Dip Your Ears, No. 100 (Rattle and Brahms)

J. Brahms, Symphonies S.Rattle / Berlin Philharmonic EMI

I might have skipped this release—the four Brahms Symphonies with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic—because EMI’s recordings with Rattle and his band have been such a mixed bag in the last years, vacillating between civilized boredom and indistinct, haphazard blandness. They rarely felt fully thought-through, much less labors of love. That may not apply to all of them, but to enough for that general impression.

I love Brahms’ Symphonies—but unlike with the symphonies of, say Bruckner, Mahler, or Beethoven, I’ve never entered a symphony-cycle collection race. The reason is largely Günter Wand’s traversal with the North German RSO (re-mastered on RCA) which so satisfies my every Brahms-craving that there simply wasn’t a need to go out of my way exploring every other possible venue. Sure, I also like Jochum/Berlin, Karajan/Berlin (70s), Szell/Cleveland, but even they don’t seem essential next to Wand. Rattle-Berlin, so I thought, certainly wasn’t going to change that.

But when I was in Amsterdam recently, several musicians from the Concertgebouw raved about that recording. Musicians hear recordings differently than the passive listener—especially, but not only, when their own recordings are concerned. And I don’t think their opinion is necessarily the measure of all things (mine is, of course!). But is there a better, more persuasive recommendation for Berlin’s new Brahms than hearing from RCO players—members of the alleged ‘world’s best orchestra’: “That’s how we would love to sound like. This is Brahms for the 21^st century”?

And so it is. This is Brahms with racing stripes—not so much for speed (Rattle is very flexible and not out to set new records), but for full-bodied, sleek, high tuned performance. If the opening of the First puts a smile on your face with Günter Wand (RCA), this one wrings tears from your eyes, for its intensity bordering sophisticated brutality. It’s not cold Brahms, either. Certainly not where Rattle evokes Elgarian plush in the second movement of the Fourth Symphony. The way the discernable string waves enter beneath the brass and flute solos in the fourth movement is enough to make one wince, they’re so movingly played and so well captured. The recording (live) from the Berlin Philharmonic is magnificent: rich, present, detailed. Rattle’s Brahms bristles, puts effective but not ostentatious spotlights on the excellent soloists and does create a sound that reminds again why the Berliners are such a special orchestra. In case those who can only judge by their recordings should have forgotten.

In Brief: Spring Has Sprung Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• For the 325th birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach today, there is this wonderful if slightly odd performance of the first movement of BWV 54, Widerstehe doch der Sünde, with countertenor Russell Oberlin and pianist Glenn Gould, televised in 1962. Most delightfully, it is introduced by Gould himself, who makes some great observations about the harmonies. Bach composed this cantata for the Third Sunday of Lent, at Weimar on March 24, 1715, and its opening line (text by Georg Christian Lehms, not as Gould states, possibly by Bach himself) is appropriately Lenten: "Stand firm against sin, / otherwise its poison seizes hold of you." [YouTube]


• Opera News has a piece that tries to answer the question of how opera fans find the time to indulge our passion for that most extravagant of genres? "Opera, it seems, requires a slower world. It hides vast amounts of time in its form — not just the duration of the music but the astonishing hours of preparation, the rehearsals and the private study (years, decades, whole lives) upon which every scintilla of music is predicated." Indeed, we do love opera "because it has become a refuge from time." A beautiful essay on the topic. [Philip Kennicott]


• Matthew Guerrieri has some marvelously formed thoughts on Chopin's use of rubato and how pianists use it when playing his music. [The Faster Times]


• You may have seen the news that Robert De Niro won a legal battle to reclaim some of his late father's paintings from the Salander-O'Reilly Galleries before they are sold in a bankruptcy auction. Lawrence Salander has been charged with taking them unfairly from the artist. The actor showed up in Nice last week for a private viewing of the Musée Matisse's exhibition devoted to the work of Robert De Niro, Sr. [Le Figaro]


• Frances Carlin says that Mariame Clément, in a new staging of Rameau's Platée for the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg, "gamely turns this story of a self-deluded frog who imagines herself wooed by Jupiter into a satire on post-war consumer-obsessed America, a nation that deluded itself into thinking the party could go on for ever." Nice. Dutch soprano Judith van Wanroij, who stood out in Opera Lafayette's recent performance of Gluck's Armide, was strong as Juno. [Financial Times]


• Hahahaha. With hat tip to Boing Boing, an interview with a proctologist about what gives farts their distinctive bouquets. Seriously. Probably, one has to have been a middle school boy at some point to find this funny. [Viceland]


