Recent Releases No. 70 (CD Reviews)

by Karl Nehring

Haydn: 48 Piano Sonatas. Daniel-Ben Pienaar, piano. AVIE AV257

In yet another project undertaken in the dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic, South African pianist Daniel-Ban Pienaar has produced this imposing box set containing eight compact discs on which he has recorded as the cover declares “the 39 authenticated multi-movement solo keyboard works from 1765 onwards and nine earlier works presumed to be Haydn’s, or probably his, by the vast majority of scholars.” These works include: Four early Sonatas (listed in Haydn’s Entwurf-Katalog of 1765); Six Sonatas (1765-1772); Six Sonatas dedicated to Prince Nicolas Esterházy (c. 1773, published in 1774); Six Sonatas (1774-?76); Six Sonata dedicated to Katharina and Marianna Auenbrugger (published in 1880); Three Sonatas (published in London in 1783); Three Sonatas for Princess Maria Esterházy (published in 1784); Two Sonatas (1789-90); Three English Sonatas (1794-95); plus Variations in F minor (1793) and nine early Sonatas widely presumed to be by Haydn. Pienaar’s liner notes go into great detail about the difficulty of making a “definitive cycle” of Haydn’s works for piano owing to questions of authenticity. He also offers some remarks concerning how to approach performing these works today.

 I was surprised to discover in the liner note credits that for this release Pienaar had done his own recording and editing. Above the list of credits here is a photo of his piano with the following caption: “The Angela Burgess Recital Hall at the Royal Academy of Music, London. The recording took place in a series of overnight sessions in late 2020, with no engineer or producer present. A single pair of suspended omni-directional microphones was used.” Pienaar is on the faculty at the Royal Academy of Music, which gave him easy access to this recording venue and the associated equipment; still, it is unusual for an artist to record without the assistance of an engineer or producer.  

There is a helpfully informative article by Pienaar in the November 14, 2023, issue of the International Piano Newsletter in which the pianist discusses this recording in considerable detail; I recommend it highly. As with the liner notes, he discusses the difficulties involved in putting together the set of sonatas to record and his approach to performing them. But as something of a hopeless old boomer audiophile, I could not help but be particularly fascinated by Pienaar’s account of the recording process: 

 

“I started recording at the end of the summer, at the Royal Academy of Music in London. The Academy’s Angela Burgess Recital Hall is fitted with a single pair of omnidirectional mics that are pretty good – so I just positioned the piano in the best way I could and played and played, without an engineer or producer. I got permission to access the building overnight, and I tended to work on Saturday nights. I would record about one CD’s worth of music on each of these nights, spending altogether eight nights between September and December. It then took me about five weeks to choose takes and edit everything (I always edit my own work). It was especially important for me that everything should remain ‘fresh’ and that I should capture a feeling of making music for myself, allowing myself to be surprised by Haydn’s music, and exploring in the way I do every day at the piano – thus working in an intimate hall, on my own, and using the simplest means of recording… Every album of mine has been a kind of experiment in avoiding the glossiness that seems almost de rigueur nowadays when it comes to recorded sound. The question to ask is: what are we trying to achieve with recorded sound? Are we just evoking a space? As a listener I don’t really want to be transported to an empty concert hall. And it is important to engage the imagination of the listener – does the recorded sound allow that to happen? It feels to me that the mind is better at filling in some ‘gaps’ in audio information than subtracting it in the case of unrealistic, excessive amounts of resolution and detail.”

 

The sound quality is quite satisfying. The first noticeable quality is that there seems to be just the right amount of distance between the microphones/our ears and the piano. This is not one of those piano recordings where we hear every little click of the keys or creak of the piano bench. On the other hand, it is also not one of those recordings with an abundance of ambient background room or hall sound. At the same time, the sound is full-bodied and dynamic, sounding very much like a piano. 

 

Later in this same article, Pienaar goes on to comment about the music, using a term that I found surprising: “The combination of elements in Haydn’s music strikes me, perhaps more than anything, as rather mysterious. There is something one can’t quite put one’s finger on which makes it beautiful in a special way – very different from the totally disarming sensuality and emotion of Mozart.” It’s the word “mysterious” that caught me off-guard, for it is not the word that I would think of to describe this music, which sounds to my ears as something of a mixture of Bach and Mozart, but leaning more to the latter than the former. But I am not a pianist, nor a musician. I have no adequate words to describe Haydn’s keyboard music, other than to say I find it spirited and enjoyable. Pienaar is certainly WAY more qualified than I to describe this music; upon reflection, I find his use of the term “mysterious” stimulating and delightful.

 

Those same terms – “stimulating” and “delightful” – are also apt descriptions of this boxed set as a whole. There is much delight to be discovered in the piano music of Haydn, and this set offers the music lover a way to sit back and dig in. Whether one might want to methodically work their way through the whole set from start to finish or instead randomly listen to a few selections here and there while perusing the CD booklet for background information, this release offers those opportunities in a package of excellent quality. 

 

The Complete Beethoven Piano Concertos. (CD1) Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15; No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 19; (CD2) No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37; No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58; (CD3) No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 58; Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43. Garrick Ohlsson, piano; Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra; Sir Donald Runnicles, conductor. Reference Recordings FR-751SACD

 

I must preface this review by shamefacedly admitting that it is inexcusably late in seeing the light of day. Poor Garrick Ohlsson, Sir Donald Runnicles, and the entire Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra (or, more precisely, this particular copy of their Beethoven concertos recording) somehow managed to disappear in my listening room for a period of many months, cleverly evading my determined search. Happily enough, though, I finally came upon it – pretty much by accident, of course – and am finally able to pass along the recommendation that I should by all rights have passed along many months ago. In the CD booklet, pianist Garrick Ohlsson (b. 1948) remarks that over the course of his long career he has performed each of the Beethoven concertos more than 100 times and that he was excited to have the opportunity to collaborate with Sir Donald Runnicles to record these works over the span of a week of concert performances in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The CD booklet includes an essay by producer Vic Muenzer in which he goes into a fair amount of detail about the recording process in some detail.

 

The end result is set of Beethoven concertos that is warm and comfortable both in sound and performance. This is not the lean and swift sort of Beethoven playing that we have come to hear more often owing to the many “historically informed performance” and/or “original instruments” Beethoven recordings in the marketplace. Ohlsson’s playing on his Steinway sounds rich and expressive, and the sound quality is on the warm and full side. It just all sounds, well, comfortable – and quite enjoyable for all that. My favorite sets of Beethoven piano concertos have been Fleisher/Szell/Cleveland and Bronfman/Zinman/Tonhalle Zurich. This new release from Reference Recordings supplants neither of those, but it is still worthy of consideration by those looking for an entertaining and rewarding set of the Beethoven piano concertos. It's a first-class set both musically and sonically.

The Muse (Piano Music by Brahms)

by Bill Heck

Brahms: Händel Variations & Fugue op. 24; Rhapsodies Op. 79; Intermezzi Op. 117; Clara Schumann: Three Romanzes, Op. 21 (No 1). Challenge Classics CC 72970

Long-time readers may recall that I favorably reviewed an earlier album of Schumann works played by the Georgian pianist Nino Gvetadze (see review here). In the current album, Gvetadze takes on a set of works by Brahms, along with an "epilogue" piece by Clara Schumann.

First – and I am summarizing from the interesting liner notes in what follows – the works presented here are in some sense inspired by two muses: Clara Schumann and Elisabet von Herzogenberg. We don’t have space here to repeat – or even start – the topic of Johannes’s complex relationship with Clara (wife of Brahms champion and friend Robert Schumann and virtuoso pianist in her own right), but there can be little doubt of the depth of his feelings and his respect for her. Brahms presented the Handel Variations to her for her 42^nd birthday in 1861; she premiered the work later that year.

In turn, the Rhapsodies were dedicated in 1879 to Elisabet. At the least, he was fond of her; the nature and depth of that fondness is difficult to assess from our distance across time, but we know at least that he corresponded with her for years.

And perhaps both of these women were more indirectly muses later in Brahms’s life. By the time of the Interezzi of Op 117, Brahms wrote of “sorrows”: among other things, Elisabet had died and Brahms was aging, perhaps looking back on “almost” romantic interests that had not come to fruition.

