Briefly Noted: Revenons à Mouton

J. Mouton, Missa Dictes moy toutes voz pensées, Tallis Scholars (released on October 9, 2012) Gimell CDGIM 047 | 67'54"

Having just written about the latest installments in the superb complete cycle of Josquin's Masses from the Tallis Scholars, it is icing on the cake to mention this new release. Jean Mouton (c. 1459-1522) is a lesser-known composer championed by the Suspicious Cheese Lords here in Washington, among other groups. This disc is centered on an imitation (or parordy) Mass by Mouton, based on the motet Dictes moy toutes voz pensées by Loyset Compère (c. 1445-1518), Mouton's senior by a decade. (The group used a new edition of the work by Timothy Symons, which through the wonders of the Internet you can examine online.) It is a long and rather ornate setting, lasting almost forty minutes, and it has some striking sounds, including a passage for two altos and bass at the "Crucifixus" text in the Credo. The Sanctus and Benedictus are often the most beautiful and striking movements in a Renaissance Ordinary setting, which is also true in this case -- with a lovely tricinium for TBB (Pleni sunt) and bicinium for AT (Benedictus). Sadly, the Sanctus is the movement most likely to be left out even in those few churches that still perform Latin polyphony at Mass -- after the Credo, which I have never heard sung as polyphony in the context of any Mass anywhere. The Agnus, however, is the most extravagantly beautiful, with the second invocation given to a trio of basses (a most unusual sound, highlighted by some fun photos of the three singers in the booklet) and the texture in the third bumped up to five voices, with the addition of an extra tenor -- making for a dark, deep, priestly conclusion. To round out a beautiful disc, the group has also recorded Compère's source motet, plus five motets by Mouton, beginning with the austere Quis dabit oculis nostris (ed. Symons), a funeral motet for Mouton's employer, Queen Anne of Brittany, and concluding with Nesciens mater (ed. Symons), an exercise in canon for two overlapping choirs that approaches the intricate complexity of Josquin.

In Brief: South Pacific Edition

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.)

• Here is a rare performance of Charpentier's Medée (1693) from the Opéra de Lille, accompanied by Le Concert d’Astrée under the baton of Emmanuelle Haïm. [France Musique]


• Watch the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya perform Honegger's oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher, with French actress Marion Cotillard in the title role. [Medici.tv]


• Andris Nelsons conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique" symphony, plus music of Wagner, the overtures of Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer, and the preludes of Acts I and III from Lohengrin. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Listen to Laurence Equilbey direct her choral ensemble, Accentus, with a group of instrumentalists including cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton and accordionist Pascal Contet, in music by J. S. Bach, Johann Christoph Bach, Bruno Mantovani, and Mendelssohn at the Cité de la Musique. [France Musique]


• A concert by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, under Georg Kallweit with flutist Jana Semerádova, in music of Telemann, Vivaldi, and Bach. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• From the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, a performance of Tchaikovsky's opera The Enchantress, recorded this past June and conducted by Alexander Lazarev. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Lutenist Rolf Lislevand and guitarist Noël Akchoté improvise together on musical themes from the Renaissance and Baroque period. [France Musique]


• Cornelius Meister conducts the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien in a program combining Bruno Maderna's Quadrivium and Pierre Boulez's Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna for orchestra in eight groups. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Watch Mikhail Pletnev lead the Russian National Orchestra in a concert of music by Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin, with violinist Sergey Krylov, from the Salle Pleyel in Paris. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Listen to a recital of mélodies by Debussy and other composers, featuring mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch and pianist Sophie Raynaud. [France Musique]


• For Daniel Barenboim's 70th birthday, a compilation of various recordings of his concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic over the years. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• From the Auditorium du Louvre, you can watch the Emerson Quartet play music by Schumann, Brahms, and Shostakovich. [Medici.tv]


• The Borodin Quartet plays music by Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Borodin in the Wiener Musikverein. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Members of the Orchestre National de France perform chamber music by Debussy, Stravinsky, Caplet, and others. [France Musique]


• The Orchestre National de Lille, in two concerts under Jean-Claude Casadesus, performs music by Debussy and Ravel (including the G major concerto with pianist Francesco Piemontesi). [France Musique]