• Rocco Palmo has the best take-off on the season of March Madness: a bracket that seeds the contenders who are likely to be named to succeed Cardinal Mahony as Archbishop of Los Angeles. One side of the bracket is Anglo, and the other is Latino. [Whispers in the Loggia]

Ionarts-at-Large: Spanish and Turkish Flavors

The Art of the Pepe Romero, Philips

Pepe Romero, once the poster boy of the Spanish Guitar, happened to be in Italy—so he asked his long time promoter in Munich if he would like to have him perform one gig north of the Alps. Wolf Siegel, half-way into retirement, agreed and managed to fill the all-wood auditorium of the Music Conservatory with some 500 guitar enthusiasts to whom Pepe Romero could and can do no wrong. Certainly not in bringing a veritable greatest-hits program of Albéniz and Tárrega—performed in memory of his father and the two composers’ passing 100 years ago (in 2009).

The technical skill is ever impressive with Romero who turned 66 on March 8^th, just ten days earlier, and a gratuitous showpiece like Tárrega’s Gran Jota with its endless flageolet passages and left hand melodies that are ‘tapped’ out of the soundboard, still come off impressively. But the zest of his early recordings—his first made at the age of 14—has lessened a bit. It makes for exciting and entertaining listening—“Asturias”, “Granada”, “Córdoba” all being ‘clap-along’-ready bits, but its helps to be part of the subculture of Spanish guitar (or classical guitar, which is nearly synonymous, except for the early music guitarists). For the non-initiated, such an evening gets longer and longer toward the end, because most of the pieces have, under the weight of their popularity, turned into pure cliché. Before the mind’s eye, stereotypical “Spanish” scenes from color-saturated Hollywood films merge into one confused and blurry blend.

Turkish, not Spanish, was the declared flavor of the Munich Radio Orchestra’s concert on March 10^th, conducted by Naci Özgüç.The over-caffeinated announcer, German-Turkish actress Renan Pemikran who pronounces the word “Deutsch” with an excitement no German has felt comfortable to do in over 60 years, led through the concert with charming, spitfire hyperbole, grand gestures, and a touch of self-importance. After the competent-routine performance of Beethoven, the “Capriccio à la turque” by Ferit Tüzün (1929-1977) was performed. The composer studied in Munich and had his Capriccio premiered by the Munich Philharmonic. The origins as a ballet piece shine through, as does a jazzy undercurrent and a Stravinskyesque orchestral treatment. Wild, fun, and nothing that scares the children.

Ahmed A. Saygun, String Quartets, Quatuor Danel CPO

Three of Saygun’s Ten Songs, op.41 for orchestra and bass were the highlight of the evening. Günes Gürle, an up-and-coming Turkish bass-baritone, sang these dark-bordering-depressive songs with dramatic intensity that would have withstood comparison to scenes from Bluebeard’s Castle. The early Suite for Orchestra is a lesser piece, gently rhythmical, irregularly pulsating, a sorrowful “Improvisation” as a middle movement, and a final movement, “Horon”, that achieves compulsive forward momentum. The concert’s finale was more exciting: Excerpts from the Violin Concerto by Ulvi Cemâl Erkin (1906-1972) who, along with Sagyun, was one of the “Turkish Five”. Hande Özyürek, a member of the Munich RO, fiddled her heart out in those two movements. She produced a gorgeous, viola-like plaintive sound in the short (and still too long) slow movement and plenty fire in the Allegro con fuoco. If the first movement doesn’t fall off considerably, the whole piece should be well worth hearing.

Still, it got overshadowed by the fire-cracker Suite for Orchestra “Köçekce”. Played with enthusiasm, it’s about the “dancers” in harems—highly paid, respected, and sought-out musicians, entertainers, and presumably lust-boy equivalents of the concubines. The work is a wild ride full of virtuosic use of the “cils”, little hand-cymbals the Köçekler used. If you hear it you will agree that Khachaturian has nothing on Erkin!

Ballets and Branles and Love Songs

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Country dance (drawing by John Evangelist Holtzer, 17th century), from The Dance: Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D.

