American Record Guide - Emmanuel Siffert - conductor

American Record Guide 

Independent Critics Reviewing Classical Recordings and Music in Concert 

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September/October 2011 


Side 1 

San Francisco Ring—3 Views 

Carnegie's “Spring for Music” 

Buffalo Phil's 2 premieres 

L.A. Master Chorale 

Montreal Piano Competition 

Festivals: 

Boston Early Music 

Spoleto USA 

Fayetteville Chamber Music 

Montreal Chamber Music 

Mahler's 100th: 

MTT's Nos. 2, 6, 9 

Crakow Phil Festival 

Over 500 Reviews

Sig01arg.qxd 7/22/2011 4:46 PM Page 1 

Contents 

Sullivan & Dalton Carnegie’s “Spring for Music” Festival 4 

Seven Orchestras, Adventurous Programs 

Gil French Cracow’s Mahler Festival 7 

Discoveries Abound 

Jason Victor Serinus MTT and the San Francisco Symphony 10 

Mahler Recapped 

Brodie, Serinus & Ginell San Francisco Opera’s Ring Cycle 12 

Three Views 

Brodie & Kandell Ascension’s New Pascal Quoirin Organ 16 

French and Baroque Traditions on Display 

Perry Tannenbaum Spoleto USA 19 

Renewed Venues, Renewed Spirit 

John Ehrlich Boston Early Music Festival 22 

Dart and Deller Would Be Proud 

Richard S Ginell Mighty Los Angeles Master Chorale 24 

Triumphing in Brahms to Ellington 

Herman Trotter Buffalo Philharmonic 26 

Tyberg Symphony, Hagen Concerto 

Melinda Bargreen Schwarz’s 26 Year Seattle Legacy 28 

Au Revoir But Not Good-Bye 

Bill Rankin Edmonton’s Summer Solstice Festival 30 

Chamber Music for All Tastes 

Gil French Fayetteville Chamber Music Festival 32 

The World Comes to Central Texas 

Robert Markow Bang! You’ve Won 34 

Montreal Music Competition 

Robert Markow Osaka's Competitions and Orchestras 35 

American, Dutch, French, and Russian Winners 

Edward Greenfield Glyndebourne’s First Meistersinger 38 

Dressing Well (and Warmly) at Garsington 

Coming in the Next Issue: 

Festivals Galore: 

Bavarian State Opera 

Bellingham 

Here & There 40 

Opera & Concerts Everywhere 42 

Critical Convictions 50 

Meet the Critic: Don O’Connor 53 

Guide to Records 54 

Collections 178 

The Newest Music 227 

Broadway 234 

Archives 235 

Videos 243 

Books 254 

Record Guide Publications 256 

Cabrillo 

Festival of the Sound 

Glimmerglass 

Music at Menlo 

Ohio Light Opera 

And Much More...


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Vol 74, No 5 September/October 2011 Our 76th Year of Publication 

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Music in Concert highlights 

September 7-14 

Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony celebrate 

the gala opening of L’Adresse Symphonique, 

Montreal’s new symphony hall, 

with works by three Quebec composers and 

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Four nights later 

the Borodin Quartet performs Quartets Nos. 15 

by Beethoven and Shostakovich. Then Nagano 

inaugurates the MSO’s regular season with 

Joshua Bell (Glazounov and Tchaikovsky) and 

Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony with pianist 

Angela Hewitt. 


Joana Carneiro leads the St Paul Chamber 

Orchestra in the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s 

Luminous Body. Also on the program are 

works by Bach, Haydn, and Brahms at the Ordway 

Center. 


The San Francisco Opera gives the world premiere 

of Christopher Theofanidis’s Heart of a 

Soldier with Thomas Hampson, William Burden, 

and Melody Moore conducted by Patrick 

Summers and directed by Francesca Zambello 

at War Memorial Opera House. 


The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio perform 

yet another world premiere, Stanley Silverman’s 

Piano Trio No. 2, on a program with 

Mozart’s Trio, K 502, and Beethoven’s Archduke 

at New York’s 92nd Street Y (see a review 

of their Danielpour premiere in this issue). 


David Robertson and the St Louis Symphony 

serve up two weekends of world premieres at 

Powell Hall: Steven Mackey’s Piano Concerto 

with Orli Shaham plus Mahler’s Symphony No. 

1; then Edgar Meyer in his Double Bass Concerto 

No. 3 on a program with Copland’s Suite 

from The City with film, plus Ives and Gershwin. 

September 29 

Sitarist Ravi Shankar (we can hope) celebrates 

his 91st birthday with a long-awaited, twice- 

postponed concert at Disney Concert Hall in 

Los Angeles. 

September 22-October 1 

In his first two weeks as the Seattle Symphony’s 

new music director, Ludovic Morlot conducts 

Zappa’s Dupree’s Paradise, Dutilleux’s 

Tree of Dreams with Renaud Capuçon, 

Beethoven’s Eroica, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, 

Gershwin’s American in Paris, and Varese’s 

Ameriques at Benaroya Hall. 

October 4-8 

The Brooklyn Academy of Music presents Kurt 

Weill’s Threepenny Opera with stage direction 

and lighting conceived by Robert Wilson. The 

Berlin Ensemble accompanies the US premiere 

of this production. 

October 6-11 and 14-16 

Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra 

take Tchaikovsky’s six symphonies (two per 

night) first to Carnegie Hall and then to the 

University of California-Berkeley’s Zellerbach 

Hall. They add an extra night in New York with 

the winner of the 14th Tchaikovsky Competition 

plus works by Stravinsky and 

Shostakovich. 

October 16 

Pianist Louis Lortie celebrates Liszt’s bicentennial 

with the complete Years of Pilgrimage at 

the Royal Conservatory’s Koerner Hall in 

Toronto. 

October 22-23 

David Alan Miller leads the Albany Symphony 

in the world premiere of Kathryn Salfelder’s 

Saxophone Concerto with Timothy McAllister, 

plus Kernis’s Concerto with Echoes based on 

Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 (also on 

the program), and Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony 

at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy 

and Skidmore College’s Zankel Music Center 

in Saratoga Springs. 

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Carnegie’s 

“Spring for Music” Festival 

Seven Orchestras, Adventurous Programs 

[The unique purpose and the principles for 

selecting orchestras that perform in the 

“Spring for Music” Festival, held in May at 

Carnegie Hall and now planned through 

2013, is explained at: springformusic.com- 

/Mission.htm. Jack Sullivan attended six of 

this year’s seven concerts; Joseph Dalton 

attended the middle one with the Dallas 

Symphony. —Editor] 

Jack Sullivan 

We hear so many grim stories about the 

state of symphony orchestras that it is 

heartening to report something good 

for a change. “Spring for Music” is a new 

annual series of adventurous programs performed 

by North American orchestras chosen 

Carlos Kalmar conducts the Oregon Symphony 

by competition. The orchestras, both full-sized 

and chamber, played at Carnegie Hall, the 

gold standard for orchestral sound, over a hectic 

but exciting nine-day period in early May. 

All seats were $15 to $25, a brave attempt to 

lure younger audiences as well as local folk 

flown in from each region (1400 from Toledo, 

Ohio, alone for the Toledo Symphony). 

Instead of the usual overture-concerto-symphony 

formula, each program had to have a 

distinct architecture or theme, and there was a 

generous amount of contemporary music, 

much of it commissioned for the festival. 

As a revelation of some regional orchestras 

and what they are capable of, “Spring for 

Music” was a series of wonderful surprises. It’s 

one thing to hear local ensembles on obscure 

CDs, quite another to experience them at 

4 Music in Concert September/October 2011


Carnegie Hall cheered on by home supporters 

as well as curious New Yorkers who are used to 

hearing the Vienna Philharmonic and the 

Cleveland Orchestra again and again. Most of 

these bands never make it to Carnegie at all; 

indeed, the Oregon Symphony had never ventured 

west of the Mississippi (simply too 

expensive, one of the exhausted but happy 

players told me after their concert). Every 

orchestra I heard was good, and every one had 

a dramatically different sound, rebutting the 

cliche that all orchestras these days sound the 

same. 

The Albany Symphony under David Alan 

Miller had the juiciest sonority. Their performance 

of Copland’s Appalachian Spring in the 

rarely heard “complete” version was one of the 

most colorful and memorable I’ve heard in a 

very long time (two weeks later I could still 

hear it floating through my head). This is not 

just because the normally excised material 

supplied a dark and startling contrast to the 

serene folksiness of what we normally hear, as 

if Connotations or some other modernist Copland 

piece had suddenly invaded his pastoral 

style, but because Albany’s luminous strings, 

forceful brass, and vivid winds took the work 

to a new level of poetry and theatricality. 

The Toledo Symphony under Stefan 

Sanderling was more delicate and austere, ideally 

suited to whisper the mysterious tremolos 

in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6; though, at 

the end, jeering woodwinds and thundering 

timpani showed they could make a big noise 

when they needed to. Sanderling brought out 

the jarring contrasts and discontinuities in this 

eccentric symphony with great skill. 

On the same program was the rarely programmed 

Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, an 

absurdist lampooning of Soviet oppression by 

Tom Stoppard and André Previn. It went beautifully 

with the symphony, especially since 

Previn’s music is a Shostakovich pastiche. This 

symphonic playlet from the late 1970s is a risk, 

requiring six actors and 94 players who only 

perform intermittently, since the “orchestra” 

exists in the head of a prisoner in a Soviet 

mental institution. Stoppard’s brilliantly sardonic 

language was a treat (though the acting 

was only adequate), as were Previn’s lively riffs 

on Shostakovich. 

The presence of fans waving colored hankies, 

so obviously proud of their hometown 

bands, lent a festive, slightly goofy air to even 

the most challenging concerts, including the 

Oregon Symphony’s somber wartime program. 

All the works in the first half were played 

without pause: Ives’s Unanswered Question, so 

quiet in Carlos Kalmar’s reading it was almost 

ineffable, faded into John Adams’s Wound 

Dresser, a tender and poignant depiction of 

horror (surely Adams’s most eloquent piece), 

its Whitman text subtly sung by Sanford Sylvan. 

It too ended quietly, but we were suddenly 

jolted out of our seats by the violent timpani 

and howling low brass of Britten’s Sinfonia da 

Requiem. After the break, the orchestra erupted 

into a cathartic, go-for-broke performance 

of Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 4. The 

composer insisted it was not really a wartime 

testament, but this explosive reading suggested 

otherwise. The Toledo Symphony will play 

this same program as part of their 2011-12 season. 

The new works at the festival, 18 by my 

count, were a decidedly mixed bag. The most 

glamorous premiere, Carlos Drummond de 

Andrade Stories by the jazz crossover celebrity 

Maria Schneider (who conducted the concert), 

sounded like air-brushed Villa-Lobos. It was 

certainly pleasant enough and was performed 

with silky authority by Dawn Upshaw and the 

St Paul Chamber Orchestra. Upshaw, who 

plans to be regular in the “Spring for Music” 

series, made a similar impression in Bartok’s 

Five Hungarian Folk Songs. Her unrelenting 

earnestness, combined with a smooth arrangement 

for string orchestra by Richard Tognetti, 

drained these songs of Bartokian color and 

charm. This program, the only one without a 

theme, included an elegant performance of 

Stravinsky’s Concerto in D and a vigorous 

account of Haydn’s Symphony No. 104. 

Melinda Wagner’s Little Moonhead, an 

impressionist palette of seductive moods and 

colors, was by far the best of the “New Brandenburgs” 

presented by the Orpheus Chamber 

Orchestra. As demonstrated by her recent 

Trombone Concerto for the New York Philharmonic, 

Wagner is an eloquent, poetic voice in 

contemporary music. Also on the program 

were Aaron Jay Kernis’s charming Concerto 

with Echoes (inspired by Brandenberg Concerto 

No. 6), Peter Maxwell Davies’s dour and 

dreary Sea Orpheus, and Christopher Theofandis’s 

gushy, minimalist Muse, which got a loud 

ovation from an otherwise frosty New York 

crowd (such a contrast to the heartland 

whoopers). Only Stephen Hartke and Paul 

Moravec, in the finales of Brandenburg 

Autumn and Brandenburg Gate, supplied the 

requisite neo-classical fizz for a Brandenburg 

evening. This was a long, difficult program to 

bring off, but Orpheus played with their usual 

finesse and authority. The Albany Symphony 

will pair the Kernis with the Bach No. 6 on an 

October concert. 

The other series of new pieces was the 

Albany Symphony’s “Spirituals Project” (not to 

be confused with Art Jones’s educational project 

of the same name, which has been promoting 

spirituals for a dozen years): nine new 

“spirituals” commissioned by David Alan 

Miller, one instrumental work by George Tson- 

American Record Guide Music in Concert 5


takis for orchestra and solo “fiddler”, and eight 

songs by John Harbison, Daniel Bernard 

Roumain, Bun-Ching Lam, Tania Leon, Donal 

Fox, Kevin Beavers, Richard Adams, and 

Stephen Dankner, all sung by the young 

African-American baritone De’Shon Myers. 

The fiddler, David Kitzis, stole the show in his 

procession from one end of Carnegie Hall to 

another, his violin resonating brilliantly and 

vanishing with ghostly shivers in Carnegie’s 

remarkable acoustic. 

In his announcement of this ambitious 

project, Miller complained about the lack of 

worthwhile symphonic spirituals besides Dvorak’s; 

yet there is a legacy of “sorrow song” 

masterpieces by Delius, Tippett, and Zemlinsky, 

not to mention chamber works by Korngold 

and Coleridge-Taylor. For the most part, 

these blandly meandering arrangements did 

little to advance the tradition. The best ones 

were Harbison’s playful ‘Ain’t Goin’ to Study 

War No Mo’, Adams’s soulful ‘Stan’ Still, Jordan’, 

and the finale, Dankner’s ‘Wade in de 

Water’, which concluded the series with brilliant 

wa-wa effects from the Albany brass. 

The final concert in this splendid festival 

was played by Kent Nagano and the Montreal 

Symphony, who appear with some regularity 

in Carnegie Hall. One expected them to be terrific, 

and they were. Their program, “The Evolution 

of the Symphony”, was no such thing 

but, rather, a non-chronological juxtaposition 

of textures: Gabrieli’s Symphoniae Sacre, 

Webern’s Symphony, and Stravinsky’s Symphonies 

of Wind Instruments, all interspersed 

with sinfonias by Bach lucidly played by 

Angela Hewitt, the whole thing culminating in 

a fast, gorgeously articulated Symphony No. 5 

by Beethoven. It might seem odd to conclude 

an adventurous series with this chestnut, but 

we should remember that the Fifth was once 

regarded as the most adventurous symphony 

of all. 

Joseph Dalton 

The Dallas Symphony’s May 11 concert at 

Carnegie Hall was the only one in the 

“Spring for Music” Festival that relied on 

a single work. August 4, 1964 by composer 

Steven Stucky and librettist Gene Scheer was 

premiered in Dallas in September 2008. Best 

described as an oratorio, it commemorated the 

centennial of President Lyndon Johnson by 

centering on two pivotal events: the discovery 

in the Mississippi River of three murdered civil 

rights workers and a spurious “attack” on two 

American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin— 

they both occurred on the same day. 

While the sheer scale of the work must 

surely be a point of pride for the DSO, the 

piece itself seemed a curious choice for a festi- 

val that served as a showcase for orchestras. 

With the huge all-volunteer Dallas Symphony 

Chorus and four vocal soloists, the orchestra, 

led by Music Director Jaap Van Zweden, was 

hardly prominent. 

Over-arching, though, were the themes of 

race, war, and corruption that are still a long 

way from being resolved in the American psyche. 

Granted that’s big stuff for an orchestra to 

take on; still, I never felt that the 80-minute 

piece elevated the discussion. 

Scheer’s libretto, drawing extensively on 

historical documents, deals with prejudice and 

murder in the south and cataclysmic events in 

southeast Asia, all amidst the mundaneness of 

a busy day in the White House. Almost none of 

it called out for music. Stucky’s settings were 

either literal and obvious or melodramatic and 

overwrought. 

For a tribute to LBJ, the creators didn’t give 

the guy many points, casting him as someone 

at the mercy of events beyond his control and 

making decisions based on incomplete and 

inaccurate intelligence. A short scene early on 

nicely depicted several aspects of Johnson’s 

persona, including his confident swagger, distaste 

for intellectuals, and slight paranoia. 

Baritone Rod Gilfrey used erratic bits of a 

Texan accent. Yet, as the piece progressed, the 

role seemed to fall uncomfortably into the 

upper reaches of his range. This, combined 

with a slow cadence to the words, shrank the 

president into someone uncomfortable in his 

office, if not his own skin. 

Contrast this with tenor Vale Rideout as a 

shrieking, hysterical Chicken Little of a defense 

secretary (Robert McNamara). The other 

soloists, soprano Indira Mahajan and mezzo 

Kristine Jepson, portrayed the mothers of slain 

civil rights activists who mostly grieved and 

sobbed. All four principals were attired in dignified 

clothes from the early 60s. The text was 

projected, line by line, onto the wall above the 

stage. 

It fell to the chorus and orchestra to briefly 

infuse the evening with poetry and eloquence. 

Near the opening, the chorus sang portions of 

a poem by Stephen Spender, set in a conservative 

style reminiscent of Randall Thompson. 

They were prepared by Donald Krehbiel, and 

they sang with outstanding clarity and 

warmth. 

Less moving was a lengthy elegy for 

orchestra positioned at the dead center of the 

work. Though hushed and deftly scored, its 

modest melodic contours felt like little more 

than a respite amid the hollow frenzy of the 

night. 

The 2012 “Spring for Music” Festival, May 

7-12, will present the Alabama, Edmonton, 

Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, and New Jersey 

orchestras. 



Cracow’s Mahler Festival 

Discoveries Abound 

Gil French 

Last spring the Cracow Philharmonic commemorated 

the 100th anniversary of 

Mahler’s death by having eight Central 

European orchestras perform his 10 symphonies. 

Consider it a “Spring for Mahler” Festival, 

a parallel to Carnegie Hall’s “Spring for 

Music” festival (above). For me it was an occasion 

for a number of surprising discoveries. 

I was last in Poland in 1987 when the arts, 

Catholicism, and Solidarity were the only vital 

means of protesting Communism’s weakened 

but still firm grip on the country. While architectural 

restoration was advanced, cities were 

rather grey, tourism was strictly state-controlled, 

and alcoholism ravished 20-somethings 

still without hope of “a future”. 

What a change today! First, Poland is 

extremely prosperous. The middle class 

thrives. Cities are bright and impeccably clean 

(the Poles could teach the Chinese a thing or 

two about clean toilets!). Local and intercity 

public transportation is superb. Lodging is 

first-rate, with bounteous Central European 

breakfasts. Tourist spots, rich in history, are 

counterpointed by superb museums that contrast 

the present with the war years. The arts 

are thriving. And from Warsaw to Zakopane 

the countryside is beautiful. 

The second major discovery: don’t believe 

the guidebooks about Warsaw (“Warsaw can 

be hard work. It may not be the prettiest of 

Polish cities”, says Lonely Planet). The restored 

Old Town-New Town tourist area speaks for 

itself, though prosperity has forced out street 

musicians, hawkers’ stalls, and folk art. The 

superb tram and bus system gets you everywhere 

(a three-day pass costs only $5.80). The 

city is orderly and blessedly quiet—no horns, 

no loud music. A new interactive Chopin 

Museum can finally be visited without 

advanced reservations. The profundity of the 

Warsaw Uprising Museum can reduce anyone 

to tears. The Museum of the History of Polish 

Jews will open in 2012 (until 1939 Poland had 

the world’s largest Jewish population). The 

Polish National Opera is world-class. And 

Antoni Wit closed the Warsaw Philharmonic’s 

season with Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, a concert 

I had to miss because of the festival three 

hours south. 

The major discovery at the Mahler Festival 

was Pawel Przytocki (PAH-voh Psheh + TROTsky 

without the R), general and artistic director 

Pawl Przytocki 



of the Cracow Philharmonic and world-class 

Mahler conductor. When asked where his idea 

for the festival came from, he said, “From 

Mahler’s biography”. By selecting orchestras 

from Central European cities where Mahler 

himself conducted, Przytocki also created a 

platform to boost the reputation of his own 

orchestra that he has directed since March 

2009, taking it thrice to Vienna’s Musikverein 

and twice to Paris’s Theatre du Chatelet. 

The concluding June 19 concert of Symphony 

No. 8 was unquestionably the high 

point of the festival that began May 10. With 

the audience facing the rear of the cathedrallike 

St Catherine’s Church in Cracow’s Kazimierz 

(Jewish) quarter, Przytocki had the 

magnificent Cracow and Czech Philharmonic 

Choirs (165 singers) facing each other in stalls 

left and right, with the Cracow Philharmonic 

Boys’, Leipzig MDR Children’s, and Puellae 

Orantes Girl’s Cathedral Choir (120 total) 

across the back facing him from under the 

choir loft where the organist and seven brass 

players were found. In front of the Cracow 

Philharmonic (expanded from 100 to 120) were 

the seven soloists, each so tonally rich and 

warm, broadly dynamic yet never strained, 

free of uncontrolled vibrato, and perfectly 

blended that they deserve listing: sopranos 

Barbara Kubiak (Polish), Urska Arlic Gololicic 

(Slovenian), and Iwona Socha (Polish); altos 

Jadwiga Rappé (Polish) and Ewa Marciniec 

(Polish); tenor Roman Sadnik (Viennese), baritone 

Adam Kruzel (Polish), and bass Peter 

Mikulas (Slovak). 

Wide-screen monitors hidden behind massive 

pillars aided the coordination, but what 

clinched it was Przytocki’s total intellectual 

grasp of the score’s form, his attention to fine 

orchestral details otherwise easily lost in the 

resonant acoustics, his Gergiev-like awareness 

and eye-contact with each group, and, above 

all, his flexible forward thrust and tight rhythmic 

pulse. It took only about two minutes for 

ensemble to solidify. By the ends of both the 

‘Veni, Creator Spiritus’ and Faust sections, the 

emotional effect was quite shattering, as I 

learned how to breathe again. 

I had learned earlier to approach the festival’s 

orchestras with trepidation, and this was 

my only chance to hear the Cracow Philharmonic. 

Not amorphously subsumed beneath 

the vocal forces and resonant acoustics, its 

intonation, quality of tone, tight ensemble, 

and the superb quality of its principal players 

justified its Vienna and Paris invitations. 

Before I arrived in Cracow, Przytocki led 

his orchestra in Symphony No. 6, and Israeli 

Lior Shambadal led it in the Resurrection Symphony. 

A week before Mahler’s Eighth, Przytocki 

substituted for the Wroclaw Philharmonic’s 

Music Director Jacek Kaspszyk in Symphony 

No. 7. In the first two movements the 

orchestra itself seemed weak. Violins were 

lean, the seven growly string basses were hardly 

audible, trumpets and French horns had frequent 

clams, winds were exposed, and ensemble 

wasn’t confident. 

Suddenly in the third movement, with 

Przytocki’s clarity, dynamism, consummate 

communications skills, and tight rhythmic 

control, this regional orchestra found its legs. 

Tight ensemble and accurate playing yielded 

delicate transparecy and flexibility that heaved 

and sighed—the same in the fourth as Przytocki 

shifted styles mid-measure, drawing ecstatic 

playing. By the finale the Wroclaw Phil was like 

a sports team that has found its groove, could 

do no wrong, and was sure of victory. 

I didn’t understand the degree of Przytocki’s 

accomplishment until a week later when 

Kaspszyk appeared with his orchestra for the 

Cooke-Matthews version of Symphony No. 10. 

It sounded like a different orchestra; in fact, it 

was to some extent—certainly different string 

players and without No. 7’s superb concertmaster. 

From the very opening unison viola 

line, I translated “Kaspszyk” as “joke”. Every 

note was detached, almost every horn 

entrance was a fart, brass was crass, ensemble 

was a mess, and fortes screamed, as Kaspszyk 

buried his head in the score, gave jerky highlow 

gestures, and proved his lack of familiarity 

with and feeling for the score’s magnificent 

scope and poignant lines. Judging from his 

biography and performance, Kaspszky, now 

59, reached the down side of the mountain 

very early in his career. 

In Symphony No. 5, Jiri Belohlavek, who 

becomes music director of the Czech Philharmonic 

for the second time in 2012, showed 

that he has firmly returned that great organ of 

an orchestra (in managerial and player turmoil 

for over a decade) to Rolls Royce status. Violas, 

cellos, and string bass sections each sound 

with one sumptuous tone. There must be a 

body-language code to belong to this still overwhelmingly 

male ensemble, their intense concentration 

and passion is so strong! Belohlavek’s 

contrasts in the first two movements 

were devastating; the third was a bit heavy, 

especially with the Mack truck force of the 

principal French horn. The slow Adagio was as 

transparent and deeply moving as I’ve ever 

heard it. Only in the finale did the orchestra 

become so taken with its own weighty sound 

that it began to overwhelm the bright acoustics 

of Szymanowski Hall. 

Another discovery was the work Belohlavek 

opened with, Sinfonietta, a graduation 

piece by 22-year-old Karel Ancerl, probably the 

most precocious, mature student work ever 

written. With the style, profundity, and counterpoint 

of Martinu’s Double Concerto, plus 

the CPO’s sonics and commitment, I couldn’t 

understand the audience’s barren response. 



The other orchestras at the Festival all 

failed to compensate for the hall’s brightness, 

illustrating the difference between power 

(Czech Phil) and loudness, caused by inferior 

instruments forced beyond their capacities by 

unsubtle musicians. Judging from his interpretation 

of Songs of a Wayfarer and Symphony 

No. 4, Aleksander Marcovic, born in Belgrade 

in 1972 and chief conductor of the Brno Philharmonic, 

has reached the down side of the 

mountain exceptionally early. Under his 

extremely angular conducting style, the 

orchestra looked bored, was poorly tuned, and 

had flatulent horns, unsubtle winds, weak 

ensemble, and a bashing timpanist. Marcovic 

attended only to the melody line, ignoring 

Mahler’s wonderful counterpoint and inner 

details. 

In Wayfarer Lithuanian baritone Vytautas 

Juozapaitis, with strained top notes and bottom 

notes beyond his range, must have 

thought he was at the Met, not in a bright 697seat 

hall. Only Polish soprano Anna Pehlken, 

deliciously floating as she sang about a heavenly 

feast, drew quality out of Marcovic in the 

symphony’s final movement. 

In Symphony No. 1, despite mellow horns, 

Budapest’s Hungarian National Philharmonic 

had wiry strings, hollow flutes, weak string 

basses, and a timpanist who absolutely bashed 

his instruments. None were helped by Music 

Director Zoltan Kocsis (the pianist), whose 

matter-of-factness seemed indifferent as he 

rushed through the work—with a six-minute 

‘Blumine’ movement to boot—in 55 minutes. 

He didn’t have a clue what this emotional 

masterpiece is all about. 

In Symphony No. 9, despite raw percussion, 

harsh cymbals, awful bass drum, somewhat 

blatant French horns, and weak string 

basses, the Slovak Philharmonic (another 

mostly male bastion) had solid strings. What 

they really needed was a conductor sensitive to 

tone color, who could tame them in the hall’s 

bright resonance. Instead, Alexander Rhabari, 

a short butterball Iranian and the only festival 

conductor who worked from memory, was all 

large, obvious gestures (two fingers means 

this, one point down means that, etc.) and 

details, details, details without forward 

motion. This has to have been the longest 

Mahler Ninth: the first movement took 33 minutes, 

the second 20. All trees, no forest. His 

metronomic pacing fit the third movement 

well enough. Only in the finale did he begin to 

develop some long arching lines. 

Italian conductor Daniele Callegari is 

worth keeping an eye out for, especially if he 

returns to the Met. Aside from Przytocki, he 

was the only other festival conductor to get an 

orchestra to play “beyond itself”. In Symphony 

No. 3 the Slovenian Philharmonic’s lower 

strings were raw, woodwinds had a number of 

glitches, the principal trombone’s tone wasn’t 

secure—nor was the trumpet’s. Yet textures 

were transparent, and, even with quick tempos, 

Callegari’s forward flexible flow was well 

aimed and often buoyant. Ensemble was 

excellent. And by the end of the first and last 

massive movements, Mahler’s emotional 

statement was delivered so powerfully that any 

glitches didn’t count. 

My other discovery was that most American 

regional orchestras (Buffalo, Rochester, 

the ones in the Carnegie “Spring for Music” 

Festival) far outclass most of the Central European 

orchestras I heard both in technical execution 

and musicality. Nor did the festival feel 

like one: the concerts weren’t social events at 

all—people arrived, heard music, and left. 

They were also ritualistic: applause, followed 

by standing, followed by unison rhythmic 

clapping, and five curtain calls, even for Kaspszyk’s 

excruciating Symphony No. 10. De 

gustibus. 

Yet where other than in Poland is an airport 

(Warsaw’s) named for a composer 

(Chopin)! 



MTT and the San Francisco 

Symphony 

Mahler Recapped Before European Tour 

Jason Victor Serinus 

During the centenary of Gustav Mahler’s 

death, Michael Tilson Thomas and the 

San Francisco Symphony have gone to 

great lengths to bolster their reputation as a 

world-class “Mahler Orchestra”. Following the 

recording of all the symphonies and song 

cycles in concert, which they released in 

hybrid SACD format, they’ve issued complete 

box sets on disc and (soon) vinyl. In addition, 

they prepared a two-part “Keeping Score” documentary, 

broadcast nationally in June on PBS 

and then released in DVD and Blu-Ray formats. 

They also programmed Mahler for their 

May 19-June 6 European tour of Prague, Vienna, 

Brussels, Essen, Luxembourg, Paris, 

Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon. 

As a pre-tour “warm-up”, the orchestra 

performed three of Mahler’s symphonies in 

early May at their home base, Davies Symphony 

Hall. Starting with Symphony No. 9, SFS 

launched an ambitious nine-day mini-cycle 

that also included the glorious No. 2 and tragic 

No. 6. 

The orchestra was in top form. My companion 

for No. 9, Raymond Bisha, Naxos’s 

director of media relations for North America, 

has heard many an orchestra in his years as a 

classical musician and media professional. Yet 

he was struck by the uniform strength of the 

ensemble and the fact that he could hear no 

weak links. The playing was all of a piece. 

It was also, in typical MTT fashion, bright, 

bold, filled with color, and impeccably controlled. 

The sound may not have that burnished 

aged-in-wood patina of some European 

orchestras, but neither is it “theatrical”, 

as Gramophone suggested when it rated SFO 

as No. 13 in its survey of great orchestras 

(December 2008). Perhaps they consider “theatrical” 

anyone who follows in the footsteps of 

Leonard Bernstein, loves Stravinsky and Copland, 

and has championed the music of Gershwin 

and Jewish theatre. 

If there is any truth in the assertion, it may 

refer to the fact that MTT, in his concern for 

structural coherence, does not always probe 

the emotional depths. That was certainly not 

the case with his emotionally riveting performance 

of No. 9. In no short order, a sense of 

tragedy overcame the Andante’s lyrical opening. 

After an especially strong statement from 

offstage horns, startling drums and cymbals 

revealed Mahler at his most emotionally con- 

Michael Tilson Thomas 

flicted. The up-and-down topsy-turvy nature 

of his writing, cogently conveyed, so seized the 

audience that you could feel the relief as people 

caught their breath and adjusted themselves 

at the movement’s conclusion. 

In the second movement MTT skillfully 

conveyed the manic aspects of what Mahler 

termed the “comfortable l„ndler”; despite the 

beauty of more pastoral passages, it was 

impossible to escape the impression that happiness 

was fleeting. The biting horn opening of 

the Rondo-Burleske third movement paved 

the way for increasingly disturbing music. 

Even its most lyrical passages—the magical 

harp glissandos, for example—were soon overwhelmed 

by angst. 



The beautiful, expansive opening of the 

final Adagio brought welcome but transitory 

relief. When Thomas (in a gesture I’ve rarely 

seen him use) opened his arms wide, the 

orchestra responded in kind, sounding as if 

they had fully opened their hearts to Mahler’s 

plight. The emotion on the faces of many players 

further reflected their complete identification 

with the composer’s struggle. Rather than 

the “grief gives way to peace, music and 

silence become one” ending that Michael 

Steinberg described in the program notes, the 

orchestra seemed to fade into nothingness. It 

was as though Mahler had totally surrendered 

to inevitable tragedy. 

Although the beginning of the Resurrection 

Symphony sounded less self-consciously contrived 

than on SFSO’s recording of it, the marcato 

cello attacks as the music got underway 

were precise to a fault. By contrast, the Andante 

Moderato (II) was so slow that it lacked 

lift. Music that wanted for a smile remained 

straight-faced. The third movement, which 

Mahler designated “in quietly flowing 

motion”, built rapidly to a noisy conflagration. 

In the Urlicht, mezzo-soprano Jill Grove, 

replacing Sasha Cook, sang beautifully until 

the very end, which she cut a mite short. 

The final choral movement was another 

mixed bag. Although the orchestra played as 

beautifully as ever, and the chorus sounded 

glorious, the passages denoting the coming of 

the light (the “resurrection”) fell short of the 

The San Francisco Orchestra 

mark. Soprano Karina Gauvin, who seemed ill 

at ease in the extremely long wait for her 

entrance, began exquisitely, then momentarily 

veered far off pitch. She recovered nicely, sang 

the repeat perfectly, and proceeded to open 

her voice in her duet with Grove to deliver 

some of the most beautifully impassioned, 

vibrant singing I’ve heard in a long time. 

In the tremendous conclusion, the gates of 

heaven opened wide and blazing light poured 

forth. When I last heard Thomas perform this 

symphony at one of the recording sessions, the 

climax was a major disappointment. It felt as 

though, even with a huge chorus propelling 

him forward, he paused at the gates, averted 

his eyes, and declared, “I’m not yet ready.” 

This time he moved forward, but without the 

orgasmic tension and release that make the 

Bernstein and Rattle recordings so thrilling. 

Everyone onstage seemed to give their all, but 

the effect was more visceral than uplifting. 

The letdown continued at the performance 

of Symphony No. 6. When MTT conducted 

and recorded the symphony in September 

2001, immediately after 9-11, we could feel the 

emotional involvement from first note to last. 

This time, the symphony’s happier passages 

were more convincing than the tragic ones. 

Was he simply unwilling to revisit that week of 

intense shock and pain? For whatever reasons, 

the Sixth of 5-12 felt more beautifully played 

than deeply felt. 