• An archived performance of Gluck's Le cinesi with Thomas Moser and others, recorded in Munich in 1983. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]

Schiff Reconsiders the WTC

Bach, WTC, A. Schiff (released on September 25, 2012) ECM 2270-73 | 245'43" Bach, WTC, A. Schiff (1984-85) [Vol. 2]

If one is not careful, the experience of reviewing a new recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier (Vol. 1 / Vol. 2) is like going down an endless rabbit hole of countless interpretations. In spite of the outrageous number of recordings already available, pianists and harpsichordists continue to record Bach's summa of keyboard and contrapuntal technique: to name just a few in recent years, Christine Schornsheim (harpsichord), Richard Egarr (harpsichord), Till Fellner (piano), Angela Hewitt (piano), Maurizio Pollini, and now András Schiff. Sadly, because of Hurricane Sandy, Washington may never hear Schiff's interpretation of this monumental work live. Although WPAS rescheduled Schiff's recital, canceled by the storm last month, for next April, he will play the French suites instead of WTC. For now we will have to content ourselves with Schiff's new recording of the work for ECM, and although it may not have displaced my favorite recording, it has provided much enjoyable listening.

Schiff made his second recording of the WTC last August, nearly thirty years after his first one (Decca). As he stated in an interview on the project, recording Bach on the piano may be the elephant in the room -- pointing to the piano, he acknowledges that "it is an elephant, but a very useful elephant." No complaints here about playing Bach on the modern piano, although even without using the sustaining pedal almost all of the time, Schiff introduces some anachronistic elements, albeit musically satisfying ones. It is overall a carefully thought out and polished recording, musically surpassing the somewhat mannered recording that Schiff himself made in the 1980s.

The act of comparing this recording in exhaustive detail with my other favorite recordings would be impossible, but let a single fugue -- the last one of the first book, in B minor (BWV 689) -- suffice as a way to show how varied the performances of a broad range of musicians can be. Where the Schiff 1985 (timing, 7:25) version was dour, wan, a little lost, wandering, Schiff 2012 (6:50) has more assertive impetus in the pacing, slow enough to make the voices carefully distinguished, but with more rubato, overall a much more exciting sound. Among other recordings on piano, Till Fellner (6:10) is compact, smooth, all legato, but also a little cool and detached, actually not unlike Edwin Fischer (6:14), who takes a gliding pace, too, but is heavier on the sustaining pedal. Closer to Schiff's more glacial 1985 interpretation is the generally odd, but also towering Sviatoslav Richter (7:30), very legato, although the tempo does not sound as slow as the timing ends up being; and Maurizio Pollini (7:14), somewhat predictably cerebral, without much expression, very smooth and legato, and the use of little rubato resulting in crystal clarity.

Schiff's 2012 tempo seems closest to Angela Hewitt (6:48), who is -- also predictably -- the most fussy about the articulation. It is true that, in the Anna Magdalena manuscript in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, some of the subject's eighth notes are slurred carefully in groups of two. Hewitt makes sure that articulation is maintained in the subject through all its permutations, but she is also among the most expressive in using dynamics to shape the piece into peaks and valleys. Some of the shorter timings are actually in recordings made on the harpsichord, like Masaaki Suzuki (5:51), who hits a nice balance between too slow and too fast, but he plays on a harpsichord that does not make my favorite kind of harpsichord sound, a little clangy. Christine Schornsheim (6:15) is just a hair slower, while Richard Egarr (7:08) takes a leisurely pace almost as slow as Schiff 1985, with an interpretation that is professorial, carefully unraveling all of the crossing lines. Bach did not always give tempo markings, of course, but the word Largo is quite clearly written in the Anna Magdalena manuscript at the start of this fugue. Largo can mean a lot of things, of course, but it is hard to say anything about Glenn Gould's still indispensable recording, from the 1960s, other than that he totally ignores the tempo marking. Clocking in at 3:44, Gould's reading of this fugue is sprightly, even a little rushed, dancelike. Although he takes waywardly slow tempos in other places, Gould's recording is among the most compact (Vol. 1: 106'; Vol 2: 104') and remains my favorite because, even though it influenced my musical thinking when I was still quite young, it continues to surprise me.

