On Music
SIMON, JOHN
On Music SOME RECENT FAVORITES By John Simon In the piano concerto field you will not find a more exciting record than the one coupling two supreme Polish masterpieces: Karol Szymanowski's...
...But Kupiec, too, does ample justice to the work, and gets the best-recorded sound of several available versions...
...I wonder whether Szymanowski, like Bartók, felt he was composing his last farewell...
...Charmant...
...To me it still sounds like a piano concerto, rich in melody spiced with sophisticatedly syncopated, rhythmically insinuating passages...
...Orpheus rushes onstage and makes off with the opera-Eurydice...
...The percussive and lurching first movement, "By the Path That Leads Nowhere," suggests with its shrilling trills the fearful entrance into the maze...
...It feels like a lively account of a number of varied experiences told in six succinct movements, ranging from the contemplative Tema, through the vivacious Gigue full of sassy bell tones, to the gossamer Andante Tranquillo...
...It tells of a coming World War and terrible devastation...
...of renewed mass violence, and a final search for Utopia in distant galaxies...
...But it is always so intoxicating that, had I to choose my Desert Island Discs, Orpheus in Town would surely be off to the island with me...
...The Spanish composer Xavier Montsalvatge (b...
...On this summer evening, Orpheus and his companion statues come to life and go in search of Eurydice...
...Its dedicatee describes it as a "positive nervousness, constantly pushing forward and increasing the tension...
...Already afflicted by the TB that would carry him off in 1937 at age 54, he needed a piece he could perform with his somewhat limited pianistic ability, and that would pay for his sanatorium bills...
...Next comes Sortilegis (Sorcery, 1992), a single eight-minute movement intended as an exam piece for aspiring conductors...
...The three-movement piece was dedicated to Arthur Rubinstein, whose pioneer recording of it for RCA remains treasurable...
...There already existed the splendid Zimerman performance with Lutoslawski and the BBC Symphony (DG 431-664...
...They represent summit achievements in Polish music of this century, and are played by Ewa Kupiec with the Bamberger Symphoniker under James Judd (Koch Classics 3-6414-2...
...But the main item is Orfeus i sta'n (Orpheus in Town, 1938) in its first complete recording...
...There is the moaningly sensual Bartender's Dance, the exotic Negress' Dance, and the irresistible Tango for Orpheus and a beautiful, tall woman, who is soon whisked off by her escort, the Corpulent Gentleman...
...More often than not, Françaix' music dances—liltingly, languorously, piquantly, or drolly, but always on its toes, as unearthbound as possible...
...The third piece is a suite from the movie Things to Come (1936), a lavish production based on H. G. Wells' futuristic novel...
...If asked who epitomizes charm in music, I would nominate three Frenchmen: Maurice Ravel, Francis Poulenc and Jean Françaix...
...the opera-Orpheus arrives and dances away with her...
...The exquisite fiddling of Yuriko Naganuma is an added asset: sweet but not sugary...
...On Music SOME RECENT FAVORITES By John Simon In the piano concerto field you will not find a more exciting record than the one coupling two supreme Polish masterpieces: Karol Szymanowski's Sinfonia Concertante, aka Fourth Symphony (1932), and Witold Lutoslawski's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1988...
...It also abounds in ruminative pauses, and overlappings the composer calls "chain form...
...of the building of an enlightened, better world...
...Bliss is well characterized in the booklet as a "Young Turk turned Establishment courtier, his manner and music charmed [sic] by more than a whiff of transatlantic zestfulness...
...What started out as a piano concerto ended up as his Fourth Symphony (Opus 60...
...What follows is both a contemporary retelling of the myth and a travelogue of the city...
...The record continues with Miracle in the Gorbals, the second of Bliss' four ballets, stemming from the wartime anxieties of Britain in 1944...
...The Piano Concerto, dedicated to the superb Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman, is an imaginative blend of novel and established strategies, occasionally oblique and introspective with fits of jaggedness, sometimes nervously spasmodic but veering into the feelingful...
...A concertino for four wind soloists, string orchestra and percussion, it embodies every imaginable playfulness in a quarter hour...
...The juxtaposition with the Szymanowski work, though, eloquently tracing the trajectory of our century's music, makes for a CD greater than the sum of its parts...
...If Szymanowski was a conservative at heart with an alert ear cocked to the future, Lutoslawski (1913-1994) was a brilliant innovator with a genuine soft spot for tradition...
...But for those interested in the mature musician, there is no better starting point than the Discourse for Orchestra (1957, revised 1965), first on the Naxos disc...
...It is a retelling of the Christ story in contemporary terms, as choreographed and originally danced by Robert Helpmann...
...The third, whimsically titled "For the Exaltation of the Minotaur," is based on the zapateado, a foot-stamping Spanish dance that brings the Grecian man-bull closer to the brave bulls of the Hispanic arena...
...If you want to experience the Young Turk, try to locate another disc (Hyperion 66137) that concludes with the splendid Oboe Quintet of 1927...
...It evokes the sordid world of a Glaswegian harborside blue-collar neighborhood, where a priest fails to revive a young girl who threw herself into the Clyde...
...rhapsodic in quality and vaguely folklike, it makes for pleasant listening despite Montsalvatge's doubts about it...
...also two Englishmen, Lord Berners and Constant Lambert...
