Chopin: Mazurkas, Volume 1 (Streaming Review)

by Ryan Ross

Ingrid Fliter, piano. LINN CKD780 

 

I’ll lay some cards on the table: I like only small dashes of rubato in Chopin’s music, or indeed in any music. One reads various stories about what Chopin himself preferred, and about what others heard when they listened to him play the piano. The consensus seems to be that he did not stray, or at least did not advocate straying, too far from strict tempo in the bass while sometimes rhythmically altering the right-hand melody for expressive effect, particularly at the ends of phrases. So, while he was perhaps a touch more liberal about rubato compared to myself, I’m guessing he was decidedly more conservative than Ingrid Fliter is in this release. For what we have here is a love letter to rubato. And if you don’t love rubato as much as Fliter apparently does, you’re in for a bumpy ride.

Chopin may not have composed his mazurkas to be danced to, but they are dances nonetheless. Moreover, they are dances in triple meter with the signature rhythmic stress on the second and sometimes third beat after a dotted-rhythm opening beat. This distinctive profile can bear some rubato, but too much obscures its character and disrupts what should be a delicate balance. In my estimation, the best performers of Chopin’s mazurkas apply only a little rubato and instead rely on dynamic shading, tone color, and the intrinsically ethnic flavor of the music for optimal results. These pieces welcome a light interpretive touch; Fliter’s is anything but light. She rather capriciously applies rhythmic alteration at any given point, sometimes in consistent patterns but often not. So, for instance, while Fliter lingers on all of Op. 7, No. 1’s quarter-note B-flat trills for noticeably longer than written, she alters the triplet rhythm in the opening melodic phrase of Op. 7, No. 2 to sound like an inverted mordent while correctly playing other triplets throughout the piece. Or hear how the rubato applied at the beginning of Op. 24, No. 3 ruins the effect of dotted versus straight rhythms in the melody, because the straight rhythm gets comparatively rushed over and therefore obscured. Or listen to the performance of Op. 50, No. 1, where in the second section melody Fliter plays the eighth note/sixteenth rest/sixteenth note rhythm as written the first time, but on repeat plays it straight.

 

Sometimes Fliter fudges more than the rhythms, and not always clearly in service of rubato. Maybe the worst example comes in Op. 6, No. 1, where she repeats (rather than holds) the tied A pitches spanning the second and third full measures. On other occasions Fliter simply ignores dynamic markings. In the second section of Op. 6, No. 3, for instance, she plays the first measure at fortissimo but introduces the following pianissimo dynamic one measure sooner than written, completely altering the indicated effect. In Op. 6/1 (again), the written dynamics are not always followed in the middle section. In WN 14 (which is actually Op. 68, No. 2 but not indicated as such on the track) she under-observes the crescendo at the poco piu mosso, blowing a dynamic differentiation that we should hear properly.

My chief impression here is that Fliter is not much of a musical thinker. She relies on whims and feelings to guide her more than she does meticulous attention to detail. Actually, I think this approach is intentional. These performances sound like someone trying hard to eke out interpretive territory. But while she ostensibly wants to make this repertoire her own, it merely sounds labored and undisciplined in her hands.

 

Which is unfortunate. Because despite all this Fliter is clearly quite talented. Once in a while, some great moments emerge. The sotto voce sounds she elicits in Op. 7, Nos. 1 and 3 are very nice. And truth be told, while excessive rubato yet afflicts most of the Opp. 50 and 59 mazurkas included, the seasoned introversion that marks some of these later pieces seems to elicit from her a modicum of needed restraint, allowing better playing to intermittently shine through

 

But we’re talking a whole lot of chaff surrounding relatively little wheat. On the whole, I’m not looking forward to the subsequent mazurka installments from Ms. Fliter. My best recommendation: go ahead and give this first entry a listen if you’re curious. Just don’t expect it to rival the Rubinstein or other celebrated Chopin mazurka performances in your affections. At least, not if you’re free from addiction to rubato. 

Pictures from Finland (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross

Rumon Gamba, conductor; Oulu Sinfonia. Chandos CHAN 20401

It’s been almost two years since I reviewed Overtures from Finland here at Classical Candor. That recording was an earlier offering on Chandos by the selfsame Rumon Gamba and the Oulu Sinfonia. While not every work on it was actually titled an overture (there were a couple of “preludes”), the project at least had a tidy overarching theme for its mostly welcome discoveries. That disc remains one of my favorite new releases from the label. It’s as fun to revisit as it was to first encounter.

Pictures from Finland is, on the whole, neither quite as fun nor quite as tidy, though it does feature some of the same composers. It presents a somewhat more motley assortment of offerings in terms of taxonomy and quality. The title “Music from Finland” would be more fitting, if also more pedestrian. Some of the included works definitely are picturesque, but it is not immediately clear that Robert Kajanus’s more plainly named Adagietto or even Finnish Rhapsody No. 2, for example, fit the bill. I guess Leevi Madetoja’s short Stabat Mater could be considered picturesque, but it is also not clear why this work especially belongs on an album extolling Finnish images and featuring no other sung selections.

 

In truth, I would take this all completely in stride if I found more of the music here particularly compelling. As I did in 2023, I’m going to single out Kajanus. One “dud” (as I called it then) was not enough to substantially detract from the otherwise winning album I found Overtures from Finland to be. But now we get TWO helpings of his music on Pictures from Finland, which for me all the more dampen a project that could have been better conceived. When these works are not simply bland they’re the musical equivalent of Wagner fanfic, which might be worse than bland. The Finnish Rhapsody is oddly named, at least insofar as the climatic passages toward the end sound like re-microwaved Tannhäuser. Crucial for the emergence of Finnish national music (and especially Sibelius’s career) Kajanus may have been, but his own compositional voice leaves much to be desired.

