Wilms: Symphonies Nos. 6 and 7 (CD review)

Werner Ehrhardt, Concerto Koln. Brilliant Classics 93778.

Why review a composer almost no one’s heard of? Five reasons: First and foremost for the very reason that most people don’t know Wilms well or at all, and I thought someone might just want to know something about him and his music. Second, Wilms’s music is interesting and deserves more recognition. Third, I just like the sound of the composer’s name: Johann Wilhelm Wilms. Say that aloud a few times: Wilhelm Wilms. Wilhelm Wilms. Very musical. Fourth, the small, historically informed chamber ensemble Concerto Koln has been recording for decades, playing some very good music and do so again on this disc. And fifth, I’ve always liked the sound the DG Archiv engineers produce, here reissued by Brilliant Classics.

Wilms (1772-1847) was a teacher and composer in Amsterdam around the turn of the nineteenth century, apparently a reasonably popular musician who, like so many others, fell immediately into obscurity after his death. His final two symphonies, Nos. 6 (1820) and 7 (1830) here get their première performances on CD. They are not earthshaking or groundbreaking, but they are generally pleasant to listen to, particularly in the capable hands of the Koln players.

The Sixth Symphony owes a lot to Wilms’s earlier contemporaries, Haydn and Mozart. There is, for instance, a jaunty little tune that bounces through the first movement sounding a lot like Haydn; it alternates with big, melodramatic moments reminiscent of Mozart’s most intense scenes in Don Giovanni. The combination doesn’t work very well, but it keeps you wondering where you’ve heard it all before.

By the Seventh Symphony, Wilms has left the Classical period altogether and joined the Romantic movement, the Seventh filled with allusions to Beethoven (reflections of the “Pastoral” Symphony abound) and to the spirit of European revolution (a la the “Eroica”). I enjoyed the Seventh quite a lot, and the differences a single decade had made in the composer’s output fascinated me. The Concerto Koln made a captivating discovery here and appear to be having a good time with the music.

The Brilliant Classics reissue of the Archiv studio sonics did not disappoint me, either. The sound is weighty and full and wide, making the relatively small Concerto Koln ensemble appear probably twice as big as it really is. The frequency range does not go through the floor, but it sounds well enough extended to get the job done; the inner detail is reasonably clear; the feeling of depth is not particularly necessary but adequate in any case; and the room-filling reverberation creates a realistic sense of occasion. A very nice recording.

To hear a brief excerpt from this album, click here:


JJP

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 21 and 22 (CD review)

Christian Ihle Hadland, piano; Arvid Engegard, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. Simax Classics PSC 1323.

It seems as though new recordings of one or another Mozart piano concerto come out daily. Maybe it’s because Mozart wrote so many of piano concertos (twenty-seven in all), and people continue to like them (well, at least the last dozen or so). Or maybe it’s because pianists and conductors find so many ways to approach them (modern instruments and style, period instruments and practice, full and chamber orchestras, etc.). Who knows.  In any case, modern listeners already have a multitude of good recordings among which to choose, and I don’t suppose it hurts to have a new batch of contenders appear regularly (so long as listeners are not buying each and every one of them with money they may not have). With this Simax recording, we find Norwegian pianist Christian Ihle Hadland tackling Mozart’s Piano Concertos 21 and 22, a daunting task because they’re a couple of warhorses recorded many times over. Hadland comes through relatively unscathed.

Until I received this disc, I had never heard Hadland play the piano. He is, indeed, a sensitive, gifted musician. Whether he surpasses so many other pianists in this recorded repertoire, only the individual listener can determine. There are, after all, a number of fine pianists to consider, people like Stephen Kovacevich, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Daniel Barenboim, Murray Perahia, and a boatload of others.  Nevertheless, Hadland deserves his shot.

The album starts with the Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467. Because the filmmakers of a popular 1967 Swedish film titled Elvira Madigan used the second movement of No. 21 throughout their movie, people have since referred to the concerto as “Elvira Madigan.” Given Mozart’s penchant for theatricality, I’m sure it would please him.

Hadland handles the outer movements of No. 21 with a fine dexterity, and his playing exudes a joyful spontaneity. It’s that famous Andante that that bothers me. You can hear a snippet of it below. It seems to move along too quickly, without as much sentiment or feeling as other pianists have found in it, as though Hadland were saying, “You’ve heard all this before so often I thought I’d just get it out of the way as fast as possible.” It loses some of its dreamy, ethereal flavor in the process. This is not, however, to suggest Hadland doesn’t demonstrate some lovely, delicate technique or that the performance is without charm. The performance strikes one as quite spirited, in fact, and leaves one uplifted at the end.

Mozart completed the Piano Concerto No. 22 in E flat Major, K. 482 in 1785, shortly after writing No. 21. Therefore, expect some obvious similarities. Two major differences, though, are the composer’s use of clarinets in No. 22 and later a final-movement Allegro with a theme from his Horn Concerto No. 3.

