Briefly Noted: Nielsen's Piano Music

C. Nielsen, Complete Piano Music, C. Bjørkøe (2008, 2 CDs)

The music of Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) is always worth discovering, rare as it is. Nielsen made his musical living as a violinist, but he learned the piano from a young age and began most of his compositional work at the keyboard. Over the course of his life he composed enough solo piano pieces (see also the extraordinary Carl Nielsen Edition) to fill only two discs, presented in chronological order on this recent set from Danish pianist Christina Bjørkøe. Other pianists have recorded all or some of Nielsen's piano music, most famously Leif Ove Andsnes, but Bjørkøe's introspective, sometimes wild-hearted approach makes this an attractive option. Nielsen excelled at the charming miniature -- with examples collected together as the Five Piano Pieces, op. 3, Humoresque-Bagatelles, op. 11, and the Piano Music for Young and Old, op. 53 -- many of which could make delightful little encore pieces. His more substantial works are especially interesting as his harmonic idiom became more unusual, after about the Chaconne, op. 32, and the Theme and Variations, op. 40.

Briefly Noted: Schumann with Melnikov

Schumann, Opp. 44, 47, Jerusalem Quartet, A. Melnikov (released on May 8, 2012) HMC 902122 | 54'56"

Alexander Melnikov is a pianist after my own heart. He is in many ways an old-fashioned virtuoso, with solo recordings to his credit in the big 20th-century repertory (fine discs of Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich). To his credit, he has also shown an interest in historical instruments and performance practice, both of the 19th century and earlier. For this excellent disc of the two giants of Schumann's relatively small body of chamber music -- the piano quintet, op. 44, and the piano quartet, op. 47 -- Melnikov teamed up with the esteemed Jerusalem Quartet, a combination with much to recommend it. Both of these pieces are near-perfect examples of their genre in the Romantic era, and both have been recorded many times, a starry discography into which these performances fit quite nicely.

The piano quintet is centered on its second movement, marked "In modo d'una Marcia," a funeral march that may have been played at Schumann's funeral, here given a moody, not too slow performance, while the big movements have an appropriately orchestral scope. The piano quartet has one of those quintessential Romantic slow movements that aches with delicate harmonic clashes (that of Brahms's third symphony is another that quickly comes to mind) -- heard recently with Mark Morris choreography and with the outstanding Takács Quartet (their recording of the piano quintet, with Marc-André Hamelin, is hard to beat). The only omission is Schumann's early attempt at a piano quartet (WoO 32, C minor, completed in 1829), which scholar Martin Geck says Schumann remembered fondly. The composer said the trio of its scherzo movement seemed to him to be one of the first indications of the sort of romantic music he wanted to compose, "in which a spirit at variance with the older character of music first revealed itself to me." Geck is quick to note that the passage in question "ultimately fails to embody the sort of 'aha' experience that Schumann himself ascribed to it." That assessment holds true when listening to a work that is clearly juvenilia, not much recorded after André Previn and friends first recorded it. At about 25 minutes it may not have fit on this single disc anyway.

Classical Music Agenda (February 2013)

In February the second half of the classical music season really gets going, making whittling down our monthly concert picks to just ten choices rather difficult. Suffice it to say that there will be many other worthy concerts that will scroll by in our sidebar calendar throughout the month.

VISITING ORCHESTRAS:
China's National Symphony Orchestra is making its first U.S. tour since 2006, with many stops all over the country. That includes, for some reason, two concerts in our area: in the Music Center at Strathmore (February 1, 8 pm) and the GMU Center for the Arts (February 2, 8 pm). The programs will be different, except for the Earth Requiem by Xia Guan, a composer who serves as the ensemble's director. North Bethesda will get Beethoven's seventh symphony and pianist Peng-Peng Gong as soloist in Chengzong Yin/Zhuang Liu's Yellow River Concerto, while Fairfax will hear Rachmaninoff's second symphony and violinist Yang Xu in the Sibelius violin concerto. Tickets: $60 to $22.

Mariss Jansons comes to town with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (February 12, 8 pm), presented by Washington Performing Arts Society at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. The program does not include Bruckner's seventh symphony, which they will perform at Carnegie Hall, but Mahler's first symphony and Bartók's second violin concerto with Leonidas Kavakos as soloist. Tickets: $115 to $45.

