas Quartet (The Strad, September 28)

Contemporary Music at Library of Congress

D. B. Franzson, The Negotation of Context, yarn | wire (La Dolce Volta, re-released in 2012)

Charles T. Downey, Opener of Library of Congress’s concert series is heard, a bit too loudly (Washington Post, October 9)

The Library of Congress marks a special anniversary this year, having opened its 90th season of concerts Saturday night. This free concert series on Capitol Hill has continued to change in content, reflecting the musical interests of its programmers. In recent years, early-music ensembles have been added to the mix of more traditional chamber music, as well as folk music, Broadway and others.

One thing has remained constant: a devotion to music by living composers. Opening the season with the piano and percussion quartet Yarn/Wire, playing music mostly from the past decade, was an admirable symbolic gesture... [Continue reading]

yarn | wire
Music by Berio, Murail, others
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, Yarn/Wire Mesmerizes at Lincoln Center Festival (New York Times, July 16)

Koh and Jokubaviciute

Composer Kaija Saariaho
Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute (listen to her recital at the Freer Gallery of Art in 2004, and read Jens's review) may have played together before. The first time we heard them as a duo, in a concert last night at the Library of Congress, made it clear that, if they are not already, they should become regular collaborators. The revelation was made possible because of a last-minute substitution, as Jokubaviciute was filling in for indisposed pianist Benjamin Hochman, who happens to be Koh's husband. From the very start of Debussy's bittersweet violin sonata, the last piece the composer was able to complete before terminal cancer set in, the sound was set aside from the rest of the concert -- a dulcet, edge-free tone from Koh, supported by Jokubaviciute's evanescent touch on the lacy accompaniment figures in the keyboard part, with snippets of melody in the piano emerging seamlessly. The second movement abounded in playful energy, with a tender middle section and a gorgeous soft ending, unfortunately marred by thoughtless noise in the audience, and the finale, quite Romantic in its excesses, featured glowing low playing from Koh.

As explained by Susan Vita, the Chief of the institution's Music Division, the Library of Congress has been trying to secure a commission from Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, an Ionarts Favorite, for some time. This concert included two of her recent pieces, beginning with a new version of Aure, from 2011, for violin and piano. It is based on a melody from Henri Dutilleux's Shadows of Time, and in this version the two instruments trade fragments contrapuntally, amid clouds of harmonics and other intriguing effects (trills near the bridge, glissandi, among others). It was nicely paired with Ravel's sonata for the same, somewhat rare combination of instruments, from the 1920s, and the basic programming concept, to combine contemporary music with late, forward-sounding Ravel and Debussy made a salient connection.

Here, as throughout the program, intonation problems, leaning mostly toward flatness but also some imprecise attacks on high notes and harmonics, plagued the performance of the cellist, Anssi Karttunen. A longtime favorite collaborator of Saariaho's, Karttunen just had, for whatever reason, an off night, although with some strong moments in Debussy's other late masterpiece, the cello sonata, especially on that soaring melody that rises out of the texture a couple times in the last movement, the most memorable part of the piece.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, Koh shines in luminous works by Ravel, Debussy and Saariaho (Washington Post, May 25)

The concert ended with local premiere of Saariaho's Light and Matter, first performed last year at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, a meditation on the effects of light for piano trio. Beginning on a rumble in the piano's bass register and on the cello's open C string, the piece builds toward and recedes from amassing of sound into static textures. Shrieks and howls from the strings were answered by the metallic strum of Jokubaviciute's hand directly on the piano's strings, a subtle, shivering sort of sound. Jokubaviciute sagely conducted the piece with the movements of her head and body, her nods occasionally wrongly interpreted by the page turner, requiring the pianist to turn back the page, all without missing anything perceptible. Keening sounds rose out of string bends in violin and cello, and the piano provided much of the driving force, harping on an oscillating figuration of octaves and fifths, until the sound slowly vanished.

Ian Bostridge's Slightly Touched Winter Journey

Franz Schubert's Winterreise is one of the monuments of music history. It may be the composer's masterpiece, in a bountiful corpus of compositions completed over the course of a tragically short life, and the greatest song cycle ever composed. Laden as it is with many layers of significance -- in the poet's life, in the composer's life, in the lives of listeners and performers alike -- it means many things to many people. Tenor Ian Bostridge gave the latest of his many performances of the work, over one hundred by his own tally, on Saturday afternoon at the Library of Congress, in a recital that did little to change my mind that his voice is not quite right for this music.

