Phantasmagoria (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross

Liszt: Sonata in B Minor; Cantique d’amour; Réminiscences de Don Juan. Lise de la Salle, piano. Naïve V8602

Lise de la Salle plays piano with such passion and earnestness that I feel bad giving her less than a glowing review here. But alas, it must be so. To pull off a successful Liszt Sonata, one needs more than simply these two attributes; among other considerations, full ranges of technique and sound are required if the music’s steep challenges are to be successfully met. While I am generally satisfied with de la Salle’s technique (despite the occasional muddy passage), I am much less impressed with her sound. She spends most of her time inhabiting one of two places dynamically: an unassuming sort of piano and a rather shrill forte. Too fleetingly do we experience any sort of middle range. More seriously, de la Salle has a very limited color palette. The quieter, tenderer areas of the Sonata are all too much alike, as are the thundering virtuosic passages. A great pianist can craft each of these areas into the singular experiences that they are supposed to be, making the whole work a microcosm of a lifetime’s worth of growth, thought, experience, and feeling. But de la Salle is unable to differentiate her sound enough to come even close to this. And so, while there are plenty of lovely and exciting moments on the surface (her earnestness shining through), the whole journey amounts to much less than it ought to be by the time it is finished. Jennifer Lesieur writes in the liner notes that the Sonata “glows with a special light in the Romantic repertoire.” I wish I could say the same for this performance in the recording catalogue.

Something similar could be said for “Cantique d’amour” from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. Here de la Salle has the right moods for the piece, but her sound is not silky or otherwise imaginative enough to make it a distinguished performance. Much more successful is her take on Réminiscences de Don Juan. True, the deficits just identified in the other two works don’t suddenly resolve here. But they don’t matter as much either. Maybe more than anything, de la Salle enjoys a good pianistic romp, and that’s exactly what a fun operatic fantasy allows her to do without harm. It’s a thrilling performance that makes me smile. Alone among the material recorded here, it’s something I’m excited to revisit.

It sounds insulting to say that my impression of de la Salle is of a pianist who has plenty of flair and rather less musical depth. But I don’t mean it that way. Not everyone can play like Martha Argerich or Krystian Zimerman. There’s a definite place for pianists like de la Salle, who may be best at showpieces, even quality showpieces like Réminiscences. Sometimes I don’t want “deep”; I just want a pianist to put a sloppy grin on my face with over-the-top album titles like Phantasmagoria and barnstorming performances of lighter fare. Liszt himself would probably agree.

On the other hand, wonderful Réminiscences aren’t difficult to find. And if that is the primary reason to purchase this recording, I can’t quite muster a recommendation for casual listeners. If you want one Liszt Sonata in your collection, this certainly shouldn’t be it. Even if you want a dozen or so great ones, de la Salle’s is far from making the cut. But if you’re a Lisztian or a collector of Sonata in B Minor performances, or both, go ahead and purchase this disc. Just don’t be surprised if you find yourself listening to the other works on it more often.

Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring 

Park Avenue Chamber Symphony; David Bernard, conductor. Recursive Classics RC3691873

To be honest, when I first received this CD for review, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. To be sure, the Mahler Ninth is one of my most treasured pieces of music, a symphony that moves me both emotionally and intellectually, one that I have listened to – and owned – many recordings of over the past 50 or so years. It’s not a work that I can just casually pop on and listen to dispassionately for the purposes of taking some notes and writing up a review. That’s one issue. Then there was, I will shamefacedly admit, some “David Bernard/Park Avenue Chamber Symphony” skepticism on my part, which was basically two-fold. First, could a small ensemble like this really pull off a Mahler symphony? Second, with excellent recordings already on the market from the likes of Karajan/Berlin, Abbado/Lucerne, Haitink/Concertgebouw, etc., how could this release be expected to be truly competitive? 

But as my colleagues here at Classical Candor have found when they have reviewed recordings by Maestro Bernard and his Park Avenue musicians, this is no lightweight ensemble. Bill Heck found that they did an impressive job with the final three Tchaikovsky symphonies (a review you can find here); even more relevant to the present release, John Puccio found their earlier Mahler 5 recording to be quite competitive (you can find that review here). As a matter of fact, the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony comprises nearly 90 musicians, a respectable size for a modern symphony orchestra. So why the name “Chamber Symphony?” Music Director Bernard explains that the name is intended to convey the idea of the transparency of sound that he strives for with the orchestra.

 

That transparency of sound is an outstanding feature of this release, in terms of both performance and engineering. The opening movement, for example, moves right along, although it never seems rushed. It has texture – the sound is not dominated by strings; moreover, the tempo is steady, with no sensation of a drag to pull at our heartstrings. It just sounds natural and unaffected. And so with the second movement, which dances, as it should, and an especially lively and energetic Rondo-Burleske third movement – in both these inner movements, the liveliness of both the performance and the recorded sound bring a sense of delight that belie the reputation this work sometimes gets as a morbid, gloomy work. The closing Adagio, the longest of the four movements (25:05 in this performance), is of course more serious in tone, but even here, the interpretation never goes over the top into the maudlin. 

In his liner note essay included in the CD booklet, noted music critic David Patrick Stearns discusses the extra-musical mythos that has become associated with this work owing to the influence of the man who did so much to popularize Mahler’s music in America, the late conductor Leonard Bernstein, who famously characterized – and later went on to conduct  -- the four movements of the Ninth Symphony as “Four Ways to Say Goodbye.” Stearns argues for a different way of looking at the work, taking into account Mahler’s deep regard for the music of Bach and close relationship with Richard Strauss; in fact, Stearns offers an alternative characterization of the Ninth as “Four Ways to Write a Tone Poem.” (By the way, the program notes for the digital version of this release are more extensive than the CD version, including an essay by Maestro Bernard and information about the orchestra.) All in all, this new release offers a fresh new way of enjoying the Mahler Ninth that should be of great interest to serious Mahlerites. Highly recommended!

Sibelius Orchestral Works (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross

Symphony No. 5, Op. 82; Two Serenades, Op. 69; Two Serious Melodies, Op. 77; Suite from Swanwhite, Op. 54. Christian Tetzlaff, violinist; Nicholas Collon, conductor; Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Ondine ODE 1468-2

Antti Häyrynen’s liner notes describe the overall mood of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony as “lucid, diatonic.” Whether or not one fully agrees, his remark is at least a very good clue to this new performance. On one level it is easy to admire the precision and clarity achieved by Nicholas Collin and the FRSO, particularly compared to other recent interpretations that I won’t mention here. There is definitely some “snap” to this Sibelius 5, with particularly exciting stretches at the end of the first movement and the famous beginning of the finale. (The former made me want to cheer during my first listen-through!) 

And yet, good as it undeniably is, there is something missing. Just what that something may be is not easy to explain past a certain point. I guess I’ll come at this from another side and confess that I have been reading (and re-reading) a great deal of musicological literature on Sibelius and his music during the past year or more. Much of this literature presents the academic view that Sibelius, far from being merely a nationalist curiosity, was as good at creating integrated musical structures as anyone, and deserves more credit for doing so. Put another way, a certain kind of scholar always seems to be looking for ways to emphasize Sibelius’s formalist credentials. Labels such as “classical” and even “modernist” are frequently wielded in such discourse. 

Why do I mention this, and what does it have to do with the present recording? I’ll be blunt: I think Collon and the FRSO undersell Sibelius’s Romantic spirit, much like the music scholars who tend to downplay it in the Finnish Master’s later works. I don’t think Sibelius ever lost his strong Romantic sensibility, even in his most concentrated formal experiments. I’m reminded of a remark he made about his Sixth Symphony: “You may analyze it and explain it theoretically. You may find that there are several interesting things going on. But most people forget that it is, after all, a poem.” What I’m missing in this Fifth, then, is more feeling for the poetic. I can hear everything in a wonderfully clear way, and I am more aware of the moving parts than in most other performances. But in terms of the work’s famous grandeur, I’m often a touch (or more) underwhelmed. 

One of the ways in which this is most tangible lies with the execution of ostinati and other repeated-figure passages. Again, these are wonderfully transparent and precise, but perhaps to the degree of sounding mechanical at times. The problem is even more noticeable in the Swanwhite Suite, one of Sibelius’s most magical scores. Collon and Company perform the opening number (“The Peacock”) very slowly, and with the repeated string figures sounding too “chugga chugga”-like (if my readers will forgive the crude descriptor). The other movements fare a bit better, but I am still missing a sense of fantasy and fairy tale, especially in “The Harp.” While I consider the Fifth Symphony performance here to be good despite my misgivings, I suggest with some sense of urgency that newcomers opt for a more ideal Swanwhite Suite. They might start with the old standby of Järvi and the Gothenburg Symphony (BIS CD-359). 

 The best-rendered items on this recording are for me easily the Two Serenades and Two Serious Melodies, offered up with solo violinist Christian Tetzlaff. Here Collon and Co.’s predilection for lucidity as an aesthetic virtue meshes well with Tetzlaff’s gentle expressiveness. This is an ideal combination that stands up well against any of the competition I have heard. In sum, we have a very good Fifth Symphony (even if it isn’t quite my ideal Fifth), excellent miniatures, and a Swanwhite Suite I feel is bettered elsewhere. Worth buying? On balance, yes.

Andrés Segovia Archive: Grand Finale

by Bill Heck

Alexandre Tansman: Cavatina; Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Sonata; Hans Haug: Alba; Joan Manén: Fantasia-Sonata; Federico Mompou: Suite Compostelana. Roberto Moronn Pérez, guitar. Reference Recordings Fresh FR-759

This is the fourth and apparently final album in a series in which each album contains works by various composers commissioned by or dedicated to Andrés Segovia. JJP reviewed the second and third albums in the series.

The first three albums in the series featured works found in Segovia’s collected papers but, as far as we know, never recorded by him; this album features works that Segovia did record. The performances here, though, follow the original manuscripts from the composers minus any changes that Segovia might have made for performance.

It’s also worth noting that while the compositions are all from the 20th century, they remain within the tonal tradition, perhaps best characterized as post-romantic; nothing atonal or twelve-tone here.

It seems only fair to prospective listeners to start with a warning: the fact that Segovia recorded a work does not mean that said performance is always easy to find or even available. His recording career stretched from 1949 to 1977; since then, his recordings have been package, repackaged, and re-repackaged. Moreover, the original releases mostly were recitals rather than being focused on any particular composer (excluding albums dedicated to transcriptions of works by J S Bach), so the combinatorial possibilities seem endless. I mention all this because I wanted to find performances by Segovia for comparative purposes; I succeeded for most by using Qobuz, but readers with similar ambitions should not be discouraged if they are unable to do so. In any case, the major story here is that the performances by Perez stand very nicely on their own. I concur with JJP in his assessment of Perez’s playing: “… he plays with flair but also with nuance and subtlety.“

Andres Segovia (1962)

So let's take it piece by piece. Tasman’s mostly introspective Cavatina, a five-movement work said to “…evoke the mystery of the Italian city…“ of Venice; the musical language might fittingly be described as baroque but with some modern harmonic twists. The performance by Segovia that I found shows two significant differences as compared to the one by Perez. First, and I hesitate to sound critical of the great Segovia, but I think he can sound a bit perfunctory here. Perez, on the other hand, lavishes attention on each note and each phrase. This shows up in the timings of the movements, where Perez takes a little more time for each. (Of course, one person’s perfunctory is another person’s lively, so your taste may not match mine.) A more “objective” difference is in the recording itself: Segovia’s guitar is very close miced indeed, occasionally giving the impression that one’s head is stuck inside the sound box while also making finger noises prominent. The superb Reference Recordings approach pulls the microphones back for a more natural sound, more like what one would hear at any reasonable distance, and nearly free of distracting finger noises. I don’t mean that the Segovia recording is unlistenable, far from that, but the sound can be distracting.

In the case of the second work on the album, Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Sonata, I simply was unable to find Segovia‘s complete recording anywhere, although I did find one movement, the Allegro, within a couple of collections. Even for the single movement, there’s quite a contrast in terms of recording as compared to the previous work: the acoustic here is slightly muffled in a very reverberant environment. (Then again, you ought to hear the whole thing, not just one movement, so the point is moot.) No doubt a truly dedicated collector could turn up Segovia‘s complete recording, but with Perez’s excellent performance at hand, I wasn’t up for the effort.

After these two large works, Perez programs a much shorter piece, Haug’s Alba, that largely consists of series of chords meant to convey the rising of the morning sun. It is a quietly lovely five-minute “meditation“ that fits nicely between the larger works before and after. And here, compared to the Segovia recording that I found, there’s no contest: the sound on the old Segovia recording is just bad, and in any case I prefer Perez’s slower, more gentle approach to this music.

Manén’s Fantasia-Sonata combines four movements without pause, running over 17 minutes. The liner notes mention that the structure requires intense concentration from the performer, and concentration is required from the listener as well. Description here of such a varied work would make this review far too long, so I’ll skip to the performance and sound. I did find a recording by Segovia, which sounds distantly recorded in a very reverberant location, perhaps a cathedral. The performances by Segovia and Perez sound fairly similar, although there certainly are differences; as usual here, the closer, more focused acoustic of the newer recording is what catches the ear immediately.

The final work on the album, Mompou’s Suite Compostelana, is meant to represent six stages of a pilgrim’s journey to a shine. Written in 1962, it's certainly not radical but it does have a slightly more contemporary flavor than the earlier works here. Moreover, the relatively recent date of composition means that Segovia’s recording benefits from modern technology and thus is sonically far better than earlier ones: gone is the all-enveloping reverberation and we can truly hear his extraordinary ability to separate musical lines. It’s not all great: finger noises are a little more prominent than one would like, and there does seem to be some subtle pitch instability, which may not bother everyone as it is quite minor, presumably resulting from tape deterioration. Perez’s own performance, though, is hardly left in the shade and it's worth hearing both.

Now let’s put this all together. First, this is an absolute must-hear for true fans of classical guitar. For the rest of us, I want to emphasize that everything here is first-rate, interesting music played in a first-rate way. It is very much worth your time to give it a listen – and to go back and check out the previous three volumes in this series as well.

Recent Releases No. 75 (CD Reviews)

by Karl Nehring

Debussy: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune L87 (arr. David Walter); Violin Sonata in G minor L148; Sonata for flute, viola and harp L145; Cello Sonata in D minor L144; String Quartet in G minor L91. The Nash Ensemble. Hyperion CDA68463

 

Those classical music fans who are familiar with previous recordings by the venerable British chamber collective known as the Nash Ensemble have no doubt come to expect quality work from the group. The Nash is the resident Chamber Ensemble at London’s famous Wigmore Hall, where every year since 1979 it has presented a series devoted to exploring the many different nooks and crannies of the chamber music catalog. Current members of the Ensemble include Philippa Davies, flute; Gareth Hulse, oboe; Richard Hosford, clarinet; John McDougall, bassoon; Richard Watkins, horn; Benjamin Nabarro, violin; Jonathan Stone, violin; Lawrence Power, viola; Adrian Brendel, cello; Graham Mitchell, double bass; Lucy Wakeford, harp; and Richard Benjafield, percussion. Here, the British group presents French music and does so quite persuasively. This generously filled disc (77+ minutes) opens with a delightfully transparent arrangement – not too thin, not too thick – of Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune for the combination of string quintet, wind quintet, and crotales (small tuned cymbals). Although the remainder of the program might be of music that many fans of Debussy might already have in their collection, the quality of the performances, the quality of the engineering, the quality of the liner notes, and the particularly noteworthy version of Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune combine to make this highly recommendable release.

 

Knaifel: Chapter Eight. Canticum Canticorum for cathedral, choirs, and cello – 1. Stanza I-VII 2. Stanza VIII-XXII 3. Stanza XXIII-XXXII. Patrick Demenga, cello; State Choir Latvija; Riga Cathedral Boys Choir; Youth Choir Kamer; Andres Mustonen, conductor. ECM New Series 2637 485 9853

Alexander Knaifel (1943-2024) was born in 1943 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, but grew up in St Petersburg. He studied with Rostropovich and his relationship with him remained close until the great cellist’s death. He was born into a Jewish family, but was also attracted by the Orthodox church and Buddhism; he has spoken of seeking to convey something of the heart of faith by "speaking in a low voice, hoping to hear a voice within oneself.” Although some critics have found echoes of Arvo Pärt, John Tavener, and Henryck Górecki in Knaifel’s quest for beauty, he has a style that is entirely his own, with its own expressive power. Of his personal quest for beauty, Knaifel once observed: "The sounds are, for me, signs of the existence of beauty. Beauty is the most important thing for me – it is energy, unrepeatable.” There is abundant beauty to be found in Chapter Eight, but it is beauty of a subtle sort. Knaifel considered the acoustic environment in which the piece would be played – a cathedral – to be instrumental in producing the sound he envisioned. Although the listing in the header above of three choirs and a cello soloist might give the impression that this is going to be some sort of sonic spectacular, with soaring vocal soloists, complex contrapuntal choral lines, and virtuosic flights of fancy from the cello, the music is restrained, contemplative, yet powerful in its own way. Rostropovich said of Chapter Eight, “It is amazing with what a deep sense of beauty this composition for church, choruses, and cello is imbued.” The performance on this album was recorded in Lucerne’s Jesuitenkirche, built in the Baroque era, and long renowned for its exceptional acoustic properties. With that beautiful sound faithfully captured by the ECM engineering team, this is a release to be treasured.

 

Live Concert Report: Stanley Clarke

 

I recently attended a show featuring the legendary bassist Stanley Clarke (b. 1951), a virtuoso on both the electric and acoustic bass. Music fans of a certain age may recall that Clarke first gained exposure in the 1970s as the bass player with the jazz fusion group Return to Forever, which along with Clarke featured the late Chick Corea on keyboards, Al DiMeola on guitar, and Lenny White on drums. He has since gone on to make many recordings as a leader and has toured the world with many bands that he has assembled over the years. On this night in Cincinnati, in a venue where my son and I had purchased front-row center seats, the band Clarke led onto the stage included Cameron Graves, piano, synths; Emilio Modeste, saxophone; Evan Garr, violin; and Jeremiah Collier, drums.  Clarke opened the show on acoustic bass (amplified), after announcing to the crowd that he and his band were going to begin by“warming up.” They immediately launched into a high-energy fusion number, with Collier whacking the daylights out of his drumkit and Clarke laying down lightning fast and powerful riffs on his bass. And so it went through the evening, Clarke and Collier laying down the bottom (Clarke occasionally picking up the electric bass), with some flashy solos being traded among the violin, saxophone and keyboard. Collier on drums deserves special notice, for he was simply amazing – energetic, emphatic, but never overbearing. He and Clarke had an amazing musical rapport, driving the music along from the bottom up.

 

As the show ended, I screwed up my courage and shouted, “Hey Stanley!” to the man on the stage who stood no more than ten feet from me. To my surprise, he walked over to me, and I quickly told him I had seen him 50 years ago with Return to Forever in Salt Lake City. And that he was one of my musical heroes. He gave me a quick smile, stuck out his hand and gave me a firm handshake, then quickly turned away to exit the stage with his bandmates. I was thrilled! What makes this little episode strange is that while I was shaking the hand of one of my all-time hero bass players, I was wearing my Jack Casady t-shirt, Jack Casady being one of my all-time hero bass players (Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna). Stranger yet, in 1970, while dating the young woman who is now my wife, we attended a Jefferson Airplane concert at the old Salt Palace in Salt Lake City. Before the show, a few of the band members wandered over to the boundary of the seated area, and I was able to shake hands with my hero, Jack Casady. Like a giddy teenager, all I could think to say was, “I really dig your music.” Well, little did I dream that 55 years later I would be wearing a t-shirt with his likeness on it as I shook the hand of another of my bass player heroes. Life can be can take some strange and delightful turns...