Dvorak: Violin Concerto (CD review)

Also, Khachaturian: Violin Concerto. Rachel Barton Pine, violin; Teddy Abrams, Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Avie AV2411.

It's always a pleasure to welcome a new recording by American virtuoso violinist Rachel Barton Pine (b. 1974). She began her concert career at the age of ten with Erich Leinsdorf and the Chicago Symphony in the mid 1980's and her recording career with the Dorian and Cedille labels in the mid 1990's. It was here with Cedille that I first encountered her and, I'm proud to say, first began reviewing her recordings. She continued making records mostly with Cedille up until just a few years ago when she began working with Avie Records. While today she appears to be recording with both Cedille and Avie, whatever the record company she has continued to produce well poised and sweetly polished performances, with some of the best sound afforded a violinist. The present Avie disc is a case in point.

Here, Ms. Barton Pine tackles two giant works of the violin concerto genre, those by Dvorak and Khachaturian, starting the album with the Dvorak. Even though Dvorak's Violin Concerto took its place in the basic classical repertoire long ago, it has never seemed to quite catch on with the public the way those from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Paganini, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and others have caught on. The Dvorak maybe hasn't quite the soaring lines, memorable melodies, and grand Romantic gestures we find in other popular concertos. Still, it offers its fair share of pleasures, which Ms. Barton Pine is eager to share with us.

So, Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) wrote his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in A minor, Op. 53 in 1879, premiering it in 1883. The famous Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer, and teacher Joseph Joachim inspired Dvorak to write the piece, and the composer intended for Joachim to play it. However, as it turned out, Joachim didn't much care for the finished work and never did perform it. Despite the violinist's skepticism, though, Dvorak released the piece, and the rest is history, as they say. Still, I have some lingering doubts myself. Maybe Joachim had something, the music never impressing me as much as it has impressed some others, even in the capable hands of Ms. Barton Pine.

Rachel Barton Pine

Whatever, Dvorak begins the concerto with an Allegro ma non troppo (fast, but not too much), the "ma non troppo" marking used in all three movements. The violin enters almost immediately. Joachim may have felt that the orchestra dominated the score, but Dvorak made some revisions before premiering it. Here, with Ms. Barton Pine, there is no question the violin dominates. She asserts her authority on the music from the outset, clearly establishing who is in charge. She handles the primary melody with both power and grace, making it strong yet lyrical and flowing. It's quite rhapsodic and quite lovely.

The slow central section, the Adagio ma non troppo, is the emotional heart of the work. Again, Dvorak's marking indicates he didn't want the soloist or orchestra to take things too slowly, possibly not to make the music too sentimental. The movement became so popular that concert violinists often perform it as a stand-alone item. Be that as it may, in the hands of Ms. Barton Pine it sounds all of a piece with the rest of the concerto, an integral part rather than an artificial add-on. She maintains a good, forward pace (again, not too slow was Dvorak's advice), and invests the music with much inner feeling and joy. And I should add that Maestro Abrams's accompaniment is flawless, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra sounds appropriately rich, lush, and accomplished.

In the Finale Dvorak returns to the radiant, dance-like tunes and Czech folk melodies of the opening movement. Ms. Barton Pine's interpretation is a delight, and along with Perlman (EMI) and Mutter (DG) must now count as one of the best recorded performances of the work available.

Coupled with the Dvorak we find the Violin Concerto of Soviet-Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978). He wrote it in 1940, and Soviet violinist David Oistrakh premiered it the same year. Apparently, Khachaturian found much influence for the work from the folk music of his native Armenia. It is a surprisingly old-fashioned piece of music for the mid twentieth century, with much rhythm, vitality, and melody, which may explain why it won the Stalin Prize in 1941 from a notoriously conservative body of Soviet judges who at the time were pretty much down on anything sounding even vaguely modern.

Ms. Barton Pine plays the Khachaturian with abandon. It appears she has had plenty of practice in doing so as she says she had an immediate connection with the work, and for a while it was her "go-to concerto for competitions." She brings out all the folk-inspired qualities of the music and invests it with a profusion of color.

Producer Andrew Keener and engineer Simon Eadon recorded the concertos at RSNO Centre, Glasgow, Scotland in August 2018. The sound is quite good, with the soloist well centered and not too far out in front of the orchestra. Meanwhile, the orchestral detailing is also good, perhaps a tad bright and forward but nothing too objectionable. The dynamic range is wide, and transient impact is more than adequate. What's more, any minor edge in the upper frequencies is more than mitigated by the warmth of the lower midrange and upper bass. I don't think most people will be disappointed in Avie's sound.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 6 (SACD review)

Marek Janowski, WDR Symphony Orchestra. Pentatone PTC 5186 809.