The Folger Consort's season thus far has been, well, not exactly a disappointment but not quite in the same category as some of the ensemble's notable successes of recent years. Last night's performance of their new program, Ballets and Brawls: French Music of Court and Countryside (a title reminiscent of a 2007 program), may not merit a rave review, but the selection of music is generally of considerable interest, and the musical quality high enough for me to recommend attending one of the remaining performances. The season takes its theme from the year of publication of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers, which was the centerpiece of the group's program in this year of the publication's 400th anniversary. For this concert the Folger Consort focused on French music from and around the year 1610, including instrumental pieces intended for various kinds of dancing and love songs performed by two of the group's favorite singers, soprano Rosa Lamoreaux and baritone William Sharp. In addition to some charming comic moments, with plenty of raised eyebrows and winked eyes, the two singers collaborated on some serious songs, the most beautiful of which was Thomas Crequillon's mournful Quand me souvient/Ung triste coeur.

Lute songs celebrating courtly love or the other kind -- with all those couples going for lie-downs on the grass that get them covered with dew -- were the best part of the program. Lamoreaux's silvery, clear voice was ideal for pieces like Etienne Moulinié's Enfin la beauté que j'adore and Pierre Guédron's Un jour l'amoureuse Sylvie, with the gentle accompaniment of lutenist Christopher Kendall. Sharp had his own charming solo moments, showing the expressive side of his voice in Dans ce beau séjour de plaisir, also by Guédron, as well as his hilarious skill as a comic actor with a performance of Gabriel Bataille's drinking song Qui veut chasser un migraine, in which the singer became more and more audibly inebriated. These are pieces in a style that is often forgotten even by specialist performers, too late for the Renaissance and too early for the high Baroque. The only reservation was that occasionally fake reverberation, which appeared to be piped through the sound system's speakers above the stage, ruined the natural acoustic of the Folger's beautiful theater.

The instrumentalists -- founders Kendall and Robert Eisenstein, joined by Gwyn Roberts (recorder and traverso), Dan Stilman (dulcian and recorder), and the multi-talented Tom Zajac -- had their best moments in the second half, as a recorder consort on a suite of dance music arranged by Michael Praetorius and a fantasie by Claude Le Jeune. For some reason, the less heterogeneous instrumental combinations were troubled by intonation issues. This was especially true in the first half, when lute, viol, and transverse flutes just did not generally come to agreement for whatever reason. In the second half, one of those odd-duck combinations (sackbut, dulcian, bass recorder, and viol) did have a beautifully tuned, mellow-toned moment in a fantasie by Eustache Du Caurroy. Also, the transverse flutes did blend better with the recorder, viol, and lute in another Praetorius set, the delightful Ballet de la Comédie, and Zajac had some more wonderful turns with the bagpipe in two sets of branles, one arranged by Attaingnant and the other by Praetorius -- the country dances that gave the English form of their name, brawl, to this pleasing program.

This concert will be repeated today (March 20, 5 and 8 pm) and tomorrow (March 21, 2 pm), at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

David Fray's Wispy Schubert

Schubert, Moments musicaux / Impromptus, D. Fray (released on November 3, 2009) Virgin Classics 50999 694489 0 4 72'33" Online scores: Moments musicaux (D. 780) Impromptus (D. 899) Allegretto in C minor (D. 915)

Schubert's piano music can present a conundrum: it is often thick in texture, dense chords over large spans that sound best, ironically, reduced to near-transparency. Especially in the late works for piano, there is an ineluctable melancholy that pervades, a sense of the composer's feeling of doomed mortality. Pianists do not all succeed playing these pieces: Alexandre Tharaud fell short recently, while Radu Lupu, Till Fellner, and Martin Helmchen seem to be in possession of the Schubert gene. Add to that list French pianist David Fray, whose playing has impressed us already both in concert and on disc. Fray played Schubert on his first recording, the Wandererfantasie and a couple song transcriptions paired with Liszt for Atma Classique, which I have not heard. This is the first time he has returned to Schubert since signing with Virgin.

B. Newbould, Schubert: The Music and the Man Schubert the Progressive: History, Performance Practice, Analysis, ed. B. Newbould

All of the pieces recorded by Fray on this new release are from the last five years of Schubert's life: D. 780 (1823-28), D. 899 (1827), and D. 915 (1827). Most of these pieces are from the last two years, when the composer's fatal illness was at its worst: scholar Brian Newbould, building on previous research, estimates that Schubert likely contracted syphilis late in 1822, with its symptoms apparent early in 1823. The late sonatas, of course, are generally regarded as the worthiest works for piano in this phase of Schubert's tragically short life. It is hard to understand how Schubert could have composed so much music for piano, and the general wisdom, borne out by examination of the scores, is that much of it is not of high quality, churned out from the composer's improvisations at parties. Newbould wisely reminds us, however, that (all quotations from his biography Schubert: The Music and the Man):

