Thirteen to Remember
SIMON, JOHN
On Music Thirteen to Remember By John Simon Call IT damage control or catching up or an omniumgatherum, but it is intermittently necessary to direct attention to some...
...The Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck's(1886-1957) powerful operatic work has not been neglected in these pages...
...Even though not so intended, the work functions as a summation...
...On CPO 999 929, we find his Erwin und Elmire, a version of an often-set Singspiel (poem sequence telling a story) by Goethe...
...With a scenario and choreography by the famous (some would say infamous) Paris Opera Ballet premier danseur and later director Serge Lifar, it was a huge and well-deserved success...
...He went so far as to call what could and should have been his Ninth instead Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth...
...The work comprises two slow outer movements replete with Mahler's richly melancholy emotionalism...
...Let's start with the good news for Gustav Mahler lovers: two remarkable performances of his last two finished symphonies, the Eighth and the Ninth...
...One of the good things about chamber music is that you can play discs of it late at night without disturbing the neighbors on the other side of New York's paper-thin walls...
...Influenced by an early career in the Navy, like Nicolai RimskyKorsakov...
...in his later works, such as the Piano Sonata and the Three Poems of Fiona MacLeod, he shook off all previous influences and moved toward bold experiments in dissonance...
...That cannot be said about what he is most famous for, his 400 or so high-quality lieder...
...The book includes a CD that is a perfect cross section of Guarnieri's music...
...On Naxos 559 164,JoAnn Falletta conducts the Buffalo Philharmonic in a number of Griffes ' most popular orchestral pieces...
...the relaxed tempo of the slow movement of the Third Concerto, bringing out in perhaps greater detail its achingly beautiful adagio religioso quality...
...even as is, I wonder how such fine music is so little known and so rarely played by his compatriots...
...Even those who feel his Romantic orchestral works are too picture-postcardy (unjustly, to my mind), concede his piano music to be less sentimental and generally superior...
...Indeed, he kept growing...
...The music has a wonderful blend of romance, humor and pathos, all melodious to a fault...
...by stays in India, where he honeymooned...
...Yoii would not know this prolific composer has written a great deal in all genres, and in various, always interesting styles...
...In his 13 years of active composing he underwent a variety of influences...
...The conductor, orchestra, choruses, and international soloists are perfectly balanced...
...Magnard (1865-1914) is, alas, most famous for his heroic death, singlehandedly defending his property on the Oise against the invading German cavalry in 1914, killing two before being killed himself, and then having his house, with numerous unpublished compositions, burnt to ashes...
...Bart??k's Second Violin Concerto is, quite simply, one of the greatest ever written, and needs no further praise from me, especially as played by Mutter and Seiji Ozawa's Bostonians...
...May this finely fiddled release change that...
...This is set, as the booklet tells us, among a decadent society of cats whose underground activities mirror those of the humans above...
...Baal-Shem, Abodah, and the rapt Suite hebraique, which you don't have to be Jewish to love...
...Schoeck began work on this in 1911, but it was not premiered till 1916 in Zurich...
...Among recent releases, Arthur Bliss' Clarinet Quintet-String Quartet No...
...I have written here at length about the Brazilian Camargo Guarnieri (19071993...
...It is very prettily sung by four (I assume) young singers, accompanied by the Zurich Chamber Orchestra under Howard Griffith, a Schoeck specialist...
...From the German Romantics (one of his teachers during his four years of study in Germany was Engelbert Humperdinck of Hansel und Gretel fame) he switched allegiance to the French Impressionists, chiefly Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel...
...Ditto the adult and juvenile choruses, who sing with equal maturity...
...The Eighth, with its huge forces, is known as the Symphony of a Thousand and sounds like something colossal, to be relegated to vast or preferably outdoor auditoriums-think New York's Radio City Music Hall or the Hollywood Bowl...
...Much of his best writing was for the piano, but some of it he subsequently orchestrated...
...So the Eighth proceeds from the somewhat guardedly lyrical to the erotically tinged dramatic, a progression more secular than religious, and ultimately rapturous...
...To the-extent that Albert Roussel (1869-1963) is performed at all these days, what we encounter are his ballet Bacchus et Ariane and the two suites drawn from it...
...Composed for her and newly recorded is Sur le meme Accord (On the Same Chord), subtitled Nocturn for Violin and Orchestra, by Henri Dutilleux (born 1916), the best living French composer, and one of the best anywhere...
...Tilson Thomas does wonderful justice to what we think of as typically Mahler, with an expansiveness reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein's approach, but without the feel of self-indulgence and dragging...
...Sir Arthur (1891-1975) is always referred to as an English composer, but despite his British passport, he had a New Englander for a father, spent quite a few years in the United States, and married an American woman...
...Known mostly for his winning tone poems (Schelomo, A Voice in the Wilderness) and perhaps for his two concerti grossi and five string quartets, he is a man of diverse other achievements, as this album (Oehms Classics 255) should make abundantly clear...
...The prize pieces, though, are three Jewish-flavored works...
