Shchedrin: Carmen Suite (CD review)

Also, Concertos for Orchestra Nos. 1 & 2. Mikhail Pletnev, Russian National Orchestra. DG 289 471 136-2.

Rodion Shchedrin (b. 1932) mostly weathered the storms of Soviet musical repression in the Fifties and Sixties, only to find favor in the latter stages of the Communist regime and, of course, today hailed as one of Russia's leading composers. The Soviet government initially banned Shchedrin's 1967 Carmen Suite from on the grounds that it was "an insult to Bizet's masterpiece and for its sexual treatment of the character of Carmen."  Thanks to the intervention of Shchedrin's friend, Dmitri Shostakovich, it became accepted.

The Carmen Suite, in thirteen short movements, as you know owes its melodies and inspiration to Bizet, largely from the operas Carmen and La Jolie Fille de Perth and from Arlesienne. The big switch is that Shchedrin arranged the Suite for a small string orchestra, timpani, and four groups of percussion. The result is vibrant and rousing, jazzy in its way, yet intimate, too.

Conductor Mikhail Pletnev, members of the Russian National Orchestra, and the DG engineers manage to convey the piece in a clean, articulate, showstopping manner, with clean, vivid sound. The percussion, especially, ring out loud and clear. Although the sound is not quite in the demonstration class for absolute depth or transparency, it's close and should not displease the music lover or audiophile.

The two accompanying works, the Concertos Nos. 1 & 2, subtitled "Naughty Limericks" and "The Chimes," couldn't be more different from one another. "Naughty Limericks," 1963, is a purely orchestral version of a folk tune, which when sung with assorted lyrics could be highly biting and satiric. The music is playful and immediately enjoyable.

"The Chimes," 1968, on the other hand, is arranged for a huge percussion section featuring eighteen tubular bells, five "Russian" bells, and various sleighbells. Yet it's not what you might expect, instead sounding like typically modern, mid-to-late twentieth century experimental music. In this case, the booklet note tells us the percussion "forms the core of various layers of sound, which move across one another in part according to the chance rhythms of aleatory principles, and whose scalic material partly derives from Slavonic liturgical chant and partly from serial note-row procedures." It's the kind of stuff that delights composers and music critics and is generally ignored by the public. "The Chimes" does, at the very least, make a fascinating contrast to the rest of the more traditional music on the disc.

Adapted from a review the author originally published in the $ensible Sound magazine.

JJP

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto (CD review)

Also, Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1; Romance in F for viola and orchestra. Janine Jansen, violin; Riccardo Chailly, Gewandhausorchester. Decca B0007260-2.

It's hard to argue with success, especially when the successful person is a world-famous, attractive, virtuoso violinist like Janine Jansen. However, it's hard to tell just which of these qualities Decca is selling here, given that Ms. Jansen is featured seven times on the CD cover and in the booklet insert. Indeed, the sixteen-page booklet devotes nine of its pages to pictures of the artist, several of them two-page spreads. Well, you can't blame the company, I suppose. Selling classical albums is like selling anything else. Which in this case is some very well-played music.

Ms. Jansen approaches the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor in a traditional manner, with her dexterity and poetic touch well in evidence, the Concerto giving her ample opportunity to show her skills since it begins by introducing the violin from the outset. She says that for her it is not the familiar, grand opening movement or even the rousing finale but the slow second movement Andante that is at the heart of the work; so, naturally, it is here that she concentrates her efforts, bringing it off quite fluently and tenderly. Then after that moment of repose, she dazzles us with her brilliant technique in the closing Allegro.

She chose two accompanying pieces, one familiar, the other not. The familiar is Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1, a work that in many ways imitates, or at least pays tribute, to the Mendelssohn, and, as expected, Ms. Jansen brings it off well, too. But of more importance, perhaps, since most of us already have the Mendelssohn and Bruch Concertos in favorite performances, is her viola playing in the Bruch Romance. It is only about eight minutes long, but it is quite haunting.

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra is one of the oldest orchestras in the world, depending on how you measure such things, and it is the orchestra that premiered the Mendelssohn Concerto, so you could say the players have the music in their blood. The Decca engineers caught their relatively new chief conductor at the time, Riccardo Chailly, and the group in a live performance, although you would never guess it unless you read the fine print on the last page of the disc booklet. They miked the orchestra fairly close up, so you don't get any of that vague, distant, dullish sound that you do with many live recordings, with audience noises and applause at the end. Instead, you get what appears to be a good studio recording, with plenty of robust frequency range and dynamics coming from a dead-quite background, the applause apparently edited out. It's a good proposition all the way around.

Adapted from a review the author originally published in the $ensible Sound magazine.

JJP

Cimarosa: Overtures (CD review)

Alessandro Amoretti, Nicholaus Esterhazy Sinfonia. Naxos 8.570508.

This collection of Cimarosa overtures, recorded in 2000, was first released on the full-price Marco Polo label in 2002, and then the company made it available on their low-cost Naxos label. I suppose if you wait long enough, all things come to pass.

The Italian composer Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801) was among the most prolific and popular composers of the late eighteenth century, probably as popular as Haydn and more popular than Mozart. Life is sometimes unfair, but time has a way of making up for things. Mozart may have died penniless, but today it's obviously his music, not Cimarosa's, that most people prefer. And for good reason. Meanwhile, with the possible exception of his opera Il matrimonio segeteo, Cimarosa is relegated to the ranks of relative obscurity for many listeners.

Anyway, as an introduction to the kind of stuff Cimarosa was turning out, the Naxos collection contains twelve of the man's overtures. Frankly, I couldn't tell you which was which. I mean, you have to remember that these pieces were not meant to stand on their own and be played in succession. Cimarosa wrote them as curtain raisers. That isn't to say the music isn't often engaging and even delightful, only that there isn't a lot of variety to it.

Included on the disc are overtures from the operas Voldomireo; La baronessa Stramba; Le stravaganze del conte; his most long-lasting, the aforementioned Il matrimonio segreto ("The Secret Marriage"); and eight others. Conductor Alessandro Amoretti and the Nicolaus Esterhazy Sinfonia perform them with great vigor, the ensemble itself created especially by the Naxos organization to further their recordings of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century music.

The sound is clean and wide, with moderate depth. It is a pleasant, easy-listening sound of a kind that might be heard from a reasonably close distance in a medium-sized concert hall. It also has good body and vigorous dynamics. The collection might have been overpriced on the Marco Polo label, but it is certainly a strong consideration on this budget-conscious Naxos reissue. I just wish there was more variety to the music.

Adapted from a review the author originally published in the $ensible Sound magazine.

JJP