I. Bostridge, Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession (Knopf, 2015) Schubert, Die schöne Müllerin / Winterreise / Schwanengesang, I. Bostridge (3 CDs + DVD) (Erato, 2015) S. Youens, Retracing a Winter's Journey: Franz Schubert's "Winterreise" (Cornell University Press, 1991)

The original keys Schubert chose for the songs in Winterreise were intended for a tenor, but baritones always seem to sound best in this cycle to my ears, and Bostridge's recording, made with Leif Ove Andsnes, did not change my opinion on the matter. That impression was borne out in concert, as the lowest notes in this transposition seemed not quite in Bostridge's range, requiring him in some cases to snarl in a guttural way, and not always on pitch. When the high notes could be floated softly, Bostridge's unusual tone -- detached, heady, light -- was just right, as in the concluding song Der Leiermann, but not always so when it required force, as in Mein Herz.

It had been a while since my last experience of Bostridge live, at the Library of Congress in 2006 and in a Shriver Hall Schubertiade in 2009. Besides his normal bizarre gyrations and facial contortions while singing, he did a few genuinely weird things, like a sort of affected smile of surprise that accompanied the narrator's description of the will-o'-the-wisp near the start of Irrlicht. The musical effect made this sort of emoting unnecessary, as he and his accompanist, the talented Julius Drake, gave the whole song a slippery rubato of sudden accelerations, perhaps evoking the apparition's shifting lights.

Rather than sounding like he was reciting poetry through music, Bostridge's interpretation often struck me as stilted, with some unimportant words hammered and some phrases whispered or murmured in a way made incomprehensible by its softness. This was matched by similarly odd gestures in the accompaniment, with Drake alternately banging and coaxing out various threads at the keyboard. Attacca transitions ran some of the songs together, but some slow tempi dragged the length of the performance out to about 80 minutes. The timbre of Bostridge's voice just could not communicate much menace, which is where this cycle's narrator seems to lean, and Schubert at least to my ears cast the songs with an ear for that kind of sound.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, Tenor Ian Bostridge performs a compelling rendition of ‘Winterreise’ (Washington Post, February 9) Michael Dirda, Ian Bostridge’s ‘Schubert’s Winter Journey’ examines the composer’s melancholy work (Washington Post, February 4) David Weininger, In a new book, Bostridge explores Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ (Boston Globe, January 29) Matthew Guerrieri, ‘Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession’ by Ian Bostridge (Boston Globe, January 24) Michael O'Donnell, A Masterpiece to Make You Shiver (Wall Street Journal, January 23)

This performance comes on the heels of Bostridge's new book on Winterreise, a song-by-song analysis of the cycle that relies in large part on literary associations and on Bostridge's personal experience with the work. Bostridge wrote the book, by his own admission, without "the technical qualifications to analyse music in the traditional, musicological sense," making its value principally as a performer's memoir. Although I have not yet read the entire book, my impression so far is that one is still better served by the masterful study of musicologist Susan Youens as far as understanding the historical background of the music and its poetry. Bostridge, for example, suggests that we may fill out the poet's sketch of his narrator by turning to a literary example: perhaps, like Saint-Preux in Rousseau's Julie, he is a tutor to the daughter of a wealthy family, forced to leave when she is married to another. Bostridge relates this to the composer's devotion to Countess Karoline Esterházy, whom Schubert served as music tutor, even wading into the polemic battles between Maynard Solomon and Rita Steblin over Schubert's sexual orientation. Youens, more circumspect, relates the narrator's situation to an unrequited love in the youth of the poet Wilhelm Müller, the man who wrote the words.

Stradivari Christmas

J. Adams, String Quartet, St. Lawrence String Quartet (Nonesuch, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, St. Lawrence String Quartet celebrates ‘A Stradivari Christmas’ at Library of Congress (Washington Post, December 20, 2014)

In the near-perfect acoustics of the Library of Congress’s Coolidge Auditorium on Thursday night, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

On or around Dec. 18 every year since 1936, the library celebrates what might be called “A Stradivari Christmas,” marking the anniversary of the death of Antonio Stradivari, the celebrated Italian instrument maker. A lucky string quartet is picked to play his exquisite instruments, chosen from the library’s collection, an honor that fell this year to the St. Lawrence String Quartet... [Continue reading]

St. Lawrence String Quartet
Stradivari Anniversary Concert
Library of Congress

STRADIVARI ANNIVERSARY CONCERT:
Parker Quartet (2013) | Miró Quartet (2012) | Borromeo Quartet (2011)
Sybarite5 (2010) | Parker Quartet (2009) | Harlem Quartet (2008)
Formosa Quartet (2007) | Ensō Quartet (2006) | Jupiter Quartet (2005)

Jan Vogler and Friends, Library of Congress

Schumann, Dichterliebe (inter alia), J. Vogler, H. Grimaud (Sony, 2013)

The family of Roman Totenberg, the violinist and teacher who died in 2012, has donated a collection of his papers (.PDF file) to the Library of Congress. The library offered a concert on Friday evening, in the Coolidge Auditorium and in the presence of Totenberg's daughters, to mark the occasion. It featured chamber music performed by cellist Jan Vogler and his wife, violinist Mira Wang -- the latter a one-time student of Totenberg's with a close connection to the family -- in collaboration with Finnish pianist Antti Siirala.