Finally, we return to Clara Schumann. Was Brahms her muse? Her Romances were composed at a difficult time of her life, while her husband Robert was in mental decline just before his attempted suicide and subsequent institutionalization. These are lovely works, if melancholy; Clara was not in the same compositional league as Brahms, but Gvetadze makes a good case for them.

Rather than focus on individual works here, let’s talk about Gvetadze’s playing throughout this album. For one thing, it is marked by more rhythmic freedom than is sometimes given to compositions by Brahms. I admit that, on first hearing, I thought that it was a little too free at a few points, but repeated hearings have changed my mind. Brahms, after all, was a great composer of leider and, despite his break with the hyper-romanticism of Liszt and Wagner, he was perhaps the artist who most successfully joined the classical tradition with romanticism. In this light, I hear Gvetadze’s accents and dynamic shifts as the singing lines that Brahms gave to the piano. (And don’t forget that Brahms’s first instrument was the piano.) Moreover, in the Handel Variations, Gvetadze seems to create a different mood for each variation – by turn introspective, joyous, extroverted, quiet – you get the idea. Certainly, this is not the only legitimate style for Brahmsians, but it does make for lovely and engaging playing. Another characteristic is careful attention to dynamic balances, with seemingly each note judged and allocated its proper emphasis in the whole, and not just between the lines being played by two hands but individual note by note. Here’s just one example that caught my ear: in the final Fugue movement of the Handel Variations, at about 38 seconds, the right hand is repeating a single note, but so subtly that it only dawns on consciousness slowly and to good effect.

Then there’s the pianist’s secret weapon: the recording team from Challenge Classics who capture every nuance of the tones that she produces from her Steinway instrument. The sonic image is relatively close but coherent: no ten-feet-wide keyboards here. Moreover, the full range is present, the lower registers with incredible weight; just listen to the resonances in the solemn low notes at the beginning of the second Rhapsody. (It helps if you have speakers with real dynamic capability.) Gvetadze’s fine control of dynamics, which I mentioned as one of her expressive strengths, comes through unscathed.

Is the sonic presentation such a big deal? Well, I think it is. Compare, for example, Radu Lupu’s playing in the Rhapsodies. There’s no doubt that the playing is awesome (in the full sense of that overused word). But the recorded sound is, by today’s standards, tubby and overly reverberant, detracting from the sheer enjoyment of listening. (I wonder if Lupus’s great Brahms recording might one day be remastered?) That’s a somewhat extreme example, but it’s just easier and downright more fun to listen to the newer recording.

In the end, there are oodles of choices for all of these works, save perhaps the Clara Schumann one; judging as if there is some competition among the better ones seems pointless. (This despite a widespread cultural attitude saying that we must rank order everything and declare a winner!) But Gvetadze’s account joins the ranks of worthy entries that cast light on some wonderful, timeless music.

Recent Releases No. 69 (CD Reviews)

by Karl Nehring

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 19 and 25 (orchestra parts transcribed for string quartet and double bass by Ignaz Lachner). Alon Goldstein, piano; Fine Arts Quartet (Ralph Evans, violin I; Efim Boico, violin II; Gil Sharon, viola; Niklas Schmidt, cello); Lizzie Burns, double bass. Naxos 8.574477

Pianist Alon Goldstein remarks of these two particular pieces that they are his personal favorites from among all of Mozart’s piano concertos, then goes on to explain about the arrangements in which they appear on this recording: “Rearrangement of music was very common in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The composer and conductor Ignaz Lachner rearranged 19 Mozart concertos, including the two featured on this recording for piano and string quartet with double bass, most likely for the simple pleasure of domestic use m—having the opportunity to play these beloved works without the need of a full orchestra.” Surely the vast majority of those reading this review are much more likely to be playing this music in their homes through loudspeakers rather than by assembling a group of their chamber music friends to perform it themselves on the appropriate instruments. Those who do listen to this release either by CD (which is how I auditioned it) or through streaming will be rewarded by some richly melodic music abounding in expression, energy, and emotion. What started out as a piano concerto reduces well to a chamber work. Goldstein’s piano part carrying over unchanged. If anything, the work becomes more intimate, more intense, if not quite so rich in color and texture. For those who love the Mozart piano concertos – and I doubt there are many classical music lovers who do not – this recording will not only prove rewarding in its own right, but it will complement and enhance other recordings of these concertos. Highly recommended.

