Changes at Classical Candor

By Karl Nehring

As we reach the end of an eventful 2022 and look forward to 2023, we want to recognize and congratulate our colleague and friend John Puccio, who is going into a long-anticipated and well-deserved “retirement.” Fear not, he is not stepping away entirely; instead, he plans to submit occasional reviews and surely will provide his wise counsel to the rest of us. Thank you, John, for bringing Classical Candor into being and nurturing it for all these years.

Also entering retirement is the Classical Music News of the Week feature. In this time when social media and search engines provide instant online access to news and schedules everywhere all the time, the News of the Week has largely outlived its usefulness. A huge “thank you” to John for putting it together over the years.

Jason Vieaux: Bach, Volume 2: Works for Violin (CD review)

by Karl Nehring

Partita No. 3 in E Major, BWV 1006 9 (Lute Suite No. 4); Sonata No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1005; Sonata No.1 in G minor, BWV 1001. Jason Vieaux, guitar. Azica Records ACD-71347

One of the first questions that springs to mind when encountering a Volume 2 of anything is, “what about Volume 1?” In the case of this new release from the American guitarist Jason Vieaux (b. 1973), you won’t have to wait long for the answer, for here is how he kicks off his liner note essay: “So, ‘Bach Volme 2'… this would indicate there was some kind of a ‘Volume 1,’ right?... some background is needed for anyone who cares to read about the genesis of this particular release. Indeed it’s been well over a decade since the 2009 issue of three lute works of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Bach Vol. 1, Works for Lute, was out on Azica. The idea Azica and I had back then was that there would eventually be a Volume 2, which would complete the ‘lute’ set by making a ‘violin’ record that included BWV 1006, which is both the 3^rd Violin Partita and the 4^th Lute Suite. Well, ‘eventually’ turned out to be about 13 years, 2 kids, 700 more gigs, and over 8 hours of commercial releases later.”

Although I did wonder a bit myself about Volume 1, having never encountered it, I was already familiar with Vieaux’s playing, having first discovered him on a CD he had released well before Bach Volume 1, his marvelous collection of music by jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, titled Images of Metheny (Azica ACD 71233). That recording from 2005 includes 13 Metheny compositions that Vieaux interprets on classical guitar, including five songs Vieaux arranged into the form of a baroque suite. It’s a real gem of a recording that should appeal to appeal to jazz and classical guitar fans alike, well worth tracking down. Years later, Metheny returned the compliment, dedicating a composition for solo classical guitar titled Four Paths of Light to Vieaux and inviting Vieaux to record it for inclusion on Metheny’s 2021 album Road to the Sun (reviewed here), an album that marked Metheny’s first foray into classical composition.

Jason Vieaux

But back to 2022 (if only briefly – I am writing this review on December 30!) and Volume 2, which, to put it briefly, is an unalloyed delight. It opens with the aforementioned BWV 1006, which served as both a violin partita and a lute suite. (As an aside, when I streamed the album in my car, it showed up on my touchscreen as “Lute Suite,” which brought back a memory from my grad school days, when while working a part-time job as a security guard at a firm that made support equipment for the computer industry, I became acquainted with a charming woman named Clara O’Dette who was in fact the mother of the internationally renowned lutenist Paul O’Dette – but I digress, and no, I never did get to meet Paul, alas.) The music has that infectious energy that Bach can so effortlessly conjure, and Vieaux’s playing communicates the spirit of it in spades. The Sonata No. 3 that follows opens with an Adagio that ushers in a shift in mood that calms the spirit. Vieaux is as effective in these slower passages as he is in the faster passages at maintaining a sense of movement and keeping the music moving with his nimble fingers. Likewise throughout Sonata No. 1, which is in a minor key and which has perhaps a slightly more wistful cast to it, Vieaux draws us deeply into the music. Bach was a true master of communicating so much depth of feeling through such seemingly simple means, while Vieaux is a true master of his chosen instrument of expression, the classical guitar. His playing is clean, straightforward, but powerful.

Unusually enough, I actually heard this recording through both my previous and current pair of loudspeakers. Most of my listening was done in my own system (for a more complete description, please see my brief biographical sketch below) to the CD through my new pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers, which I purchased in October, 2022. However, I was recently able to listen to a high-resolution streamed version of the album in the system of a friend to whom I had sold my previous pair of Focus SEs. The sound was great in both locations, but slightly more, uh, focused in my listening room, a function not so much of the newer speakers themselves but rather of speaker and seating placement. Not to worry, this is a well-engineered release that should delight lovers of Bach’s music, of whom I am more than confident that there plenty of you out there. Enjoy!

