Dip Your Ears, No. 247 (Bach, Jazzed Up: An Austrian Attempt)

Bach Improvisations Benjamin Schmid & Friends (Oehms)

Oehms Classics has released several recordings of Benjamin Schmid, one of Austria’s premier violinists. This time we are treated to “Improvisations on J.S. Bach”. Color me interested! If keen observers notice that the cover photo of Schmid’s is not just of oddly shoddy quality but also rather dated, they might be onto something: A hint at the fact that the recording was made a decade ago and is only now being released? Pondering this raises the question: Why release it now? Listening to the album raises the question: Why release it at all? That’s not to insinuate that all’s bad with the music on this disc – the opposite. The approach and the general idea are great: Let a collection of extraordinary musicians – certainly Schmid himself, the locally famous Austrian bassist and all-purpose musician Georg Breinschmid, and major marimbist Emiko Uchiyama – loose on Bach in jazzy arrangements speckled with jazz standards (Kurt Weill’s Youkali, a bit of Django Reinhardt, Jerome Kern) and semi-improvisations. And in its idealized form, the result here is somewhere between Jacques Loussier and Edgar Meyer. Several of the arrangements are very groovy, indeed. It’s just that this exalted level is reached rarely – and when it isn’t, it leaves you wanting. The opening E major Prelude is a case in point: A dab of hoedown, as re-imagined by Austrian boys, a touch of bluegrass raises the spirits. And then some woeful off-key notes that are sold as on-purpose but which are not finding any buyers at that price.

After several foot-tapping episodes, the project reaches the nadir in a freewheeling violin-rumination on the Well-Tempered Clavier Prelude No. 1 that is played by the marimba. If you hesitate before figuring that the violin’s part is not just aimless noodling, it’s already too late. What’s lacking is conviction. Every improviser has essentially two modes: “Searching” and “rolling with the material”. To the extent any of the works on this disc are truly improvised in the moment (it’s a mix of studio and live takes), they sound like they are only searching and never really rolling with it. There is a hesitancy about the material that does not befit any groove nor, importantly, the instrument. You can be hesitant on the piano and maybe get away with it. But on the violin, the instrument betrays its player at once. A phrase that might have been probing becomes a whimper, in-stead. Much of what sounds promising among these tracks, also sounds as though it would have been much better had performers had much more time under their belts with this music. (In fact, Schmid has recently released a very well regarded Jazz album on Gramola, suggesting that he isn’t the problem.) The liner notes are a few curiously offhand comments from Schimd: to the point at best, brusque and meaningless at worst. It’s almost as if he could not quite be bothered to revisit this project, which is also how it sounds. It’s a strange recording, flawed and full of good ingredients. Yet rather than ending up reasonably satisfying, it makes you wish for a very similar, better one. Unfortunately, that little difference makes *all* the difference.

5/7

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On ClassicsToday: Swiss Bach Cantata Cycle Continues to Delight (Bach-Stiftung)

Volume 26: St. Gallen’s Bach Cantata Cycle Marches On

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Artistic Quality: ?

Sound Quality: ?

Step by lively step, the St. Gallen Bach Foundation’s cantata series moves ahead with its sneakily magnificent releases. One of the latest efforts, Volume 26, features the usual qualities: Unspectacular, buoyant, deeply felt readings with fine singers with clear, natural voices.

BWV 25 opens the proceedings with its sighing, teeth-gnashing stepped introduction in the violins—in a tangy minor mode that belies the E major on the written page. The tug and pull leads to a constant repetition of “There is naught of soundness about my body before thy dire anger, nor any rest in my bones in light of my sins” in the chorus—operating in free counterpoint to the double fugue to the chorale in the brass with three trombones and a horn. [continue reading]

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Briefly Noted: More Beauty Farm

Obrecht, Masses, Beauty Farm (released on April 5, 2019) Fra Bernardo FB1905157 | 94'11"

Beauty Farm came to my attention a couple years back, when I reviewed two of their discs for the Washington Post. They are a male vocal ensemble, formed in 2014 by members of leading early music groups and based in the cultural center at the former Carthusian monastery of Mauerbach, Austria. I am happy to report that they are still active and recording. As you can see, they are still using the same quirky style of cover art for their releases on the Fra Bernardo label.

Just four of the group's roster perform in these two four-voice Mass settings by Jacob Obrecht (1457-1505), Missa Fortuna desperata and Missa Maria zart, enough music to require two CDs. Each polyphonic Ordinary by Obrecht is prefaced by its source material, Antoine Busnois's three-voice Italian canzona Fortuna desperata and the monophonic song Maria zart, von edler Art, an example of popular sacred music of the time.

The quartet sings one to a part, a practice that reflects the likely performance standard in the Renaissance and also exposes the slightest weakness in any singer. The Missa Maria zart, in particular, is a sort of super-work of the period, a feat of endurance lasting almost an hour and making use of extended vocal ranges in all parts. As is usually the case in all-male performances of this repertory, it is the two upper voices' top ranges that are most sorely tested. All in all, though, these are superbly balanced renditions of exceedingly difficult repertory, an honor to the memory of Obrecht, who died in the final days of July 1505 in Ferrara during an outbreak of the plague.

Bayreuth on the Danube: The Budapest Wagner Days. Production Photos from Die Götterdämmerung 2019

The Chorus: Honvéd Male Choir (Honvéd Férfikar) & Hungarian Radio Choir (Magyar Rádió Énekkara)

From the third day of the 2019 Budapest Wagner Days come these pictures of Die Götterdämmerung. (See production pictures of Das Rheingold here, Die Walküre here, and Siegfried here - and the ClassicsToday review here.) If the Rheingold stunned with a (largely) no-name cast that was absolutely bona-fide world class (most especially Alberich, Loge, Mime, and Fasolt along with the established Wotan of Johan Reuter's), this most popular opera of the Ring boasted a cast with world class names that, happily, lived up to their billing. Stuart Skelton, Johan Reuter, Camilla Nylund, and especially Catherine Foster gave of their best.