Jennifer Koh at Strathmore

Bach and Beyond, Part 1, J. Koh (released on October 30, 2012)

Jennifer Koh gave a commanding solo performance Wednesday night in a program that honored the enduring relevance of J. S. Bach, both as a touchstone for composers after him and as a voice that directly appeals to audiences now. Filling the Strathmore Mansion's cozy music room with an electrifying sound, Koh used two Bach partitas, pinnacles of the violin repertoire, to bookend a selection of later pieces that were in some way inspired by them. The concept, titled Bach and Beyond, has generated a series of recitals and a new recording. Unfortunately, program notes to elucidate the connections between pieces were not provided, though they should have been readily available since the concert had already been performed elsewhere.

Koh opened with Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E Major. She summoned a vigorous tone for the suite’s sunny, expansive Preludio. In the intimate Loure that followed, Koh set up an elegant rhythm but could have quieted her sound more; it was loud and a bit harsh even toward the back of the small room. From the partita Koh moved without pause into Belgian virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 2 in A minor. This was an obvious pairing, since the sonata begins by quoting the partita’s opening phrase. But Ysaÿe soon turns away from Bach in frustration to brood over the medieval Dies Irae tune. What follows is not a particularly profound engagement with Bach but rather an undistinguished hodgepodge of overwrought late-Romantic sounds bites. Nonetheless, it served as a vehicle for Koh’s virtuosity, from the bleak strains of the second movement, played with a haunting, vibrato-free tone, to the third movement’s meaty pizzicatos.

Other Reviews: Joan Reinthaler, ‘Bach and Beyond’: Jennifer Koh’s unsentimental guide to the composer’s legacy (Washington Post, November 16)

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Nocturne was the night's shortest but perhaps most intriguing work. It was a hushed exploration of the violin’s different timbres, ranging from percussive scratches to spectral harmonics. The subtle adjustments of bow position and pressure that Saariaho called for allowed Koh to reveal the richness of overtones contained within each note. Next was the fidgety, angular Fantasy by American composer Elliott Carter, who died two weeks ago, followed by Lachen verlernt (“Laughter unlearnt”) by Saariaho’s countryman Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958). This anguished, cathartic work was written in Bach-inspired chaconne form, which tied it to the evening’s final piece. Koh closed with Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor, crowned by its monumental last movement, an emotionally and intellectually intense chaconne that is a violinist’s Everest. Koh’s fiery technique was a perfect match for the work’s challenges, and she gave it a memorable performance.

For Your Consideration: 'Flight'

Flight is Robert Zemeckis’s return to live-action filmmaking for the first time since he was Cast Away so many years ago with motion capture movies such as The Polar Express and Beowulf. Yes, those dead-eyed, eerie semblances of recognizable actors painted over digitally with all the warmth and verve of a hologram resurrection. Working now with his actor, Denzel Washington, it may be the case that all of that lost nuance and fussy human complexity came rushing over him after such a long drought.

The title of the film concerns, in the literal sense, a commercial airline flight that encounters a disastrous mechanical error while being piloted by captain Whip Whitaker (Washington), whom we have just seen coming off a sex, booze, and coke bender with one of his attendants, with little or no sleep dividing the episodes.

While Zemeckis’s execution of the plane sequence and its subsequent landing are as tense and audacious as any we have seen on film (without being overly gimmicky with editing and effects), it is the aftermath that most concerns him. More precisely, what happens to our hero, Captain Whitaker, a man you would never in a million years want at the helm of your airplane. Yet, by all accounts, he is the only one who could have landed the plane without a 100% casualty rate. The true flight in this film is Whitaker's, from himself and others through various episodes towards and away from alcohol. It is also Washington's, soaring beyond anything we have seen him do before.

Read more »

Takács and Hamelin

R. Schumann, String Quartet (op. 41/3) / Piano Quintet, Takács Quartet, M.-A. Hamelin (2009) Schubert, String Quartets 13/14, Takács Quartet (2006)

Take the Takács Quartet, one of our favorite string quartets, and Marc-André Hamelin, one of our favorite pianists, and put them together on one free concert at the Library of Congress, and you have our full attention. The concert by that combination on Tuesday night was an easy choice for our top picks of this month, and nothing could have kept us from hearing it. Except maybe the long security lines at the entrance to the Jefferson Building, which nearly did.

