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.

Clara & Robert Schumann: Piano Concertos

by Bill Heck

Clara Wieck-Schumann: Piano Concerto 1 in A minor; Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor, Widmung. (Beatrice Rana, piano; Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Chamber Orchestra of Europe). Warner Classcs B0BLGH14M1.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin seems to be showing up in recordings everywhere these days, and this time he teams up with Beatrice Rana – or should I say that she teams up with him? – to produce an enjoyable disk featuring the piano concertos by what must be the most famous musical couple of the Romantic era, Clara and Robert Schumann. Robert’s piano concerto is well-known to modern audiences; Clara’s, actually written first, has been little-known. Recently, though, Clara’s music seems to be staging a mini-revival.  

Given the dates of composition, it is appropriate that Clara Schumann's concerto appears first on the disk. Considering her age when she composed it (14!), the work is remarkably sophisticated and mature, easily mistaken for the effort of a much older and more experienced composer. For those unfamiliar with the composition (and until very recently that included me and, I’m sure, many readers of Classical Candor), here’s a capsule summary:

The first movement begins with a flourish in the home key of A minor, a theme that is a bit foreboding, followed by both orchestral and pianistic flourishes. There's plenty of drama here, with quiet piano passages alternating with full-throated combinations of the solo instrument and the orchestra. One might even be reminded of an early Beethoven concerto, at least in general outline, if not in clear structural integrity. Toward the end of movement, the sun breaks through and a series of ascending lines take us to a major key.

Interestingly, Clara Schumann dares to tie the first movement directly to the second, a device that, although hardly unprecedented, must have seen quite daring its day, especially for a young, female composer. This second movement is a "romance", with a stretch of piano work that turns into a duet between piano and cello, with additional strings gradually adding harmony. By the way, the device of giving the melodic line in the slow movement to the cello shows up again in Brahms’s second piano concerto. Given the relationship between Brahms and the Schumanns, that seems more than coincidental -- just sayin'. In any case, as with the transition from the first to second movements, the second moves directly into the third.

The third movement, about the length of the first two put together, is more dramatic and initially restless, primarily staying in the minor key. Soon along comes a more joyful melody, which in turn gives way to solo passages in a more introspective mood. But restlessness moves us on, moving through several moods until, as we near the end, the piano gallops off with the orchestra coming along in full stride, ending back in the minor key again: another innovative move, as it was quite unusual at the time to end such a major showpiece work in a minor key.

The playing is both enthusiastic and more than competent: if hearing is believing, I’m certainly convinced that Rana truly enjoys playing this work. The recorded sound is very good: after several listens, I realized that the projected sound of the piano was a little too wide, but the Warner engineers had balanced the piano and orchestra so nicely that this was not bothersome.

Clara and Robert Schumann

Moving on to the next work, the coupling with Robert’s concerto is, at first glance, an obvious one. Both are in A minor, so they must be related, right? In fact, they are not particularly related, other than by key. Sure, there are a few passages that share some similarities, but in the main these are quite different works, and I needn’t go into details about Robert’s concerto, as it is a mainstay of the repertoire. Rana brings much the same energy and vitality to Robert's composition as we just heard in Clara’s; a few passages that struck me as slight missteps don’t detract from a first-rate effort. The story is much the same with the orchestra: intelligent phrasing, very good playing. I can summarize quickly by saying that the performance here is quite nice, as is the sound, although to my ears neither aspect is so spectacular as to displace any other favorites that you might have. I don’t mean to damn with faint praise; if you are looking for a very good performance of Robert Schumann’s concerto in modern sound, this will do nicely.

But, but….at this point, the astute reader may wonder about my attitude here. Well, I am a little disappointed. It’s not because there’s anything wrong with what we hear here. I just wish that we could have had more innovative (might I even say more daring?) programming.

As I mentioned earlier, Clara Schumann's compositions mostly languished in obscurity until recently. We can be glad that they now are played more often, as they truly deserve to be. We can be especially happy that the piano concerto has received such a fine recording as this one. However, I would be remiss if I did not point out that the concerto, although an amazing work for one of her age at the time of composition and signaling and extraordinary talent, still ends up being the work of youth. While it's certainly worth hearing, it only foreshadows some of Clara's more interesting later works. 

Sadly, Clara composed relatively little throughout her life: given the demands of caring for Robert through his increasing mental illness and eventual death, raising a passel of children, enduring a crushing travel and performance schedule, and (in her spare time, one supposes) dealing with a tricky relationship with Brahms, it’s a miracle that she found any time at all for composition. It seems that there were a couple of minor orchestral pieces that are now lost, and she did work on a second concerto that was never finished; so much for orchestral output.  But she managed to create several pieces of chamber music and even more for solo piano. So wouldn’t it have been nice if, on this disk, the concerto had been followed by a few of those latter piano compositions? I’m drooling (metaphorically anyway) at the thought of hearing Rana have a go at some of those.

Oh well, given the realities of marketing and contracts, perhaps a concerto/solo works program wasn’t feasible. And maybe Rana is already hard at work on another album of Clara Schumann’s compositions – or so we can hope!

By the way, there's a nicely-done video about the album and the Schumanns on the Warner Classics channel on YouTube, part of which is transcribed in the liner notes for the disk.

Piano Potpourri No. 9 (CD Mini-reviews)

by Karl Nehring

The Future Is Female: Vol. 2, The Dance. Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729): Suite No. 1 in D minor: 1, IV, V, VIII, VI (from Les Pièces de Clavecin) [1687]; Clara Schumann (1819-1896): Variations, Op. 20 [1853]; Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983): Partita [1957]; Zenobia Powell Perry (1908-2004): Rhapsody [1960]; Madeleine Dring (1923-1977): Colour Suite [1963]; Betsy Jolas (b. 1926): Tango Si [1984]; Elena Kats-Chernin (b. 1957): Peggy’s Rag [1996]; Meredith Monk (b. 1942): St. Petersburg Waltz [1997]; Gabriela Ortiz (b. 1964) Preludio y Estudio 3 [2011]; Theresa Wong (b. 1976): She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees [2019]. Sarah Cahill, piano. First Hand Records FHR 132

This is not just another piano recital recording, for Sarah Cahill is not just another pianist. Among other things, she is also a musical explorer, communicator, and advocate. Her radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8 pm in San Francisco. The program focuses on the relationships between classical music and new music, encompassing interviews with musicians and composers, historical performances, and recordings outside the mainstream. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 2018, she started working on her project, The Future is Female, which now encompasses more than 70 compositions. 

 “For decades I had been working with many living American composers,” Cahill explains, “including Pauline Oliveros, Tania León, Eve Beglarian, Mary D. Watkins, Julia Wolfe, Ursula Mamlok, Meredith Monk, Annea Lockwood, and many more, but felt an urgent need to explore neglected composers from the past, and from around the globe. Like most pianists, I grew up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of color. It is still standard practice to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men. The Future is Female, then, aims to be a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire. It does not attempt to be exhaustive, in any way, and the three albums in this series represent only a small fraction of the music by women which is waiting to be performed and heard. At some point I would love to record Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s complete Suite in D minor and Madeleine Dring’s complete Colour Suite, but my main objective in this project is to be inclusive rather than exhaustive.”

 

What we have here is the second volume in the series (Vol. 1: In Nature was released in March, 2022), and as you can see from the track listing above, Cahill presents the works of 10 composers in chronological order of their composition, spanning the years from 1687 all the way up to 2019. Somehow it seems that you can sense that the earliest selections, five movements from Jacquet de la Guerre’s Suite No. 1 in D from her Les Pièces de Clavecin was indeed written for an instrument different from our modern piano; it just has that feeling of music meant to be played on the clavichord or harpsichord – not that it sounds wrong on the piano, just that the style of the music gives away that it was written for such an instrument – which of course it originally was. In any event, it’s a danceable delight. As we come next upon the music of Clara Schumann, the more stately, formal style of dance is served well by the full, rich sound of the modern piano (Steinway Model D) captured so well by engineer Matt Carr. 

 

And so the program continues with diverse forms of dance such as the “deconstructed” tango of Tango Si by Betsy Jolas or the gently swinging Peggy’s Rag by Elena Kats-Chernin. The stylistic range of the program that Cahill has assembled makes for an interesting program, and the dance theme, even though not all of the pieces sound like the kind of music that is going to make you just want to just get right up and dance, is enough to keep things lively and interesting. The most recent compositions, those by Gabriela Ortiz (Preludio y Estudio) and Theresa Wong (She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees) give Cahill particular opportunity to fly her fingers nimbly over the keyboard and emphasize some expressive dynamic contrasts. In addition to her playing, Cahill also supplies the liner notes, which give biographical information about all of the composers. The Future is Female, Vol. 3 is scheduled for release later in 2023. 

 

Federico Mompou: Música callada (“Silent Music”): Book One [1959]; Book Two [1962]; Book Three [1962]; Book Four [1967]. Stephen Hough, piano. Hyperion CDA68362

 

In his fascinating collection of essays titled Rough Ideas (reviewed here), the British pianist Sir Stephen Hough wrote of the Spanish composer Federico Mompou (1893-1967): “The music of Federico Mompou is the music of evaporation. The printed page seems to have faded, as if the bar lines, time signatures, key signatures, and even the notes themselves have disappeared over a timeless number of years. There is no development of material, little counterpoint, no drama nor climaxes to speak of; and this simplicity of expression – elusive, evasive and shy – is strangely disarming. There is nowhere for the sophisticate to hide with Mompou. We are in a glasshouse, and the resulting transparency is unnerving, for it creates a reflection in which our face and soul can be seen.” Hough also observed that of his musical education, “I knew Mompou before I knew Mozart,” which perhaps give him something of a different perspective on the composer’s output.

Mompou declared that Música callada was meant as a spiritual piece with an aim “to reach the profound depths of our soul and the hidden domains of the vital force of our spirits. This music is silent as if heard from within.” The music seems to exist somewhere behind the notes, drifting in and out of focus, or as Hough puts it, it “evaporates.” That does not mean that there are actual silences; no, it is not there are no notes, but rather there are times when the notes linger but the music seems to disappear. There are wisps of melody, but they seem to come and go as though they were scattered about hither and yon by the breeze. Hough has a tender touch at the keyboard, at times lingering, but then at other times snapping things back into focus with some sharply struck notes – those too, though, destined soon to evaporate.

Another way that I might try to explain this music would be to ask you to imagine keyboard music something like that of Debussy – dreamy, impressionistic, soft-edged; however, in this keyboard music by Mompou, there is much less of the lushness of Debussy’s music. Many of the notes have been subtracted, so that the music that remains is more subtle, more spiritual, more transparent. My guess is that some listeners will find the lack of hummable melodies a minus, while, others will find themselves entranced by the unique musical atmosphere evoked by Mompou’s writing and Hough’s performance, which has been captured in full, rich sound by the Hyperion engineering team. The customary top-quality liner notes and cover art that we have come to expect from Hyperion are the frosting on the cake.

 

Bordeaux Concert. Keith Jarrett, piano. ECM 2740 B0036120-02 

 

The American pianist Keith Jarrett (b. 1945) is most widely known as a jazz pianist, but that is not the extent of his recorded legacy. On the jazz side, some of his notable recordings include Forest Flower wlth Charles Lloyd; his American Quartet albums with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Paul Motian; his European Quartet albums with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson, and Jon Christensen; his Standards Trio albums with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette; and his numerous solo piano albums, including one of the most famous solo piano albums of all time, his Köln Concert. On the classical side, he has recorded music by Bach, Bartok, Mozart, Harrison, Hovhaness, Pärt, Shostakovich, and others. it is an incredible recorded legacy. Surprisingly enough, however, although he was nominated a dozen times, he has never received a Grammy (although Köln Concert was named a Grammy Hall of Fame recording in 2011). Tragically enough, in 2018 he suffered the first of several strokes that have left him unable to play the piano. As a longtime Keith Jarrett fan, that leaves me heartbroken. Thank goodness we have so many recordings to enjoy the beauty he has created throughout his remarkable career.

Bordeaux Concert documents a solo performance, the last that Keith Jarrett would give in France, at the Auditorium de l'Opéra National de Bordeaux on July 6, 2016. For this concert, the entire program was improvised – no segue into any familiar melodies, even at the end as an encore, as Jarrett would sometimes do at his concerts. Given the worldwide popularity of Köln Concert for well more than four decades, there may be readers whose familiarity with that recording might lead them to expect a similar style of music from Jarrett this time around. However, it would not take long for them to realize that this concert is not going to be the same gospel= and blues-tinged mix. From the almost random-sounding bunch of notes that opens his performance, Jarrett’s improvisatory inspirations in Bordeaux lead him down largely atonal paths. That is not to say that the resulting music is harshly dissonant or otherwise harshly voiced; there are, even within some of the more abstract sounding movements (the performance is divided into 13 Parts, of which Part I is the longest at 12:45, while Part X is the shortest at 2:54), there are often passages in which Jarrett’s lyrical impulses can be discerned. Part IV is simply tender and gorgeous throughout. Longtime Jarrett fans will know that he must have been particularly inspired during this part of the concert because of the groans picked up by the microphones – a Jarrett trademark. Some listeners hate it, some don’t mind, much as is the case with recordings by another keyboard legend, the late Glenn Gould.

 

The sound of Jarrett’s piano is captured quite closely by the microphones, so you hear plenty of detail, a few little warts and all (Jarrett’s occasional moans, some occasional creaks and bumps, some strings in the piano that occasionally just don’t sound quite right when struck hard). You can put recording on, close your eyes, and imagine you are hovering right above the keyboard as Keith Jarrett somehow manages to find all of these notes in his mind and fingers and use the piano to send wave after wave of energy into the auditorium on that night in France as once again you find yourself taking a moment to pause and reflect upon the miracle of high-fidelity sound reproduction and the magic of musical imagination.