Vogler, who was the principal cellist of the Staatskapelle Dresden for over a decade and has some good recordings to his name, is also the director of the Dresden Music Festival. His tone on the instrument has a plangent quality, with plenty of volume at the top but an occasionally dry, dusty quality on the low string, and occasional infelicities of intonation. A Beethoven cello sonata (D major, op. 102/2) started off a little bland in the first movement, where more brio was called for, but Vogler's resonant A string soared in the slow movement, which had a somber, hymn-like quality. The final movement's fugato was chipper, and Siirala's four-square touch matched nicely with Vogler's crisp articulation, creating a chipper and fun quality, not at all dour.

The discovery of the evening was John Harbison's Fantasy-Duo for violin and piano, a beautifully constructed and endlessly diverting piece commissioned by the library's McKim Fund in the 1980s. The single-movement arch form begins with a series of vignettes of pleasing variety: a sort of ground-bass of short chords of pungent dissonance, bebop flurries of notes in the violin, a music-box section of treble sounds -- in a hodgepodge pattern the composer labeled a "collage" in his program note. The other side of Harbison's career is as a jazz pianist, and an infectious delight in impelling rhythm ran through the piece in the most alluring way, never feeling like direct like direct quotation, which would be too facile, but suggesting music that stood on its own. Wang produced a lovely, throaty tone, with a fluid left hand, although the sound on the E string and in the double-stop section could have used a little more polishing.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Energetic, imaginative concert at Library of Congress (Washington Post, December 15)

After intermission, all three musicians united for Tchaikovsky's extended Piano Trio in A minor, op. 50, more proof that this composer, when not constrained by ballet choreography or an opera libretto, simply did not know when to stop. Siirala, whose style is not distinguished by its subtlety, excelled at the bang-bang bombast of the keyboard part, overpowering the string players at times. With each movement, however, it was hard to shake the impression that Tchaikovsky could have cut about a third of the score and done no harm while tightening the piece considerably. In particular, it is hard to understand why he went on quite so long in the second half of the work, squeezing variation after variation out of his bloodless stone of a theme.

The concert series at the Library of Congress comes to the end of the year this Thursday (December 18), with the Stradivari anniversary concert. The St. Lawrence Quartet will be joined by violist Hsin-Yun Huang to play one of Mozart's sublime string quintets, on the Library's Strads.

Chiara Quartet

J. Friedman, Quartets, Chiara Quartet, Matmos (New Amsterdam, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, Chiara String Quartet honors Irving Fine
Washington Post, December 8, 2014

The music of Irving Fine has largely disappeared from local concert programs. To mark the centenary of the American composer’s birth this week, the Library of Congress has put its Fine archive on display with a scholarly panel and festival of concerts, including one by the Chiara String Quartet on Friday night, performing on the library’s precious Stradivari and Amati instruments.

When Fine died in 1962, he had begun to switch from Stravinsky-ish neoclassicism to Schoenberg-ish 12-tone composition... [Continue reading]

Chiara String Quartet
Simone Dinnerstein, piano
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Friedman Quartets (2011)
2006 debut

Aimard Chases the Fugue

J. S. Bach, Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, P.-L. Aimard (released on August 19, 2014) DG 479 2784 | 112'05"

Every performance by Pierre-Laurent Aimard is full of unexpected things, and his recital at the Library of Congress on Friday night was no different. The experience of watching the French pianist play some of the preludes and fugues from the first book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier -- what he did with the sustaining pedal, how he approached the keyboard -- helped me understand the sounds that are captured on his recent recording of the work.

Most of the Bach preludes and fugues were fairly close to how they were rendered on the disc, especially the pair in E-flat minor, one of the highlights of both recording and recital -- the operatic lament of the prelude heavily pedaled, the fugue a little deliberate. The A-flat prelude was one of the pieces that ticked away like a clock, with Aimard's quirky rolling of chords to set it apart. There Aimard applied the pedal in a fluttering way, while in the C# minor fugue, the pedaling created a resonant wash-like acoustic effect. In the F-sharp prelude, by contrast, the two voices danced in a clean and articulate way, the three lines of the fugue each given an independent character. Sometimes the choices were extravagantly weird, like the choppy, even truculent insistence on bringing out the subject in the E-flat fugue, or the endless trill in the tenor voice on the final chord of the G minor fugue, marking that Picardy third for what seemed like an eternity, just in case you missed it. The most complicated fugue, the A minor, reveled in untangling each strand of this complex web of moving parts. The B-flat prelude was shaped as a sort of wild toccata, with a rather fast take on the fugue, which helped make this piece into a convincing conclusion for the Bach selections.

Other Reviews: Philip Kennicott, French pianist Aimard delivers strange recital at Library of Congress (Washington Post, November 10)

Beethoven's A-flat sonata, op. 110, was equally odd, the arpeggios light and feathery, with the pedal deployed again to create an often murky sound. Aimard took almost no pause before launching into the scherzo, with its silly folk-song references (snatches of Unsa Kätz häd Katzln ghabt, or 'Our cat has had kittens', and Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich, or 'I'm a slob, you're a slob') all performed with an archly raised eyebrow. The recitative introduction to the last movement had a mercurial spontaneity, but what Aimard was really after here was its concluding fugue, which spun rapidly out of control from the moment the subject returns in inverted form. Not that it fell apart, although there were a few loose spots, but in trying to observe Beethoven's tempo marking literally ("poi a poi nuovo vivente") you had the sense of Beethoven forcing the music out of the performer's control -- that is, the fugue, most controlled of forms, slips out of its collar and runs away.

The final piece, the Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, op. 24, by Brahms, was probably a case of the musician biting off more than he could chew, a long-winded and exhausting work that was not entirely in Aimard's fingers or brain. There were many intriguing diversions: the sweet perdu quality of the fifth variation, the sotto voce sixth, the hunting calls and obsessive horse-galloping motif in the left hand of seventh. The lesson, ultimately, is that even the best fugues of both Beethoven and Brahms are not half as ingenious as a Bach fugue, perhaps because they were trying to be twice as clever.

The next concert at the Library of Congress will feature recorder virtuoso Matthias Maute and Ensemble Caprice (November 21).

From Old to New

G. F. Haas, in vain, Klangforum Wien, S. Cambreling (Kairos, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge celebrated with Ensemble Dal Niente performance (Washington Post, November 1, 2014)

After an evening of old music on Wednesday, the Library of Congress marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of its patron, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, with a concert of new music on Thursday night. Ensemble Dal Niente, the contemporary music group based in Chicago, performed mind-bending recent pieces by American composer George E. Lewis and Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas, including one world premiere.

The McKim Fund in the Library of Congress commissioned the new work from Lewis... [Continue reading]

Ensemble Dal Niente
Music by Lewis, Haas
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Alex Ross, Darkness Audible (The New Yorker, Nov. 29, 2010)

Vox Luminis Debut @ LoC

D. Scarlatti, Stabat mater (inter alia), Vox Luminis (re-released on June 24, 2014) Ricercar RIC258 | 61'42" [REVIEW]

Charles T. Downey, In D.C. debut, vocal ensemble Vox Luminis offers moments of beauty despite hiccups (Washington Post, October 31, 2014)

The series of free concerts at the Library of Congress this week offered contrasting examples of rather old and rather new music.

On Wednesday night Vox Luminis, a recently formed vocal ensemble from Belgium in their Washington debut, performed a program of mostly baroque music from Italy. Though one could hardly complain about the unusual selection of rarely heard pieces, the execution, while generally fine, showed signs of vocal fatigue.

An unseen soprano opened the evening starkly with the unaccompanied “Lamentation de la Vierge au pied de la Croix”... [Continue reading]

Vox Luminis
Music by Monteverdi, D. Scarlatti, others
Library of Congress

Koussevitsky Celebration @ LoC

Charles T. Downey, Serge Koussevitzky’s legacy celebrated at the Library of Congress
Washington Post, May 5, 2014

M. Babbitt, Phonemena (inter alia), J. Bettina [Listen on YouTube]

Serge Koussevitzky shepherded many compositions into existence as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In his final years, he established two foundations to carry on the work of commissioning new music. These foundations have now merged, and their home base, the Library of Congress, celebrated the legacy of the Russian conductor with a concert on Friday night.

Some of the Koussevitzky commissions have become contemporary classics... [Continue reading]

Koussevitzky Legacy Celebration
Ursula Oppens and Friends
Library of Congress

PREVIOUSLY:
Dutilleux, Ainsi la Nuit (1977) for string quartet
Jupiter Quartet (2005) | KC Chamber Players (2010) | Arcanto Quartet (2010) | ARD Competition (2012)