San Francisco Opera’s 

Ring Cycle 

Three Views 

[With the Music Critics Association holding 

its annual meeting last June during the first 

of San Francisco Opera’s three Ring cycles, 

I asked three of ARG’s writers to share their 

impressions. Susan Brodie covers opera 

often for ARG in her trips to Europe. Jason 

Victor Serinus, who lives in the Bay Area, 

knows the SF Opera well, including the single 

productions leading up to the complete 

cycle. And Richard S Ginell gave 

complete ARG coverage to Wagner’s four 

operas in Los Angeles Opera’s 2010-11 season. 

—Editor] 

Susan Brodie 

Andrea Silvestrelli (Hagen) with members of the San Francisco Opera chorus 

Francesca Zambello’s Ring Cycle was originally 

a Washington National Opera production 

billed as a “Ring for America”, 

but the company had to abandon the project 

for financial reasons before the final installment. 

San Francisco Opera seized the opportunity 

to complete the cycle for its first new 

production since 1999. It was a very good one, 

especially for American audiences, with just 

enough updating and topical relevance to 

tickle the intellect without thrusting the viewer 

into confusion or outrage. 

Zambello has chosen American times and 

places for the settings and situations of the 

Nibelung myth. The Rhinemaidens were Gay 

90s wenches and Alberich a gold prospector 

(Nibelheim is a gold mine). The gods, gathered 

in front of a construction site, were 

dressed like characters from The Great Gatsby 

(with hard hats), and their rainbow bridge to 

Valhalla is the gangplank to the Titanic. Hunding 

dwelled in a wood-frame hunting cabin 

straight out of Deliverance. Wotan was outargued 

by Fricka in a corporate boardroom. 

Brunnhilde’s rock was modeled after fortifications 

at San Francisco’s Presidio. Mime raised 

Siegfried in a camping trailer amply stocked 

with Coca-Cola and Rheingold beer. Fafner’s 

lair was a chop shop, where Alberich, now a 

homeless off-the-grid terrorist living out of a 

shopping cart, kept watch while assembling 

Molotov cocktails. Gibichung Hall was a glasswalled 

Trump-worthy penthouse overlooking 

a polluted industrial skyline. 

These settings served as cultural references 

to heighten an American viewer’s connection 

with the themes of the work. There 



was almost nothing in Zambello’s staging that 

could be considered directorial excess. Beyond 

the redwood forests and parachuting WW I 

valkyries, this was a very traditional Ring. 

Zambello’s only major changes from the 

aborted Washington production involved a 

reworking of the projections, which for me 

proved to be the strongest cohesive element of 

the staging and probably the most American 

element, designed for a public accustomed to 

watching a screen. Most of the film imagery 

came from nature—clouds, rippling waves on 

the water’s surface, rocks, forest—or from 

man-made urban or industrial scenes. Video 

was projected onto two full-stage-wide 

screens, one a scrim at the front of the proscenium 

that was raised during each scene to 

draw the audience closer to the action. 

The dual-screen projections created depth 

and texture. Variations in the speed of movement 

increased Zambello’s control of the 

viewer’s experience. Projections were sometimes 

static, sometimes subtly moving, like a 

movie camera’s slow close-up to suggest emotion. 

Orchestral intervals become background 

music for panoramic fly-over shots of movement 

through space or change of scenery, like 

the descent from the gods’ domain to Nibelheim. 

As the story progressed, the projections 

underlined the environmental subtext with 

concrete imagery: the spilling of oil, the progressive 

despoiling of river or forest, the death 

of nature. 

The film also leapt off the screen onto the 

stage in the form of special effects: a dazzling 

arc of sparks when Donner summoned thunder 

and lightning in Rheingold, a lightning 

strike as Siegmund pulled the sword from the 

tree in Walkure, an explosion when Siegfried 

broke the Wanderer’s spear. The Magic Fire at 

the end of Walkure was the most stunning I’ve 

ever scene: real fire (requiring flame-retardant 

costumes and the presence of a fire marshal) 

surrounded Brunnhilde’s rock, and projections 

of fire on both screens gave depth to the 

illusion. Dramatic shifts of stage lighting further 

clarifed Zambello’s reading of the text 

with great specificity. 

Even though this Ring was often staged in 

semi-abstract ways, Zambello dug to the emotional 

heart of every encounter, establishing 

intimacy and teasing out fresh feeling from 

small moments via carefully gauged small gestures 

and reactions. Each character interacted 

physically with the others, from a simple touch 

on the arm or clasping of hands to full 

embrace. This is by far the most touchy-feely 

Ring I’ve ever seen. 

Wotan and Fricka were physically affectionate 

from their first appearance in Rheingold 

until the thwarted, angry Wotan flinched 

at his wife’s touch in Walkure. Freia at first suffered 

the caresses of the smitten Fasolt with 

great unease but returned from captivity blissfully 

embracing him, clearly unhappy to return 

to the gods. Hunding and Sieglinde groped 

one another like teenagers. Brunnhilde 

breached the barrier between gods and men to 

embrace Siegmund at the moment she understood 

his love for Sieglinde. Fafner, once 

stabbed, descended from his trash compacter 

to express his (ultimate) pity and compassion 

for the fate of the uncomprehending Siegfried 

with a touch. Even Alberich and Wotan tussled 

mano a mano when they met in Siegfried. The 

constant physical engagement along with 

other aspects of Zambello’s detailed direction 

infused humanity into these sometimes 

abstract mythological characters. 

The theatrical and cinematic details were 

fascinating, but the success of a Ring cycle 

depends on the musical values. San Francisco’s 

forces were solid but rarely rose to a 

thrilling level. Rheingold started with a lurch, 

as though someone had clumsily dropped the 

needle onto a vinyl record, and the pacing and 

dynamics showed limited nuance. The brass 

had difficulties in all four operas, and at least 

from my seat in the rightmost orchestra section 

there were strange balance problems. 

Things did improve, however, over the 

course of the cycle. By the middle of Walkure’s 

Act I the pacing became more expressive, with 

an urgency to the Siegmund-Sieglinde dialog 

that suggested lovemaking. By Siegfried the 

orchestra participated dramatically to a much 

greater degree. But the brass often weren’t up 

to the task, and I heard a surprising number of 

intonation problems, not to mention a lack of 

coordination between stage and pit. The Gotterdammerung 

I heard in Paris three days later 

showed much greater precision and clarity of 

sound from the orchestra. 

Casting was strong, given the voices available 

today. Nina Stemme was a fine and feisty 

Brunnhilde, though some signs of strain gave 

the impression of a singer not at her best. Mark 

Delavan’s impetuous and detailed Wotan 

couldn’t be bettered dramatically (most chilling 

moment: when he embraced the victorious 

Hunding and then nonchalantly broke his 

neck), but too often he was inaudible. Gordon 

Hawkins as Alberich was stronger both vocally 

and dramatically in Siegfried than Walkure. 

Both Siegfrieds—Jay Hunter Morris in Siegfried 

and Ian Storey in Gotterdammerung—looked 

and acted the part but had vocal problems. 

Brandon Jovanovich contributed youthful 

good looks and a strong tenor sound as Froh; 

in his role debut as Siegmund, he showed 

potential to become a Siegmund for our time. 

Andrea Silvestrelli was perhaps the most 

impressive voice in the production, a booming 

Fasolt (why not Fafner?) and a menacing 

Hagen. Melissa Citro played a knockout 

blonde-bimbo Gutrune (also Freia), though 



vocal glamor was lacking. The Rhinemaidens—Stacey 

Tappan, Lauren McNeese, and 

Renee Tatum—sounded absolutely glorious. 

Jason Victor Serinus 

From June 14 to 19 San Francisco Opera 

presented the first of its three complete 

cycles of Wagner’s Ring. Despite a lessthan-perfect 

cast, the power of stage director 

Francesca Zambello’s production, Michael 

Yeargan’s sets, Jan Hartley and Katy Tucker’s 

all-important projections, and the enveloping 

waves of Donald Runnicles’s occasionally 

overpowering orchestral eloquence made for a 

haunting experience. 

Much of the effectiveness of Zambello’s 

production came from the sets and projections. 

All images were drawn from America’s 

past and present. The production’s unified 

vision owed much to its ever-engrossing projections, 

which contrasted the beauty of 

forests, canyons, water, and clouds with the 

ugliness of railroad tracks and soot-spewing 

smokestacks. What some conservative critics 

decried as a heavy-handed attempt to saddle 

Wagner’s Ring with contemporary relevance 

instead brilliantly tapped into the audience’s 

collective unconscious, bringing Wagner’s 

messages of unbridled greed and abuse of the 

natural order to the fore. 

Zambello’s Ring remains, by her own 

admission, a work-in-process. The cycle’s first 

three operas had their production premieres 

in Washington DC. Since then, she has 

changed emphasis. While the DC productions, 

taking their cue from the role the city plays in 

world affairs, centered on the misuse of political 

power, San Francisco’s remounting drew 

on California’s consciousness of nature and 

the environment to place more emphasis on 

despoliation. 

In addition to reconceiving video and 

choreography for Act III of Walkure, Zambello 

also beefed up the conclusion of Gotterdammerung, 

which was first given in a standalone 

performance on June 5. That performance’s 

very short-lived fizzle of a fire, which 

left cast members gazing off into the darkness 

of a bare, black stage, was given a much-needed 

boost of metaphorical lighter fluid by the 

time the opera reappeared in the complete 

cycle. 

Zambello’s meticulousness let no one get 

by with “stand and sing”. Besides such wonders 

as the three perfect cartwheels and hilarious 

dance of Mime (the sensational David 

Cangelosi), Zambello’s constant attention to 

the interplay of men and women added extra 

dimensions of meaning. Especially delicious 

were the ever-changing, often-hilarious facial 

expressions of Gutrune (Melissa Citro), whose 

droll Anna Nicole Smith-like posing compensated 

for wild upper notes. Just as notable 

were Sieglinde’s (Anja Kampe) fluctuation 

between revulsion for Hunding (Daniel Sumegi) 

and futile attempts to turn him around 

through loving embrace, Gutrune’s surprising 

interplay with Hagen in their brief TV-watching 

bed scene, and Wotan’s brutality with Erda 

(Ronnita Miller) in their final interaction. 

At the conclusion of the Immolation Scene, 

women briefly held the stage. After the Rhinemaidens 

and a very sympathetic Gutrune 

brought Siegfried’s body to the unseen funeral 

pyre, the Rhinemaidens suffocated Hagen as a 

chorus of women watched Brunnhilde (Nina 

Stemme) descend to her death. Zambello’s 

heart-touching testament to the transcendent 

power of sisterhood and later surprising affirmation 

of future resurrection linger in the 

memory as much as Stemme’s astounding 

artistry. 

A major vocal rebalancing act occurred 

between SFO’s stand-alone premieres of 

Siegfried (May 29) and Gotterdammerung 

(June 5) and their complete cycle productions. 

Jay Hunter Morris, whose hardly-the-hero 

Siegfried had difficulty projecting over the 

orchestra on May 29, noticeably beefed up his 

sound for the cycle without running out of 

steam. Concurrently, the magnificent Stemme, 

who sang him into the ground on May 29, held 

her voice back until Gotterdammerung’s climactic 

Immolation Scene. Only then did she 

sing with the breathtaking power and generosity 

of glorious tone of the individual premieres 

a few weeks before. Stemme’s modulation was 

especially important on June 19 in Gotterdammerung, 

where Ian Storey as Siegfried 

progressively lost power owing to illnessinduced 

dehydration. Only after treatment by 

a physician was he able to return to something 

resembling the heroic form he displayed on 

June 5. 

Volumes could be written about Stemme’s 

achievement. Despite short-shifting a few top 

notes and fudging her trills, her string of high 

Cs in her ‘Hijatoho’ entrance were dispatched 

with the carefree impetuosity of youth. The 

contrast with Delavan’s performance—wellnuanced, 

but lacking in volume and physically 

congested—was unfortunate. 

Just as disappointing was Brandon 

Jovanovich’s deliciously hunky, initially 

promising Siegmund, which failed to build 

tension; his crucial interplay with Kampe had 

all the intimacy of lovemaking by cell phone. 

Indeed, besides Stemme, it was Stefan Margita’s 

ever-insinuating Loge, Cangelosi’s 

superbly sung and acted Mime, Silvestrelli’s 

towering dark-voiced Hagen, Stacey Tappan’s 

endearing Forest Bird, and the superbly bal- 



anced Rhinemaidens trio (including Tappan) 

that deserve the most accolades. 

Richard S Ginell 

Last year, Los Angeles made its first homegrown 

attempt at staging a complete 

Wagner Ring cycle, beating upstate rival 

San Francisco to the punch, even though the 

SF Ring was launched a year before LA’s. But 

in the end, San Francisco Opera, whose Ring 

performance tradition dates back to 1935, had 

the last word in almost every way. Here was a 

screwball concept with a huge emotional payoff 

because stage director Francesca Zambello 

took the trouble to develop her ideas along the 

lines of what Wagner wrote (what a novel 

notion!). 

Whereas the LA stage director Achim Freyer 

didn’t particularly care about Wagner’s 

characters—or whether you cared about them, 

Zambello had her cast probe deeply into their 

personalities, virtues, faults, passions, and 

capacities for growth. Whereas Freyer set his 

Ring on some kind of cold, alien planet populated 

by hideous caricatures, Zambello’s 

Ring—with its American settings from the 19th 

Century to the present and near future—connected 

with its intended audience on a familiar 

human level. Whereas Freyer’s cast was 

hamstrung and straitjacketed by his rigid staging—sometimes 

no better than a concert performance 

with pictures, Zambello’s singing 

actors were encouraged to develop all kinds of 

physical actions and nuances, large and small, 

that illuminated the storyline and libretto. 

Zambello has said that her Ring conception 

evolved over time into a fable about the 

destruction of the environment. Indeed, 

Rheingold looked different from and felt more 

unified than the stand-alone performance in 

2008. I sensed less emphasis on the California 

Gold Rush origins of the tale and more on the 

pristine natural world that is gradually darkened 

by civilization’s pollution and waste as 

the cycle proceeded. There were cinematic references 

(the West Side Story Siegmund-Hunding 

street fight under a crumbling freeway 

overpass stands out), lots of weird humor 

(Siegfried slaying the 2-1/2-ton scrap-metalcompactor 

“dragon” by short-circuiting it with 

his sword; Gutrune and Alberich playing with a 

TV remote control in a modern, super-sleek 

Marriott-like hotel; the parachuting Valkyries), 

and recurring social themes (people who lost 

control of the ring often ended up homeless, 

when not dead). 

Granted, Zambello indulged in a speculative 

agenda of having no less than three female 

characters (Freia, Sieglinde, and Gutrune) feeling 

attracted to dangerous men (Fasolt, Hunding, 

and Hagen). Yet, in Gutrune’s case, I 

found that it contributed to the power of the 

production, as it set the stage for Gutrune’s 

unusual development from a bored wanton 

vamp into a high-minded handmaiden to 

Brunnhilde’s and the Rhinemaidens’ redemption 

of the world. Indeed Zambello’s conclusion 

to Gotterdammerung was quite touching—a 

small child planting a single sapling 

after the end of the gods, which, unlike Freyer’s 

sickening dismantling of his set, meshed 

with what Wagner’s music says. Zambello 

made us feel good walking out of the opera 

house, whereas with Freyer one regretted not 

packing those stale tomatoes one was saving 

for just the proper occasion. 

Beyond the staging, there were two triumphant 

performances in this Ring that will 

be remembered for a long time. One came 

from the pit. While Rheingold was considerably 

better-paced and more emphatic in 

rhythm than the 2008 performance, Donald 

Runnicles kicked things into an even higher 

gear in the closing minutes of Act II of 

Walkure, and he rode that wave through the 

rest of the cycle. Probably his greatest moment 

occurred at the closing heights of the 

Brunnhilde-Siegfried love duet in Gotterdammerung; 

he took off in recklessly thrilling 

overdrive, nearly losing control, but his excellent 

orchestra saw it through. He was more of a 

racehorse than a brooding philosopher in this 

Ring, but there are few that are as good at it as 

he is these days. 

The other big triumph was Nina Stemme 

as Brunnhilde, where the promise she showed 

in 2010s SFO Walkure blossomed in her first 

complete cycle. Here was a strong, amplevoiced, 

steady heldensoprano in a compact 

body, a playful tomboy Brunnhilde who never 

entirely lost that aspect even as she acquired 

wisdom and maturity. 

Mark Delavan’s now-and-then powerful 

Wotan did not eclipse memories of James 

Morris and Thomas Stewart from the 1985 SFO 

Ring; nor could either of the Siegfrieds (Jay 

Hunter Morris in Siegfried and the -indisposed 

Ian Storey in Gotterdammerung) keep pace 

with Stemme’s Brunnhilde. But there were 

ample compensations elsewhere: Andrea Silvestrelli’s 

genuine bass Hagen, Gordon 

Hawkins’s burly bullying Alberich, David Cangelosi’s 

almost lyrical Mime, and Anja Kampe’s 

pointed, lustrous Sieglinde. 

One could also single out Brandon 

Jovanovich’s youthful Siegmund for cheers; 

but Los Angeles easily trumped San Francisco 

with its incomparable Placido Domingo as 

Siegfried. It was one of only a few instances 

where the LARing wasn’t outpointed by the 

gripping competition from the Bay Area. 



Ascension’s New Pascal 

Quoirin Organ 

French and Baroque Traditions on Display 

Susan Brodie 

Manton Memorial Organ, 3-Manual Mechanical Action Core Console 

With the installation of the Manton 

Memorial Organ, the Church of the 

Ascension in Manhattan’s Greenwich 

Village has enhanced its long tradition of 

musical and artistic excellence. On May 5 

American Jon Gillick, a Messiaen specialist 

long associated with this church, inaugurated 

the new instrument with a concert of 19th and 

20th Century French music on the larger of its 

two component organs. 