...Some will go on to Federico Mompou and Xavier Montsalvatge, but few will land on that fine Andalusian Joaquin Turina (18821949...
...2, with Leif Ove Andsness and the Berlin Philharmonic...
...This is music that becomes richer with every hearing, especially as played here by the Maggini Quartet and the clarinetist David Campbell...
...Claudio Abbado and the Vienna manage at a mere 79...
...The cat heroine, a role reluctantly created by the young Margot Fonteyn, is torn between a feline and a human lover, a situation that brings tragedy to all...
...Brazilian Composerby Marion Verrhaalen (Indiana University Press...
...There are, of course, several first-rate versions of the three concertos on a single disc, but this one...
...1, with Krystian Zimerman and the Chicago Symphony...
...I recommend warmly his chamber music and his Third Symphony among others, but here wish to praise two major efforts for chorus and orchestra that, along with two minor ones, appear on timpani 1082...
...the chamber compositions, in any case, are doughtily unsentimental, without lacking delicately ingratiating aspects...
...Both the playing of the San Franciscans and their sound recording merit unreserved praise...
...Warning: Listening to it is habit-forming...
...Consider him, in the profoundest sense, a free spirit...
...Unfortunately, that was before Naxos 557 666 brought us the first three of his six piano concertos, staunchly performed by Max Barros with the WarsawPhilharmonic under Thomas Conlin...
...The second, the 1948 Les Demoiselles de la nuit (The Ladies of the Night), is quite a bit darker, with a scenario by Jean Anouilh and choreography by that supershowman Roland Petit...
...On Naxos 557 150, Jordi Maso' expertly offers the first of what will be a most welcome traversal of Turina's complete piano output...
...One may hear Debussy and Ravel, plus Scriabin and Modest Mussorgsky subtly ingested here, but the overarching effect is not unlike that of the maturest works of Frederick Delius and may even foreshadow Samuel Barber...
...Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin forces take under 85...
...A form Roussel was drawn to is the opera-ballet (as in his Oriental Padvati) , and here we get one of his last works, the ballet with chorus Aeneas...
...Even ifyou have one ormore versions of this trifecta, I promise that owning this one will unveil further beauties to you...
...Jean Francaix (1912-1997) is one of the most charming French composers, right up there with Francis Poulenc and Henri Sauguet...
...But after finishing little more than the lovely opening Adagio, he died of a blood infection in 1911, shortly before his 51 st birthday...
...and No...
...The piano was his instrument, and he wrote upward of 60 pieces for it...
...He was in many ways the most cosmopolitan Spanish composer, having studied in Paris at the Schola Cantorum with Moritz Moszkowski and Vincent d'Indy...
...Concerto No...
...Even the concept is interesting...
...The distinguished Ysaye Quartet plays with complete idiomatic immerston, and is recorded with sound that is almost spookily immediate...
...It does indeed require eight soloists, a double chorus, a children's chorus, and an orchestra of at least 120-all captured admirably by modern technology in a trifle over 77 minutes on EMI 57945...
...These are works of overwhelming yet very different, almost antithetical, beauty...
...It is superlatively caught by Thierry Fischer and the Ulster Orchestra, to be listened to with ear, heart, and feet...
...As performed by Latica Honda-Rosenberg and Avner Arad, and magnificently recorded, these works will insinuate themselves into even the hardest, least musically inclined hearts...
...Much of it is percussive, spiced with native instruments, but a large part is also lyrical, rhapsodically expressive or exquisitely brooding...
...The Stravinsky Concerto in D (1931), here with Paul Sacher conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, is for mysterious reasons not well enough known and not often enough performed for a work in the composer's best vein: elegantly playful and brainily sophisticated...
...Deeply felt and gripping, it has a text by Joseph Wetterings closely based on Virgil, and is performed worthily by the Europa Chor Aakdemie and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Luxemburg under Bramwell Tovey...
...the second is a setting of the famous closing pages of Goethe's Faust, Part Two, with its concluding evocation of the Eternal Feminine that draws us upward...
...in between, a rather emphatic L?¤ndler and a RondoBurleske-i.e., fairly daringly, a folk dance and a scherzo, both of them really scherzi...
...3, with Helene Grimaud and the London Symphony...
...To be sure, this is one symphony where Mahler does not sound quite so perspicuously Mahlerian...
...Except perhaps in his fascinating ballets, his music is not particularly British...
...the music is less moody and passionate, more sober and dignified, almost oratorio-like...
...Russians, mainly Alexander Scriabin, as well as Oriental and American Indian music also affected him...
...It has that wonderful Rousselian mix of fervor and restraint-truly a work of unparochial, unchurchy spirituality...
...Had Griffes lived,hewouldhave become oneof America's major composers...
...But his life and works are as noble as his death, and this quartet has the greatest imaginable emotional range expressed with a technique that is diverse, subtle and full of gripping surprises...
...The first, the 1935 Le Roi nu (The Naked King), in Francaix' characteristic feather-light style, is based very loosely on Hans Christian Andersen's "Tire Emperor's New Clothes...