 

Mozart’s Jazz Requiem: The Queen’s Cartoonists (Joel Pierson, piano, arrangements;

Rossen Nedelchev, drums; Mark Phillips, clarinet, alto sax, flute, soprano sax; Greg Hammontree, trumpet, trombone; Drew Pitcher, tenor sax, bass clarinet; Steve Whipple, bass); Special Guests – Jon Singer, xylophone, marimba;; Samantha Lake, tuba (3, 6); Jen Wharton, bass trombone; Tatum Greenblatt, trumpet; Wayne Tucker, trumpet. 7 Train Records (digital release)

 

Well, there are arrangements and then there are arrangements. Ignaz Lachner’s arrangements of Mozart’s piano concertos, for example, kept the piano part intact but reduced the wind and string parts down so they could be played by a small ensemble such as string quartet augmented by a double bass. But what we have here is something completely different. Joel Pierson’s arrangement of Mozart’s unfinished Requiem into Mozart’s Jazz Requiem is meant not as a meticulous downsizing of the score for performing by smaller forces, as was Lachner’s; rather,  it is meant as a kind of jazz tribute to what the musicians of the Queen’s Cartoonist’s esteem as one of the greatest pieces ever written. The entire piece has been re-composed in a boisterous jazz style. Using Mozart’s renowned sense of humor as their guide, the band presents a wildly original take on Vienna’s greatest export. The record is being released as a visual album, with the tracks synchronized to old cartoons, which will be screened at performances of the work. It’s wildly irreverent, enthusiastically energetic – not exactly the characteristics we normally associate with a requiem, n’cest-pas? Obviously, to enjoy this piece, you have to be willing to enter into the spirit of the thing. Some listeners will find this sort of thing sacrilege, others will find it good-natured fun and admire the skill and enthusiasm that the Queen’s Cartoonists bring to their project. For a taste of what they are up to, you can check out this video. Have fun! 

Peter Jonatan: Psalms Symphony (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring

Jasper Soffers, piano; Aram Kersbergen, bass; Martijn Vink, drums; Metropole Orkest conducted by Jukka Lisakkila; Netherlands Radio Choir conducted by Benjamin Goodson. CD available here, also available on streaming platforms

The Jakarta-born, Boston-based composer and pianist Peter Jonatan, has long been drawn to hybrid forms of jazz and classical music, and the Metropole Orchestra is considered by many in the industry to be the gold standard for performing such music. Vince Mendoza, its former director, was a major artistic influence on Jonatan – you can read our review of a Mendoza release here. This new composition takes as its subject matter four chapters from the Bible’s Book of Psalms, which Jonatan chose for their expressive and musical potential. Broadly speaking, the work’s four movements follow standard symphonic form: I. “God, the Magnificent King” (Psalm 29) - a big opening theme and variations; II. “God, the Merciful” (Psalm 136) - an adagio; III. “God, the Protector” (Psalm 121) - a scherzo; IV. “God, the Savior and Holy Judge” (Psalm 96) – finale, with full choir and soloists. 

 

“Each movement describes God’s character as portrayed by the Psalmist,” says Jonatan. “There is a singular recurring motive, depicting God, appearing in different variations throughout all four movements. Stylistically, the symphony merges classical and jazz with influences from different genres such as gospel, film and video game scores. These are all musical styles that have shaped me as a composer.” The jazz element is strong, with the trio of pianist Jasper Soffers, bassist Aram Kersbergen and drummer Martijn Vink functioning as a band within the larger forces – improvising, but also holding down parts of the written orchestration. The Metropole Orchestra sounds more like a large dance band (“big band”) with strings than a symphony orchestra. In addition, the recorded sound tends toward the bright and forward, which emphasizes the brassy, jazzy aspects of the score. 

It is the very variety of musical influences and styles of which Jonatan testifies that serves as both the strength and a weakness of the music. It’s not quite classical, not quite jazz, but not so much a blend as a conglomeration. That is not to say it is not an interesting and entertaining composition, for it has more than its fair share of musical highlights. It’s a fascinating piece; not for everyone, but something that there are many – myself included – can enjoy for its energy and originality. For a quick preview of the Psalms Symphony, you can check out this brief video.