Can a classical music fan really have too many recordings of the Beethoven Fifth and Sixth Symphonies? They are possibly the most popular pieces of music ever written and have probably been heard by more people over the past two hundred years than anything by Elvis or the Beatles. But, still, more recordings? If you're like me, you no doubt already have a armload of favorites on your shelves: for me it's Kleiber, Reiner, and Bohm in the Fifth; Reiner, Bohm, Walter, Klemperer, and Jochum in the Sixth.

So what's the big draw with this new recording from Marek Janowski and the WDR Symphony Orchestra (the German Radio Orchestra, Cologne) on Pentatone? Well, it's an SACD in stereo and multichannel, for what that's worth to you. Perhaps more important, it's one of the few pairings of these two famous symphonies on a single disc. Fact is, most record companies don't like putting them on one disc because they're popular enough on their own to sell twice as many copies. Moreover, the two symphonies together usually don't fit on a single CD. But Janowski takes them at such a brisk pace, they take up only seventy-three minutes together.

Of course, these quick tempos brings up another question: Should they be played this fast? We all know that Beethoven's own tempo markings using the newfangled metronome of the day are at odds with the traditional way conductors often play Beethoven. Unless the music director is conducting a historically informed performance and/or a period-instruments performance, the tempo choices are customarily personal decisions rather than rigid metronome markings, and these decisions have varied considerably over the years, providing the listener with a wide variety of choices and an even wider variety of favorites. This would discount, too, the fact that some musical scholars mistrust the accuracy of Beethoven's metronome. What I'm saying here is, Janowski's readings are speedy, and you may or may not take to them, especially the pedestrian nature of his "Pastorale."

The pairing of the Fifth and Sixth does make a lot of sense, though. Beethoven himself coupled them, along with other premieres, for a monumental concert in 1808. (What would any music lover of today give to have attended that concert, with the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Choral Fantasy, and others?) They're among the best music ever written. And they make excellent contrasts: the daringly dramatic Fifth and the lyrically pictorial Sixth. So, whatever, it's nice to have them back-to-back.

Marek Janowski

Janowski's rapid pace works best in the Fifth Symphony, which opens the program. He's not as fast as, say, Roger Norrington (EMI, Virgin, Erato) who tried with the London Classical Players to follow Beethoven's metronome markings as scrupulously as possible. Janowski is closer to Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony (RCA), although while Reiner seems thrilling, Janowski seems merely...fast. Now, that's not to say Janowski isn't exciting. His performance just seems more prosaic than Reiner's, despite the similarity of tempos. Those opening knocks of fate, for instance, lose a little something under Janowski when he bangs them out so quickly.

The second-movement Andante works best, although it, too, appears a touch commonplace next to Reiner. Nevertheless, it builds momentum as it moves along, leading nicely into the concluding Scherzo and subsequent finale, which blaze forth appropriately, though not quite memorably. The whole performance struck me as too rigid to be entirely memorable or uplifting.

It's Janowski's handling of the Symphony No. 6, the "Pastorale," though, that bothered me a little. Here, the conductor's penchant for hewing a mite too closely to Beethoven's metronome seems to drain the music of much of its charm. This is most apparent when Janowski continues in the first movement to rigidly conform to unchanging tempos, content to push forward without much contrasting feeling.

Then Janowski throws in an almost shockingly traditional "Scene by the Brook." He takes it smoothly, flowingly, and invests it with something like its old delights. Likewise with the "Merry Gathering of Country Folk," although here I thought the conductor missed something of the movement's humor by doing it up too inflexibly. It's like the old storytelling maxim: Show, don't tell. Janowski spends more time telling and not enough time showing. The notes are all there in the right places, but they convey precious few of Beethoven's picturesque subtleties.

And so it goes. I'd say if you already have favorite recordings of these two popular symphonies, you might just want to hang on to them and perhaps listen to Janowski's readings to confirm your long-held opinions.

Producers Seigwald Butow, Renaud Loranger, and Sebastian Stein and engineer Arnd Coppers recorded the music at Kolner Philharmonie, Germany in September 2018. They recorded the music in hybrid SACD, so the listener can play it in two-channel stereo or multichannel from the SACD layer (using an SACD player) or in two-channel stereo from the CD layer using a regular CD player. I listened in two-channel SACD.

As always with an SACD, there is an enormous dynamic range, so watch your volume knob. The frequency response is a tad aggressive in the lower treble, making things somewhat harsh at times. Deep bass is not particularly prodigious, and the upper bass fails to mitigate the slightly forward quality of the upper regions. Orchestral depth is fine, too, if a bit on the one-dimensional side. Actually, it's a sound that rather complements Janowski's assertive performances. It just doesn't come across quite the way it might live in a concert hall.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:

The Chieftains: The Long Black Veil (Ultradisc review)

The Chieftains and various guests. Mobile Fidelity Ultradisc II UDCD 762.

