Four Centuries (CD review)

Susan Merdinger, piano; David Yonan, violin. Sheridan Music Studio.

Among my favorite pianists is Steinway artist Susan Merdinger. On the present album, Four Centuries, she teams up with violinist David Yonan for a program of music that takes us from the 1700's to the present. They do pieces by Mozart, Schumann, Bloch, and Levinson, and they do them exceptionally well. In fact, Ms. Merdinger and Mr. Yonan make some exceedingly beautiful music together.

The juxtaposition of old and new music works well and makes for some fascinating listening. What's more, the duo of Merdinger and Yonan brings with it a much-appreciated warmth and enthusiasm. While both performers are capable of and often display virtuosic playing, neither of them tries to get too fancy or upstage the other. They work as one player instead of two, the results quite satisfying.

The first work on the agenda is the Sonata No. 13 for Piano and Violin in B-flat major, K. 454 by Austrian composer and pianist Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). Written in 1784, Mozart intended it as a piece he would play together with violin virtuoso Regina Strinasacci at a concert in Vienna. With Merdinger and Yonan, the Mozart is both lively and relaxed as the occasion demands. They give the outer movements the spark they need, and they apply a sweet, gentle touch to the Andante.

The next work is the Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in A minor, Op. 105 by German composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856). He wrote it late in life, 1851, and premiered it in 1852 with Ferdinand David on violin and the composer's wife Clara on piano. In contrast to the high good spirits of the Mozart, the Schumann piece is more solemn, especially the first movement. The second movement sounds richly melodic, particularly as Merdinger and Yonan handle it. Then we get a somewhat agitated final movement, in which the performers emphasize the distress and conflict to passionate effect.

Susan Merdinger
After that we hear a piece from the twentieth century, the Suite Hebraique for Violin and Piano by Swiss-born composer Ernest Bloch (1880-1959). Bloch wrote the music in 1950 for the Covenant Club of Chicago, which had just sponsored a festival of his music. Merdinger and Yonan bring out Bloch's clearly though not always obvious Hebraic influences. The violin was not Bloch's first choice for the work; originally, he wrote it for cello, a more somber instrument, and later he adapted it for violin. Still, it works out well for Yonan's violin, which supplies a demonstrative voice to the proceedings.

The final work on the album is Elegy: Crossing the Bridge, for Violin and Piano, written in 2011 by Russian-born composer Ilya Levinson (b. 1958) and dedicated to David Yonan, who performed its world debut. Merdinger and Yonan's rendering of the piece is its official world-premiere recording. Levinson's work is the shortest on the disc at a single movement of about nine minutes. As with so much modern music, it has multiple meanings, the business of "crossing the bridge" referring to the actual playing technique as well as "getting in touch with the reality outside of commonly known human senses," as Lawrence Block writes in the booklet notes. Fair enough, and certainly it presents the listener with a variety of mood changes from "elegiac to tragic" and on to the other side of the bridge and a glimpse of "the Great Beyond." So, it's not only an interesting piece of music, it's rather ambitious as well. Whatever, Yonan and Merdinger infuse it with a rich, intense, sinuous longing that is quite moving.

Recording and mastering engineer James Auwarter and producer Susan Merdinger made the album at the Anne and Howard Gottlieb Hall at the Merit School of Music, Chicago, Illinois in July 2015. Played back at a realistic level, the disc offers among the best sound you'll find in any solo or duet album. The relative positioning of the violin and piano seems as perfect as it can be, with a lifelike balance in both tone and space. Clarity is outstanding, too, without being forward, bright, or brittle. The instruments simply sound natural, with a hint of room ambience to give them an even more accurate presence. It's quite a beautiful disc to hear, actually.

Among the places you can find the album is Ms. Merdinger's own Web site: http://www.susanmerdingerpianist.com/store

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

Contact Information

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@gmail.com

Readers with impolite, discourteous, bitchy, whining, complaining, nasty, mean-spirited, unhelpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@recycle.bin.

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa