Dip Your Ears, No. 238 (Franz Schmidt Rarities and Delights)

Franz Schmidt, Variations on a Hussar’s Song, Piano Concerto, Chaconne Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Alexander Rumpf, Jasminka Stančul (piano) Capriccio

Franz Schmidt is one of those “Surprised by Beauty” romantics of the 20^th century whose (re-)discovery is still ongoing. Latest exhibit: This CD, unearthing a world-premiere in the form of the Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra. Anyone familiar with Schmidt’s opera Notre Dame might think he pilfered the opera for this 20-minute, one-movement work. Au contraire, the Fantasy came first. What a humdinger! We may no longer know the once truly popular, famous tunes, but we can readily appreciate how they were popular in a Vienna where the cab drivers hummed operetta arias. Coupled with the nearly-as romantic Hussar’s Variations and the Chaconne (Schmidt’s orchestration of his own organ work), this is a perfect, quite well performed addition to the Schmidt-catalog and any romantic music lover’s library. The last hint of orchestral sheen is missing, but unless Manfred Honeck records this repertoire with the Vienna or Pittsburgh bands, you’re bound not to get any better any time soon. (You might remember Welser-Möst's fine recording of the Variations, coupled with the Fourth Symphony, but it obvioulsy lacks the Concerto and also the Chaconne and it's since been allowed to go out of print.)

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Briefly Noted: Gerhardt's Bach

J. S. Bach, Solo Cello Suites, A. Gerhardt (released on March 29, 2019) Hyperion CDA68261 | 129'06"

Alban Gerhardt's older recording of a Bach solo cello suite -- No. 5, released on the Oehms label -- seemed not quite ripe, as if the German cellist was forcing Bach's hand a bit. So it was surprising to be much more impressed by his live performance of the same suite at the Phillips Collection earlier this year. Gerhardt's complete set of the suites, released a few weeks later, is further witness to his far more satisfying approach to these seminal works.

Gerhardt plays on a 1710 Matteo Goffriller cello, an instrument with an especially pleasing dark, chicory tone on the low strings. That characteristic is important in many of the suites (especially the ones in C major and C minor), where notes on those low strings form a harmonic foundation something like the sound of the viola da gamba. It is difficult to make all six of the suites sound equally convincing on a single instrument because it is likely that Bach, in typically encyclopedic fashion, had more than one type in mind.

Most explicitly in that regard, the sixth suite was intended for an instrument with five strings, most likely something like the violoncello piccolo, a small version of the cello that had an extra high melodic string. Gerhardt's intonation at the top of the A string, where so much of this suite lies, is sure and the tone clean and sweet, even in lively detached articulations. He writes in his booklet note of controlling vibrato in these pieces, and that effort makes the phrasing refined and transparent. Most pleasing is the rhythmic approach, retaining the metered feel of dances without a slavish opposition to any rubato, as in the jaunty gavottes of the sixth suite, the homespun drones sort of like a sea chanty.

Dip Your Ears, No. 237 (A Stickler for Clapping Along - Steve Reich)

Steve Reich, Sextet, Music for Pieces of Wood, Clapping Music London Symphony Orchestra Percussion Ensemble (hands) (LSO Live)

Typical contemporary music recital: Only two or three people in the crowd, but before the chaps with wooden blocks even begin to bang them together (twelve rhythmically shifting minutes long), they applaud the performers for another three or four minutes. Oh, wait, it’s just Steve Reich’s Clapping Music preceding Music for Pieces of Wood. Mhwak-mhwak: My apologies. Minimalism is such a ripe target for gentle mocking that any attempt to do so will automatically trigger a trope-alert. It’s especially unwarranted with Steve Reich, who, miraculously, manages to be—to my ears at least—the purest of the famous minimalists but also the one least prone to becoming his own cliché. The LSO Percussion Ensemble does a splendid job with this music—which may not be very obvious in isolation but becomes notable when this recording turns out catchier and more incisive than master-percussionist’s Colin Currie recent Reich album (“Live at Foundation Louis Vuitton”) which has Music for Pieces of Wood and Clapping Music in common with this one. Especially Clapping Music is telling: Although both accounts are live, one sounds like a perfectionist recording of a composer’s point (LSO) – the other like a get-together of hippies indulging in a musico-intellectual fancy. Also available on Vinyl.

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On ClassicsToday: David Fray's Multiple-Keyboard Bach Concertos

White Nougat: David Fray In Bach’s Multiple-Keyboard Concertos

by Jens F. Laurson

When Evgeni Koroliov & Co’s recording with the six multiple-keyboard concertos of Bach, performed on modern instruments, came out earlier this year, it became the immediate reference version. Not because it is the only complete such set, convenient though that is, but because of the... Continue Reading

Briefly Noted: Coronation Music (CD of the Month)

An English Coronation, 1902-1953, Gabrieli Consort, Roar, and Players, Chetham's Symphonic Brass Ensemble, S. R. Beale, R. Pierce, M. Martin, E. Slorach, P. McCreesh (released on May 3, 2019) Signum Classics SIGCD569 | 159'21"

From this American's perspective, the only thing to be regretted about the final demise of monarchy would be the ceremonial and music associated with it. Paul McCreesh has put together this 2-CD collection of the best music composed for the coronation of English rulers, following up on a similar compilation of music for the coronation of the Doge in Venice, recorded in two slightly different versions. With forces ranging from intimate to vast, he has recorded music from Gregorian chant to Tallis and Byrd to William Walton and David Matthews in the resonant acoustic of Ely Cathedral and two smaller churches. All of the music is drawn from the coronations of Edward VII (1902), George V (1911), George VI (1937), and Elizabeth II (1953).

The pieces range from expected favorites like Parry's I Was Glad, Handel's explosive Zadok the Priest, and Walton's Coronation Te Deum to less expected discoveries. McCreesh expands his main ensemble with the Gabrieli Roar, a partnership with a number of youth choirs, which adds voice to his projects and gives young singers training. The pieces with mass numbers of singers gain in vigor and excitement what they lose just slightly in refinement. The instrumental works include regal marches and heraldic brass fanfares. Much here to make Anglophiles and royal nostalgists rejoice.

Dip Your Ears, No. 236 (The Diaphanous Elegance of English Baroque)

H.Purcell, M.Locke, Orchestral Works Vox Orhcestra, Lornezo Ghirlanda DHM

On this most recent disc of the youngish Vox Orchesta under Lorenzo Ghirlanda, two of the finest pre-Haendelian English baroque composers are combined in some of their ‘greatest orchestral hits’: Henry Purcell (1659-1695) and Matthew Locke (1621-1677). What they have in common is a very fine, very ingratiating, never dry, never blatant or gaudy style of early baroque. As the booklet rightly points out, the English – long before Bach – combined European baroque styles to their own end: Operatic-Italian baroque with Courtly French dance, shearing the music of any excess in the process. The result, rather than faceless international baroque, is actually an appreciable, ‘very British’ style of its own. The orchestral collections from Purcell’s King Arthur, Dioclesian, The Fairy Queen und Locke’s The Tempest (replete with a few orchestrated arias) give the impression of a bracing collection of free-wheeling de-facto dance suites. The instrumentalists and especially the rocking continuo group of the HIP Vox Orchestra, founded by band leader Lorenzo Ghirlanda in 2015, makes you chair-dance all along. All properly measured, of course – the composers are English, after all – but most decidedly delightful!

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On ClassicsToday: Wilhelm Kempff's Schubert, neither Titanic nor Teutonic

Kempff’s Schubert in Blu-ray Pure Audio: A Reference Revisited

by Jens F. Laurson

Schubert—almost as much as Beethoven—had been a staple of pianist Wilhelm Kempff’s repertoire from the beginning to the end of his career, including his final public recital where he played (apart from Beethoven, of course) Schubert’s Sonata D. 845. And if his set of Schubert... Continue Reading [Insider content]

On ClassicsToday: Vienna Philharmonic' Mahler's 8th at the Konzerthaus

Vienna Aroused: Mahler’s Eighth Still Does the Trick

May 12, 2019 by Jens F. Laurson

Vienna, May 11, 2019; Vienna Konzerthaus—Even in times of inflationary Mahler performances, a Mahler Eighth is something special. It was notable from the moment you set foot into the Vienna Konzerthaus on this past Saturday afternoon. The mood was different. A little tense, a little hushed in anti...  Continue Reading

See also:

106 Years Mahler Eighth: The Best Recordings (Forbes)
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.8 (Part 1)
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.8 (Part 2)
Alles Vergängliche: Ozawa's Mahler Eighth