One week later, Sakari Oramo brings the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra to the Kennedy Center Concert Hall (February 19, 7:30 pm). The music is all Scandinavian, including Sibelius, Grieg, Alfven, Leifs, and Nielsen's fourth symphony ("Inextinguishable"). Danish soprano Inger Dam-Jensen is featured as soloist. Tickets: $64 to $10.

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Daniil Trifonov, Anguished Soul

Chopin, Preludes, op. 28, G. Sokolov [Review] Scriabin, Piano Sonatas, M.-A. Hamelin

In the calculated pursuit of technical perfection, a virtuoso can lose that most exciting musical quality, the adventurous taking of risks. This was one of the things that most impressed me hearing Daniil Trifonov play with the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra in 2011, in Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto, with which he had won the Tchaikovsky Competition earlier that year. His technique was astounding, but it was the sense of daring in his playing that stuck with me, that he was willing to play at the edge of security, to push himself over that edge. The same quality stood out in his recital on Saturday afternoon at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, sponsored by Washington Performing Arts Society. Not all of the performances would be at the top of my list, but with each composer Trifonov smashed expectations, reordered my thinking about the composer and his music, and left one with much to ponder.

The opening work, Scriabin's second sonata (Sonate-fantaisie, op. 19, 1892-97), was the one that seemed likely to be the best match for Trifonov's temperament. Scriabin was staying in Genoa and the Crimea while working on it, and the sounds and feel of the ocean waves are what drive the piece. According to his letters, he reworked it many times, settling on a two-movement form: a slow introduction (supposedly a moonlit southern sea) followed by a turbulent Presto (the ocean roiling with agitated waves). He packed exceptional beauty into just the introduction, taking care to craft and shape each sound, layering voicing upon voicing to give a sense of depth to the oceanic texture. In the first movement, the moonlight sections are cast in the key of E major, which the synesthete Scriabin saw as a light blue or sea blue color (Rimsky-Korsakov, who also confused colors and sounds, often used the same key for his seascapes), given a transparent, gleaming finish by Trifonov. His take on the second movement was breathtakingly fast, a storm-tossed tea that seethed with movement. Anatole Leikin's study of the piano rolls that Scriabin made of this piece indicates that Scriabin took broad liberties with the tempo in both movements, especially the first, taking the second faster than the tempo he marked and emphasizing the right-hand material over the left-hand octaves, even distorting the rhythms he marked to enhance the sense of agitation. Much of that, intentional or no, seemed reflected in Trifonov's performance.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, At Kennedy Center, Daniil Trifonov proves himself an heir to Liszt (Washington Post, January 21) Marie-Aude Roux, La fascinante maturité de Daniil Trifonov, jeune prodige russe (Le Monde, January 11)

Liszt's B minor piano sonata is overplayed, but one is always thrilled by the occasional mind-blowing performance. Scholar Alan Walker has called this singular work, which Liszt composed under the influence of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, a "sonata across a sonata, [in which] the material is constantly making contributions to two sonata forms simultaneously." Liszt often thought in terms of a program, but if this sonata had one, Liszt never specified what it was, although it is an inherently dramatic work. Trifonov opened with an air of mystery, a murky opening with the initial notes of the descending motif made to ring, with the following notes slipping underneath it. When the piece took off, Trifonov raced through it, giving the sense of a soul tormented, wracked by terror, driven toward the exalted major-mode rising theme, played with relieved abandon. The slow passages were lost in rhapsody, with no need to rush through them, as Trifonov explored each whorl and curl of thought, while the fugue, which came out of nowhere, was drenched in sweat. (You can get a sense of what I experienced by watching Trifonov's recital at the Louvre earlier this month, which featured the Liszt sonata, Agosti's arrangement of Stravinsky's Firebird, and Trifonov's own composition, Rachmaniana.)

Trifonov brought many of the same qualities to a complete performance of Chopin's Preludes, op. 28 (search through the list of works to see the first editions of these pieces), playing the shorter pieces impetuously, as if they were not complete thoughts but brief flashes of inspiration. His rubato was free and mercurial, but the extremes of technical accomplishment -- the sparkle of his left hand in no. 3, for example -- were not at the center of the interpretation, and often previously unnoticed details (at least by me) materialized. Three encores were the reward for a rousing ovation: Liszt's arrangement of Schumann's song Widmung (drenched in emotion); Rachmaninoff's arrangement of a Bach Gavotte, from the third violin partita (odd harmonies mixed with sprightly spring -- see video embedded below); and Agosti's arrangement of the "Danse Infernale" from Stravinsky's Firebird (diabolical mania of orchestral scope).

Canadian 'Wonderland'

Ballet is largely about fantasy, and the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy it is perhaps the greatest among all the arts, even more than in opera. How exactly that aura of fantasy has been achieved through the centuries has changed significantly, and some companies are moving past the traditional means of frilly costumes and carefully choreographed movements to make the dancers seem lighter than air. There are all kinds of theatrical and cinematographic possibilities that remain more or less unexplored, perhaps because these things can take away from the dancing part of ballet. The best use of modern technology in a ballet, which did not take away from the dancing, that we have seen is the work of the Royal Danish Ballet and their director Nikolaj Hübbe, who has used fly wires, mechanized sets, and advanced lighting to lift his choreography beyond the ordinary. The new Alice in Wonderland from the National Ballet of Canada (co-produced with London's Royal Ballet), which opened for a run at the Kennedy Center Opera House on Friday night, went even further in this regard, but too often at the expense of the dancing.

This leaves no complaints in the entertainment department, as this three-hour extravaganza, choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon and staged by Jacquelin Barrett, goes full out in bringing Lewis Carroll's phantasmagorical world to life. Moving screens with video projections (designed by Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington) create the effects of the fall down the rabbit hole and the doors that grow enormous next to the shrinking Alice; ingenious set pieces (sets and costumes by Bob Crowley) provide others, like the room-shaped box Alice crawls into when she grows huge, accompanied by massive arms and legs that descend onto the stage; gigantic marionettes operated by black-clothed puppeteers form the floating and sometimes separating parts of the Cheshire Cat; there is even tap dance, in the choreography of the Mad Hatter (danced energetically by Robert Stephen). It is a multimedia production, in which ballet places a part.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, At Kennedy Center, a jubilant ‘Alice’ that doesn’t worry about ravens or writing desks (Washington Post, January 21)

Perhaps not enough of a part for some enthusiasts. Alice and the Knave of Hearts have a couple of romantic duets, neither extended enough really to qualify as a pas de deux, danced longingly by handsome dancers Jillian Vanstone and Naoya Ebe, the latter an up-and-coming dancer promoted to First Soloist last year. There are some fun comic moments, especially from the herky-jerky queen of Greta Hodgkinson, and some exotic touches like the Caterpillar-cum-Arabian dancer of Jiří Jelínek (his dance concluded with a group of en pointe dancers making up a many-legged caterpillar). Still, for all its appeal -- a series of pleasing episodes rather than a dramatic arc (this is partly due to the source material, also adapted by Septime Webre just last year) -- the work's repetitive qualities grated on my nerves after a while. Part of the fault goes to the rather pedestrian score by Joby Talbot, like the staging full of bells and whistles -- celesta! glockenspiel! synthesized voices from a keyboard! The style is what one might call cinematic quasi-minimalism, lots of percolating repetition but few memorable melodies.

This production continues through January 27, at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Schubert, Schumann, Ives: Not Beautiful, Courageous!

C.Ives, Violin Sonatas, J.Wood / D.Riley Endeavour C.Ives, Violin Sonatas, C.Thompson / R.Waters Naxos C.Ives, Violin Sonatas, H.Hahn / V.Lisitsa Naxos

It may look like Violinist Carolin Widmann has emerged from a contemporary music niche to the much larger niche of classical music in general; from Boulez and Salonen to Schumann and Schubert. That’s not quite right in the sense that she had never eschewed the classics in the first place. And it’s not quite right in the sense that she isn’t abstaining from Morton Feldman or John Cage, either. Except if her next album were Feldman, you wouldn’t as likely hear about it as her recent Schubert and 2008 Schumann recitals for ECM.

Widman put her enthusiastically championed, but ear- and brain-demanding modern repertoire to a pragmatic side for her BR-Klassik studio recital. Bavarian Radio’s “Studio 2” was packed on the evening of January 16^th despite snowy roads outside, where Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert lurked on the bill, to be broadcast live. And the coy shock of musical hair of Charles Ives peeked out from safe Viennese Classicism—in the form of his brief “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting” Fourth Violin Sonata, a terrific palate cleanser full of jocular collages and irreverent references. Hearing Ives live is usually bliss or excitement: in any case wide-open ears... and certainly proved so on this occasion.

Perhaps in a further concession to commercial realities, the opening act of Schumann’s vast first Violin Sonata No.1 (performed dry, aggressively, accentuated, slightly put-on, but certainly full blooded) sat next to Schubert’s Fantasie D934. The two pieces are uneasy benchmates, with the latter—despite it’s own classical, carefully structured brilliance—exposed as backwards by the brooding forward hurdling Schumann. Yes, the composers’ names sound so similar, but their music doesn’t… and yet they trigger easily assumed false equivalencies that help neither.

Schumann-Ives is a more natural combination and bookending the recital with Schumann’s two staple sonatas (the composite Third is less popular, though just as intriguing) made dramatic sense, too. It helped that the playing was more comfortable, with all the agogics, little twists and turns and emphases now naturally in place, where they had stood out as potentially self-serving in the first sonata. Among the aural joys of her playing is that Widmann uses vibrato for color and shaping of notes, not to give a homogenizing perma-glow to her notes. Her varied musical pizzicatos—no-two-ever-the-same—are ever a delight. I would go hear her just for the pizzicatos (op.121, third movement!)… something the war-torn beauty of the Poulenc encore (“La guitare fait pleurer les songes...”) further emphasized.

See also: • Sometimes the Beauty Isn't So Obvious - Interview with Violinist Carolin Widmann • Best Recordings of 2012 (4) • Dip Your Ears, No.97 • Best Recordings of 2008 “Almost List”

Widmann is so compelling because she isn’t primarily beautiful, but courageous. Daring means risks, and risks mean mistakes. A little something off in intonation here or there. A hesitant wiggle in the soft, breathy, and scarily, endlessly long opening of the Fantasie. Nor isWidmann afraid of mannerisms and exaggerations. But the impression of the whole is not married to any infelicities. Instead it is tied to the riveting approach of the music and the ravenous appetite with which she devours tasty notes. I carry my nose high, and my expectations low, and I’m not a fan of much or many, but Carolin Widmann, even in imperfect form, is a delight.

In Brief: Inauguration Edition

There is something big going on here in Washington this weekend: best to stay inside and listen to some music. Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.) It's a long list this week.

• The Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles mounted a production of the Ballet des fées des forêts de Saint-Germain, a court ballet danced at the Louvre by Louis XIII and his court in 1625. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Valery Gergiev leads the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra at the Salle Pleyel, in two Shostakovich symphonies (nos. 3 and 13) and the second cello concerto, with cellist Mario Brunello and bass Mikhail Petrenko. [France Musique]


• More Shostakovich from the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra and Valery Gergiev, this time three symphonies (nos. 1, 2, and 15), plus the second piano concerto with Denis Matsuev. [France Musique]


• A new year's concert from the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and the RIAS Kammerchor in J. S. Bach's Magnificat and C. P. E. Bach's Heilig, heilig ist Gott, Wq 217, and Magnificat, Wq 215, at the Berlin Philharmonie. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Daniel Harding leads the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Robert Schumann's Szenen aus Goethes Faust. [BR-Klassik]


• Marek Janowski leads the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in excerpts of Wagner operas, with tenor Stephen Gould, bass Albert Dohmen, and soprano Violeta Urmana. [France Musique]


• Catch Joyce DiDonato in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda at the Metropolitan Opera. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• From the Salle Pleyel, watch Herbert Blomstedt lead the Orchestre de Paris, in an all-Beethoven program with pianist Lars Vogt. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• A concert by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, led by Mariss Jansons and recorded last November: Beethoven's second and sixth symphonies, plus a new piece by Misato Mochizuki, Nirai, composed as an intermezzo to go between those two symphonies. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Pianist Edna Stern plays music of Debussy as part of a play called La Boîte à joujoux by Pierre Senges, recorded this past fall. [France Musique]


• Listen to a recital of French and Spanish songs recorded last November, featuring the young artists of Les Solistes de l’Atelier Lyrique in the Amphithéâtre Bastille in Paris. [France Musique]


• Hear the New World program from Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, and Tembembe Ensemble Continuo under Jordi Savall. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• I have been on a 19th-century historical piano kick the last year or so. Here is a recital by Philippe Bianconi, playing on two such pianos, an 1860 Pleyel and an 1890 Érard from the Musée de la musique. [France Musique]


• Claudio Abbado conducts the Orchestra Mozart and violinist Isabelle Faust in Schumann's second symphony plus Mozart's Linz symphony and K. 219 violin concerto. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Pianist Boris Berezovski joins the Orchestre National de Lyon, under conductor Josep Pons, for music of Ginastera and Falla. [France Musique]


• Two concerts from Stockholm: Sakari Oramo conducts the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in music by Per Nørgård and Jean Sibelius; plus the Trio con brio Copenhagen with a piano trio by Per Nørgård. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• The Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, conducted by Frans Brüggen, performs Haydn and Fauré, plus Chopin's second piano concerto with soloist Nelson Goerner. [France Musique]


• From the Proms last July, Hervé Niquet leads Le Concert Spirituel in Handel's Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• The Wiener Mozartisten and friends perform music by Leó Weiner, Debussy, and Strauss. [France Musique]


• Fabio Luisi conducts the Wiener Symphoniker and Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien in Bruckner's seventh symphony and Gerd Kühr's Jetzt wohin? for speaker, chorus, and orchestra. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Listen to a recital from the Auditorium du Louvre with cellist Yan Levionnois and pianist Guillaume Vincent, playing music by Schumann, Britten, and Debussy, introduced by Vincent's recording of Rachmaninoff preludes. [France Musique]


• Wolfgang Sawallisch conducts a 1983 performance of Wagner's Die Feen in Munich, with Kurt Moll, Linda Ester Gray, June Anderson, and Cheryl Studer. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]

NSO Prepares for Tour, Week 1

Christoph Eschenbach is back in town, for two weeks of concerts. To prepare the National Symphony Orchestra for its upcoming European tour (January 31 to February 10), Eschenbach is giving test runs of most of the planned repertory this week and next at the NSO's regular concerts. (They trotted out Strauss's Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche this past November.) Last night, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, one of the tour's soloists, Tzimon Barto, joined the orchestra for Béla Bartók's second piano concerto, sandwiched between Beethoven's Egmont overture and Brahms's second symphony. Next week will feature Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, Beethoven's Grosse Fuge (in the Weingartner edition for string orchestra), and Mozart's fifth violin concerto, with Dan Zhu standing in as soloist. Julia Fischer was to have been the violinist on the tour, but she has had to withdraw and will be replaced by Arabella Steinbacher.

Barto is an odd duck in many ways, but it is unlikely that anyone would ever complain of a lack of theatricality in his playing. He certainly had the technical acumen, stamina, and guts to pull off this dastardly concerto, not heard from the NSO since 1973 when Antal Doráti conducted it. Barto played from a score, even turning his own pages, but the cascades of notes poured out in the first movement, with its tour de force cadenza, and he made the most of the barbaro octaves and pointed syncopations in the finale. There is an element of chaos built into the score, and Eschenbach and the orchestra had to make many tiny adjustments to keep this crazy train on the tracks, as Barto careened his way through it. It was exciting without wracking the listener's nerves too much, listening to him white-knuckle his way through it. The second movement, with its languid halo of string sound, was the high point, especially the soloist's odd duet with groaning (glissando) timpani. A hearty ovation also offered the chance to try out the encore for Paris, a slow, sotto voce version of the Largo from Bach's F Minor keyboard concerto (BWV 1056).

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Under Christoph Eschenbach’s baton, Tzimon Barto plays Bartok with NSO (Washington Post, January 18)

Beethoven's overture for Egmont had a forceful touch, which gave the right sense of the story's heroic but doomed struggle for liberty but also caused some aggressive intonation stridency in the low strings and woodwinds at times. The piccolo's whoops and hollers and jubilant brass made the conclusion triumphant and martial. Eschenbach had excellent ideas in the Brahms second symphony, and the NSO executed the piece beautifully. The opening movement glowed with moments of sunrise from its slow introduction filled with reverie. Eschenbach seemed to hold back on tempi and dynamics, allowing the second theme to smolder in the cellos, for example. The second movement, not one of the best Brahms composed, brooded and exulted, outshone by the pastoral simplicity and folk-inspired dance of the third. Only the fourth movement seemed not quite ready for the main event, not always sure-footed in the sense of ensemble cohesion. The signs are good, however, that this Brahms will make a fine centerpiece to showcase the NSO as Eschenbach leads them through Spain, his native Germany, and ending up in his old stomping grounds with the Orchestre de Paris at the Salle Pleyel.

This concert repeats tonight and Saturday night, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.