Schubert Transfiguration: Symphonies Nos. 8 & 9 (SACD review)

Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished”; Symphony No. 9 “The Great.” Jordi Savall, Le Concert des Nations. AliaVox AVSA9950

By John J. Puccio

The year 2022 must have been the year of Schubert, with at least three major sets of the composer’s Symphonies Nos. 8 and 9 appearing, one from Herbert Blomstedt and the Gewandhaus Orchestra (DG), another from Rene Jacobs and the B’Rock Orchestra (Pentatone), and this newest and best one of all from Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations (AliaVox). Such extraordinary attention couldn’t happen to a nicer composer.

Maestro Savall has been around for a long time, making beautiful music with several different period-instrument bands. He is very good at it, and his Concert des Nations is probably his best ensemble yet. They play with an ardent finesse, and Savall ensures that they follow historically informed performance practices as well as anyone. For me, the culmination of Savall’s work came with his recent release of the complete Beethoven symphonies, which taken as a set I found was as good as anything I’d ever heard. So it was with great anticipation that I awaited these new Schubert discs, and I was not disappointed.

OK, here are a few things you should already know about the symphonies. Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) began writing his Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 in 1822 but stopped after two movements. He left a scherzo nearly completed for piano, but with little orchestration. No one is sure why he quit the piece only halfway through, but they’re lovely movements and have given rise to the work’s being called Schubert’s “Unfinished.” Certainly, they are among the most melodic, lyrical, and tuneful movements in the classical repertoire, and maybe that’s good enough.

Maestro Savall is one of the few conductors of historically informed performances who seems to genuinely love the music he’s performing. Another such conductor is Nick McGegan, who seems positively to dance while on the podium. I’ve never seen Jordi Savall conduct live so I’m not sure about his dance steps, but I can only imagine his liveliness in front of an orchestra. He appears to communicate this enthusiasm to the orchestra, too, which plays with a crisp vigor, something not all of Savall’s ensembles have displayed in the past. Needless to say, the Eighth comes off with a splendid dynamism while maintaining Schubert’s endearing melodic lines. Moreover, there is never any sense that there is anything missing, that something more should come. Savall manages to make the “Unfinished” sound, well, finished.

Schubert wrote his Symphony No. 9 in D major “The Great” D 944 somewhere between 1825 and his death in 1828. However, he never heard it performed as he wrote it. Like most of his music, the Ninth never saw publication until well after the composer’s death. Schubert was unable to pay an orchestra to perform it, and the ones he did submit it to refused to play it, claiming it was too long and too difficult to undertake. (Robert Schumann would come to the symphony’s rescue some ten years after the composer’s death when Schubert’s brother Ferdinand gave him the manuscript, and Felix Mendelssohn would conduct the symphony for the first time with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1839.)

Whatever, the symphony’s structure is fairly conventional: I. Andante – Allegro ma non troppo - Piu mosso; II. Andante con moto; III. Scherzo Allegro vivace - Trio - Scherzo da capo; and IV. Allegro vivace. However, as I mentioned, its length was quite long by the standards of the day. Robert Schumann called it a “heavenly length,” yet early musicians found it challenging to play because of its extended string and woodwind parts.

Savall beefed up his Concert des Nations with additional young players from a l’ Academie Schubert to approximate the numbers the composer intended for these productions. They are especially welcome in the Ninth, helping to punctuate the “Great” in the work’s subtitle.

Schubert wrote that “my works are the fruit of my musical knowledge and my pain.” It is for this inward-looking quality of Schubert’s music that Savall calls his present set “Transfiguration.” He sees Schubert’s music as a major refashioning of Beethoven, a metamorphosis of sorts, based on Schubert’s reaction to his own ill health. Maybe. Savall certainly makes the most of the Ninth’s varying moods, from the symphony’s magisterial opening to the second movement’s almost jaunty funeral march to the work’s spirited, dance-like Scherzo and on to the vibrant, passionate, heartstruck finale.

I obviously can’t speak for every listener, but I can say without doubt that for me Savall’s renditions of Schubert’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonies are the best I have yet heard on period instruments and possibly the best I am likely to hear for some time.

Producer and engineer Manuel Mohino recorded the symphonies for hybrid SACD playback at A La Collegiale de Cardona, Catalogne, Spain in September 2021. AliaVox chose to make the discs in hybrid SACD multichannel and stereo, depending on the equipment used for playback. I listened in SACD two-channel stereo.

Like Savall’s Beethoven set, recorded in the same venue, the sound in the Schubert symphonies is smooth, spacious, wide-ranging, dynamic, well balanced, and well defined. It is, in fact, about as good as one could want. It is among the most-realistic sound you’ll find in this repertoire, so you really can’t do any better.