Less annoyingly derivative are the two included works by Väinö Raitio. But what they avoid in overt mimicry they nearly make up for in being unassuming. The Idyll and “Domestic Cat” Scherzo are nice enough, but hardly do they lend any strong Finnish identity to a recording branding itself as such. Daniel M. Grimley’s liner notes mention Scriabin’s influence in the latter work, and its “almost Stravinskian humour.” I guess this is great if you like a heavy dose of cosmopolitanism with your Pictures from Finland.

 

Things improve with the remaining repertoire. Little need be said of the obligatory Sibelius piece, the “Scene with Cranes” from his Kuolema music. It’s well performed and adds much-needed picturesqueness to some of its surroundings. Welcome, too, is the Suite Pastorale by Madetoja. An orchestration of some earlier piano pieces, most of this music is of admittedly mild flavor. The best part is the “Legend” movement, which hits harder emotionally than its brethren. 

 

This album ostensibly gets its title from Selim Palmgren’s Aus Finnland, subtitled “Pictures from Finland.” If we don’t count the Sibelius, this is easily the best music included. Vivid and tuneful, it is not only the namesake of the recording but also almost singlehandedly shoulders its promise. It sounds more Finnish than almost everything else on the disc, what with its folk- and modal- flavored melodies and harmonies. It also recalls this composer’s first two piano concerti in its sheer capacity to evoke northern scenes. I would pay to hear this composition again in the concert hall far more readily than the other works here that I did not know beforehand.

 

As far as I can tell, Gamba and company perform everything well. The sound is wonderful, and the overall product gives off Chandos’s customary shine. In terms of content, I can give a mild recommendation on the strength of the Palmgren, the Sibelius, and a few other favorable points. These would just add up to me buying the disc. But if you’re not the Scandinavian music lover that I am, your mileage may vary. 

Mendelssohn Orchestral Works (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 in A minor ‘Scottish’, Op. 56, MWV N18; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61, MWV M13 (excerpts) – No. 1: Scherzo (after Act 1); No. 7: Nocturne (after Act III); No. 9: Wedding March (after Act IV). Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Sergiu Comissiona, conductor. VOX VOX-VX-NX-3046CD

Mendelssohn: The Hebrides in D major ‘Fingal’s Cave’ Op. 26, MWV P7; Symphony No. 4 in A major ‘Italian’, Op. 90, MWV N16; Symphony No. 5 in D major ‘Reformation’, Op. 107, MWV N15. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Sergiu Comissiona, conductor. VOX VOX-VX-NX-3047CD

 

Many of our readers of a certain age are no doubt familiar with Vox, a budget label that produced some real musical treasures over the years. An example from my own experience is the day back in the mid-1970s when I was strolling through a Sears department store one afternoon and came across an aisle display that featured the newly released 4-LP Vox Box of Ravel’s orchestral music featuring Stanislaw Skrowaczewski conducting the Minnesota Orchestra. I was at the time back in college on the G.I. Bill after serving 4½ years in the Army, with a wife, two kids, a pair of Bose 901s, a rapidly expanding passion for classical music, and a tight budget. When I saw that this box was on sale for something like seven bucks – well, that settled it, I just had to have it. It sounded pretty darn good through the 901s (purchased in Germany with my reenlistment bonus) when I got home, and I found the music of Monsieur Ravel to be utterly captivating. Even though Vox was a budget label, the sound quality on some of their releases could be excellent (the main drawback was the often substandard quality of their vinyl pressings), and this Ravel set, which was recorded by Elite Recordings (engineer Marc Aubort and producer Joanna Nickrenz), had beguiling sound. Those performances and recordings still hold up as you can see from reviews of digital releases from the Ravel set, such as a review from our own John Puccio that you can read here, or an article at the PS Audio website that provides some insight into the recording process, which you can find here. 

Appearing on the back cover of these new “Vox Audiophile Edition” releases is a highlighted statement affirming that “The Elite recordings for VOX by the legendary producers Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz are considered by audiophiles to be amongst the finest sounding examples of orchestral recordings.” For this series of reissues from the Vox catalog, the folks at Naxos have been pulling some of those tapes out from the vaults and carefully preparing these CDs for release, the end product of their labors being what they describe as “new192 kHz / 24-bit ultra high definition transcriptions of the original Elite Recordings analogue master tapes.” We have previously reviewed several releases in this “Audiophile Edition” series originally recorded by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and found them to be excellent, so we were eager to audition these recordings from Baltimore. We have in our collection numerous fine recordings by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the baton of David Zinman on the Telarc and Argo labels, so we know how good they can sound.

Of course we ought not consider only sound without stopping first to reflect on the most important component of these releases: the music. In these unsettling times, with disturbing developments assaulting our senses and emotions from week to week, day to day, seemingly hour to hour on particularly bad days, how comforting it can be to listen to the music of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). Mendelssohn was a master of melody; however, by that I do not mean to imply that his music is merely a succession of pretty tunes. It has substance, it has grace, it has style. The late conductor Sergiu Comissiona (1928-2005), who was born in Romania, emigrated to Israel, then later became an American citizen, enjoyed a successful 16-year term at the helm of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, building them into a first-class musical outfit. When you combine the attractive music of Mendelssohn, the solid musicianship of Comissiona and his orchestra, and the excellent sonics provided by the team of Aubort and Nickrenz (transferred to CD by the Naxos engineers), the end result is a pair of CDs capable of making the world seem a better place.