The program played to all of this venerable quartet's strengths, beginning with the simmering, moody themes of Schubert's A minor quartet (D. 804), named for Schubert's incidental music for the play Rosamunde, a theme from which appears in the quartet's second movement. In the first three movements, this performance rose little above a hush, with the pure, sweet tone of first violinist Edward Dusinberre leading the blossoming of minor into major and back. The second movement had the feel of a wordless melody hummed to oneself while on a stroll, a glowing, rosy set of variations, but the third movement stood out for its folk-inflected introduction to a delicate dance, forlorn and lonely even in its trio set in major. The fourth movement, the only moment of sunny exuberance, had all of its staccato chords in unity, with little Haydnesque jokes at the theme's return.

Britten's three string quartets, masterful 20th-century examples of the genre that make one wish he had composed more of them, are not yet in the Takács's discography. Dusinberre gave an insightful introduction to the first quartet (D major, op. 25). Composed in 1940, when Britten was living in the United States, the work was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, for whom the Library's acoustically gorgeous auditorium is named. Its opening is one of the stranger moments in the repertoire, with the three higher instruments hanging in the clouds on long, high notes over distracted pizzicati in the cello. The first movement's animated fast section rumbled away, turning heavenward again to dissolve into those numinous, floating structures of the opening. The second movement, a heavy-footed dance, was interrupted by garrulous growls from the four instruments in grouchy conversation. The third movement, described by Dusinberre as one of Britten's evocations of the seascape of his home country in East Anglia, was marked by the group's impeccable intonation and balance, caressing the dissonances that dissolve into consonance. The fourth movement was an athletic romp, with impish upward flourishes that powered the piece to an ecstatic ending. When the group records the Britten quartets, it should be memorable.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Classical music review: The Takacs Quartet (Washington Post, November 15)

The evening reached its apogee with Shostakovich's piano quintet (op. 57), one of the most eloquent pieces written for that combination of instruments. It dates from the same year as Britten's first quartet, 1940, and rumbles with many of the same tensions but is more tragic in character where Britten was elegiac. Hamelin brought to the keyboard part both reticence, with the piano often trying to fit into the texture in minimal ways (trying to sneak in like a string instrument in the mournful fugue of the second movement), and overwhelming power, biting in tone as the engine that drives the cynical dance of the scherzo. Shostakovich wrote the piano part for himself (he claimed in a letter that it was easy), to play with the Beethoven Quartet, who requested the piece, and it met with delirious critical acclaim in the Soviet Union. The fourth-movement lament was led by the soulful first violin -- the final part of Dusinberre's first-rate performance -- joined in perfect tandem by Geraldine Walther's viola. Seeming to put on a false happy face, the music takes an odd turn in the neoclassical intermezzo, aping a zippy Baroque serenade at times, followed by a quasi-Mozartean sonata-form conclusion. Although the piece won Shostakovich a Stalin Prize, it was not without its detractors, as documented by biographer Laurel Fay. A functionary named Moisey Grinberg penned a critique that labeled the work "a composition of profoundly Western orientation" and "music that does not connect with the life of the people." Fortunately for Shostakovich, Grinberg's was a minority opinion. Sofia Moshevich relates Shostakovich's remarks after the premiere, as recalled by writer Marietta Shagynian: "I have been wandering the streets of Moscow, my soul filled with bliss."

The next chamber music concert at the Library of Congress will feature the Apollon Musagète Quartet this Friday (November 16, 8 pm), playing music by Haydn, Szymanowski, Suk, and Mendelssohn.

Doric Quartet @ Phillips

Charles T. Downey, Britain’s Doric Quartet shows off knife-edged sound at Phillips Collection
Washington Post, November 13, 2012

R. Schumann, String Quartets, op. 41, Doric Quartet (2011) Schubert, String Quartets, Doric Quartet (2012)

A young string quartet may distinguish itself by its unusual sound, an unconventional choice of repertoire or an attention-catching gimmick. The gimmick groups generally fade in short order, but Britain’s Doric Quartet showed the first two, more enduring distinctions during a concert Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection.

For the somewhat unexpected program, cellist John Myerscough thanked the organizers of the Phillips series, who gave the Doric greater freedom by not insisting on any tried and true audience pleasers. The group’s fine recordings for the Chandos label have included discs devoted to Erich Korngold and William Walton, but it chose instead the Quartet in C Minor, Op. 35, by Ernest Chausson.

It gave its first movement a searing intensity, the chromatically inflected sense of pining contrasted with a blithe middle section. The four musicians moved with a near-faultless cohesion, giving the middle movement a sentimental quality and the third a slightly harried, dancing propulsion. [Continue reading]

Doric String Quartet
Schumann, Quartet in F Major (op. 41/2)
Ernest Chausson, String Quartet in C Minor, op. 35
Benjamin Britten, String Quartet in C Major, Op. 36
Phillips Collection

SEE ALSO:
Tom Huizenga, Music Review: Doric String Quartet at the Library of Congress (Washington Post, November 21, 2010)

Lang Lang with the NSO

The Chopin Album, Lang Lang (2012) Complete Recordings (2000-2009), Lang Lang

Lang Lang's residency with the National Symphony Orchestra has been the week's big news maker. Now that the brash, spiky-haired prodigy is in his 30s, critics are finding that he may have something behind all that virtuosity. I am not sure that I heard anything this week that changes my opinion of him. I have never been disappointed by any of his performances: he is a Lisztian showman of the first order, capable of ever greater circus-style feats -- playing three Beethoven concertos in three days with the NSO may be one of the biggest yet -- but he is likewise vulnerable to the risk of making cheesy interpretative and repertoire choices. These were all qualities of his performance on Friday night with the NSO, playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 (op. 37).

Lang Lang's greatest gift to classical music -- some would argue what tarnishes his reputation -- is an unparalleled celebrity. In all my years of going to concerts at the Kennedy Center, this was the first time that young children next to me regularly badgered their parents about when the soloist was going to play. He packed the Concert Hall for every performance, and many people came more than once, cheering wildly at every facet of his rhapsodic, weird performance. At the podium Christoph Eschenbach made some effort to rein his soloist in, taking the first movement initially at a somewhat reserved tempo, but he had little choice but to give Lang Lang his head as he moved the music in so many different directions. The technique was startling -- impetuous runs, buzzsaw trills, the cadenza rendered like one of Liszt's opera paraphrases -- but the second movement got tangled in its own self-indulgence, starting with a particularly wandering, dreamy piano introduction, while the third movement, not quite as fast as one expected, was still a delirious galop. A quirky encore, Chopin's "Minute Waltz," taken at a clip and with theatrical over-gesturing, was just short of a parody of Chico Marx. All in all, not one of my favorite performances but also not one I would not have wanted to miss.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Lang Lang, Christoph Eschenbach, NSO offer vivid classical music (Washington Post, November 9)

For its part, the NSO played extremely well, matching its stride to that of Lang Lang in the Beethoven. Richard Strauss's comic tone poem Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (op. 28) served as curtain-opener, in a whimsical and funny performance that Eschenbach helped to shape with a mercurial rubato. The horn solos had an appropriately rowdy character, with raucous sounds from the cymbals and ratchet to accent big pranks, a flashy solo from concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef, and ominous brass sounds when it looks bad for Till, although there was something a little vinegary in the final fff chord. We last heard the closing work, Dvořák's seventh symphony (op. 70), under Iván Fischer in 2009. Eschenbach gave its opening more dread than mystery, and although not enough was saved for the first movement's climax, it had a brooding, fierce quality. The slow movement was lyrically pastoral, with striking blooms of sound in the brass and Wagnerian undertones in the harmony, while the third felt just a little smooth and gentle for Vivace. Folksy rustic sounds rounded out the fourth movement quite nicely, an exciting conclusion, although Dvořák's decision to tack on a modal shift to major, at the end of this decidedly tragic symphony, always feels contrived.

Vasily Petrenko takes the reins of the NSO this week (November 15 and 17), leading performances of Shostakovich's fourth symphony and Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, with Sergey Khachatryan as soloist. On Friday night (November 16), Petrenko will preside over a multimedia examination of the Shostakovich fourth, the Beyond the Score presentation created by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.