No real composer, however, can produce reams of functional art without having his true musical instincts engaged from time to time. Schubert's dances do sometimes reveal the real Schubert, the creator of the tiny gem-like Lied or the moment musical. And sometimes a link with the grander musical forms emerges. One has to listen or sight-read patiently to unearth the treasure amid this bulky oeuvre, which in end-to-end performance would probably outlast six symphonies. An enlightened musicological survey of this field is overdue. (p. 339)

Newbould observes that the best of this body of occasional music, especially the impromptus, Moments musicaux, and Klavierstücke, "were well suited to performance by Schubert himself at social gatherings, whether they were musical evenings or artistic mixed-media soirées, but they sometimes touch the world of the sonata, just as they often embody the dance spirit" (p. 341). At their best, these pieces have a delicacy about them, traces of melodic genius coupled to harmonic and formal wandering. Fray plays them with a restrained yet singing touch that is both nostalgic, lost in itself, and aware of the impending doom that must have been at the back of Schubert's mind no matter how much he tried to escape it. Fray manages to capture that elusive quality, what Newbould calls "the essence of Schubert the somnambulist, lost in a world of his own which knows no mundane measure of time" (p. 343).

At times, however, Fray veers almost too closely to the edge of preciousness, with a sense of rubato that borders on the cloying -- if not really crossing into it. He is able to make you think about these rather familiar pieces, the impromptus and Moments musicaux, in different ways, prompting me to try some of them out at the keyboard again recently, to attempt to reproduce his style of interpretation. I could not really do that, of course, but it is always exciting to look at a familiar piece a new way. Fray's recording also brought the little C minor Allegretto (D. 915, 1827) back to my ears after a long absence, in a performance that matches Newbould's description of this affecting miniature: "the embodiment of poetic thought of the highest order, matching economy and simplicity to brevity in a way that induces in an audience the rapt silence in which pins are heard to drop" (p. 345).

David Fray will return to the United States this spring, to play Beethoven's second piano concerto with the San Francisco Symphony (May 7 and 8), under guest conductor Christoph Eschenbach.

Leclair, Royer, and Barrière

Jean-Marie Leclair, Sonatas / Overture / Concerto, Les Folies Françoises, P. Cohën-Akenine Pancrace Royer, Premier Livre de Pièces pour Clavecin, C. Rousset [Review]

Read my review published today in the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Ensemble Les Folies Françoises plays with vivacity at La Maison Française
Washington Post, March 18, 2010

The excellent series of baroque music concerts at La Maison Française continued on Tuesday night. Some daring sonatas by Jean-Marie Leclair, the foremost French violin virtuoso of the early 18th century, were performed by three players from the historically informed performance ensemble Les Folies Françoises. Violinist Patrick Cohën-Akenine, harpsichordist Béatrice Martin and cellist François Poly drew the program largely from their fine "Leclair" CD, released a few years ago on the Alpha label.

Cohën-Akenine played with vivacity and accuracy, adding lavish ornamentation while producing a warm, smooth tone on his instrument's gut strings. The fourth and seventh sonatas from Leclair's third book were the most consistently lovely from all three musicians. In the opening Leclair sonata (No. 8 from the second book), Poly did his best at playing the middle part, created for a middle-range viola da gamba and notated mostly in the C clef, but the high passages were often strained and off-key. [Continue reading]

Patrick Cohën-Akenine (violin), Béatrice Martin (harpsichord), François Poly (cello)
Les Folies Françoises (music by Leclair, Royer, Barrière)
La Maison Française

PREVIOUSLY ON LECLAIR:

• Charles T. Downey, Band of Brothers: Trio Hantaï Warms Up for Boston (Washington Post, June 13, 2009)
  
• ---, John Holloway @ LoC (Ionarts, April 19, 2008)
  
• ---, Baroque Music in Versailles (Ionarts, January 4, 2006)

Gerald Finley in English

Great Operatic Arias, G. Finley, London Philharmonic Orchestra, E. Gardner (released on February 23, 2010) Chandos CHAN 3167 | 68'41"

Gerald Finley's recital for the Vocal Arts Society this evening (March 17, 7:30 pm), at the Austrian Embassy with pianist Julius Drake, figures in the calendar of the organization's American Music Festival. As I had hoped in my preview of the festival, Finley's program will include some Ives songs, as well as a set by one of this year's anniversary composers, Samuel Barber (b. March 9, 1910). The non-American parts of the recital include a great set of songs from Finley's Ravel disc and a first half of Schumann's settings of the poetry of Heinrich Heine, drawn from Finley's recent CD of Schumann's Dichterliebe and other Heine songs. (Finley made the Ives, Ravel, and Schumann discs with the excellent accompanist Julius Drake, who will be his associate artist at this evening's recital.) While all of Finley's recent recordings, including of songs that will figure in his recital this evening, are worth listening to, the latest one to cross my disc is this selection of opera arias and duets in English.