In No. 22, I still had memories of the Bezuidenhout recording with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra lingering fresh in mind, Bezuidenhout’s recording being one I’ve become quite fond of. So Hadland’s newer rendering maybe had a little too much to live up to. Nevertheless, Bezuidenhout plays it on a fortepiano and Hadland on a modern piano, so any serious comparisons are inappropriate in any case. Hadland plays No. 22 with the same gusto we hear in No. 21, and while that part of the proceedings goes delightfully, it’s again the slow movement that gave me pause. Hadland seems so determined not to sentimentalize it that he sort of squeezes some of the breath out of it. Fortunately, the music has enough dramatic, operatic character to it that it survives pleasingly enough. Then there’s Mozart’s fetching “hunting” theme to conclude the work, Hadland treating it with high good humor.

Simax recorded the pianist and orchestra at the Oslo Konserthus in 2011, and while the sound may not aspire to audiophile standards, it’s pleasant enough. It displays a wide stereo spread, with reasonable depth and dynamics, yet there’s a warm, ambient glow to remind us of a realistic venue and not a dry studio. Midrange transparency is only average, and the piano looms rather large, appearing a bit too broad to sound entirely lifelike. Still, the piano, like the rest of the sound, communicates a sweet, if slightly soft, tone that is easy on the ear.

To hear a brief excerpt from this album, click here:


JJP

Exiles’ Cafe (CD review)

Music of Bartok, Chopin, Prokofiev, Martinu, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Korngold, Weill, Still, Bowles, Sahl, Milhaud, and Fairouz. Lara Downes, piano. Steinway & Sons 30016.

“If one lives in exile, the cafe

becomes at once the family home,

the nation, church and parliament,

a desert and a place of pilgrimage,

cradle of illusions and their cemetery.”

--Hermann Kesten

The idea behind Steinway concert artist Lara Downes’s album Exiles’ Cafe concerns the many celebrated composers who have, for one reason or another, found refuge away from their homelands, writing some of their best work as expatriates--in exile, so to speak. The composers listed above fit into such a category, some of them finding shelter in Paris, in England, in America, when they found it difficult to return to their native countries. Perhaps living in a new land helped their creative spirit, who knows. What Ms. Downes has done is record a series of brief piano works from thirteen such displaced emigrates, all of the pieces benefiting from her gentle yet virtuosic playing style and from Steinway’s excellent sound.

The first composer we encounter in this metaphorical cafe is Bela Bartok, represented here by three Hungarian Folksongs from the Csik District. They are quiet, serene, slightly melancholy, always appealing pieces, like most of the music on the album. In playing them, Ms. Downes’s technique seems to disappear into the music, her performances direct, straightforward, unadorned, and the better for it.

Next up, we hear the first of two mazurkas--Op. 6, No. 1 and Op. 68, No. 4. They contrast somewhat with the relative simplicity of the preceding Bartok, yet through Ms. Downes they communicate the same semisweet spirit. After that, we get Prokofiev’s Pastoral Sonatina in C major, which has a lovely gait, charmingly exploited by Ms. Downes. And so it goes, each composition a little gem, exquisitely, lovingly played, each conveying a varying sense of longing, perhaps the composers’ lingering regrets about days gone by.

I particularly liked the two little dumkas (Slavic folk songs that alternate between gaiety and sadness) by Bohuslav Martinu, as well as Stravinsky’s surprisingly old-fashioned but effective Tango. Then, too, Korngold’s Moderato from his Sonata No. 2, Op. 2, reminds us why he achieved his greatest success in Hollywood with his highly Romantic music. While Ms. Downes in no way hesitates to expand upon its Romantic inclinations, she never over-dramatizes it, either. She is, above all, a subtle pianist whom I have yet to hear unnecessarily glamorize or sensationalize a subject.

All of the music on the program glistens with a subdued radiance, the tunes reflecting a quietly hopeful, hardly veiled sorrow. American composer Michael Sahl sums up the album’s unique appeal when he writes, “Perhaps it is only naive fools who keep returning to the kitchen door of beauty and tears, whining and scratching to be let in. I don’t think so. I think that we all return time and again to that kitchen door because beauty, wherever and however, is what we need to survive, and, ultimately, to triumph.”

Steinway & Sons made the recording at Sono Luminus Studios, Boyce, Virginia, in 2012. Rich, warm, and ultrasmooth, the piano sound they obtained is not so close as to spread the instrument across the room yet provides a realistic width and dimensionality. A good, clean transient attack helps the verisimilitude, the overall response ideally suited to the refined, comforting, if sometimes heavy-hearted nature of the music involved.

To hear a brief excerpt from this album, click here:


JJP