...To stay with the violin, I warmly recommend a two-disc set, the complete violin-and-piano works of the Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch (1880-1959...
...In nine minutes, this 2003 piece conjures up a whole mysterious universe, ably performed by the Orchestre National de France under Kurt Masur...
...This allows Mahler to sound more churchy in the first section, more erotic in the second, originally conceived as the final movement of a four-movement symphony, to be entitled Creation Through Eros...
...On Music Thirteen to Remember By John Simon Call IT damage control or catching up or an omniumgatherum, but it is intermittently necessary to direct attention to some outstanding missed releases: These CDs either did not fit into my previous columns, or came out too late for inclusion where they belonged...
...and by interest in classical literature and mythology-which he grew to prefer to the Christianity he was raised in-Roussel strongly believed in the spiritual but not in organized religion...
...A rather trivial love story, it nonetheless affords nice opportunities for four singers, and can be staged either as a theater piece or in concert...
...Superstitious, Mahler dreaded a Ninth because several great symphonists died after that number...
...There are many highlights, e.g...
...Surely AngloAmerican composer is called for...
...But if, like me, you have until now tended to avoid it, this is the time to find out the error of your ways...
...There were some others, but as Donna K. Andersen, his biographer, stressed, "It was Griffes' ability to accumulate the best around him, and stamp it with his own power of expression and individuality that mark him as a composer of true originality and genius...
...On the same label (DG 4049), you get the terrific Anne-Sophie Mutter in three smashing violin works...
...Tenor Jon Villars sounds a bit strained on some high notes, but the others, who include Soile Isokoski (the current Met Marguerite, better heard than seen) and a favorite of mine, Juliane Banse, do splendidly...
...This latter-day Hugo Wolf, who learned some useful lessons from his teacher Max Reger, developed into a solid, subdued art-song writer with a kind of Swiss earthiness...
...Comprising some of his better known and least known efforts, it is by rums lilting and spunky, colorful and robust-a disc you will keep returning to as you await its doubtless equally satisfying sequels...
...While we are on piano concertos, consider the three by Bela Bartok on Deutsche Grammophon 3885, with Pierre Boulez conducting three different major orchestras and three superb soloists...
...Like the Magnard, it takes off from late Beethoven, but reflects a modern French sensibility, illumined by an almost otherworldly serenity...
...Hyperion 67489 unites two of his ballets, a genre he excelled at...
...A no less marvelous issue (Aeon 0426) offers string quartets composed by Alb?©ric Magnard in 1902/3 and Gabriel Faur?© in 1924, the year of his death...
...The other two items are reissues...
...Having unavoidably composed a Ninth, he rushed on immediately to a Tenth...
...Psalm SO also has a tenor soloist (Benjamin Butterfield) and is composed to the text in English-a commission from America...
...So herewith a modest selection of the novelties, although "new" in this context covers roughly the last three years...
...Besides the Three Poems, they include Clouds, Bacchanale, Three Tone Pictures, Poem for Flute and Orchestra, and the two favorites, The White Peacock and The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan...
...A very different composer was the American Charles Tomlinson Griffes, who tragically died of emphysema in 1920, at age 35...
...Michael Tilson Thomas, with somewhat leisurely tempos (on San Francisco Symphony records 821936-007) clocks in at over 88 minutes...
...The Faure quartet, written by the then deaf composer, is a dignified, totally unsentimental farewell piece...
...In the Ninth Symphony we get, inadvertently but appropriately, a Mahlerian testament...
...However unintentionally, the Ninth is a compelling farewell, managing to sum up in what, for Mahler, is a relatively compact form, his musical and spiritual essence...
...If, like most hearers I know, you fall in immediate love with Guarnieri's music, you may want to acquire a new and absolutely engrossing book, Camargo Guarnieri...
...When people think of Spanish music, the obvious names that pop into memory are Isaac Albeniz, Enrique Granados and Manuel de Falla...
...Each is discussed briefly in no particular order...
...The two masterly violin sonatas already have their following, but what about the intoxicating Nuit exotique, hitherto unknown to me...
...The first part is a setting of a medieval hymn, Veni, creator Spiritus (Come, Creator Spirit), ascribed to one Hrabanus Maurus...
...Sir Simon Rattle, on leave from his new post at the Berlin Philharmonic, revisits his old haunt, the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, in this joyous-reunion live recording that sounds as controlled and cosseted as if it had been coaxed into existence in a studio...
...The author knew him well and is equally enlightening about his life and his work...
...besides being uniformly flawless, fascinates by the variety of its artists and matchless sound...
...2 (Naxos 557 394) recommends itself as challengingly various yet always jovially virile music...
...Despite taking to heart Albeniz' advice to be a nationalist, Turina was an admirer of Debussy and considered Robert Schumann the ideal model...
...Most of this music is spiritually rather than literally steeped in the Amerindian tradition, involving either frenetic or languorous dance rhythms of a haunting, exotic loveliness...
Vol. 88 • May 2005 • No. 3