Here is part two (of two) of my review on ClassicsToday: A Magnificent Budapest Ring, Part 2: Walküre, Siegfried, & Götterdämmerung
Here is part one of my review on ClassicsToday: A Magnificent Budapest Ring: Prelude and Rheingold

Below are loads of production photos from Die Götterdämmerung to go with that review (or titillate you all on their own.)

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Dip Your Ears, No. 246 (Accordion-Journey: Teodoro Anzellotti in Satie)

Erik Satie, Keyboard Works arr. for Accordion Teodoro Anzellotti (Winter & Winter)

Transcriptions and adaptations of music for accordion are not that hard to find; it’s an instrument that lends itself to grabbing music written for other – especially keyboard – instruments and it hasn’t that much original classical music in the repertoire to fall back on. But there are few accordion players who so consistently pick interesting material and reshape it with such skill and genius as does Teodoro Anzellotti, as his recordings on the boutique label Winter & Winter over the last 20 years testify.

This one, of works by Erik Satie recorded in 1998, was the first to come out. The interpretations depict just the playful whimsy, the witty and coy sides of Satie we know – certainly in the opening cycle of piano-vignettes titled Sports et divertissements. But Anzellotti can also be somber and grave, as in the Jules Massenet-based Rêverie Du Pauvre. The barcarole-like swing of Petite ouverture à danser is sweetly lulling and the famous Gnossiennes are of contemplative beauty, with their long lines enhanced on the accordion, compared to the percussive piano. There’s a meditative quality to the accordion that Anzellotti can tap into, that would make a pianist’s version sound mellow to the point of sedate, while his interpretation still seems alert. The resulting alienation-effect is one of the many aspects that makes this recording a niche-classic.

8/10

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On ClassicsToday: Karajan's best Beethoven or the best Karajan-Beethoven? (DG)

Karajan’s 1970s Beethoven In Blu-ray Audio: A Controversial Set Revisited

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Artistic Quality: ?

Sound Quality: ?

Herbert von Karajan was once the high-holy name in classical music. So much so it was inevitable that the historical pendulum would swing the other way. And so he became something of an outcast among the self-declared cognoscenti. When customers asked for Karajan at the Tower Records store I worked at, we subtly sneered: “Karajan in whichever-composer? Pooh-pooh. Tut-tut!” His seminal 1960s Beethoven cycle might have been given a grudging exemption, ditto a bit of late Bruckner and an opera or two. But not a whole lot else. And certainly not the later Beethoven recordings.. [continue reading]

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See also: The Beethoven Symphonies, A Survey of Complete* Recordings

Briefly Noted: Parfenov's Goldberg Riff

Bach, Goldberg Variations / Parfenov, New Goldberg Variations, A. Parfenov (released on July 19, 2019) Naxos 8.551399 | 79'50"

André Parfenov, born in Kaliningrad in 1972, is in the line of composer-pianists that includes Lera Auerbach, among others. The Russian-born composer resettled in Germany, where he has been working at the Theater in Mönchengladbach/Krefeld, including a collaboration creating original ballet scores for the choreographies of Robert North. This new recording combines his performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations with his own New Goldberg Variations, a set of reactions to the famous Bach work.

Parfenov's Bach is somewhat rough-hewn, with plenty of sustaining pedal and rubato. The playing is heavy-handed, meaning both a deficit in terms of refinement and some striking differentiation of polyphonic voices in the canons and double-keyboard variations. The "Quodlibet" is quite striking in this regard, with the popular song fragments popping out of the texture in unexpected ways. Both performances fit in the space of a single disc in part because Parfenov eschews the repeats, meaning that ornamentation is limited.

In his composer's note, printed only in German, Parfenov makes a point of discussing the polyphonic dimensions of Bach's work. This element permeates his tribute variations as well, which often dwell on contrapuntal expansion, as in his version of the aria with an imitation of the melody at the fifth added like a ghostly echo. Other variations create otherworldly effects, like the harp-strumming washes of sound produced directly on the piano strings in the Introduction. Further highlights include the Debussy-like moto perpetuo of the "Tonale arpeggio" variation, the Bartók barbarism of the "Quarten," and the clanging bells of "Overture: Kirchenglocken." Stylistically, Parfenov veers among various poles, from tonality to jazz to atonality and back again.

On ClassicsToday: Italian Decca Reissues Peter Hurford's Bright and Glorious Bach

Back in Print: Peter Hurford’s Seminal Bach Survey On Argo/Decca

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Artistic Quality: ?

Sound Quality: ?

Peter Hurford’s traversal of Bach’s complete organ works has been out of print for years. As a result, all that I had to go by, for assessing Hurford’s take on that oeuvre—which, outside the cantatas, best shows Bach at his essence—was a well-loved, much-played best-selling Double Decca of “Bach: Great Organ Works”. It was among the earliest Bach organ recordings I owned, next to some splendid Karl Richter, and it made quite an impression. But that was a long time ago and I had moved on, accumulating some two dozen sets in the meantime. Now Italian Decca has re-issued the set and I finally took the chance to check out the rest of Hurford. It turns out, that Twofer really is a very good primer for things to come: Hurford’s Bach is glorious, organistic, and initiation-friendly. [continue reading / insider content]

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See also: A Survey of Bach Organ Cycles. Audio samples below:

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