As noted before, the Opera in English label at Chandos is a quixotic project, not for championing operas actually written in English but for apparently finding enough collectors who want to own foreign-language operas in English translation. To be sure, Finley's recital includes selections from English-language operas worth knowing, including "Batter My Heart" from Finley's memorable turn as Oppenheimer in John Adams's Doctor Atomic and Harry's "Oh bring to me a pint of wine" from Mark-Anthony Turnage's The Silver Tassie (2000). Whether or not you find the translated selections compelling depends on if you do not mind hearing phrases like "So I am evil because I'm human, / primeval slime has left its vileness in me" (Iago's creed aria in Otello), "There will my arms enfold you, / there will you say I do: / and if you let me hold you, / your dreams will come true" ("Là ci darem la mano" from Don Giovanni), or "Ah, but to quell the dark imperious eyes of Tosca, / see her grow faint and languish in my arms, / feel her surrender languishing in my arms" (Scarpia's "Va, Tosca" from Tosca).

It is a shame that the selection of arias does not include anything by Benjamin Britten, another composer at whose works Finley excels, as shown in his various recordings of the operas, including Owen Wingrave among others. Finley's rarely sounds anything but smooth and puissant, with only slight tendencies to the underside of the pitch and overly nasal placement. For anyone other than enthusiasts of Finley's voice or for opera translated into English, however, this disc is not likely to be a high priority. The translations are not terrible, to be sure, carefully considered so that they match the original melodic scansion as much as possible, but to ears accustomed to familiar operas in their original languages, it can be jarring.

Gerald Finley sings for the Vocal Arts Society this evening, starting at 7:30 pm, at the Embassy of Austria.

Left Bank Concert Society at SAAM

Leon Kirchner: String Quartets, Orion Quartet Works for Solo Piano, P. Serkin, J. Biss, J. Denk, M. Levinson

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Every second Sunday afternoon of the month the Smithsonian American Art Museum hosts a free concert in their basement auditorium. This month’s program featured the Left Bank Quartet and pianist Naoko Takao in chamber works of Leon Kirchner (1919-2009), Beethoven, and Schönberg. Though the modern McEvoy Auditorium lacks the air of the historic Greek revival building’s soaring, glass-roofed atrium and halls, there is definitely not justification for using amplification at an indoor concert of classical music (Washington National Cathedral being an exception). The amplification compromised a finely prepared program.

American composer Leon Kirchner’s late String Quartet No. 4, just premiered in 2006, was rather plain, yet purposeful. Just a single movement, its balance and consistent drive easily engage the listener, putting him into a unique musical zone, however tonal it may be. Violinists David Salness and Sally McLain, violist Katherine Murdock, and celling Evelyn Elsing approached the work with masterful fluency and a high-Romantic flexibility in tempo and spirit. The work ends abruptly after a build-up of complexity. Sharp releases reverberated as electronic feedback through the speakers housed in the auditorium’s low ceiling.

The pearly playing of pianist Naoko Takao in Beethoven’s Trio in E♭ Major (op. 70, no. 2) made quick flourishes resemble soft ornaments, and rhetorical pauses and punctuation abounded. The trio forged a perfect tempo in the Allegro finale that was clear and not rushed, allowing more room for flexibility. The program concluded with Webern’s transcription for piano quintet of his teacher Schönberg’s Kammersymphonie, op. 9. The Kammersymphonie seemingly attains the goals of color that Kirchner’s String Quartet No. 4 falls short of obtaining. The quintet for the most part played with terrific precision, with sweeping gestures from the strings and lively pianistic splashes. Nevertheless, strong pizzicato notes caused colossal amplification system failure.

The next concert in the Steinway series at the Smithsonian American Art Museum will feature singers from the Washington National Opera Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, with pianist Carlos César Rodriguez, performing music by Chopin and Schumann (April 11, 3 pm). Free tickets to these concerts are distributed in the G Street Lobby, starting one hour before the performance.