The design was developed by the firm of 

Pascal Quoirin of St-Didier, France, in conjunction 

with Gillock and Ascension Music 

Director Dennis Keene, who sought an instrument 

suitable for the widest possible repertoire. 

It is a novel two-in-one: a large electricaction 

four-manual French 19th-Century one 

and a smaller tracker-action three-manual 

baroque style organ. They share pipes. (A 

technical description with registration details 

and photographs are available on the 

builder’s website: www.atelier-quoirin.com.) 

The handsome consoles and pipes, at the 

front of the church, are decorated with stylized 

art nouveau trim that harmonizes with 

the sober yet rich Gothic revival interior of the 

church (a national historic landmark), remodeled 

in the 1880s by McKim, Meade, and 

White. Hand-carved birds decorating the pipe 

cases honor Olivier Messiaen, who drew inspiration 

from birdsong. 

This concert was a good survey of music 

conceived for the classic French organ as 

developed by 19th-Century maker Aristide 

Cavaille-Coll, with its greatly expanded sound 

palette. The tradition is rigorous in the musical 

and instrumental skills demanded, dynastic in 

the succession of the most important organist 

jobs (giving access to the best instruments), 

and, with much of the music written for the 

Catholic church, rooted in faith. Composers 

represented on the program formed a roll call 

of the most important practitioners of this art. 

For the concert the large, curved fourmanual 

console was moved from its normal 

position at the front of the left aisle to sit in 

front of the altar with the keyboard facing the 

pews at a slight angle. Most organ recitalists 

play seated in an organ loft, almost invisible, 

so it was an unusual view. Gillock walked out, 

bowed modestly, turned his back, removed 

his jacket (revealing a spiffy brocade waistcoat), 

and slipped onto the bench to play. 

Marcel Dupré’s Cortege and Litany started 

softly, sounding like a processional heard 

through the doors of a country church. An 

opening four-note bell-like motif expanded to a 

folk-like theme that lent itself to shifting meters 

and an array of tone colors showing off the registrations, 

as the sound swelled to a powerful 

finish. It was followed by the more formally 

structured Prelude, Fugue, and Variation by 

Cesar Franck, which gave a fuller sense of the 

symphonic capabilities of the instrument as 

well as Gillock’s nimble control of the pedals. 

A trademark of the French organ school is 

improvisation; Conservatoire students still get 

a thorough grounding in keyboard harmony 

and counterpoint that enables them to improvise 

for unpredictable amounts of time during 

church services. Past masters of this art drew 

large audiences eager to hear their extended 

improvisations on a theme supplied to the 

soloist at the last minute. Transcriptions of 

two such improvisations, notated from 

recordings, gave the nod to Notre Dame 

organist Pierre Cochereau (1924-84), who 

crafted boldly dissonant variations on a lullaby 

by the organist Louis Vierne, and to Charles 

Tournemire (1870-1939), titulaire at St- 

Clothilde, whose colorful, episodic improvisations 

on the Te Deum were transcribed by his 

famous student Maurice Duruflé. 

A second, longer piece from Franck’s Opus 

18, Priere, showed the more improvisational 

and expressive side of the disciplined contrapuntalist. 

A hymn-like opening moved into 

more lyrical rising figures; after a solo recitative 

on a trumpet stop, the opening theme returns, 

with more perfumed harmonies and embellishments. 

Its harmonies have a kinship with 

Fauré’s sinuous but stable progressions, but 

Franck’s more flamboyant colors were 

undoubtedly developed during his tenure as 

organist at St-Clothilde, home to a major 

Cavaille-Coll instrument. In this repertoire, 

those who have it flaunt it, and the composers 

who played major instruments took full advantage 

of their possibilities. Even more than other 

composers, Franck allowed the listener to taste 

the brass and reeds in a range of octaves, but all 

for expressive ends. With its careening emotional 

highs and lows and its wall-of-sound finish, 

this music puts the lie to the notion of 

French restraint. Gillock, to his credit, mixed 

registrations with taste as well as exuberance. 

The final two pieces were excerpts from La 

Nativité du Seigneur by Olivier Messiaen, an 

inspiration for this organ’s design. This relatively 

early collection already shows the composer’s 

musical language, with palindromic 

rhythmic figures, bird-like twitterings, and 

polytonal harmonic progressions celestial in 

flavor. The music was well served by the 

instrument. 

In some respects a large symphonic organ 

is overkill in a relatively small church like 

Ascension, only a fraction of the size of the 

Cathedral of Notre Dame or Messiaen’s 

Trinité. In this space even a fortissimo climax 

with a long-held final chord lacks the thunderous, 

bone-tingling amplitude and the ethereal 

after-buzz of clashing overtones that linger in 

a larger, more resonant space (Ascension’s 

reverberation time is only three seconds). But 

it’s a gorgeous instrument that will have no 

shortage of recitalists eager to play it. 

Organ music may never again see the rock 

star prestige enjoyed by the flamboyant Virgil 

Fox; but the Manton Memorial Organ, the first 

French symphonic organ built in New York in 

more than 50 years, should spark plenty of 

interest among people already steeped in this 

relatively esoteric world. The Bach concert 

later in the month on the smaller console 

should offer an interesting contrast. 



Leslie Kandell 

In the life of a church, a new organ is a 

momentous and costly venture, calling for 

time-intensive study and choice of styles, 

fundraising, and introductory booklets with 

elegant photographs. The Church of the 

Ascension made significant indoor and outdoor 

renovations before the instrument’s 

arrival and assembling; the organist world 

buzzed. 

Ascension is Fifth Avenue’s oldest church, 

dedicated in 1841. Its organist, Dennis Keene, 

insisted that the instrument’s stature, pipes, 

and sound fit with Richard Upjohn’s architecture, 

John Lafarge’s huge altar mural, and windows 

of stained glass by Lafarge and Louis 

Comfort Tiffany. Churchgoers pay attention to 

surroundings because usually the console and 

player can barely be seen from the pews. 

The Manton Memorial Organ is named for 

Sir Edwin and Lady Manton, philanthropic 

British parishioners and next-door neighbors. 

After scouring the United States and Europe 

for a builder, Keene chose the firm of Pascal 

Quoirin, near Dijon, France. The organ is the 

first French-built one in the United States, and 

a series of inaugural recitals and choral concerts 

took place in May and June. 

The second recital—and first New York 

appearance by Francis Chapelet—was on the 

tracker. It was a program of baroque works 

from France, Spain (where Chapelet was a 

professor), and Germany. Germany won in a 

walk—how could it not, represented by Bach 

and Buxtehude? 

Chapelet had a young assistant in tow 

(Bach always had a boy to help with registra- 

tion—so did they all, really). The Livre 

d’Orgue, by Bach’s contemporary Pierre 

Dumage, was instructive rather than inspired, 

but it displayed the instrument, starting with a 

commandingly full plein jeu. Each movement 

was preceded by a verse of the Magnificat in 

Gregorian chant, sung by the men of Cerddorion, 

a volunteer chorus. 

The imposing Fugue revealed the lower 

manual trumpet stop; the trio, the upper manual 

small high stop. Other movements 

demonstrated ornaments, ostinatos with 

hands and feet, bass trumpet stop range, and 

breathy treble effects on manuals without 

pedals. It ended with predictable grandeur. 

Musically, Tiento par Alamire by Juan 

Cabanilles didn’t hold me at all, but it did 

show off brilliant reed overtones and horizontal 

trumpet. 

The bar doesn’t get any higher than Bach’s 

late Prelude and Wedge Fugue, as well as the 

concert’s concluding Prelude and St Anne 

Triple Fugue. I was transported to another 

world that had nothing to do with music criticism, 

except to suggest, “Why don’t those 

other composers just go home?” 

Registration in Buxtehude’s Come Holy 

Spirit exposed an assertive nasal melody over 

a low muted accompaniment. Though the 

tremblant was audible, the fugue had 

immense clarity. Played again as an encore 

after the mighty Bach, it somehow sounded 

more French; Chapelet was having a master’s 

good time. 

So, thanks to devoted and varied contributors 

for a gift that doesn’t so much usher in a 

new era for this church as it does a new 

dimension. 

Manton Memorial Organ, 4-Manual Electric Action Console (left), 3-Manual 

Mechanical Action Core Console (right) 



Spoleto USA 

Renewed Venues, Renewed Spirit 

Perry Tannenbaum 

The Magic Flute 

Marie Arnet as Pamina and Fabio Trumpy as Tamino 

Just a few years ago, the venues at Spoleto 

Festival USA and the men leading their 

choral and chamber music programs had 

one glaring similarity: they were elderly and 

showing their age. Historical preservation is an 

ancient article of faith in Charleston, but when 

temperatures topped 95 degrees, keeping the 

faith could be oppressive for festival goers, 

particularly at Memminger Auditorium and 

Dock Street Theatre. 

Then a refreshing wave of renovations 

began. In 2006 Memminger closed for two 

years. It returned with a sensational salvage of 

Anthony Davis’s Amidstad in an arena staging 

that surrounded the infamous slave ship with 

audience and orchestra. Memminger’s versatility 

also made it the home of the lunchtime 

chamber music series while the Dock Street 

venue underwent renovation. Dock Street, the 

hub of Spoleto’s chamber music, small-scale 

opera, and theatre, returned in 2010 with quieter 

air conditioning and more comfortable 

seats. In 2012 Gaillard Auditorium will under- 

go a three-year remodeling, steering it in a radically 

retro course by shedding its airplane 

hangar ambiance and hearkening back to the 

rounder, more ornate opera halls of the Victorian 

Era with aisles in the middle and boxes on 

the sides, praise God! 

Meanwhile, there has been an infusion of 

youth in the musical leadership. Geoff Nuttall, 

the flamboyant first violinist of the festival’s 

resident string quartet, the St Lawrence, has 

succeeded the beloved Charles Wadsworth as 

director of chamber music. And John Kennedy, 

once confined to hosting the contemporary 

Music in Time series, has become the resident 

Festival Orchestra conductor, following 

Emmanuel Villaume’s departure. Although 

Joseph Flummerfelt continues as director of 

choral activities, he no longer presides over the 

Westminster Choir concerts. Yet his participation 

actually increased this year. He led the 

choral-orchestral concert of Bruckner’s Te 

Deum and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and 

authoritatively conducted The Medium by festival 

founder Gian Carlo Menotti. 



Mozart’s Magic Flute offered a respite from 

the modernistic tilt of this year’s Spoleto lineup. 

Emphasizing the comic, stage directors 

Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier tossed in liberal 

dollops of discordant Eurotrash. Baritone 

Ruben Drole made his entrance as Papageno 

accompanied by trained uncaged birds—and 

with appropriately-named soprano Audrey 

Luna flying in as the Queen of the Night 

perched on a crescent moon. And when 

Tamino formally took his magic flute, die 

zauberflöte actually floated magically through 

the air. 

Drole and Luna also sang better than Fabio 

Trümpy and Marie Arnet as Tamino and Pamina. 

Thanks to a supersized pair of platform 

shoes, bass-baritone Kevin Short was a 12foot-tall 

Sarastro; his Masonic cult uniforms 

were sinister gray business suits. In Act II Leiser 

and Caurier poured on the dark magic, calling 

on Flying by Foy to give the Three Spirits 

flashier roles and supplying Pamina with a 

special lift when the trio visited her in her 

despondency. 

Sottile Theatre, a College of Charleston 

property, had been out of the Spoleto mix 

since 2008. Now in mid-renovation, Leiser and 

Caurier made heavy use of its wonders by 

using the trapdoors through which the Queen 

of the Night vanished and Tamino re-entered 

and exited during his climactic trials. In his 

farcical despair Papageno was handsomely 

furnished with a rope that dangled comically 

from the fly loft; he was relieved by the arrival 

of a transformed Papagena clinging to the 

other end of that rope as she rose from below. 

Despite its drab Eurotrash detour and conductor 

Steven Sloane’s lack of freshness, this staging 

was very human and much fun. 

The Menotti peace offering at the renovated 

Dock Street Theatre showed off the facility’s 

technical assets to better advantage than the 

theatrical productions mounted there. In fact, 

Flummerfelt’s work with the Spoleto Orchestra, 

paired with John Pascoe’s direction and 

production design, amounted to near-ideal 

advocacy of The Medium, the composer’s most 

dramatic piece. Pascoe’s set, with all sorts of 

surreal furnishings floating high above it, presented 

Madame Flora’s seance parlor as a 

huge, dark warehouse space, lavishly rimmed 

with mirrors and ripe for haunting. Where the 

ghosts might come from became clear enough 

when the huge warehouse door slid open, and 

a bombed-out cityscape loomed Dresden-like 

in the background. 

Pascoe’s costumes faithfully picked up the 

postwar ambience, and the work’s most 

notable aria, ‘Monica’s Waltz’, chimed well 

with the gumbo of gothic and film-noir scenic 

elements. 

Mezzo Barbara Dever combined the fire 

and harrowing vulnerabilities of Flora so natu- 

rally that, sometimes, it seemed Stephanie 

Blythe was performing. As Flora’s daughter, 

soprano Jennifer Aylmer’s delivery was short 

on youthful vitality or ruefulness. So was her 

rapport with her mother and mute pseudosibling, 

Toby. Menotti apparently had a weakness 

for delicate, debilitated boys like Toby; 

but this servant lad, infused with pathos by 

Gregg Mozgala, put an ice-pack on any romantic 

flames between him and Monica. The two 

teens worked best together in helping to dupe 

Flora’s clientele in the opening scene. Stephen 

Bryant and Caitlin Lynch sang well enough as 

the couple that communes with their lost twoyear-old 

son, but there was too little music or 

character development for them to excel. Even 

less was written for Jennifer Feinstein as Mrs 

Nolan, but I appreciated what she brought to 

the table when her gullibility was fed by 

Aylmer’s sotto voce impersonation of her 

daughter. The message of The Medium could 

hardly have been better served, except that, 

English or not, the production screamed for 

supertitles. 

Even more definitive was soprano Elizabeth 

Futral’s performance in the title role of 

Kaija Saariaho’s opera, Emilie. After a moody 

overture, adroitly led by Kennedy, Futral took 

the stage at Memminger and dominated it for 

the full 75 minutes. With a luxurious chaise on 

one side of the stage and a writing desk on the 

other, we were offered generous samplings of 

Emilie du Chatelet’s amorous career and intellectual 

powers. She would soon die in childbirth, 

but her instincts told her she must complete 

her translation of Newton’s Principia 

without delay. That’s about all the tension that 

this monodrama can produce, except for all 

the beauties of Saariaho’s sometimes turbulent, 

mesmerizing score. 

The visuals by video designer Austin 

Switser lifted the lyricism of the spectacle to an 

even loftier realm. Projected onto a modernistic 

array of canvas triangles that set 

designer Neal Wilkinson brashly contrasted 

with period furnishings, these visuals ranged 

from Emilie’s writings to male-female interactions, 

physics formulas, and Newton’s calculations 

of solar bodies—a heady mix of powerpoint 

and movie. Switching abruptly from spoken 

to sung passages, and even from French to 

English, Futral was never upstaged by the light 

show that enveloped her. Truly exciting. 

Now in his second year as chamber music 

director, Nuttall is doing things more his way. 

For the first time, the complete set of 11 programs 

was printed, but still without the performers’ 

names. In a gray suit jacket that conjured 

up Robert E Lee, the dapper Nuttall also 

displayed a nuanced grasp of tradition. While 

his attire reminded us that Charleston was 

commemorating the opening of the Civil War 

150 years ago, his introductory remarks lin- 

20 Music in Concertert September/October 2011


gered on the festival’s celebration of Menotti’s 

centennial, reminding us that the concluding 

piece of the day, Schubert’s String Quintet, 

was Menotti’s invariable choice for concluding 

the festival he founded. 

With Saariaho and composer-in-residence 

Osvaldo Golijov in the audience, Nuttall 

stamped Spoleto 2011 as the richest ever in 

modern chamber music. Four programs 

included at least one piece by Golijov, building 

up to the majestic Dreams and Prayers of Isaac 

the Blind, played by clarinetist Todd Palmer 

and the St Lawrence Quartet. And if Emilie and 

a full Music in Time concert devoted to Saariaho 

weren’t enough, another macabre peep at 

her work was offered in Program 2 with Oi Kuu 

(For the Moon), a duo where cellist Christopher 

Constanza had Palmer squeezing forth 

challenging multiphonics on a bass clarinet. 

The 11 programs also had works by 

Shostakovich, Cage, Barber, Britten, Ricky Ian 

Gordon, and Tom Johnson. 

Program 10 was the most emblematic of 

the five I attended. It began with a piano quintet 

by Louise Farrenc (1804-75) that double 

bassist Anthony Manzo suggested because it 

has the same lineup as Schubert’s Trout Quintet 

that he’d be playing on the final program. 

Each of Farrenc’s four movements was a pleasant 

discovery, though the Scherzo, beginning 

with a Mendelssohnian thrust and culminating 

with Beethovenian agitation, was the most 

memorable. 

Then Manzo was thrust into the spotlight 

with Johnson’s Failing: A Very Difficult Piece 

for Solo String Bass and its entertaining recipe 

for failure: Manzo was not only obliged to play 

increasingly difficult music but was also 

required to read an increasingly dense text 

printed like song lyrics in his score, meditating 

with absurdist self-regard on the success he 

was having in achieving the failure that Johnson 

had ordained for him. 

