Forbes Classical CD of the Week

…What La Voce Strumentale and their do-it-all leader Dmitry Sinkovsky deliver is truly rock’n’roll-baroque. Just when you think that the race towards expressive extremes in baroque must surely have come to an end or enter the realm of the ridiculous, another band shows that the envelope can still be pushed and excite.…

-> Classical CD of the Week: Classical CD Of The Week: The Vivaldi Vanity Package

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Forbes Classical CD of the Week

…The kicker of this release is clearly the rarely performed and rarely recorded Liebesmahl der Apostel (“The Holy Supper of the Apostles”). Written for the male choral society of Dresden, which Wagner led for just shy of three years (his immediate successors were Ferdinand Hiller and Robert Schumann), it is as a 1914 review suggested, namely that “the work surely does not rank among his masterworks, but it is interesting and valuable enough as an excellent student work.” (Dr. Georg Kaiser, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, v.81)…

-> Classical CD of the Week: Classical CD Of The Week: Bruckner Rising, Wagner Rarity

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CD Reviews: Erkki Melartin / New York Polyphony

Charles T. Downey, CD reviews: Neglected Finn merits a closer listen
Washington Post, September 9

E. Melartin, Traumgesicht (inter alia), S. Isokoski, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, H. Lintu (released on June 10, 2016) Ondine ode1283-2 | 56'50"

A composer as good as Erkki Melartin should be better known. I, at least, have not heard any Washington ensemble perform this Finnish composer’s music in the past decade, although it has occasionally cropped up at places such as Bard College, where Leon Botstein champions less-performed composers. This recent release from the Ondine label, which recorded Melartin’s six symphonies two decades ago, features excellent world-premiere recordings of three more of his works. Let jaded listeners who thought they had nothing new and beautiful to discover rejoice.

Melartin (1875-1937) composed his tone poem “Traumgesicht” (“Dream Face”) in 1910, adapting his own incidental music for a Symbolist play from five years earlier. Hints of the harmonic style of Debussy abound, evoking the murky world of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s “Un sogno d’una mattina primavera” with ethereal combinations of instruments. At the same time, there are soaring, chromatic moments of full-bodied sound — a reminder that Melartin’s teacher in Vienna, Robert Fuchs, also taught Mahler, Sibelius and Korngold.

The second piece, “Marjatta,” brings in elements of Finnish nationalism. The redoubtable Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski deploys a shimmering high range, veritably purring on the high, soft B-flats in the opening description of silvery birds singing — and it gets even better from there. This orchestral version, premiered in 1915, features more iridescent orchestration as backdrop to an odd story of Marjatta, drawn from the end of the “Kalevala,” the Finnish national epic, about a girl who miraculously conceives a son by eating a lingon­berry.

The latest of the three works is “Sininen helmi” (“The Blue Pearl,” Op. 160). The first full-length ballet written in Finland, it premiered in 1931. A prince, shipwrecked on an island in the South Seas, fights a giant octopus to win the magical blue pearl in its crown, as well as a princess the monster is holding captive. Hannu Lintu, who conducts the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in these fine performances, has made an arrangement of pieces from the ballet’s first two acts.

Highlights include a gossamer-delicate “Danse des Nénuphares” (“Dance of the Water Lilies”) and the delightful number for the “Poissons à voiles” (“Long-Finned Goldfish”), which combines languid strings, harp-like piano and tinkling percussion. The only regret is that the disc doesn’t feature the entire score.

Roma Æterna (Guerrero, Palestrina, Victoria), New York Polyphony (released on August 12, 2016) BIS-2203 | 72'07"

In 2006, New York Polyphony formed as an all-male vocal quartet specializing in Renaissance polyphony, in the style of the Hilliard Ensemble and other groups. After all, most of this repertory was intended for all-male ensembles, with either boys or countertenors on the top part.

In the group’s first few years, its sound was good but not yet thrilling. In its latest release, however, with new singers on the middle parts and the excellent sound engineering of the Swedish label BIS, the puzzle’s pieces finally fit together.

Two masterful, often-recorded settings of the Latin Ordinary, by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Tomás Luis de Victoria, provide the frame for a handful of motets and Gregorian chants, giving the partial impression of two complete Renaissance liturgies.

Pitch frequency was not standardized in the Renaissance. Therefore, transposing this music to a range most comfortable for the singers of a given group is perfectly authentic, as well as just making sense.

Palestrina notated his “Missa Papae Marcelli” in a high key, suitable for the boys singing the highest part. To make that top part work for its countertenor, New York Polyphony transposes the pitch down by a perfect fifth, which shifts this music completely into the darker, heavier male range, with the four lowest parts sung by baritones and basses. The tenor Andrew Fuchs and bass-baritone Jonathan Woody join the quartet for this six-part Mass, and the countertenor Tim Keeler takes the second soprano part that’s woven into the glorious triple canon of the “Dona nobis pacem.” The same singers do an equally beautiful job with Palestrina’s six-part “Tu es Petrus,” on the crucial papal text inscribed in giant letters around the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Even transposed down a step, however, Victoria’s “Missa O quam gloriosum,” for four voices, does not sit quite right for counter­tenor Geoffrey Williams. It is complemented by Victoria’s and Palestrina’s disparate settings of the antiphon “Gaudent in coelis,” written for the feasts of multiple martyrs; the ensemble gives long-breathed drive to the ecstatic, overlapping repetitions of the words “exultant sine fine,” as the martyrs rejoice ceaselessly in heaven.

The disc ends with a Palestrina classic, the motet “Sicut cervus.” The balanced, rarefied sound of this recording, captured in St. Cecilia Cathedral in Omaha, is another reminder of the rewards that can come from meeting older music on its own terms.

SEE ALSO:
Gabriele d'Annunzio, Un sogno d'una mattina primavera

Blast from the Past: An Open Letter on Matters Gustav Mahler

An open, but unsent, letter to Fanfare Magazine from 2011 on the subject of Lynn René Bayley and her hyperbolic review of Naxos’ box of Mahler Symphonies for the Fanfare Magazine. A bit of a rant, but I found myself amused by it, still, when I found it just now.

Dear Fanfare Editor,

I have tried, as best I can, to ignore the exacerbating reviews of Lynn René Bayley. I browse ahead in my Fanfare issue, carefully, to find her name (all-too-often). Then I skip the review, because I value my coronary and mental health.

Unfortunately I failed in that precaution when reading the review of Naxos’ Mahler box set. What a travesty, what a befuddling mess.

But rather than succumbing to the unhealthy (and uncouth) tirade that simmers just beneath the surface (peppered with damning blanket statements), I will try to quote-and-comment on some of the more unnerving elements. (I will leave aside her mediocre writing while noting in passing that it’s come a long way from her unadulterated hatchet jobs of yesteryear.)

After a series of platitudes and a highly superfluous “Mahler was not always popular” preamble, we arrive at:

LRB: “Only the two orchestras that Mahler himself had conducted, the Vienna Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic, had anything like a Mahler style in their blood.”

Oh, boy. For starters, what’s that “Mahler style” precisely? A musical gene he transmitted by conducting Beethoven with these bands? The same (“correct”) style LRB claims doesn’t exist, just one paragraph further down? When it comes to performances of Mahler, what did the Vienna Philharmonic have, that the Concertgebouw, for example, didn’t? The VPO performed Mahler Symphonies a whopping 34 times between 1900 and 1920; and an average 18 times per decade (!) until the seventies when things eventually, reluctantly picked up. The Vienna Philharmonic, elusive “Mahler Style” or not, was not a natural Mahler orchestra. The RCO, in comparison, performed Mahler Symphonies 180 times in the first two decades of the last century. And, except for the dark 40s, never less than 73 times per decade. The New York Philharmonic performed Mahler Symphonies a mere six times between 1900 and 1920 and made up for lost opportunities only starting with the 60s (137 performances). The Prague, Munich, and Cologne Orchestras, for example, have more of a Mahler-the-composer tradition than either Vienna or New York.

G.Mahler, Symphonies, A.Wit, M.Halász/Warsaw PO, Polish NRSO Naxos G.Mahler, Symphony No.1, M.Halász/Polish NRSO Naxos G.Mahler, Symphony No.2, A.Wit/Polish NRSO Naxos G.Mahler, Symphony No.8, A.Wit/Warsaw PO Naxos

LRB: “[Mahler’s] symphonies are unique in being able to withstand several different approaches, from fairly swift, taut, and dramatic to slow, alternately relaxed or tense, and brooding. Moreover, I’m pretty sure Mahler himself changed the way he conducted his own symphonies from year to year, depending on his mood at the time.”

What a staggering assortment of hapless fluff, re-hashed clichés, conjecture, and inane opinioneering in just two sentences. And still nothing at all about the collection at hand.

LRB: “This particular set, primarily the work of two Polish conductors, is fascinating in that it gives us Mahler not in a German or Anglo-Saxon vernacular, which is how most of us came to know it (even through Klemperer, Walter, Barb[ir]olli, and Horenstein), but rather through an Eastern European vernacular.”

Oy veh. Horenstein and Barbirolli aside, it might be worth pointing out that Otto Klemperer was from Wrocław, formerly Breslau. That would be in… you’ve guessed it: Poland. The son of Silesian Jews, Bruno Schlesinger, a.k.a. Bruno Walter, learned his trade in Wrocław (Breslau), Bratislava (Pressburg), and Riga. And one of the great European post-War pioneers of Mahler was the Czech Rafael Kubelik. How much more Eastern European do these men have to be for it to count? What is more, Michael Halász isn’t even Polish, but from linguistically and culturally rather distinct Hungary.

LRB: “…[T]his is Mahler with a Polish-Bohemian accent, and as such is probably closer to what the composer himself heard in his mind when writing it.

Aha! A 21^st century production of Mahler Symphonies with an allegedly Polish flavor—things Polish not actually being particularly related to Mahler—is more likely what he heard in his mind when writing the music than any or most of what has come before? Including the (wildly varying) interpretations of those who worked with him? Maestro Halász, it seems, is now nudged from being Polish toward being vaguely Bohemian. It’s the right direction, at least, though “Bohemian” is still quite distinct from Hungarian.

LRB goes on to gush about the set and the recorded sound in ways I have trouble comprehending, but taste and experience being subjective matters it wouldn’t be fair to grill her for (dis)liking this or that. In our appreciation of the 8^th Symphony under Wit we actually agree; in her assessment of the soloists as “weak” we do not. Unknown, yes, but weak? Well, tastes…

I’d agree that the Wheeler version of the 10^th is so interesting that its inclusion is a merit to the Naxos set. To suggest it’s the second best after—of all the many available versions—Wigglesworth’s obscure non-commercial BBC-freebe 10^th is just a wee bit bizarre. Peculiarity continues when she lists her grave disappointments at the hands of Messrs. Solti, Zander, Levine, Bernstein, Segerstam, Dohnányi, Thomas, and Tennstedt and their “supposedly top-drawer cycles”.

Peculiar because Zander, Dohnányi, and Levine never (or not yet) recorded complete cycles. And I have yet to meet a person that ever claimed that Segerstam’s hopelessy out-of-print ‘Danish’Mahler cycle on Chandos was even mid-drawer. But it gets stranger, still:

LRB: “…and since several of my first choices are rare and/or out-of-print recordings (such as the Mehta Second, Tennstedt Fifth, and Kubelík Seventh on the out-of-print New York Philharmonic boxed set), as a whole it is certainly first choice as a complete cycle.”

Halász-Wit-Olson is “certainly [the] first choice as a complete cycle”? It’s difficult not to chortle at that statement, especially with that “certainly” added. I wonder if she could find even three Mahlerians to agree with that statement. But again: taste, arguing, and such. Plain wrong, meanwhile, is the idea that Mehta’s Second is out of print; it is currently making its happy and inexpensive rounds on “Decca Legends”. To be had for a tenner, and worth every penny. Tennstedt’s Fifth, apart from perennial availability in his complete Mahler box (EMI, retailing at something between $20 and $50, lest she meant the live version, which is available in the newer box on Warner or individually used and imported]) can still be gotten with relative ease on its most recent installment on EMI double forte. (The Kubelik New York Seventh is tricky to come by, admittedly.)

LRB: “Even at Naxos’s list price, it’s cheaper than any of the cycles I cited in the above paragraph…”

Oh, but it isn’t. Arkiv’s list price is $108.98, the sale price $82.49, Amazon’s official price as of writing this is $71.62. And although getting the set for $60 is a distinct possibility, that makes it more expensive than some of the most venerable sets out there. In fact, it makes it one of the most expensive ones. Chailly’s Mahler (Decca) has a lower list price. Bertini’s Mahler (EMI) is one of the great Mahler-bargains. Bernstein’s New York Cycle, even in the beautiful Carnegie Hall edition, is less expensive at $50 and the DG cycle in its latest issue costs less than $40. Kublik’s Bavarian cycle on DG has come down in price below the $50 mark, ditto imports of Decca’s Eloquence re-issue of Sinopoli’s Mahler. Add to that three anniversary sets from DG and EMI with different conductors… it would be possible to go on, but boring.

Mahler sets should probably be reviewed by someone who has at least some idea of what they are writing about… and someone who doesn’t get tripped up by pesky “facts” quite so often.

Almost sincerely,

Jens F. Laurson

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Washington Classical Review Goes Live

The official launch of Washington Classical Review is finally here. The site's first article, I am happy to report, is an exclusive review of the recital by soprano Janai Brugger this past week. This year's winner of the Marian Anderson Vocal Award performed a winning program in the Kennedy Center's Family Theater. In addition to a complete concert calendar, there is also a news article there about the most recent appointments to the National Symphony Orchestra, and a preview of the Washington area season to come will be appearing soon. The next installment of my weekly roundup of streaming video and audio from around the classical Internet will be posted there as well.

Dip Your Ears, No. 214 (The Final Abbado Dud)

#morninglistening to #Abbado’s last concert w/@berlinphil in #Mendelssohn & #Berlioz.#cl… https://t.co/y1xkYB2KDm pic.twitter.com/vINpseVXl1

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) September 3, 2016

F.Mendelssohn-B., 'Dream', H.Berlioz, Symphonique fantastique C.Abbado / Berlin Philharmonic et al. Berlin Philharmonic H.Berlioz, Symphonique fantastique (E.Varèse, Ionisation) M.Jansons / BRSO BR Klassik

You wouldn’t buy this luxurious, $62 set – “Claudio Abbado – The Last Concert” – for the music it contains: One disc of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and one of Berlioz’ Symphonique fantastique. So does it make sense to review the performances as if they competed with all the others that are out there? It doesn’t: If just the music were your concern, this set would not competitive because it is a.) very expensive, b.) designed specifically so as not to fit any CD-, book-, or DVD- shelf, and c.) because the performances are, pace Claudio Abbado, middling and very boring. I’m sure the orchestra played their hearts out for him, but it doesn’t amount to any sort of excitement, which is almost shocking, given the repertoire – especially the Berlioz. (Compare this to Mariss Jansons’ recent account with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, for maximum contrast.) The reason to get this might be the enjoyment one gets out its impeccable presentation, the accompanying essays and photos, or the DVD of said concert. But, speaking of the music, you might be tempted to get the $15 mp3 version that Amazon et al. offer. This brings us back to reason C:

The limply conducting Abbado manages the unimaginable and sucks all the life out these two works. They are sapped of energy and zest and fall on the floor like a limp squid; it never sparks any fireworks -- like a damp squib. In the Mendelssohn it’s perhaps less surprising; I’ve always found those London recordings of his – especially the symphonies, however much praised by others – on the boring side (compare those to Dohnanyi/Decca, for example, and Maag/Decca for the ‘Dream’). But even then, not nearly as boring as this. If you want to do yourself and your memory of Abbado a favor, pick any one (or all) of the recordings George Pieler and I assembled in this tribute on Forbes: The 13 Best Recordings of Claudio Abbado: A Remembrance and give this a pass.

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Bernstein via Angers: John Axelrod in Conversation (2011)

Originally published on WETA's website, Tuesday, 5.31.11, in anticipation of the Axelrod-led NSO concerts of Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish Symphony”, with text and narration by Samuel Pisar, June 2nd, 3rd and 4th of 2011. Re-posting of this account was largely inspired by this brilliant, marvelously honest and superbly written article in the Houston Press from Shaila Dewan: "Perfect Pitch". I could only wish that anything I have ever or will ever write would still ring so true twenty years later!

Angers is a small and picturesque town to the west of Paris in the Pays de la Loire region with about 160,000 inhabitants, cute (or bountiful) enough to attract ransacking Vikingsin the 9^th century. In its center rises the impressive Cathedral Saint-Maurice of Angers, begun in Romanesque style a thousand years ago and – after fiery interruptions and setbacks – finished in Gothic garb early in the 13^thcentury.

In it the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire performed Hector Berlioz’L’enfance du Christ, some time last month. To be precise, it was the Nantes-division of the bipartite Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire; the Anger division was busy playing film music at an Anger theater that night. Conducting the ONPL was their current music director, Houston-born John Axelrod, “America’s most unknown great conductor”. Or was it “America’s greatest unknown conductor”? That may not be a direct quote, but more or less the gist of his introductory remarks when we meet up after the concert, over the comforting fare of a few Belgian beers and pizza. Intriguing… of sorts.

That concert—Delphine Haidan (mezzo), Donat Havar (tenor), Stefano Palatchi (bass), and a familiar voice from his Washington appearances, baritone François LeRoux were the soloists—was impossible to judge after a tiresome trip to Angers via Paris. With four hours of sleep and eight hours of flying and riding through the countryside (I dream of train-travelling bliss by way of combining French high-speed rail tracks with German trains one day… until then the crammed discomfort of the TGV has to suffice), even the best performance of L’enfance du Christ would have been

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Perchance to Stream: Labor Day Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio and online video from the week gone by. After clicking to an audio or video stream, you may need to press the "Play" button to start the broadcast. Some of these streams become unavailable after a few days.

• The Collegium Vocale Gent and Capriccio Stravagante, under Skip Sempé, perform Jean Gilles's Requiem pour les funérailles de Louis XV, recorded last June at the Chapelle Royale in Versailles. [France Musique]


• Listen to a performance of Bruckner's third symphony, and music by Wagner, with Andris Nelsons conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, recorded last June in Leipzig. [France Musique]


• From the Salzburg Festival, a performance of Otto Nicolai's Il templario starring Juan Diego Flórez (Vilfredo d'Ivanhoe), Clémentine Margaine (Rebecca), Luca Salsi (Briano di Bois-Guilbert), and others. Andrés Orozco Estrada conducts the Vienna Philharmonic and Salzburger Bachchor. [Ö1]


• René Jacobs conducts a performance of Gassmann's L´Opera seria at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. [ARTE]


• Christian Gerhaher joins the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester for Bach's Ich habe genug, and Philippe Jordan also conducts Bruckner's ninth symphony. [BBC Proms]


• Listen to the rest of the concerts from the past week at the Proms. [BBC Proms]


• Simon Rattle leads the Berlin Philharmonic in music of Grieg and Beethoven, plus the Mendelssohn violin concerto with soloist Vilde Frang. [Ö1 | Part 2]


• Watch Edgar Moreau play the first cello concerto of Saint-Saëns with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, under conductor Kazuki Yamada. [ARTE]


• From the Festival de Saint-Denis, the Orchestre National de France performs Beethoven's ninth symphony, conducted by Michele Mariotti and recorded in June at the Basilica of Saint-Denis. [France Musique]


• John Neschling conducts the Orchestre National de France, with pianist Bertrand Chamayou, soprano Malin Hartelius, and baritone Christian Immler, for music by Saint-Saëns and Zemlinsky, recorded at the Festival de Radio France. [Ö1]


• Daniel Harding leads the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in the opening concert of the Musikfest Berlin, with the premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's Poème dansé Tutuguri. [BR-Klassik]


• Andrew Manze conducts the Camerata Salzburg in music by Handel, J.C. Bach, Mozart, and Haydn. [Radio Clásica]


• From 2015, a performance of Berlioz's Les Troyens at the Hamburg Opera, starring Catharina Naglestad (Cassandre), Elena Zhidkova (Didon), and Torsten Kerl (Enée). [Radio Clásica]


• Listen to performances from the Early Music Festival in Utrecht. [AVRO Klassiek]


• Watch a program called Labirinto d'amore at the Festival de Sablé with Anna Reinhold and lutenist Thomas Dunford. [Culturebox]


• Nathalie Stutzmann and Emőke Baráth perform in Il duello amoroso, a selection of airs and duets by Handel, at the Festival de Sablé. [Culturebox]


• Watch three concerts from the International Music Festival "Stars on the Baikal," an event under the artistic direction of pianist Denis Matsuev at the Irkutsk State Musical Theater, near Lake Baikal in southern Siberia. [Medici.tv]


• The Mandelring Quartett plays music by Haydn, Ravel, and Schubert, recorded last month at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg. [Ö1]


• Mezzo-soprano Marie-Claude Chappuis joins Giovanni Antonini and Il Giardino Armonico for music by Haydn, Vivaldi, Purcell, and Sammartini, recorded in July at the Internationale Festival Geistlicher Musik - Freiburg. [Ö1]


• From the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, a Schubert recital by soprano Christina Landshamer, tenor Maximilian Schmitt, and pianist Gerold Huber. [Ö1]


• Rudolf Buchbinder plays a recital at the Carinthischer Sommer, recorded last month, with music by Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert. [Ö1]


• From the Festival Messiaen au Pays de La Meije, pianist Luis Fernando Pérez performs Albeniz's Ibéria. [France Musique]


• Les Muffati and Vox Luminis perform Telemann's Donnerode, composed in commemoration of the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon, and Almeida's Mass in F Major, recoorded at the Festival de Sablé. [France Musique]


• Violinist Hiro Kurosaki performs Telemann's Zwölf Fantasien für Violine ohne Bass, TWV 40:14-25, recorded last month at the Innsbrucker Festwochen. [Ö1]


• From the Salzburg Festival, Constantinos Carydis leads the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg in an all-Mozart program. [Ö1]


• A recital by tenor Benjamin Bruns and pianist Gerold Huber, recorded last month at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg. [Ö1]


• Listen to the recording of Stanislaw Moniuszko's opera Halka, starring Barbara Zagorzanka (Halka), Wieslaw Ochmann (Jontek), and others. [Ö1]


• Semyon Bychkov conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in music of Glanert and Brahms, recorded in 2015. [CSO]


• Watch performances by youth orchestras from around the world at the Young Euro Classic. [ARTE]


• From the Radio France archives, listen to Louis Armstrong play the Salle Pleyel in Paris, recorded on March 2, 1948. [France Musique]


• From the Proms, Semyon Bychkov leads the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Thomas Larcher's second symphony, Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder (with Elisabeth Kulmann), and Strauss's Alpine Symphony. [France Musique]


• From the Proms, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra performs music by Mozart, Abrahamsen, and Tchaikovsky, conducted by Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, with soprano Barbara Hannigan. [France Musique]