It was good to have audiophile companies like Mobile Fidelity around, especially when they were doing their gold-disc thing, along with SACDs and now super-vinyl LPs. Mo-Fi's Ultradisc II gold remastering of the Chieftain's 1995 folk album "The Long Black Veil" was a welcome pleasure when they issued it back in 2004.

First, though, let me repeat a few remarks I made about RCA's original release of the album: Namely, I asked what Sting, Sinead O'Connor, Van Morrison, Mark Knopfler, Ry Cooder, Marianne Faithfull, Tom Jones, Mick Jagger, and the Rolling Stones had in common. Well, they were all featured vocalists on this Chieftains disc.

The Chieftains are, of course, the award-winning Irish folk group that play on traditional instruments like the bodhran, uilleann pipes, and tiompan, and come as close to the roots of Irish music as any group alive. Here, they back up some respectable talent in tunes from both sides of the Atlantic.

The most moving are the ballads "Coast of Malabar" with Ry Cooder and "The Foggy Dew" with Sinead O'Connor. The most startling is the title song with Mick Jagger; and, yes, he does still have a singing voice. The most beautifully sung are, again, the two pieces by Sinead O'Connor. The most successful is "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?" with Van Morrison, a tune that reached number 71 on the UK singles chart. The best sounding items (there were half a dozen recording locations used) are the ones by Ry Cooder, who has a golden touch with everything he records. The most interesting vocalist is Marianne Faithfull, whose voice had gained a pleasantly distinctive character over the years. The most bizarre but unforgettable track is the one by Tom Jones, a belter, singing the "Tennessee Waltz." (Jones at the time was looking more and more like ex-heavyweight boxing champ Max Baer, a belter himself, so maybe the comparison is apt.) Whatever, any album that has Sting singing in Gaelic and the Chieftains jamming with the Rolling Stones can't be all bad. I've played it again and again over the years, a sure sign of something good.

Here's a track listing for those of you who don't already have the album:
  1. Mo Ghile Mear ("Our Hero") - The Chieftains with Sting
  2. The Long Black Veil - The Chieftains with Mick Jagger
  3. The Foggy Dew - The Chieftains with Sinead O'Connor
  4. Have I Told You Lately That I Love You? - The Chieftains with Van Morrision
  5. Changing Your Demeanour - The Chieftains
  6. The Lily of the West - The Chieftains with Mark Knopfler
  7. Coast of Malabar - The Chieftains with Ry Cooder
  8. Dunmore Lassies - The Chieftains with Ry Cooder
  9. Love Is Teasin' - The Chieftains with Marianne Faithfull
10. He Moved Through the Fair - The Chieftains with Sinead O'Connor
11. Ferny Hill - The Chieftains
12. Tennessee Waltz/Tennessee Mazurka - The Chieftains with Tom Jones
13. The Rocky Road to Dublin - The Chieftains with The Rolling Stones

The Chieftains

Now, is it worth paying out the extra money for Mobile Fidelity's gold treatment? Well, is anything worth the money if it's only a little bit better? Things audiophile, be they software or hardware, are a matter of very personal taste, and the fact is, most people can't tell the difference, anyway. So, probably 99% of all the people in the world with stereo systems wouldn't notice anything better or worse about this Mo-Fi remastering any more than they would notice a difference in a JVC XRCD or FIM UHD remastering. Mo-Fi gold discs, like anything audiophile, are for a very discerning (and, one hopes, well-heeled) listener with a reasonably high-quality audio system to appreciate,

Yes, as with every Mo-Fi disc I have listened to in the past forty-odd years (half-speed remastered LP to gold-plated CD's), I did hear a difference for the better (particularly with this gold remaster). Is it the gold that makes the improvement, as all the gold remastering companies have always claimed? I've never been convinced, wondering if a carefully well-engineered remastering itself has probably more to do with the improvements. After all, the folks at JVC XRCD don't use gold plating, and their results are equally impressive.

Be that as it may, this gold remastering does sound better in a side-by-side comparison than the original RCA issue. Using two CD players and switching the discs every song from one player to the other, I kept going back and forth between recordings making instant comparisons. Results: The gold disc was tighter, better focused in every song; the gold disc had a firmer bass line; the gold disc was cleaner; and the gold disc was smoother overall. The differences were most noticeable in the opening track, where in the RCA disc Sting and his accompaniment sounded almost out-of-phase by comparison. Also, in O'Connor's singing where high notes are prevalent, I could hear the difference in clarity and smoothness.

Is the extra money worth the incrementally small improvements? Not my job to say; only to report. But I liked what I heard.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below: