Recent Releases No. 80 (CD Reviews)

by Karl Nehring

Víkingur Ólafsson: Opus 109. Bach: Prelude in E Major, BWV 854; Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 27 in E Minor, Op. 90; Bach: Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV 830; Schubert: Piano Sonata in E minor, D566; Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109; Bach: French Suite No. 6 in E, BWV 817: Sarabande. Víkingur Ólafsson, piano. Deutsche Grammophon 486 7411

 

We have reviewed several previous releases from the Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson (b. 1984) here at Classical Candor, each of them having some sort of unusual twist that set it apart from the standard piano recording. On Bach: Works and Reworks (DG 4837769) we got not only a piano recital but the sound of the piano combined with other (often electronic) instruments; on Debussy-Rameau (DG 479 7701), the pianist explored connections between two composers separated by a century-and-a-half; his Philip Glass album (DG  479 6918) included an arrangement a piano etude for piano quintet; and his Reflections album (DG 00289 483 9222) was a reimagining of his Debussy-Rameau album, this time with Ólafsson on piano accompanied by other musicians (with some electronic manipulation of sonic textures). This latest release is a straightforward piano recital without any added instruments or electronic manipulation. The pianist includes a liner note essay in which he explains his somewhat unusual program, which he assembled for a combination of musical and personal reasons. Although the album is titled Opus 109, the Bach Partita No. 6 seems to come across as the centerpiece. Ólafsson plays lyrically and expressively throughout; if the idea of Bach, Schubert, and Beethoven played together on the same program is an appealing one, then Opus 109 is warmly recommended. 

 

Close. Steve Tibbetts: We Begin, Pt. 1; We Begin, Pt. 2; We Begin, Pt. 3; Away, Pt. 1; Away, Pt. 2; Away, Pt. 3; Remember, Pt. 1; Remember, Pt. 2; Somewhere, Pt. 1; Somewhere, Pt. 2; Somewhere, Pt. 3; Anywhere; Everywhere, Pt. 1; Everywhere, Pt. 2; Everywhere, Pt. 3; Everywhere, Pt. 4; Everywhere, Pt. 5; Remember and; Remember and Wish; We End. Steve Tibbetts, guitar, percussion, piano; Marc Anderson, percussion, gongs, handpan, loops; JT Bates, drums. ECM 2858

 

Wisconsin-born, Minnesota-based guitarist Steve Tibbetts (b. 1954) has been recording his imaginative music since the mid-1970s. He released his self-titled first album in 1976 on the tiny independent Frammis label, which was followed in 1980 by YR, also on Frammis. YR marked his first collaboration with percussionist Marc Anderson, a collaboration that continues to this day. In 1982, the pair spent three days in Oslo recording the album Northern Song for producer Manfred Eicher’s ECM label, the label for which Tibbetts has since recorded seven more albums. In 2022, we reviewed his ECM release titled Hellbound Train, a two-CD sampling of tracks from his first seven ECM releases. I felt certain that I must have reviewed his previous release, Life Of, but when I checked, I discovered that much to my surprise, that this May 2018 album had been released several months before I ever started writing for Classical Candor. (It turned out my first contribution was an October 2018 review of Walton’s Viola Concerto.) As on his previous album, Tibbetts here plays plenty of moody 12-string, but also does some plugging in. The presence of both percussionists provides a steady rumbling pulse throughout the album; the net effect being one of reflection and quiet mystery. The cover photo is of a backyard at night; the liner photo is the same backyard in daylight. The music on the disc falls somewhere between. “Music is a twilight language,” Tibbetts affirms. “The job is to translate some shadow into sound.” 

 

Transcription as Translation. Smetana: String Quartet No. 1 “From My Life” (orch. George Szell); Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29, Op. 106 “Hammerklavier” (orch. Felix Weingartner). The Orchestra Now; Leon Botstein, conductor. AVIE AV2822

 

The late American conductor Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) made a much-heralded recording of a transcription he made of Beethoven’s Op. 131 string quartet with the Vienna Philharmonic – but for strings only. When it comes to transcribing piano works for full orchestra, perhaps the most noteworthy example is Ravel’s transcription of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. On this release from AVIE, we get two transcriptions for orchestra made by orchestral conductors. The first, by George Szell, takes Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 from an intimate piece of chamber music and makes it into something of an orchestral showpiece. According to the liner notes, Szell made his arrangement in 1939-40, soon after his arrival in the United States, and conducted it at his debut with the orchestra in 1944 and several times thereafter. It’s a pleasant enough listening experience, if not particularly memorable. Fans of the Smetana quartet may find this performance of interest to gain some additional insight. The Weingartner transcription of the “Hammerklavier,” on the other hand, comes across as less successful. The music never seems to catch fire; something seems to have been lost in translation. To be fair to Maestro Botstein and the orchestra, however, the original sonata is a daunting challenge for even the finest of pianists, so to expect an orchestral transcription to succeed in captivating an audience is – to be candid – in all likelihood an exercise in wishful thinking.

Bennett and Duke Violin Concertos (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross 

Robert Russell Bennett: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in A Major (“In the Popular Style”); Vernon Duke [Vladimir Alexandrovich Dukelsky]: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Chloë Hanslip, violinist; Andrew Litton, conductor; Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Chandos CHSA 5371

This is one of those recordings: extended orchestral works by composers who made their mark very much elsewhere. In this case we have a pair of figures who worked in the American show business, one as an orchestrator and the other as a songwriter (primarily). To be honest, the results are about what you’d expect: respectable efforts that go over well enough but probably won’t blow your hair back. Think John Williams’s concertos, or Meredith Willson’s symphonies, or anything by Danny Elfman that is not film or TV music. You get the picture.

 

We’ll take the more successful of these two concertos first. Robert Russell Bennett wisely decided to write a lighter work explicitly “in the popular style.” This translates to some fetching themes across four movements, and an overall breeziness that shows a composer not taking himself too seriously. The jaunty first movement lasts 11+ minutes and, even if it slightly overstays its welcome by the end, elicits plenty of goodwill. The remaining sections are much shorter, my favorite of which is a lovely ABA second span heavily influenced by the theater. Nothing here rivals the Barber Violin Concerto (probably the American masterpiece in the genre), but I can see the work being successful if programmed occasionally, all the more since it clocks in at under 25 minutes and ends with a rousing send-off. As a bonus, we next get the short Hexapoda studies for violin and piano – delightfully fluffy music.

 

If I’m in a generous mood, I might argue that the Robert Russell Bennett Violin Concerto is actually a touch more compelling than the Williams, Willson, and Elfman fare I named earlier. But not even on my best day would I say the same for this Duke Concerto. It lasts only 29 or so minutes but feels longer. There is nothing offensive in it, to be sure, but its angular themes just meander and fail to hold interest. Drab orchestral and harmonic colors predominate, with only very brief moments of Songwriter Vernon Duke peeking through now and then. I was sometimes reminded of Prokofiev, but did not feel Sergei Sergeyevich’s strong personality. Duke would have done better to let his Broadway side take over more, as RRB did. Slenderer compositional voices should be strategic about where they direct energy and attempt to make impacts. Because when all is said and done, April in Paris packs more of a punch than any of the scores emanating from Duke’s classical ambitions.

 

The performances themselves are terrific. They exude about as much zip and skill as I can imagine, and (certainly in terms of sound quality) outclass their scant competition in the catalogue (Cambria CAMCD-1078 and Urlicht UAV5990, as far as I can tell). More importantly, I sense the earnestness of Hanslip and Litton loud and clear. Both scores absolutely need this. In the end, we have another Chandos winner. If you’re going to record and package this music, do it like it’s done here. Whether or not that music is terribly distinguished is another matter.

Berta Rojas – The Journey of Strings

by Bill Heck

Santiago de Murcia: La huella del Códice; El Canario (traditional); Ángel Mislán: Sara; Daniel Saboya: Bambuco Pá Billy; Popi Spatocco and Sebastián Henríquez: Tierra Mía; Elodie Bouny: El Mar, La Montaña, Los Llanos; Félix Pérez Cardozo: Che la Reina; Gustavo Santaolalla: The Last of Us. Berta Rojas, guitar; multiple artists.

In my reviews for Classical Candor, I seem to be on a roll, or rather two rolls: music for guitar and musical “projects.” This release combines both streams: Berta Rojas and colleagues have given us a history of stringed instruments, those in what we might call the guitar family, using a book, an app, multiple videos and, of course, music. Naturally, producing such a work – one that Rojas and her colleagues mean to be a living, breathing history – involved research, but it involved so much more: traveling internationally, especially in Latin America, to find instruments and the musicians who play them and recording the performances that bring their history to life.

Most readers will know that the musical instruments that we hear today evolved over the last few centuries. This is especially true of stringed instruments, and even today we see multiple versions that are strummed or plucked like the guitar, such as the ukulele and mandolin, not to mention guitar variations such as twelve- and even seven-string versions. What is less widely known is that there are many more variations of guitar-like instruments, both historical and present day, primarily associated with Spain and various Latin American countries. Instruments such as vihuela and the charango not only were but, in many cases, still are played. This project identified no fewer than thirteen such instruments in addition to the modern classical guitar!

With that capsule summary in mind, if learning and hearing more sounds appealing – and it should, especially if you have a particular interest in classical guitar – a good place to start is the project website. Scroll down and look at the “full documentary” video, which provides a 33-minute project overview and background. (Most of the interviews are in Spanish or Portuguese, but well-translated English subtitles are there as needed.)

Berta Rojas

The musical heart of the project is a series of 10 selections, each in the four-to-five-minute range. All the pieces are “Latin” in flavor, but that includes a range of styles from several periods, including the present. Each piece features Rojas, usually on a standard guitar, plus one or more stringed instruments that derive from or are related to the guitar. The selections are superbly played, excellently recorded, and eminently listenable. You can experience them in the form of music videos, which can be found on the project website or in a YouTube playlist here. But if you want to hear them in their full glory, you can find them on major streaming service services (although not on Qobuz, an omission that I hope is remedied soon), or purchase and download them from the usual sources, or go for the project boxed set that includes an LP (see below for details on that last option).

But that’s by no means all. Scrolling down further in that YouTube playlist, you’ll find a series of “Behind the Scenes” videos. Each of these provides background discussions about the corresponding musical selection, with topics ranging from history and construction of the instruments to musical analysis and much more. I found these invariably interesting; most are longer than the musical selections themselves.

I’ve mentioned videos a couple of times. Unlike some simple classical music videos that use a static camera or perhaps a few random cutaways, these are quite well produced and visually interesting. Thoughtful editing helps to focus not only on techniques used by the players but also show the joy that the musicians obviously have in playing their instruments and their music.

Finally, to bring multiple threads together we have a single package comprising a book, an app, and an LP. The book is a large format, lavishly illustrated 60+ pages with introductions to each musical work, the instruments used, and the musicians performing the work, all with text in both Spanish and English. (I reviewed a preproduction electronic copy.) The app, which is downloaded from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, is keyed to the book: in the app, you scan markers in the book to launch 3-D illustrations of the instruments described. You can move the instruments around virtually with your fingers to better see their construction, and you can even strum the strings by swiping. Finally, the LP contains all the musical selections. This package is available for purchase on Amazon and Strings by Mail. (As an aside, I hope that at some point the book may be available with a CD or as a standalone product for those don’t have turntables to play LPs.)

Now that we have all the components, and because Classical Candor reviews musical performances, let’s return to the music itself. As I mentioned earlier, the performances are excellent. Rojas is a well-known and respected guitarist, so virtuosity is hardly a surprise. It (almost) goes without saying that tone and intonation are impeccable. But I was even more impressed with the fluidity of her playing, how even the most difficult passages just seem to flow forward, a combination of technical mastery and an obvious love for what she is doing.

Playing "El Canario" (The Canary)

Then again, Rojas’s capabilities are a given. What may be even more gratifying is that the musicians who accompany her are virtuosos in their own rights. This applies not only to those who play the stringed instruments of note, but to every musician involved, including those playing in what amounts to a chamber orchestra accompaniment for the last three selections of the series. The compositions here, while immediately appealing, are also musically complex and demand a high degree of skill. If by any chance you imagined that finding lesser-known instruments and their players would involve hobbyists plucking out simple melodies or just strumming a few chords on instruments made from found materials, forget it. Everyone and everything here is, as they say, professional grade. That applies to the entire range of music, whether from earlier periods (such as the 15th century piece attributed to guitarist Santiago de Murcia) or our current time (such as the South American Triptych, commissioned by Rojas and composed by Elodie Bouny).

At this point, I’ve run into a dilemma: on one hand, this review is getting on in length; on the other, I feel as though I’ve only scratched the surface. I suppose that’s the occupational hazard of taking on a review of a multi-part project like this one. So I’ll summarize: Rojas’s project offers something for everyone. Those who simply want to listen can enjoy the music via download, streaming, or the LP, and hearing the unique sounds of lesser-known stringed instruments will be a welcome bonus. Those who are more curious about the instruments, the music, and the musicians can watch the videos, particularly the behind-the-scenes ones. And those who are ready to take a deeper dive can do so with the book and app. With all the options and components, you have a project to which you can return repeatedly, finding something new each time.