...After Szymanowski outgrew his earlier Wagner-Straussian and Debussyist periods, he arrived at a fusion of tasteful delicacy with fundamental lushness, culminating in this work...
...or yet another with the even lovelier Clarinet Quintet of 1932 (Redcliffe Recordings RRO10...
...Woodblocks and whiplashes, gongs and sundry tintinnabulations are all based on that old Iberian dance tune la folía—which means folly, and so aptly applies to Dali...
...The second, "The Encounter of Theseus and Ariadne," contrasts a virile, dissonant wind-andpercussion section (Theseus) with a more lyrical string one (Ariadne...
...That applies to everything by Françaix, whom Balanchine, choreographing a piece of his for A la Française, dubbed the most French of composers...
...The Sinfonía, more traditional than the later compositions, sounds like superior movie music...
...On the ASV label (DCA 1060) we are treated to four of his characteristic works, from the as yet somewhat tentative Sinfonía mediterránea (1945) to the magnificent late Folia daliniana (1996), a tribute to Dali...
...1912) is really a Catalan, like so many modern Spanish geniuses—Picasso, Dali, Gaudi, Casals, Gerhard, Mompou, etc...
...I hope to write at length someday about the catalogue of works by the amazing Hilding Rosenberg (1892-1985...
...Its third movement, a most unlikely Menuet, seductively stirs together the tango and the cha-cha-cha...
...The music is by turns shimmering, earcaressing, scene-specific, sexy, thrilling, and melancholy...
...A CD that is a fine introduction to the orchestral Bliss (Naxos 8.553698) consists of three pungent, memorable works...
...Even though the latest work on this disc, the First Violin Concerto, is already 31 years old, it illustrates the composer's most mature style...
...The hour-long ballet begins at Carl Milles' famous Orpheus fountain outside the Stockholm Concert Hall, where stalls display sundry wares and gaping tourists snap pictures...
...As for the Symphony in G major, commissioned by the Musical Arts Society of La Jolla, it exemplifies Françaix' aim to write "music that is serious without being solemn...
...Thence through a lively recapitulation and a majestic declamation to a Coda's mysterious dying fall...
...He has written some 20 ballets, three operas and every other kind of secular or sacred music, and is still going strong...
...The mood is that of goodnatured teasing in this lovable piece, lovingly performed by the Orquesta Filarmonica de Gran Canaria under Adrian Leaper...
...Sir Arthur Bliss (1891-1975)had an American father, an English mother, a full and fecund life, and an aptitude for almost every type of music...
...By the time he wrote Laberinto (1971), surely intended as a ballet, his hand was assured and we get his personal mix of three well-digested influences: StravinskianNeo-Classicism, the cheeky gamesomeness of Les Six, and the torrid pulse of West Indian rhythms...
...Everyone hastens to a nightclub where, in a seven-movement section dubbed The Jazz Suite by the composer, various dances and interactions ensue...
...The new CD by Phono Suecia (PSCD 702) starts with the eight-minute prelude to The Last Judgment (1929), a ballet deemedblasphemous at the time and never produced...
...Thus the Orpheus group dances all over the square with a bunch of emerging concertgoers, then proceeds to seek out public monuments and lovers' lanes, eventually hitting the Royal Opera House, where a performance of Orfeo ed Euridice is on...
...Arguably the fountainhead of 20th-century Swedish music, he worked in many genres, stage music being one of his fortes...
...The Final is a miniconcerto for orchestra, wherein against an obsessive bass various instruments, solo or in exhilarating groupings, indulge in a poised, stately gallop...
...The ballet Les Malheurs de Sophie is based on the beloved children's novel by the Comtesse de Ségur, and the four episodes chosen from it make you yearn for the complete work...
...Listen to the Violin Concerto's third movement, and you will experience something at once "spikily playful and tenderly lyrical" (Geoffrey Thomason's phrase) in a combination that is not the easiest to carry off...
...The piece bears a striking resemblance to Bartók's sublime Third Piano Concerto, but preceded it by 13 years...
...A mysterious stranger appears and resuscitates her, whereupon the jealous priest induces a juvenile gang to kill him, and the street returns to its routine brutishness...
...The music is a powerful combination of pictorially evocative and dramatically gripping elements, allowing you to see the story with your ears...
...It is dawn: The stalls are back, as are the tourists...
...This is music that transcends its utilitarian origins, stylishly played by the Queensland Symphony under Christopher LyndonGee, and impeccably recorded...
...It switches between Debussyesque exquisiteness and full motoric acumen, putting the would-be maestros through their paces, and us at our smiling ease...
...Finally, the group returns to the fountain, but Eurydice refuses to mount the pedestal with Orpheus...
...But the jewel here is the 84-year-old composer's homage to his Surrealist countryman...
...From solo flute fluttertonguings to gorgeous ripienos (re-entries of the full orchestra), the musical whimsies match Dali's bold fantasies...
...As the composer remarked about his aptly named Variations on a Peasant Theme (not on this record), "lovers of melody—and there are some left—will be able to satisfy their guilty passion...
...Here I will confine myself to the last recording of and by Françaix (1912-1997), made a few months before his death, on which he conducts the Monte Carlo Philharmonic (Erol 97002...
...Les Malheurs de Sophie (1935) and the Symphony in G Major (1953) represent the musician's early and middle periods...
Vol. 82 • August 1999 • No. 10
