Recent Releases No. 63 (CD Reviews)

by Karl Nehring

Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (Reimagined by Chad Kelly). Rachel Podger, violin; Brecon Baroque (Huw Daniel, violin; Jane Rogers, Viola; Alexander Rolton; cello; Jan Spencer, violone; Katy Bircher, flute; Daniel Lanthier, oboe; Leo Duarte, oboe; Inga Klaucke, bassoon; Chad Kelly, harpsichord). Channel Classics CCS5A44923

Typically, when we are reviewing a new release of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, we are considering yet another recording by a pianist. Recently, for example, the exciting young Icelandic piano virtuoso has released a recording on DG (although we have been promised a CD for review, we have not yet received it; perhaps we will have to resort to streaming it.) Then follow the usual comparisons to the touchstone recordings by Gould, Perahia, et al. – plus perhaps some discussion of the relative merits of piano v. harpsichord performances of the work. Here, however, we have something completely different: a “reimagining” of the piece for a small Baroque ensemble. In the booklet included with the CD, harpsichordist and arranger Chad Kelly writes of Bach’s famous composition: “Through its immortalization on screen, in books, and through certain seminal recordings, listeners and performers alike can easily become detached from its deeply personal identity. Despite what many respected and respectful commentators have propagated, it is not a sacrosanct work of pure, absolute, and abstract art. Nor should it become merely a revered museum piece. It is with this mandate that this new arrangement and recording has been undertaken. The arrangement attempts to be idiomatic to the historical instruments used in its performance and to the individual styles and genres referenced in the work, whilst remaining true to the essence of the piece. At times it has required a liberal reading of the original text, prioritizing an authenticity to the to the instruments performing the music over the notes on the page.” 

 

Immediately with the opening aria it is evident that the phrasing of the familiar  melody just sounds different from that which we are accustomed to hear from keyboard performances, be they piano or harpsichord. As the variations unfold, the overall impression is that of a kind of blending of the Goldbergs with something akin to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Although that might sound as if I am making some sort of snide putdown, please believe me when I say that no, I am not intending to demean this arrangement. Truth be told, I find the music on this release to be quite delightful, even though it takes quite a few “liberal readings” of the original text. Hey, what the heck?! Whip me, beat me, call me a liberal – this interpretation is both lively and lovely. If you’d like to hear the Goldberg Variations in a whole new (old, actually – Baroque ensemble) light, this new release is well worth a listen. 

 

Purcell: Fantazias in three and four parts. John Holloway Ensemble (John Holloway, violin; Monika Baer, viola; Renate Steinmann, viola; Martin Zeller, violincello. ECM New Series 2249

 

The English composer Henry Purcell (1659-1695) is a composer that many reading this blog have most likely heard about as a figure in music history; however, I would venture a guess that the majority of music lovers have heard very little – if any – of the man’s music. On this new release from ECM, the British violinist and prominent figure in the early music movement has invited three colleagues to join him in presenting these 12 Fantazias. Holloway has great respect for Purcell, and in fact is willing to put this music in the same lofty category as that of Bach: “Only just out of his teens, Purcell already shows his extraordinary ability, shared by few composers of any other era, to walk the fine line between joy and sorrow, to beautifully express the melancholy which was such a characteristic mood of his times; and all this within the strictest self-imposed disciplines of complex counterpoint. Nowadays we regard J.S. Bach as the greatest of all contrapuntists. He would have been immensely proud to have composed this music, and had he encountered it, would certainly have acknowledged it as equal to his finest achievements in this art.” Listening to the four (or occasionally three) players weave their way through their parts, it is easy to conclude, as does Holloway, that this is some truly engrossing counterpoint that casts a spell in the same way that Bach’s music can do. For those who enjoy Baroque counterpoint, especially those who might be curious about the music of Purcell, this gloriously performed and engineered ECM release is certainly well worth seeking out.

Sigur Rós: Átta. Glóð; Blóðberg; Skel; Klettur; Mór; Andrá; Gold; Ylur; Fall; 8. Sigur Rós (Jón Dór Birgisson [“Jónsi”], guitar, vocals; Georg Holm, bass; Kjartan Sveinsson, keyboards, synthesizers); Strings performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra conducted by Robert Ames; Brass on Klettur and 8 performed by Brassgat í bala; Percussion on Glóð, Klettur, Gold, and 8 performed by Ólafur Björn Ólafsson. Additional violin on Klettur performed by Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttír. BMG 538920412

 

I was just about ready to write that although I have occasionally reviewed releases by jazz artists previously in Classical Candor, on the grounds that jazz can be reasonably thought of as a form of chamber music, I have not yet reviewed a release by a rock group – but then I suddenly remembered a couple of posts that I made that although technically may not have been reviews of releases by rock groups, were pretty darn close. The first was back in 2021 when I wrote about classical and jazz artists who covered the rock group Radiohead (see those reviews here), while the second was a brief discussion of a 2001 release by the rock group Low, which I included in an addendum (which you can read here) to my favorite releases of 2022. Now here I am in 2023 with a review of Átta (“Eight”), the new album (it’s their eighth full album, their first in 10 years) by the Icelandic rock group Sigur Rós. Lest you think I have gone completely off the rails in reviewing an album by a rock group in Classical Candor, allow me to make a couple of quick points. First, Sigur Rós is not really a typical rock band; their lyrics are often in an imaginary language, their musical lines are often extended and flowing, and they have experience playing with symphony orchestras, as in this concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Second, Átta, as you can see from the description above, is an album that features prominent contributions by Aclassical musicians.

The band’s vocalist Jónsi says of the album that they just wanted “to have minimal drums and for the music to be really sparse, floaty and beautiful.” The band self-produced album at Sundlaugin Studio, on the rural outskirts of Reykjavik, with the strings laid down at London’s iconic Abbey Road. Sveinsson agrees: “We wanted to allow ourselves to be a bit dramatic and go far with these arrangements. The world needs that right now. After COVID and everything, people just need something nice. It’s hard to describe, but for me everything is always open to interpretation. People can think and feel how they want.” Bassist Holm reflects, “I remember when I was a kid, I’d have this feeling of things being really big and really small at the same time. I like the idea that’s what this record is. There’s a 32-piece orchestra and loads of reverb, but at the same time some of the songs are just like a small dot. This record sounds like a Sigur Rós album, but it’s more introvert than before. It’s very expansive with this sound of strings, but it looks within more than outside.” 

In many ways, the music has a classical feel to it. Jónsi’s voice has an ethereal, otherworldly quality, enhanced here by the engineering – the “loads of reverb” give his vocals extra presence that blend well with the sound of the orchestra. Without meaningful words to draw listeners’ attention, what remains is the sound, the vocals becoming another instrument in the mix. Despite the number of musicians involved, the music comes across with a directness that makes for immediate emotional connection. Much closer to classical than rock, Átta is an album that the more adventurous among our readers might well want to give a listen.

Rachmaninoff: The Piano Concertos and Paganini Rhapsody (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross

Yuja Wang, piano; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Gustavo Dudamel, conductor. Deutsche Grammophon 486 4759 (2 CDs) 

It is a strange coincidence that as I have been listening to these Rachmaninoff discs, I just finished reading Samuel Lipman’s Music After Modernism (Basic Books, 1979). This book is a series of essays outlining the author’s thoughts about the Western classical tradition during what he saw as its twilight years. One of his arguments is that the lack of vital new repertoire adopted by performers in any enduring way sees them adding new interpretations of well-established favorites to an ever-growing backlog. One wonders what Lipman would have thought of the explosion of previously unrecorded repertoire and its champions from the 1980s up to the present, with the advent of the compact disc and then streaming. (Since he passed away in 1994, his experience of these developments would have been limited or non-existent.) But given the tone of his book, I have a feeling that Lipman would quickly point to the uninterrupted proliferation of standard repertoire recordings, and how relatively few of them measure up to the old favorites we perennially celebrate. 

 

This is what I kept thinking about as I took in these performances by Yuja Wang, Gustavo Dudamel, and a decidedly diminutive Los Angeles Philharmonic. Beyond the furtherance of careers involved, or perhaps special sympathies with the performers, on what basis can I recommend this product? Regretfully, the answer is “little.” Truthfully, most of that “little” goes to Wang’s piano technique. I agree with the buzz: she does fast and brilliant very well. Maybe too well. Because when I look for other reasons to praise her playing here, I struggle to find many. Even in the slower passages, where she ostensibly gets into the emotion and lyricism of the music, I often find that it feels like serving time until the next opportunity for technical brilliance. When one listens carefully to these passages, they harbor a certain metronomical core. It’s as if someone coached her on how to be expressive, and she’s imitating their example more than really exemplifying it. This is less of a problem in the more ostentatious works and moments; her First and ThirdConcerti are better than the rest. 

Her other performances here aren’t even really bad. It’s just that in such a saturated field, nothing quite measures up. When one can choose rapt, heartrending interpretations by Pennario, Richter, Horowitz, Ashkenazy, Graffman (her teacher!), and others (not to mention the composer’s own), why should one shell out full price for hers? Maybe she equals or outdoes most of them in terms of sheer technique, but if the tears, tenderness, colors, and beauty of this repertoire are important, the buyer has many better options.

 

Much as I am cool on Wang’s pianism beyond technique, she gets little help here from Dudamel and the LA Phil. I don’t know whether or not conductor and soloist made a prior agreement that the orchestra would go to great lengths not to upstage or obscure the piano, but its role in these performances is unacceptably meek. The problem is less severe in many of the tutti sections than it is in stretches when the orchestra accompanies the piano. Taking the Second Concerto as an example, the opening sounds particularly strange, with everyone but Wang trying hard to recede into the background. A thankfully present clarinet in the opening of the second movement bucks the trend before the orchestral muting resumes in the finale. 

The same issues trouble the Fourth Concerto’s quicker movements. But even where the tutti sections without piano are loud and clear, their special moments (notably in the climax of the Second Concerto’sFinale and the famous 18th variation of the Paganini Rhapsody) feel oddly routine. This is why I actually find Wang’s earlier recording of the Second Concerto with Claudio Abbado and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (DG 477 9308) to be the better choice. It’s more of the same Sonic-the-Hedgehog pianism, but at least we have a conductor who lets the orchestra play with suitable fullness. 

 Lest the reader think I am being too hard on Wang, I want to close with a constructive suggestion. I’ve seen her perform high-octane repertoire that requires edgy brilliance rather than lush Romantic sentiment, and I think she’s generally amazing with this music. Her Ligeti, Adams, and Kapustin, for example, are stunning. Moreover, these composers all prove that great (yes, great) piano compositions were still being composed in the closing decades of the twentieth century and beyond. If she were to concentrate even more on recording and championing them, so much the better. And, per Lipman’s prescription, the classical tradition itself would only gain health and longevity. 

Recent Releases No. 62 (CD Reviews)

by Karl Nehring 

Something that these three releases all have in common is they all boast audiophile-quality sound. Two of them, in fact, are from labels with audiophile credentials: Reference Recordings and Sono Luminus. The third is from Hyperion, a small label from the UK that although not necessarily known as an audiophile label, has produced some superbly engineered recordings. To be honest, recording technology and practices have come a long way over the past 50 years. Many labels almost routinely release recordings that would have been considered “audiophile-quality” back in the 1970s when the underground audio magazines started touting such things. That said, we sometimes come across recordings that just seem to have something special about their sound quality. Note also that these three are not the stereotypical audiophile spectaculars featuring booming bass drums or huge brass choirs; no, these are recordings of chamber music. Enjoy! 

Spanish Impressions. Enrique Fernandez Arbos: Trois Pièces originales dans le genre Espagnol (Three Spanish Dances), Op. 1; Joaquin Turina: Piano Trio No. 2 in B Minor, Op. 76; Gaspar Cassado: Piano Trio in C Major; Mariano Perello: Tres Impresiones para violin, violincello y piano. Hermitage Piano Trio (Ilya Kazantsev, piano; Sergey Antonov, cello; Misha Keylin, violin). Reference Recordings RR-151 

 

As the three musicians of the Hermitage Piano Trio remind us with their new recording of Spanish trios, it does not always take an orchestra of 100+ musicians playing a symphony by Mahler to generate musical excitement. Chamber music can be powerful, too, especially the richly expressive music of Spain. On this new release from Reference Recordings, the program includes music by composers both familiar and unfamiliar. As the album’s producers explain it, “For the last several years we have been exchanging scores, ideas and developing programs. The trio had been performing two extraordinary Spanish trios by Turina and Cassado—romantic, exotic and lush works. Using these two works as anchor points, we built around them “bookends”—three Spanish dances by Arbos and three Spanish impressions by Perello. All four composers are interconnected to one another through their relationships to each other. Arbos was a celebrated conductor who also orchestrated Albeniz’s Iberia and Perello was a violinist who studied with Albeniz and performed with Granados—both of these gentlemen had close ties to Turina (Arbos conducted many of his works) and Cassado (a celebrated cellist, and next to Casals, among the greatest cellists of Spain).” 

The album draws the listener in immediately from the opening measures of Arbos’s Three Spanish Dances, which are ripe with rhythmic zest. And thus it continues throughout the program – a musical voyage through the Spanish imagination, presented in remarkably realistic sound by the engineering team at Reference Recordings, led by the veteran audio wizard  Keith O. Johnson, a prominent figure in audiophile circles about whom you can learn more here. You can gain some more insight into Spanish Impressions by watching this brief YouTube video in which the musicians discuss the album. This is a recording that will bring a smile to your face and a spring to your step.

 

Mozart: (CD1) Piano Sonata in D Major K311; Piano Sonata in A Minor K310; Piano Sonata in C Major K330; Fantasia in C Minor K396 (completed by Maximilian Stadler); Fantasia in D Minor K397; (CD2) Piano Sonata in A Major K331; Piano Sonata in F Major K332; Piano Sonata in B Flat Major K333. Angela Hewitt, piano. Hyperion CDA6841/2

 

The Canadian-born pianist Angela Hewitt (b. 1958), who now resides in London, was the one of pianists whose album I included in my very first “Piano Potpourri” post, which you can see here. Immediately following the recording sessions for that album, Hewitt received the shocking news that the piano movers who had come to transport her $200,000 Fazioli piano with its custom-installed fourth pedal had somehow managed to drop the instrument, which turned out to be irreparably damaged. Hewitt had made recordings and even played some concerts in Europe with her beloved piano for 17 years, so this was a real blow. However, things have a way of working out; the mover’s insurers covered the replacement expense and Hewitt was eventually offered her choice of five new Fazioli concert grands, from which she chose her new best musical friend. Thus settled, Hewitt has undertaken a project to record the complete Mozart piano sonatas, to be released on three two-CD sets. The first of these sets, containing the first seven sonatas (K279-284 and K309), was released by Hyperion in November, 2022. This new Hyperion release marks the second installment of Hewitt's chronological survey. These works date from Mozart's twenties and include his first masterpieces in the genre (K331, with its famous 'Alla turca' finale, for example). 

 

These middle sonatas of Mozart are simply marvels of melody. Not too simple, not too complex – just right. Bill Heck and I recently talked about the piano music of Mozart, about how it so seamlessly integrates structure and melody. Hewitt’s playing brings out every little nuance, drawing the listener into the music. She has a delicate touch, making the music seem to flow naturally and inevitably from note to note, phrase to phrase, measure to measure. Hewitt has a reputation as a Bach specialist; perhaps her precision in mastering that music formed the basis for her mastery of the music of Mozart. Moreover, the beauty of her playing is highlighted by the recorded sound, which captures the sound of her Fazioli in rich, natural, lifelike tones. With CD1 clocking in at 80 minutes and CD2 at 75 plus informative notes about the music by the pianist herself, there is plenty to like about this production. There are plenty of excellent Mozart sonata recordings out there, several of which I have reviewed in the past, but I’ve never heard better than this one, which of course earns my highest recommendation.

Sonic Alchemy. Vasks: Balta Ainava (White Scenery); Pärt: Fratres; Mozart: Fantasia in D minor, K. 397; Pärt: Mozart-Adagio (after Sonata K. 280); Mozart: Fantasia in C minor, K. 475; Vasks: Castillo Interior (Interior Castle); Pärt: Spiegel im Spiegel. YuEun Kim, violin; Mina Gajić, piano; Coleman Itzkoff, cello. Sono Luminus DSL-92261

 

Pianist Mina Gajić says of this album that it was “inspired by the transformation and fluidity of life, represented by the seasons in nature, and in humankind in the way people connect through religion and spirituality.” In its own way, Sonic Alchemy is something of a spiritual album, but not in the way that a mass or other liturgically-oriented composition would be. The program is a fascinating one, spanning two centuries  to bring together the music of Mozart with that of two contemporary composers, Arvo Pärt and Pēteris Vasks. Icelandic composer Páll Ragnar Pálsson, who contributed the album’s liner notes, writes “Despite the roughly 200 years that separate Mozart from Vasks and Pärt, there are elements that connect them. Similarly to Pärt and Vasks who needed to find a way to deal with the oppressive rule of the Soviet Union, Mozart also made a well-known declaration of independence. He left the archbishop in Salzburg and the financial security that followed and embarked on a path of what we would call freelance composing today. Mozart, Pärt and Vasks all share a deep sense of clarity that crystalizes in music that comforts and elevates your spirit.” 

The program is centered around Mozart. The centerpiece is Pärt’s Mozart-Adagio (after Sonata K. 280), which is actually the only piece on the album in which all three players combine as a trio. It is framed on the program by the two Mozart Fantasias, played by pianist Mina Gajić, who is also featured on the opening track, the peaceful and reflective Balta Ainava (White Scenery). Gajić is joined by cellist  Coleman Itzkoff both for the second track, Pärt’s Fratres, and in a bit of symmetry, in the sixth (and next-to-last) track, Vasks’s Castillo Interior.  On the final track, Pärt’s simply constructed but nonetheless haunting Spiegel im Spiegel, Gajić is joined by violinist YuEun Kim.  Contributing to the deep beauty of the album is the purity of its sound, which was engineered by Daniel Shore and Erica Brenner at the Sono Luminus Studios in Boyce, Virginia, where it was mixed and mastered using Legacy Audio speakers (the same speakers Bill Heck and I use for reviews). Sonic Alchemy is a marvelous album of chamber music, an appealing blend of old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, impeccably performed and recorded.