In the performance I had most eagerly 

awaited, violinist Livia Sohn and pianist Pedja 

Muzijevic took on Beethoven’s Kreutzer 

Sonata. In the opening sturm und drang, the 

duo matched up well against the magisterial 

account I had heard at the Savannah Music 

Festival ten weeks earlier from Daniel Hope 

and Sebastian Knauer. Sohn’s phrasing was 

somewhat clipped by comparison, contrasts 

less keen, but her attack had its own noble 

ardor. In the Andante, Sohn seemed to lose the 

conviction necessary to sustain the movement. 

Even though Muzijevic grew in strength 

behind her, Sohn showed little sign of recovering 

her confidence and joy in the closing 

Presto. 

Muzijevic’s fire was unalloyed the following 

afternoon in Schubert’s Trout, where he 

and Nuttall dominated in a zesty partnership. 

EMILIE 

Elizabeth Futral as Emilie du Chatelet 

Beforehand baritone Tyler Duncan and pianist 

Inon Barnatan performed Schubert’s song, 

basis for the quintet’s fourth movement. Duncan’s 

work was not done until he taught the 

melody to the audience and had us stand up 

and hum it. 

If he hadn’t put in that extra effort, Duncan 

would have been upstaged by bravura cellist 

Alisa Weilerstein (with Barnatan) performing 

Paganini’s Moses Phantasy on a single string, 

achieving every effect possible from such scant 

means. Nuttall’s colorful introduction—how 

Paganini composed it on a broken-down 

instrument while incarcerated, cunningly rigging 

it to spontaneously lose its strings in performance—immensely 

increased the pleasure. 

Our amazement might have increased if he 

had mentioned that the Phantasy had originally 

been composed for the more easily traversed 

violin. Maybe Weilerstein had kept that 

little secret to herself. 



Boston Early Music Festival 

Dart and Deller Would Be Proud 

John Ehrlich 

The Boston-area air crackles with palpable 

anticipation in the days before each 

biyearly Boston Early Music Festival, and 

so it was last June at this world-class meeting 

of early music minds and artists. 

There were the expected premiere of a 

long-neglected baroque opera, soloists and 

ensembles of many stripes, revivals of past 

performances, and exhibitions of instrument 

builders, music publishers, and other ancillary 

early music operations. There were late-night 

concerts for diehard connoisseurs intent on 

discovery. In short, from the June 12 opening 

night to the June 27 out-of-town final performance 

in Great Barrington, there was nonstop 

activity. The overall high level of proficiency 

and variety of repertoire would stagger 

a Thurston Dart or Alfred Deller, though they 

would have been pleased. 

This year’s North American baroque opera 

premiere was Agostino Steffani’s Niobe, Regina 

de Tebe. The hero of the opera, whose story 

actually upstages the title queen, is her husband 

Anfione, a musician whose utterances 

are so potent that they charm the rocks of the 

countryside to form a protective phalanx 

about the city of Thebes. Philippe Jaroussky, 

the countertenor of prodigious vocal gifts who 

played Anfione, was particularly effective in 

the remarkable scene where he envisions a 

“palace of harmony” where he would retire 

from his kingly responsibilities, imagining the 

music of the spheres and the planets in their 

heavenly orbits. In a particularly telling musical 

gesture, Steffani offers an offstage consort 

of viols as the ethereal accompaniment. This 

stopped the show—a tribute to singer and 

composer both. 

Soprano Amanda Forsythe handily performed 

the dramatically unsympathetic role of 

Niobe, who is vain and impolite to her courtly 

associates and thinks she is superior to the 

gods, which leads to her undoing. For her 

impertinences, the gods impassively hurl bolts 

of lightning earthward that fatally strike her 

three hapless children and turn Niobe into 

stone. 

I was astonished by the melodic and dramatic 

gifts of this relatively unknown composer. 

It was handsomely staged by the very gifted 

designer Gilbert Blin, whose work seems only 

to improve with each festival (an interview 

with Blin can be viewed at http://classicalscene.com/2011/06/18/scene-for-bemf’sniobe/) 

and so well projected by the BEMF 

Amanda Forsythe 

Orchestra. The production was a testament to 

Stephen Stubbs and Paul O’Dette, who led the 

ensemble and continue to unearth worthy 

baroque operas. 

The other baroque opera was Handel’s 

1718 chamber version of Acis and Galatea, 

which BEMF had first presented to great 

acclaim in 2009. Galatea, the wood nymph, is 

in love with the shepherd Acis. But the jealous 

one-eyed giant, Polyphemus, wants Galatea 

for himself. As happens so often when mortals 

dally with gods or seductive woodland creatures, 

tragedy ensues when the heatedly jealous 

Polyphemus hurls a large rock at Acis, who 

promptly expires. All is not lost, though, as 

Galatea, reminded that she has divine powers, 

grants Acis immortality, transforming his mortal 

remains into a burbling stream. 

Soprano Teresa Wakim sang the role of 

Galatea elegantly and gracefully. She assumed 

positions on stage that looked as if they were 

lifted directly from an oil painting of the period. 

Tenor Aaron Sheehan sang and acted 

handsomely as Acis. Both had pleasingly light, 

lyric voices that were ideally suited to their 

roles and blended perfectly in duets. Baritone 

Douglas Williams was the amusing, terrifying, 

blustery Polyphemus, yet he sang with a pleasing 

elegance. Jason McStoots and Michael 



Kelly, tenors of uncommon accomplishment 

in baroque style and tonal beauty, were the 

shepherds Damon and Corison. The costumes, 

designed by Anna Watkins, were sumptuous 

and richly adorned. Once again, Gilbert Blin’s 

simple yet very artful stage set, rustically pastoral 

yet Versailles-like in its richness of clouds 

above and woods below, was a model of creating 

lushness with modest means. 

It would be hard to imagine a tighter and 

more colorful band of early instrumentalists 

than violinist Cynthia Roberts, cellist Phoebe 

Carrai, violonist Robert Nairn, bassoonist 

Mathieu Lussier, harpsichordist Avi Stein, 

archlutenist Paul O’Dette, and the extraordinary 

Gonzalo Ruiz and Kathryn Montoya playing 

oboes and recorders, all co-led by baroque 

violinist Robert Nealy and Stephen Stubbs, 

master of all things strummed and plucked 

from theorbo to guitar. And, what music! One 

gorgeous aria or chorus after another! The 

sheer fecundity of Handel’s gifts of melody and 

drama was amazing. 

Fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout and 

three members of the Freiburg Baroque 

Orchestra played Mozart at Jordan Hall with 

dazzling results. After a thoughtful, well-paced, 

deeply felt performance of the Fantasia, K 475, 

Bezuidenhout was joined by violinist Petra 

Müllejans, violist Gottfried von der Goltz, and 

cellist Kristin von der Goltz for Mozart’s two 

piano quartets. Their joy was audible as well as 

visible; their ensemble was the product of one 

creative mind. The exquisite, richly voiced 

fortepiano, built by Rodney J Regier of 

Freeport, Maine, had an especially delectable 

pianissimo. 

Two superb English vocal ensembles presented 

fascinating programs. The latest iteration 

of the King’s Singers elicited the following 

well parsed statement from the Boston Globe’s 

Matthew Guerrieri: “The King’s Singers have 

been around for over 40 years, the Boston 

Early Music Festival for 30, but it took until 

Tuesday (June 14) to bring the two together. 

Though famous as free-range omnivores, 

crossing styles and genres, at the core of the 

Singers’ sound is renaissance music, the basis 

of their BEMF debut.” 

Indeed! Their fascinating program interlaced 

the 1592 Italian collection of vocal works 

called Il Trionfo di Dori with madrigals drawn 

from the 1601 British publication The Triumphs 

of Oriana assembled by the great English 

madrigalist Thomas Morley. The works 

share an approach to their refrains: each of the 

Italian works closes with “Viva la bella Dori”, 

while the parallel British refrain is “Long live 

fair Oriana”. 

The concert’s second half brought forth 

Janequin’s earthy Cris de Paris and his onomatopoetic 

La Guerre, where the singers recreated 

the sounds of battle to great and 

Philippe Jaroussky 

amusing effect. A King’s Singers’ specialty, 

Alessandro Striggio’s Gioco di Primiera, was 

offered as a substantial encore, a tour de force 

where a vigorous Italian card game is theatrically 

reenacted with props. 

Offering a completely different sonority, 

Peter Philips’s Tallis Scholars, with their 

honed, chaste, and pure sound, presented a 

program of the great Spanish renaissance master 

Tomas Luis de Victoria, including the O 

Magnum Mysterium Mass, the first three 

Lamentations for Good Friday, and—what for 

me was the evening’s high point—the exquisite 

Salve Regina. They also performed music by 

Sebastian de Vivanco, a contemporary of Victoria: 

the Magnificat Octavi Toni and the 

motet ‘Sicut Lilium’. I am not among those 

who think the Tallis Scholars the holy grail of 

renaissance choral singing. Too much straighttoned 

vocal production began to wear on me 

after an hour or so. 

BEMF has already announced its next 

baroque opera for June 2013: Christoph 

Graupner’s Antiochus und Stratonica. O’Dette, 

Stubbs, and Blin will return. 



Mighty Los Angeles 

Master Chorale 

Triumphing in Brahms to Ellington 

Richard S Ginell 

The mighty Los Angeles Master Chorale 

does double service at Walt Disney Concert 

Hall, both as the chorus-of-choice 

for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and on its 

own concert series. Sometimes both functions 

coincide, and so Disney Hall was the place to 

hear the Master Chorale in two almost completely 

different settings in May. 

One concert was part of a concept that the 

Phil’s Gustavo Dudamel inherited from Esa- 

Pekka Salonen, the “Unbound” series, where 

complete symphonic cycles by the big names 

are juxtaposed with present-day works for 

contrast and context. But Dudamel’s first 

attempt at this kind of programming, “Brahms 

Unbound”, came unbound through no fault of 

his own. All three world premieres by bluechip 

composers were cancelled: Henryk 

Gorecki died before he could finish his Symphony 

No. 4; Peter Lieberson lost his battle 

with lymphoma, leaving his Percussion Concerto 

unfinished; and Osvaldo Golijov couldn’t 

meet the deadline for his Violin Concerto. 

That left only Sofia Gubaidulina’s strange, 

sprawling percussion concerto, Glorious Per- 

cussion (a US premiere), and Steven Mackey’s 

Beautiful Passing from the originally 

announced contemporary lineup. And it was 

Mackey’s work that was coupled with Brahms’s 

German Requiem on May 12 for an eveninglong 

meditation on the theme of death. 

Mackey originally intended to write a riproaring, 

rock-em-sock-em violin concerto for 

Leila Josefowicz, but his mother’s death in 

2008 turned his muse inward. “Please tell 

everyone I had a beautiful passing” were his 

mother’s last words, and, after Josefowicz was 

given serene multiple-stops and trills against 

jazzy, raucous orchestral backtalk based on the 

six-note New Jersey Transit ticket machine jingle 

(!), Mackey eventually managed to unite 

everyone into a lovely mellow reverie that 

gradually faded away. We weren’t given a 

chance to find out if Mackey’s music could 

stand on its own without hearing his touching 

story about the motivation for the piece. So in 

this stacked emotional deck, the concluding 

reverie went down best. The remarkable Josefowicz, 

increasingly our go-to person for new 

violin pieces, was in full command. 



Then Dudamel made a powerful case for 

the Requiem, conducting without a score as he 

does for just about every large-scale romantic 

work. When Brahms wanted the tempos slow, 

Dudamel added the word “molto” and slowed 

things down even more, while kicking up the 

pace in appropriate passages with an infectious 

vigor that drew parallels with Beethoven. 

There was even some wildness in the third 

movement fugue and the central rallying point 

of the sixth movement, held together by a firm 

rhythmic underpinning. There were a few idiosyncratic 

hesitations in the first two movements 

(one might have wanted more compassion 

and Zen there), but things evened out the 

rest of the way. Matthias Goerne’s sonorous, 

solid, Rock-of-Ages baritone was in great form; 

while soprano Christine Schäfer sounded 

luminous in timbre but a bit uncertain in pitch 

at first. While the Philharmonic played well, 

and the organ pedals produced a satisfying 

deep rumble that vibrated pleasantly through 

Disney Hall’s wood surfaces, the real star of 

this performance was the Master Chorale, 

rich-textured, dynamically sensitive, and outstanding 

in every department. 

Shifting into a more life-affirming gear on 

its own series ten days later, the Master 

Chorale turned to Duke Ellington. In his last 

decade, feeling the tug of his sincere religious 

faith and impending mortality, Ellington 

assembled three “Sacred Concerts” from a pile 

of newly-composed pieces plus bits of this and 

that from various stages of his long career. 

These “Concerts” are an inimitable American 

goulash of many things—hot big-band jazz, 

gospel, Afro-Cuban rhythms, a cappella 

chorales, solo ruminations on piano or drums, 

even a concerto for tap dancer—all tied 

together with Ellington’s harmonic and tonecolor 

signatures, a brace of good tunes, and a 

big serving of showbiz. 

Fusing jazz with Christianity was a hot 

industry in the mid-1960s, triggered in part by 

all of the “Is God dead?” talk and queries about 

whether the church was “relevant” anymore, 

so Ellington caught flak from both the jazz corner 

and hard-line religious figures. 

The attacks left their mark. The trilogy was 

still one of the better-kept secrets of the Ellington 

catalog when Master Chorale Music Director 

Grant Gershon and jazz composer-conductor-Ellington 

buff James Newton presented 

their first Sacred Concert at Disney Hall in 

March 2004. For me, that concert was the high 

point of Gershon’s tenure. When he and Newton 

did another last May, it was just as spinetingling, 

exuberant, and emotional the second 

time. 

Ellington himself probably never encountered 

a chorus as unified, flexible, and glowing 

in sound as the Master Chorale—and they can 

really swing. They were driven by a power- 

house rhythm section with the same personnel 

as in 2004. The big band on hand, which Newton 

led with leaping gestures alongside Gershon’s 

command of the voices, was stocked 

with skilled jazzers who played with wild abandon. 

Maybe this wasn’t quite the authentic 

Ellington sound (it never could be, for the 

Duke wrote specifically for the quirks of his 

casually-curated collection of oddball soloists), 

but it could come amazingly close. And without 

a doubt, it was strong enough to rock the 

house. 

This combination made every selection 

sound like a stand-alone masterpiece; a visibly 

awed Gershon exclaimed after three numbers, 

“We go from mountaintop to mountaintop.” 

In some cases, they were able to surpass the 

performances on Ellington’s own recordings. 

One in particular was the lyrically preachy 

‘Something ‘Bout Believing’ where the Master 

Chorale could illuminate inner harmonies that 

transformed the song into something sublime. 

There is a lot more from the Sacred Music concerts 

that this concert didn’t cover, but Gershon 

and Newton chose most of the best stuff 

the first time out in 2004, and, with the exceptions 

of one deletion and two additions, they 

didn’t tamper with success in 2011. As a result, 

there is now a second twin mountaintop in the 

Gershon era. 



Buffalo Phil: Premieres 

Without Pain 

Tyberg Symphony, Hagen Concerto 

Herman Trotter 

The Buffalo Philharmonic’s 75th anniversary 

season (Mar/Apr 2011) has been a 

festive one where Music Director JoAnn 

Falletta opened brilliantly with Midori in 

Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, followed by 

Elgar’s Cello Concerto in Lynn Harrell’s heartwarming 

performance, an electrifying Concerto 

for Orchestra by Lutoslawski, a spectacular 

Planets by Holst with projections of each planet, 

and Verdi’s Requiem to conclude the season. 

But what left the most indelible memories 

in my mind was Falletta’s quite remarkable 

feat of presenting, in consecutive programs, 

premieres of a significant symphony rediscovered 

and a new violin concerto that did not 

cost the orchestra a nickel. 

Here’s how: regular readers of ARG know 

that for several years Falletta and the BPO have 

been at the center of the emergence from total 

obscurity of works by Vienna-born composer 

Marcel Tyberg, who was put to death at 

Auschwitz on December 31, 1944, despite 

being a practicing Catholic with only 1/16th 

Jewish ancestry. His entire life’s work, however, 

had been entrusted to the family of one of 

his composition students, Enrico Mihich, who 

eventually moved to Buffalo and became a 

world-renowned cancer researcher, all the 

while safeguarding Tyberg’s scores in his attic. 

When he shared this trove with JoAnn Falletta, 

it marked the beginning of Tyberg’s emergence. 

She led the world premiere of his Symphony 

No. 3 (1943) in 2008 and recorded it for 

Naxos (Nov/Dec 2010). For the 75th anniversary 

Falletta chose to unveil his Symphony No. 

2 (1931) on April 30. 

Tyberg was by nature introverted and retiring, 

desperately concerned with composing 

but quite oblivious to any need to have his 

music published or even performed. After conductor 

Rafael Kubelik, a friend of the Tyberg 

family, saw his Symphony No. 2, he performed 

it in Prague sometime in the early 1930s with 

the Czech Philharmonic. Shortly before Kubelik 

died, he confirmed to Mihich that it was the 

world premiere, but any printed trace of the 

performance seems to have been obliterated 

by World War II. The BPO’s performances constituted 

the Western hemisphere premiere, 

and the music fully justified Kubelik’s high 

opinion of it. 

Tyberg was a no-nonsense composer. His 

musical ideas are cogent, often absorbing, and 

are developed with a clear sense of logic that 

leads the listener, almost effortlessly, to their 

conclusion. Once Tyberg has stated his case, 

the music, without extraneous pomp or 

grandiosity, just says goodbye with a succinct, 

fascinating coda. This is warm, bracing music 

from the trailing edge of romanticism. 

Symphony No. 2 is more expansive and 

perhaps a bit more from the heart than the 

more concise and pointed No. 3. The opening 

Allegro Appassionato speaks first in pianissimo 

spiccato strings, answered by brusque lower 

strings, and seems largely propelled by an elevated 

sense of ceremony. The rhythms and 

voicing seem pleasantly Brucknerian, and as 

the music unfolds there are lovely quiet connecting 

interludes in the winds and brassy 

declamations that develop into extended 

ruminations, capped by a quick quiet close. 

The slow movement is the quintessence of 

its marking, “langsam”. It is searchingly meditative 

with a mellow, pensive theme and some 

adventurous harmonies. It radiates a sense of 

purpose or direction and is guided by a strong 

inner voice and superbly balanced instrumental 

colors. A surprising descending string glissando 

leads to warm horn commentary and 

another aptly prompt conclusion. 

The Scherzo has the overall feeling of a 

jolly, percolating piece that reaches a full boil, 

then signs off with a decisive flourish. It has a 

lilting five-note theme with a countering idea 

in high twittering winds, an interesting oompah 

effect in low winds that acts like a ground 

bass, and propulsive triplet rhythms that give a 

sense of continuous, inventive change. 

The Finale is an athletic, energetic piece 

whose pensive prelude in warm strings leads 

to dramatic declamations and flourishes that 

break out first in a rather episodic fugal passage 

punctuated by unexpected pauses and 

later in full-fledged counterpoint that reflects 

Tyberg’s love of the organ. It’s music with a 

great striding tread, sweeping horn interjections, 

and dense orchestration that is never 

showy but always seems imaginative and just 

right. Tyberg’s absolute assurance generates a 

toe-tapping excitement that finally yields to a 

quick pause, as if the orchestra were taking a 

deep breath before the joyous F major coda. 

Falletta and the BPO seemed to project this 

conservative, engrossing symphony with an 

authority and complete conviction that sug- 



gest it is well worth adding to the repertory. 

She speaks of Tyberg’s music as belonging to 

the sound world of Schubert, Bruckner, and 

Mahler. While there is a clear allegiance to 

those composers, there is nothing plagiaristic 

in what we hear 67 years after Tyberg’s death. 

Viewed another way, Tyberg’s output was 

relatively slight: four orchestral works, two 

each of chamber works, piano sonatas, and 

Masses, plus some 35 lieder. But as these 

works progressively emerge, they strike me as 

radiating a sure sense of conventional late 

19th- and early 20th-Century style not too different 

from what listeners might experience if, 

say, the music of Dohnanyi, Reger, or Pfitzner 

had been lost and suddenly rediscovered in 

the 21st Century. 

Two weeks later Falletta followed with the 

May 13 world premiere of a Violin Concerto by 

American composer Daron Hagen simply 

called Songbook, with Concertmaster Michael 

Ludwig as soloist. The title derives from the 

fact that the themes for each of the four movements 

were taken from two Irish and two 

American folk songs that Hagen’s wife sang 

nightly to their young son at bedtime. Scored 

for solo violin, strings, harp, and percussion, 

the structure sounds complicated. The movements 

are listed as Variations, Chaconne, Passacaglia, 

and Variations, but most of the music 

falls quite easily on the ear. 

It opens with a plaint to the tragic 1798 

Irish uprising called ‘The Croppy Boy’, whose 

heart-warming, slow, melancholy theme on 

the violin is far more beautiful than the subject 

matter might suggest. Often underscored by a 

marimba, the violin leads the way through 

nine variations that are wholly tonal with only 

mild dissonance, but with increasingly dense 

textures, gradually subsiding to the original 

calm. 

The brief Scherzo is a delight, based on a 

song about the great potato famine called ‘The 

Praties’. Here the violin, harp, and snare drum 

almost play tag as they skitter with great animation 

and captivating rhythmic pulse 

through the hop-skipping variations to a quick 

but very satisfying conclusion. 

The heart of this concerto is the Passacaglia 

on the American song ‘Over Yandro’. 

Here the percussion is tacit, which helped me 

attend to the central importance in the overall 

structure. The violin limns a supplicating, 

reaching theme that manages to radiate both 

tenderness and angst over the course of the 

variations and their peaceful resolution. 

The more complex Finale teases the listener 

with an extended violin solo leading to an 

agitated allegro where bits and pieces of the 

ubiquitous ‘Amazing Grace’ emerge, only 

gradually falling in place as the fully realized 

theme. Over restless orchestral and percussion 

JoAnn Falletta 

support, the variations grow in intensity and 

then, seemingly without preparation, just stop. 

The performance seemed even more convincing 

on second hearing. As soloist Ludwig 

was absolutely secure and comfortable in the 

music’s overall texture, which largely presented 

the violin as a true soloist but sometimes in 

more of a concertante role. The central movements 

were completely satisfying, but there 

were moments in the outer movements where 

the composer might want to reconsider some 

of the percussion-string balances and contrasts. 

Of special note is the fact that Songbook 

was not a commissioned work but the fallout 

from a conversation among Ludwig, Hagen, 

and Falletta following the BPO’s 2006 concert 

performance of Hagen’s opera Shining Brow 

about Frank Lloyd Wright. Ludwig and Falletta 

in effect said “Hey, write us a violin concerto 

and make it tuneful.” The result was Songbook. 



Schwarz’s 

26-Year Seattle Legacy 

Au Revoir But 

Not Good-Bye 

Melinda Bargreen 

They’ve named a block of a downtown 

Seattle thoroughfare “Gerard Schwarz 

Place”. They’ve named Schwarz an honorary 

one-star general. Marvin Hamlisch has 

written and performed a witty song in 

Schwarz’s honor; 18 top composers have written 

short works for him to premiere; the Seattle 

community has penned congratulations in 

several big “autograph books”; and the array of 

pre- and post-concert galas, parties, and other 

events would challenge the stamina of a 

marathoner. 

What a coda to Gerard Schwarz’s 26 years 

as Seattle Symphony music director! His long 

tenure, which officially concluded with a set of 

June concerts that included Mahler’s Symphony 

No. 2 (Resurrection) along with a Philip 

Glass premiere, is all the more remarkable 

because no one ever expected Schwarz to stay 

in Seattle for more than a short sojourn. 

When he first came to Seattle as music 

advisor in 1983, Schwarz arrived to a shellshocked 

orchestra and music community, following 

the death of the Seattle Symphony’s 

Music Director Rainer Miedel from cancer. 

The orchestra and its finances were in disarray; 

the performance space (the former Seattle 

Opera House) was an acoustically diffuse barn 

of a hall that wasn’t exactly conducive to a 

refined orchestral sound. Schwarz was hired to 

lead the orchestra during the search for 

Miedel’s successor, but it became immediately 

clear to the orchestra and the community that 

the best successor just might be Schwarz himself. 

“He’ll never stay in Seattle!” was the 

mantra of knowledgeable observers on both 

coasts. After all, Schwarz was a New Yorker, 

originally a trumpet phenomenon who in 1972 

became the New York Philharmonic’s 



youngest co-principal trumpet at age 25, and 

who left the orchestra five years later to pursue 

a conducting career. And pursue it he did, with 

tremendous energy. At the time he came to 

Seattle, Schwarz was the director of six organizations: 

the Mostly Mozart Festival, the New 

York Chamber Symphony (originally the New 

York “Y” Symphony), the contemporary Music 

Today series, New Jersey’s Waterloo Festival, 

the Eliot Feld Dance Company, and the Los 

Angeles Chamber Orchestra. 

Nobody expected Schwarz to spend much 

time in the Northwest corner of the country; 

nor did Schwarz himself. But gradually things 

changed. He married the former Jody Greitzer 

(daughter of New York Philharmonic principal 

violist Sol Greitzer), a flutist of considerable 

charm who became an immediate favorite in 

the Seattle music community. The couple settled 

into a condo overlooking the Seattle 

waterfront and the Pike Place Market, and in 

due course they welcomed two children, 

Gabriella, who now works for CNN, and Julian, 

now an increasingly busy solo cellist. (Schwarz 

also has two children, Alysandra Lal and 

Daniel Schwarz, from an earlier marriage.) 

Though Schwarz continued his globe-trotting 

ways (with music directorships as far afield as 

Liverpool and Tokyo), somehow the New Yorkers 

had become Seattleites. 

Thanks to the trumpeter’s earlier relationship 

with the Delos label, his new orchestra 

recorded a highly praised series of discs in that 

exciting new medium, the compact disc. More 

than 140 CDs on Delos and other labels were 

to follow, with 14 Grammy nominations and a 

lasting mark particularly in the repertoire of 

20th Century symphonists (Hanson, Piston, 

Schuman, Diamond, and Hovhaness, among 

others). 

It took many years for Schwarz to get his 

orchestra out of the old Opera House (increasingly 

gridlocked with concert dates by the 

Seattle Opera, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and 

visiting artists) and into a new concert hall. 

Schwarz’s friends, philanthropists Jack and 

Becky Benaroya, launched that project with a 

$15 million gift; the result, Benaroya Hall, 

opened in 1998 to national acclaim for its 

acoustics and amenities. The hall, along with 

the gradual advent of several gifted new players, 

allowed Schwarz to raise significantly the 

quality of the orchestra. 

It wasn’t all a consistent hymn of praise, 

however. Discord gradually grew between the 

music director and several players who objected 

initially to what they considered his highhanded 

hiring of John Cerminaro as principal 

horn, over objections of the players’ selection 

committee. A group of increasingly vocal dissident 

musicians expressed displeasure later, 

when the board voted in 2006 to renew 

Schwarz’s contract through 2011. One violinist 

filed suit against the orchestra and music 

director (the suit was later dismissed, but not 

before drawing considerable attention in the 

New York Times). Two outspoken Schwarz loyalists 

in the orchestra reported vandalism incidents. 

When Schwarz announced his decision to 

leave at the end of his contract in 2011, plans 

were set in motion for a blockbuster final season. 

Chief among the innovations was an 

unprecedented set of 18 short commissions by 

some of the country’s finest composers, 

underscoring Schwarz’s commitment to new 

American music: Augusta Read Thomas, 

Joseph Schwantner, Aaron Jay Kernis, Daron 

Hagen, Samuel Jones, David Stock, Bernard 

Rands, Gunther Schuller, Bright Sheng, Daniel 

Brewbaker, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Robert Beaser, 

Chen Yi, George Tsontakis, David Schiff, 

Richard Danielpour, Paul Schoenfield, and 

Philip Glass. 

Many of these curtain-raisers, including 

the festive Zwilich work and the jazzy Schiff 

piece, used lots of brass as a tribute to this former 

trumpeter. The longer Samuel Jones work, 

Reflections: Songs of Fathers and Daughters, 

was an effective and evocative set of vignettes 

displaying Jones’s imaginative harmonic structure 

and virtuoso scoring. The last of the commissions, 

Philip Glass’s Harmonium Mountain, 

was in his familiar motive-oscillations 

minimalist style, breaking no ground but 

entertaining the audience well. 

The finale’s big piece, Mahler’s Resurrection 

Symphony, demonstrated the feisty good 

health and the resounding brass section of the 

orchestra, as well as the conductor’s ability to 

shape the score’s smaller-scale, more intimate 

moments. Sustained and lengthy ovations 

before and after the program made it clear that 

the maestro had also connected powerfully 

with his audience. 

People who worry about how the Seattle 

Symphony—which, like most orchestras 

today, is struggling with a deficit and the difficulty 

of fundraising in a tough economy—will 

fare in Schwarz’s absence may be relieved to 

discover that he won’t disappear entirely: he is 

staying on for several weeks each season as 

“conductor laureate”. Also the artistic director 

of the Eastern Music Festival, Schwarz will 

devote his considerable energies to composition 

(he is currently working on a band piece 

for Cornell). He is also director-conductor of 

an educational TV-DVD series with an “All- 

Stars Orchestra” of the country’s best players 

in great concert repertoire, in eight hour-long 

annual programs with many other enhancements. 

Don’t look for any moss to grow on his 

baton. 



Edmonton’s Summer 

Solstice Festival 

Chamber Music for All Tastes 

Bill Rankin 

Edmonton is the most northerly city in 

North America with a population over a 

million, and those million people endure 

some of the harshest winter weather on the 

continent. So when the short summer season 

arrives, Edmontonians revel in festivals that 

recognize the resurrection of the human spirit. 

In late June alone, there is a cluster of 

opera, visual arts, jazz, and improvisational 

theater festivals; but until four years ago, classical 

music fans felt deprived. University of 

Alberta piano professor Patricia Tao, a member 

of the Edmonton Chamber Music Society 

board, which brings renowned musicians to 

the city during the cold, dark winters, filled the 

classical music void with a three-day Summer 

Solstice Festival in 2008. This year’s festival, 

June 24-26, included some of Canada’s most 

distinguished musicians, several of whom won 

Junos (Canada’s Grammys) in April. 

Canadian ex-pat Lara St John, now running 

a thriving, eclectic violin career from New 

York, including her own record label, was this 

year’s festival headliner. St John’s affinity for 

the music of Romania and Hungary made her 

a natural for the first of three concerts with 

gypsy-inspired themes. Sounding anything 

but gypsy, the concert began with Haydn’s 

Trio in G, with its Gypsy Rondo, played by 

Tao’s Trio Voce, with cellist Marina Hoover 

and violinist Jasmine Lin, both of whom live in 

Chicago. The Haydn choice was clever 

because by the third movement a little of an 

ersatz Roma mood was established, opening 

up all sorts of possibilities. 

Roman Borys, the Gyphon Trio’s cellist, 

then joined Edmonton pianist Michael Massey 

for a slightly labored performance of Bartok’s 

Rhapsody No. 1. Bartok will never make such a 

musical challenge feel more like play than 

work, but the result was professional and the 

control admirable. The Gryphon Trio’s violinist, 

Annalee Patipatanakoon, and Tao then 

performed Ravel’s Tzigane, showing that 

chamber music players are always happy to 

find a release for their inner soloist. Patipatanakoon 

delighted the audience of about 

300 with the virtuosic flair and lyrical playfulness 

Ravel built into his display of gypsy fiddling. 

Following a polished performance of 

Brahms’s first five Hungarian Dances in their 

original piano four-hands version, played by 

husband and wife Angela Cheng and Alvin 

Chow, both Oberlin profs, St John took the 

stage with Massey to play two sections of New 

York composer Gene Pritsker’s Russian 

Evening Suite, one of them ‘Song’, a world premiere. 

St John, for whom Pritsker wrote the 

suite, brought the necessary intensity and 

abandon to the Slavic-inspired music. Her 

performance of ‘Falling’, a jazz-tinged, rhythmically 

erratic movement with just enough 

melody on top to keep its Eastern European 

folk foundation in sight, set up nicely the 

evening’s finale, a Michael Atkinson transcription 

of cimbalomist Toni Lordache’s scintillatingly 

theatrical Ca la Beaza. The notions of 

chamber music covered by the program were 

vast and quite thrilling. 

Saturday’s program reflected two sides of 

Franz Liszt’s musical personality, the betterknown 

showman and the religious contemplative. 

In between the fiery opening ‘Campanella’ 

from the Paganini Etudes and the Mephisto 

Waltz No. 2 in Liszt’s arrangement for piano 

four hands (Cheng and Chow), we heard 

music that soothed and saddened. The string 

quartet arrangement of Angelus with Patipatanakoon, 

St John, Borys, and local violist 

Charles Pilon, satisfied Tao’s ambition to 

bring an assortment of excellent players 

together for some quickly prepared chamber 

music. The cohesion of the impromptu 

ensemble was impressive. 

Tenor Anthony Flynn opened the second 

half with Liszt’s Three Petrarch Sonnets. So 

huge was Flynn’s sound that these love songs 

would have found the beloved’s ear if she had 

been several villages away. His robust projection 

and warm timbre were impressive but not 

subtle enough—he had vocal heft to spare. 

Thousands of singers would kill, though, to fill 

a room like he can. (On Sunday in several 

songs from Schubert’s Schwanengesang, he 

showed that he can tone it down for smaller 

effects.) 

For me Saturday’s highlight was Borys and 

Tao in Liszt’s Lugubre Gondola. All weekend 

Borys demonstrated that music should not 

only sound fine. but that artists should look 

like they are moved by it. Lin too has a style 

that draws the listener into her performances 

without ostentation. 

Sunday afternoon’s program was the most 

conventional: the Schubert, Arensky’s Trio No. 



1, and another demonstration of professional 

aplomb with St John, Patipatanakoon, Pilon, 

Borys, and Cheng giving a vivid performance 

of Schumann’s Piano Quintet. While the fourth 

Lara St. John 

Summer Solstice Festival ended with music 

that appeals to chamber music fans everywhere, 

the treats were the less known repertoire, 

some of it written “just yesterday”. 



Fayetteville Chamber Music 

Festival The World Comes to Central Texas 

Gil French 

In Orzak’s Cafe, a family restaurant in Fayetteville, 

Texas (population 258), while lunching 

on some southern fried chicken amidst 

scores of family photos, beer, street signs, 

antlers, cowboy hats, a bow and arrow, and 

folk crafts, I noticed a sign that said, “In a small 

town, there ain’t much to see, but what you 

hear sure makes up for it.” 

What I was hearing May 17-21, across the 

street from Orzak’s, was the second of two 

weeks of the fifth annual Fayetteville Chamber 

Music Festival in the Country Place Hotel, a 

restored 111-year-old building now on the 

National Register of Historic Places. Concerts 

are held in the Moravian Room, which measures 

37 by 41 feet, with wood floor, 12 foot 

wood ceiling, windows on three sides, and one 

brick, one wood, and two plaster walls, decorated 

with nine large oil paintings by the owner. 99 

padded folding wood chairs were two-thirds to 

four-fifths full for the concerts I heard. 

Fayetteville, half-way between Houston 

and Austin in Texas’s hill country—wide 

rolling hills festooned with trees, song birds, 

cattle ranches, and pickup trucks—was settled 

at the turn of the 20th Century by Germans 

and Czechs. But, as it was with our European 

ancestors, it is the recent “immigrants”— 

wealthy oilmen, lawyers, and bankers from 

Houston and other parts of the country, some 

with second homes, many with permanent 

ones—who import the art, music, paintings, 

sculpture, literature, and other pleasures they 

enjoyed before moving here, along with their 

penchant for conservation. 

The movement began 40 years ago when 

pianist James Dick founded the Round Top 

Festival (Nov/Dec 2010) 17 miles north, transforming 

the area surrounding Texas’s smallest 

town (Round Top, population now up to 90) 

into a community where the arts flourish and 

real estate prices are more than double what 

they are in Rochester NY (where I live). 

Compared to the larger American summer 

festivals, Fayetteville’s is an intimate affair 

with only five musicians the first week and six 

the second (three of them staying on), performing 

two weekends of Friday night, Saturday 

afternoon, and Saturday evening concerts. 

They lived, had breakfast, rehearsed, and performed 

under the same roof; the quiet and 

freedom from having to run someplace were 

perfect stress relievers for them. 

The week I attended, Swedish clarinetist, 

festival founder, and Artistic Director Hakan 

Rosengren, 47, who became a resident of 

Round Top as a result of that festival, made his 

own festival a truly international affair. 

Returning Hungarian pianist Peter Nagy (“gy” 

like the “z” in “azure”), who turns 52 this year, 

was the festival’s workhorse, playing in eight 

major works and becoming the principal negotiator 

about form, balance, style, and other 

details. His own performing style was intellectual 

rather than rapturous, with relatively low 

use of pedals. 

Polish cellist Andrzej Bauer, 48, also a 

Fayetteville veteran, usually contributed to 

discussions last, always asking for more 

expression and blend. His broad range of tone 

colors, warmth, and remarkable combination 

of lyricism and articulation illuminated Bach’s 

Solo Cello Suite No. 3, making it compelling 

and engaging. Those qualities plus a kaleidoscope 

of techniques, from huge portamentos 

and strings struck with the bow’s wood to 

quick-stroked harmonics and two-handed 

pizzicatos, were on parade in his composition, 

Duotone, which seemed like 10 minutes of 

aimless noodling to me (the highly responsive 

audience disagreed). 

The others were new to the festival, reflecting 

Rosengren’s need to widen his own musical 

experiences by engaging some musicians 

he’s never performed with (he’s also the rare 

artist who devours new recordings). German 

violinist Tanja Becker-Bender, 33, dominated 

not just by virtuosic technique but by sheer 

volume. When the Moravian Room wasn’t at 

least three-quarters full, the acoustics created 

an oppressive wall of sound, with her metallic 

tone the main offender (that flat 12-foot ceiling 

was the chief culprit). I was dumbfounded 

when told she was playing a Guarneri. But 

when the room was mostly full, she blended 

nicely with the others, though, like Nagy, her 

low-vibrato approach was more intellectual 

than rapturous. 

Juan Miguel Hernandez, 26, whose father is 

half-black half-Dominican and mother is 

French Canadian, is a big-boned, long-armed, 

lean 6’4” Canadian with a viola custom-built to 

comfortably fit his frame. It’s big and fat and 

produces a mellow, rich, well-projected sound 

that fits his romantic, expressive approach. He 

is a founding member of the Harlem Quartet, 

and he cares about balance and practicality. 

After others discussed possible approaches to 

passages, he was the one who would say, “So 

what are we going to do?” At one point, given 



the room’s acoustics and the soloistic tendencies 

of a few others, he amiably joked, “Should I 

go out and get some Q-tips so we could listen to 

one another?” Restraint and balances followed. 

DaXun Zhang, born 29 years ago in Harbin, 

China, into a family with eight other string 

bass players connected to the city’s symphony 

orchestra that was conducted for years by Gary 

Graffman’s father, has lived in Austin for the 

past four years. He brought two instruments to 

the festival, one two months old and made in 

Cincinnati. One afternoon, rehearsing for a 

June concert, he used it as he played for me 

from memory his arrangement of Bach’s Solo 

Cello Sonata No. 5. I recall only one error 

amidst a performance that had the same stunning 

attributes Bauer brought to Sonata No. 3. 

So I was surprised when his superb musicality 

failed him in Schubert’s Trout Quintet as his 

older instrument merely grunted, giving no 

shape whatever to the repetitive, boring bass 

line. It takes a rare artist to make it truly 

expressive. 

Earlier when Zhang performed his 

arrangement of the ‘Meditation’ from Thais 

with Nagy, he had severe intonation problems 

on his new bass. But then so did everyone at 

the afternoon concert. Even the avant-garde 

techniques in Bauer’s Duotone couldn’t disguise 

his bad intonations. And Rosengren, a 

sensitive, meticulous romanticist, was sharp 

most of the time in Schumann’s three 

Romances. By performance time, he and Nagy 

had analyzed away his instinctive musicality 

heard at the first rehearsal, resulting in an 

angular, conjured interpretation. 

The afternoon began with Bach’s Sonata 

No. 4, S 1017, made excruciating by Becker- 

Bender’s low use of vibrato and non-resonant 

metallic tone; Nagy put not an ounce of buoyancy 

into Bach’s written-out keyboard part. 

The concert concluded with Brahms’s Piano 

Quartet No. 1. After opening with shabby 

ensemble, the players were all afflicted with 

more sour tuning. True, it was humid, but tuning 

beforehand might have helped. Tempos 

were rushed. The violin and cello veritably 

screamed in the half-filled room; I had to concentrate 

to hear the viola. Only in the finale did 

they finally become a balanced “quartet”, as 

they played the hell out of its Hungarian 

rhythms! 

Big works made up the Friday and Saturday 

evening concerts. In Brahms’s Violin 

Sonata No. 1 Becker-Bender and Nagy were 

equal partners. In the first movement phrases 

were perfectly peaked and very emotional, 

though they didn’t play with abandon. It was 

their business-like efficiency and narrow use 

of tone color that made me lose interest in the 

other two movements. 

I had never heard a good performance of 

any of Bruch’s eight Pieces for clarinet, viola, 

and piano until now. In Nos. 2, 4, 5, and 7 

Rosengren emerged from the ether, shaping 

lines with breathtaking nuance and lyricism, 

as Hernandez let his gorgeous dark tones (even 

in the treble register) melt into the clarinet 

line. The ‘Romanian Melody’ was moody with 

gypsy soul. And the fast movements were crisp 

and swift but never rushed, perfect music 

before intermission, when patrons enjoyed 

two kinds of German beer, compliments of 

Round Top Mercantile. 

Maybe it was the beer, but Beethoven’s 

Archduke Trio never sounded better! The playing 

was full-throated, yet balances were 

superb because the room was almost full and 

the players were truly a “trio”. Bauer’s cello 

was rich and warm. And Nagy was at his very 

best—one could tell that Beethoven is his soul 

brother as he made the piano ring with a richer 

use of pedal. Indeed, he was the one who in 

rehearsals shaped it so that the flow was totally 

engaging with just the right touch of rubato 

and integral transportation across Beethoven’s 

seams. The second movement was a veritable 

Viennese waltz. In the Andante Cantabile the 

piano, the work’s principal instrument, was 

supremely poetic. In the finale Nagy led with a 

rare moment of playfulness. 

Saturday night Bauer’s Bach solo was follow 

by Bartok’s Contrasts. This was where 

Becker-Bender’s strident tone paid off, as the 

violin and clarinet’s contrary lines crossed 

each other, reaching for the lowest and high 

ends of their registers. The terraced, unrushed 

‘Verbunkos’ was truly love. In the ‘Piheno’ 

Rosengren was utterly secure, but the violin 

had trouble with bowing pressure, and Nagy 

was too direct, never creating a gauze over his 

tone. The finale was unexpectedly too careful, 

lacking sufficient weight on the dance beats. 

Nagy was very dry; creating atmosphere is simply 

not his style. 

The festival ended with a superb performance 

of Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Becker- 

Bender, Hernandez, Bauer, and Nagy were all 

really “hot” and playful in the opening movement, 

hitting on just the right tempos. Nagy 

made the piano ring, though the forward 

tempo in the second movement did miss the 

underlying feeling of a lullaby. They gave 

rhythmic bounce to the next movement. The 

cello solo in one of the variations was very 

comforting. And the finale had a bright, easy, 

upturned, top-tapping style. 

Here I was, in the middle of nowhere in a 

town where there is absolutely nothing to do, 

yet there was no spoon-feeding this festival’s 

sophisticated audience. As I always say, if anyone 

thinks classical music is dying, the chamber 

music festivals, large and small, that sweep 

across America each summer (plus the 500 

CDs reviewed in each issue of ARG) put that lie 

firmly to rest. 



Bang! You’ve Won 

Montreal Music Competition 

Robert Markow 

The 24 competitors at the Tenth Montreal 

International Musical Competition, held 

from May 23 to June 3, included the 

usual lineup of candidates from Russia (3), the 

US (3), and Asian lands (8); but there was also 

representation from a few countries not often 

associated with top winners in the piano 

world, such as Switzerland, Australia, Israel, 

and Italy. 

The Italian, Beatrice Rana, made it to the 

final round (with orchestra), and eventually 

went on to become not only the First Prize 

winner ($30,000) but also to win the People’s 

Choice Award ($5,000) and the Award for the 

Best Performance of the Imposed Canadian 

Work (another $5,000). Rana thus walked away 

with a cool $40,000 plus a career development 

program worth another $20,000—not bad for 

an 18-year-old. But then, she was already an 

experienced hand at winning prizes at international 

events; this has been part of her life 

since she was 11. 

There were other surprises. No Russian or 

Asian won any of the top prizes (Second and 

Third Prizes both went to Americans, Lindsay 

Garritson and Henri Kramer). Of the 24 

pianists originally chosen to participate, four 

were Canadian but three of these were of Asian 

background (one was later replaced by a non- 

Asian—more on that later). 

If you like statistics, there were 161 applications 

from 30 countries. Nearly a third of 

these were from South Korea (27) and China 

(24) together, with Canada (21) and the US (19) 

close behind. The total number of candidates 

in the course of the competition’s ten years of 

existence stands at 2,000, or an average of 200 

per year. 

“Off-contest” activities included master 

classes with Jean-Philippe Collard and Arnaldo 

Cohen, “My First Piano Lesson” where total 

novices could give it a try, a “Piano Bar Happy 

Hour” at a local wine bar, and workshops for 

children called “Hammer Away!” that might 

have served as the theme for the entire competition. 

In stark contrast to the jury’s choices at last 

year’s competition (for violin), the contestants 

who most impressed the judges this year 

seemed to be the ones who made the most 

noise. Artistic maturity, a hallmark of all of last 

year’s winners, appeared to have little place in 

this year’s line-up. In the semi-finals, banging 

was part of nearly every contestant’s playing to 

some extent. The jury members were André 

Beatrice Rana 

Bourbeau (Canada, jury president), Arnaldo 

Cohen (Brazil), Jean-Philippe Collard (France), 

Mari Kodama (Japan), James Parker (Canada), 

Benjamin Pasternack (US), Imre Rohmann 

(Austria), and Lilya Zilberstein (Russia). 

The sole pianist to avoid this pitfall entirely, 

Canada’s Lucas Porter (the last-minute 

replacement), did not advance to the finals. 

Two others who brought more beauty than 

bang to their playing, Zheeyoung Moon and 

Jong Ho Won (both Koreans), got to the final 

round but were not top prize winners. Moon’s 

performance of Schumann’s Humoresque 

brimmed with elegance and poetry in a wellstructured 

approach. Won too brought musical 

logic, a beautiful tone, and a wealth of 

dynamic nuance to Beethoven’s Sonata No. 3, 

contrasting these qualities with an appropriately 

febrile Sonata No. 5 by Scriabin. In both 

works there was musicality in every note. 

But the real artist in the group was Porter, 

who turned 20 just days before the competi- 



tion opened. His program alone deserves comment: 

two modest, technically simple pieces 

(Egon Petri’s arrangement of Bach’s ‘Sheep 

May Safely Graze’ and a Haydn sonata) played 

with grace, poise, and delicate touch but without 

even a suggestion of the firestorm he 

would unleash in the Liszt sonata, where he 

poured forth great torrents of sound—without 

banging!—that truly enthralled; but he also 

reveled in the most exquisite pianissimos that 

nevertheless carried to the back of the hall. His 

double octaves may have been the fastest since 

Horowitz’s, and even cleaner. Perhaps since 

Porter is also an accomplished composer, 

shape and structure were always evident in his 

playing. Why the jury knocked him out of the 

finals is anyone’s guess. 

I tried hard to find what so many others 

(not just the jury) liked about Rana’s playing. 

But to me she made Chopin’s Sonata No. 3 

shapeless; Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit lacked 

color and imagination; Bartok’s Out of Doors 

was willfully crude. And Tchaikovsky’s Concerto 

No. 1 was all sound and fury, played with 

too much pedal and not enough lyricism. The 

tone Rana drew from the instrument was hard 

and brittle. And could this lady ever bang! 

BANG! BANG! BANG! Not my kind of Tchaikovsky. 

Rana is still just 18, so she has time to 

develop as a musician; one hopes she will find 

the time and the desire to do so. An indication 

that she has the potential was her repeat performance 

of the imposed Canadian work, 

David McIntyre’s Wild Innocence, at the final 

gala concert. The five-minute piece, in the 

composer’s own words, “makes room for the 

performer to display a world of touches, from 

warm to brilliant; various qualities of energy 

from light to driving; and a broad emotional 

palette”. And so Rana did. There were passages 

of clanky, toccata-like playing, but also some 

beautifully managed lyrical episodes, charming 

and coy. 

Overall it was a disappointing lot this year. 

Most of the candidates were quite obviously 

trying too hard; they looked and sounded like 

they were desperately competing: too much 

tension, too little spontaneity; too much noise, 

too little sensitivity. Some simply weren’t 

ready for a major international competition. 

Here and there sparks of genuine talent 

showed through, such as Dorel Golan’s tastefully 

rendered Clementi and the lovely singing 

lines she brought to Chopin’s Ballade No. 4, or 

the charm Yulia Chaplina evoked from 

Tchaikovsky’s little gem of a ‘Berceuse’. These 

gave hope that three years from now, when the 

next MIMC for piano rolls round (2012 is for 

voice, 2013 for violin), some of these same 

pianists will be back, but not banging. 

Osaka’s 

Competitions 

and 

Orchestras 

American, Dutch, 

French, and Russian 

Winners 

Robert Markow 

When earthquakes shook buildings in 

eastern Japan last March (Japan’s 

“3/11”), they also shook travelers’ 

confidence in visiting a country where resulting 

radiation leaks from a nuclear power plant 

in Fukushima made daily headlines for weeks. 

But Fukushima is some 300 air miles from 

Osaka, where neither earthquake damage nor 

radiation occurred, so plans continued for the 

Seventh Osaka International Chamber Music 

Competition and Festa (May 17-25). 

This triennial event, organized by the 

Japan Chamber Music Foundation and supported 

by big business and government (Panasonic, 

Suntory, Sumitomo, the Ministry of Foreign 

Affairs, etc.) is quite possibly the most 

comprehensive in the world. It encompasses 

three independent, interlocking components, 

each with its own jury, its own set of prizes, 

and its own follow-up tour of ten Japanese 

cities for the first-prize winners. The three 

components are string quartets (“Section 1”), 

wind ensembles (“Section 2”: woodwind quintets, 

brass quintets, and saxophone quartets), 

and a Festa (more on this later). 

Cellist Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi presided over 

the juries for Sections 1 and 2. For nine days in 

May, Sections 1 and 2 underwent three rounds 

each, the Festa two. The prize money was generous: 

three million yen ($US 37,000) for the 

first prize winners in Sections 1 and 2, two million 

for the second prize winners, and one million 

for the third. Festa winners got a bit less. 

Normally ten string quartets compete, 

though this year only six showed up owing to 

radiation worries. No clear winners or losers 

emerged from Round 1, so the jury sent all six 

on to Round 2. Four quartets made the cut to 

the final round, but there were still no clear 

choices to be made. Most quartets excelled in 

20th Century repertory where youthful enthusiasm 

and an almost palpable energy were 

much in evidence, but their Haydn sometimes 

lacked formal structure, their Mendelssohn 



Attacca Quartet 

Two saxophone quartets in particular 

stood out, the Melisma from 

Holland and the Morphing from 

France, but it was the Morphing 

Quartet that towered above all others 

and deservedly won a first prize. It is 

almost impossible to describe the 

perfection of their blend, balance, 

outstanding sensitivity, and huge 

range of dynamics from pppppp to 

ffffff. Their arrangement of Haydn’s 

Quartet Op. 20:5 outclassed performances 

by string quartets in Section 

1. The Morphings played as a single 

musical organism, and the effect was 

often mesmerizing. More amazing 

still, the ensemble was formed just 

eight months ago. Two woodwind 

quintets and three brass quintets 

also competed, but none came close 

to generating the excitement of the 

Morphings. 

But what makes Osaka’s competition 

really special is its unique 

Festa. While many competitions 

include an audience prize, it is usually 

a sideshow. In Osaka, it takes center 

stage and attracts the largest 

elegance, their Beethoven Opus 18 proper 

audience. One hundred or more 

phrasing. On the plus side, though, all the local music lovers constitute the jury. The 

quartets had well-balanced sound, excellent competitors are miscellaneous groups of two 

ensemble, and unanimity of conception. 

to six players and, unlike the ones in Sections 1 

Then in the final round something clicked and 2, are unrestricted in age or in repertory. 

for the New York-based Attacca Quartet, This year generated nearly 150 applications 

formed at the Juilliard School in 2003. Their from 29 countries, and 20 groups from 11 

glowing account of Beethoven’s Quartet No. 15 countries were invited to attend. (Four can- 

gave them the clear edge, and the otherworldly celled owing to “3/11”.) By far the most appli- 

aura that emanated from the slow movement cations came from Russia (37), followed by 

alone might have won them a first prize. Here Japan (27) and the US (17). 

was musical magic, the kind of playing that “Finding 100 jury members from the pub- 

bespoke true artistic maturity and left me lic at large is more difficult than you might 

breathless. 

imagine”, says Megumi Morioka, manager of 

The Attacca Quartet also gave the most public relations at Izumi Hall, the competi- 

searching interpretation of the required Japantion’s venue. “You need to be in a position to 

ese work, Toshiro Saruya’s Aither, the Beorht, set aside three full days of your time, a luxury 

which offered ample opportunities for widely not given to many in workaholic Japan.” Yet so 

differing approaches. But only the Attacca dis- effective has Festa become that a record 130 

covered its inherent lyricism while also under- jury members participated this year. 

scoring the conversational tone that some- The motley array of competitors included 

times approached acrimonious debate. The folk ensembles from Korea, Lithuania, Russia, 

Attacca thus became the first American string and Poland; duos (piano, guitar, saxophone 

quartet at the Osaka competition to win a first and piano, violin and guitar); and various larg- 

prize. 

er ensembles. Half a dozen of these easily 

This competition is one of the few in its qualified for first prize. I would not have 

class to include both string quartets and wind wished to cast a ballot myself, so rich were the 

ensembles (though only in certain years). The choices. 

range of talent in Section 2 was considerably In the end, though, the jury handed the 

wider, the opportunities for discovery greater. two million yen ($US 25,000) Menuhin Gold 

The wind component was dominated by saxo- Prize (Yehudi Menuhin conceived the Festa 

phone quartets (five of the ten ensembles), format) to Classic Without Borders, a stunning 

which collectively supplied both the most Russian trio of piano and two domras (lute-like 

interesting repertory and the most outstanding plucked instruments). In their own arrange- 

performances. 

ments of the finale of Mendelssohn’s Italian 



Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien, 

and other works, they combined flair and 

showmanship with superb control and genuine 

musicianship. The virtuoso pianist (Dmitry 

Krivonosov) could easily sustain a solo 

career. 

Festa’s Silver Prize went to the Czech 

Republic’s Nepomuk Quintet, an unorthodox 

assemblage of two violins, cello, double bass, 

and piano. They too create their own arrangements. 

Schubert’s Trout Quintet, Dvorak’s 

Slavonic Dances, and other pieces gave the 

audience a taste of what well-established professionals 

from central Europe can sound like 

(they play in the Vienna Philharmonic, Dresden 

Staatskapelle, etc)—sleek, elegant, 

supremely sensitive to niceties of phrasing, 

and boasting a pianist (Christian Pohl) who 

might well be a clone of Rudolf Serkin. 

The Bronze Prize was won by an also 

engaging group with a difference, a woodwind 

quintet from Denmark called Carion (don’t 

ask). This one has come up with the innovative 

idea of literally choreographing the music they 

play (all memorized), physically interacting 

with each other in a manner that visually 

expresses the music’s structure. (Move over, 

Schenker.) Their intelligent and tasteful style 

definitely added a new dimension to Ligeti’s 

playful, fascinating Six Bagatelles. Carion is 

considering bringing their visual insights even 

to Schoenberg’s thorny, 12-tone Woodwind 

Quintet. Now that’s something I’d like to see. 

Festa was not only unique; it was fun, 

informal, lighthearted, and yielded a continuous 

succession of surprises. One never knew 

what to expect next. I heard The Rite of Spring 

played as thrillingly on two pianos as by any 

orchestra; I heard a soprano saxophone and 

piano duet that gave a whole new range of 

hues to ‘Clair de Lune’; I heard a passionate 

piano trio by Arno Babadjanian played by an 

American-Armenian group that left me gasping. 

Yes, there was big money to be won at 

Festa, but absent was the stress of the string 

quartet and wind ensemble competitions. The 

level was uniformly so high that there was 

scarcely an ensemble I would not eagerly go to 

hear in a full-length recital. Many are worldclass 

acts. 

800-seat Izumi Hall, where the competition 

was held, is unquestionably one of the 

world’s most acoustically perfect concert 

venues, a hall that should win a first prize 

itself. All the more reason to look forward to 

the Eighth Osaka International Chamber 

Music Competition and Festa in 2014 

(www.jcmf.or.jp). 

Music critics can be incorrigible when it 

comes to taking busman’s holidays. So for 

three of my nine days in Osaka, I also covered 

what I was told are the three leading orches- 

tras in the area. The Osaka Philharmonic (one 

of four in the city itself) did not make a good 

showing, burdened with an inept German 

guest conductor, Alexander Liebreich. On his 

May 19 program of Prokofieff’s Classical Symphony 

and Alexander Nevsky, he proved more 

adept at tracing beautiful gestures in the air 

than at keeping his forces balanced, taming 

the rough sound, or maintaining rhythmic 

control. Pianist Piotr Anderszewski saved the 

day with a ravishing account of Mozart’s Concerto 

No. 20. 

An altogether different experience awaited 

me in nearby Kyoto, exactly 29 minutes—not 

30—from Osaka by fast train. The Kyoto Symphony 

gave its 546th subscription concert 

(they’ve been counting since 1956) with its 

much-loved music director Junichi Hirokami, 

who led one of the finest performances of 

Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 I have ever 

heard. Technically it was spotless; musically it 

was awe-inspiring. From the opening notes of 

the sumptuous, dark, velvety cellos and basses, 

Hirokami shaped each phrase, episode, and 

movement with inexorable logic and forward 

motion, weaving the lines into a seamless, 

rich-textured web. Any western orchestra 

seeking a new music director could do no better 

than snap up this outstanding musician. 

(In fact, Hirokami served briefly as music 

director of the Columbus Symphony until a 

political brawl forced him out.) 

My third busman’s holiday took me to the 

Hyogo Prefecture Performing Arts Center 

Orchestra, which plays in the center’s Grand 

Hall found in Nishinomiya, a kind of Japanese 

Beverly Hills nestled in the foothills between 

Osaka and Nara. The center, a symbol of 

renewal, opened a decade after a huge 1995 

earthquake killed more than 6,400 people in 

the city of Kobe. 

The orchestra is a good, entry-level professional 

ensemble, much like the New World 

Symphony, consisting mostly of Japanese but 

also a handful of foreigners (the Osaka Philharmonic 

and Kyoto Symphony were fully Japanese). 

The highly charismatic Michiyoshi Inoue 

led a program of Shostakovich Firsts, the Violin 

Concerto and the Symphony. What the 

orchestra lacked in polish it compensated for 

in youthful enthusiasm. As in Osaka and 

Kyoto, strings, especially violins, generally 

constituted the orchestra’s finest players. 

Women greatly outnumbered men. Audiences 

were alert and quiet to a degree almost 

unknown in American concert halls. Dress was 

casual—surprising in a land where nearly 

every male office worker wears a dark suit. 

At all three concerts in halls seating about 

2,000, seats were almost sold out, and the 

complete gamut of age ranges was about also 

represented. 



Glyndebourne’s First 

Meistersinger 

Dressing Well (and Warmly) at Garsington 

Edward Greenfield 

Chorus ensemble 

The great event at Glyndebourne this 

summer has been the company’s first 

ever production of Wagner’s grandest, 

most lyrical opera, The Mastersingers of 

Nuremberg. The prime concern of stage director 

David McVicar was to eliminate any Nazi 

associations, not least in avoiding the portrayal 

of Beckmesser in anti-Semitic terms. He 

made Hans Sachs a beardless, handsome man, 

no longer a greybeard advocating “Holy German 

Art”, but still a deeply thoughtful character. 

McVicar updated the opera to the post- 

Napoleonic period represented in music by 

Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert. It 

worked well, with enough color in Vicki Mortimer’s 

architecturally arched set to make you 

forget the updating and concentrate on the 

music—not hard when Gerald Finley made 

such a fine, sensitive Sachs, well matched by 

Johannes Martin Kranzle as Beckmesser—far 

from being a clown, he was more affecting for 

being a worthy member of the Masters’ fraternity. 

The irony is that, though some may feel 

that Glyndebourne has bitten off more than it 

can chew in tackling Meistersinger, it was Act 

III Scene 1 of this very piece that, in an intimate 

semi-amateur performance with piano in 

1928 in the Organ Room, first gave John 

Christie, the festival’s founder, the idea of presenting 

opera in the great country house he 

had recently inherited. He was wooed off his 

original idea of Wagner in favour of Mozart as 

the principal composer, particularly when he 

married the pretty young Eva of that first performance, 

Audrey Mildmay, who in 1934 

became Glyndebourne’s first Susanna in 

Figaro. 

Glyndebourne has of course altered out of 

all recognition since those early days, particularly 

since Sir George Christie, son of the 

founder, had the bold idea of building a totally 

new, far grander theater, probably the most 

attractive of its size in Britain. The company’s 

first essay in Wagner came with Tristan and 

Isolde in 2007 (counted a triumph) that saw the 

arrival of the leading Isolde of our time, Nina 

Stemme, who then was unknown outside her 

native Sweden. By contrast, the one disappointment 

in Meistersinger was Anna Gabler’s 

indifferent portrayal of Eva. Otherwise the 

casting was excellent. Marco Jentzsch was a 

handsome, upstanding Walther, proud of his 

uniform. And Vladimir Jurowski, the company’s 

long-standing music director, proved 

himself a splendid, urgent Wagnerian. 

The great event at Garsington Opera was 

quite different. After 10 seasons at the original 

venue, following the death of founder Leonard 

Ingrams in 2005, his widow urged the company 

to move, which it has now done with more 

success than anyone could have predicted. 

The move has been to another great countryhouse 

estate 20 or so miles from Garsington in 

Wormsley in Buckinghamshire to the estate of 



Mark Getty (the most anglophile of the great 

Getty family), where you even find a full-scale 

cricket ground central to the 25,000 acre 

estate. 

For this new venue Robin Snell designed a 

removable pavilion, influenced by Japanese 

designs with glass walls that let the audience 

see the rolling countryside with many trees all 

around. Beautiful as the result is, the advice of 

early audiences was to dress as though for 

Scotland in winter, with heating totally inadequate, 

detracting from the sheer beauty of the 

place. 

Not that the very first production of 

Mozart’s Magic Flute (in English) was a complete 

success. Olivia Fuchs presented the 

opera in modern dress with Papageno in a ginger 

Mohican cut wearing a tartan kilt and 

entering on a bicycle. His arrival with attendants 

waving fishing lines with floating birds 

was one of the better effects, while Tamino in 

jeans and a flowered shirt was waylaid by a 

serpent represented by more extras, with a 

great red swathe of cloth swirling about. 

Monastatos, like Papageno, wore a kilt but 

in black leather, matching the costume of his 

mistress, the Queen of Night, portrayed as a 

dominatrix along with the three Ladies. The 

Three Boys arrived in striped pajamas, while 

the Speaker looked like a university professor. 

Sarastro was also unimposing. Vocally, the 

casting was mixed, with Tamino and Pamina 

well sung by Robert Murray and Sophie Bevan, 

with William Berger a strong Papageno and the 

Three Boys and Three Ladies all singing well. 

Kim Sheehan as Queen of Night was bright 

and clear enough to make you forgive a few 

missed top notes, while American bass Evan 

Boyer was fine, though his lowest notes tended 

to disappear. Martin André got crisp playing 

and singing from the Garsington Orchestra 

and Chorus. 

The second Garsington opera was Rossini’s 

Turk in Italy, again a production in modern 

dress, this time directed by Martin Duncan 

with designs by Frances O’Connor. The character 

whose voice aptly stood out from the rest 

of the cast was the superb baritone Mark Stone 

as the Poet who, Pirandello-like, sought to 

manipulate the other characters in a plot of his 

devising. In the designs too the Poet stood out, 

consigned most of the time to a little office 

with chair and table high above the main 

stage. 

First heard at La Scala in 1814, Turk was 

designedly quite differently from The Italian 

Girl in Algiers, which had preceded it, with the 

eponymous Turk of the title a rich Turkish 

prince on a voyage to Europe, here represented 

by a smooth character in blue blazer and 

turban, well sung by Quirijn de Lang. The principal 

heroine, the flirtatious Fiorilla, unhappily 

married to the elderly Geronio (Geoffrey 

Dolton), was Jennifer Nelsen, a bright, clear 

soprano precise in her coloratura, who in her 

acting overdid her attempts at seductiveness, 

squirming away in her bright scarlet form-fitting 

dress. 

The other heroine, Zaida, the abandoned 

fiancee of Selim, was dressed as a gypsy, 

singing very seductively despite being overshadowed 

by Fiorilla. Add to these the light 

Rossini tenor David Alegret as Narciso, coping 

well with the high tessitura if hardly with mellifluous 

tone, and the mixture was complete, 

with couples shuffling partners, not least in a 

colorful fancy-dress ball in Act 2. Needless to 

say, all ended well with Selim again partnering 

with Zaida, and Fiorilla with Narciso, with only 

the forlorn Geronio left out. As with previous 

Garsington productions of Rossini, it was a 

splendid romp, vividly conducted by David 

Parry, who also played the fortepiano in recitatives. 

The third Garsington opera was a rarity, 

Vivaldi’s Verita in Cimento, translated as 

“Truth Put to the Test”. First heard in 1720, 

this opera too has its Turkish flavor. David 

Freeman’s quirky production with designs by 

Duncan Hayler offered stylized trees and 

shrubs in silver and white, with a great central 

oak extending its branches. Central to the 

involved story is the decision of the Sultan 

(tenor Paul Nilon) to switch his two sons, one 

born to his wife Rustena, regal in silver and 

white, the other to his favorite concubine 

Damira, in crimson. The complications are 

endless. 

The two sons were both taken by countertenors: 

Zelim, son of Rustena, sung by 

James Laing, inoffensive in jacket of white 

teddy-bear fur, and the handsome Melindo, 

son of Damira, aggressive in tight black leather 

trousers, sung by Yaniv d’Or. Yet even with 

mezzo Jane Rigby as Rustena and soprano 

Diana Montague as Damira, both excellent 

singers, the member of the cast who shone out 

even more brightly was young Swedish soprano 

Ida Falk Winland as Rosana, heiress to a 

neighbouring sultanate. She dominated every 

scene where she appeared with her technically 

brilliant singing and charismatic acting. 

As for the music, Vivaldi’s invention is winning 

in its variety, not least in the many lively 

arias, plus one or two in tender minor keys, 

while descants from trumpet, recorder, or flute 

add colour. It makes you wonder why the 

piece has been so neglected over the centuries. 

Freeman’s production ended with a coup de 

theatre in the final ensemble (by tradition the 

only one in the opera), when flames suddenly 

burst forth from the branches of the central 

tree—a magical moment. The vigorous performance 

of the Garsington Festival Orchestra 

was conducted by Laurence Cummings. 



JoAnn Falletta will become principal conductor 

of the Ulster Orchestra in September with a 

three-year contract that includes concerts, 

recordings, broadcasts, and Proms appearances. 

In addition, she has renewed her contract 

for another three years (with an option 

for an additional two years) as music director 

of the Virginia Symphony in Norfolk, where 

she just completed her 20th season. Also, she 

recently extended her contract (begun in 1999) 

as Buffalo Philharmonic music director to 

2016. 

Ludovic Morlot, who succeeds Gerard 

Schwarz as music director of the Seattle Symphony 

this autumn, has also signed a five-year 

contract to become chief conductor of La 

Monnaie Opera in Brussels starting January 1, 

2012, with an option to extend until 2019. 

Violinist Joshua Bell has signed a three-year 

contract as the new music director of the 

Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields. 

Jonathan Crow, 33, has been appointed concertmaster 

of the Toronto Symphony. He was 

concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony 

from 2002 to 2006 and has performed often at 

the Montreal Chamber Music Festival 

(reviewed in this issue). 

Stefan Sandering has given a three-year 

notice, as required by his contract, that he will 

not continue as music director of the Tampa 

Bay-St Petersburg-based Florida Orchestra 

when his contract expires in 2014. He is also 

principal conductor of the Toledo Symphony. 

Jeffrey Kahane, music director of the Los 

Angeles Chamber Orchestra since 1997, has 

extended his contract for another two years 

until 2014. 

Jeff Tyzik, 60, principal pops conductor of the 

Rochester Philharmonic for the past 17 years, 

has extended his contract with the orchestra 

for another five years. 

Jack Everly, principal pops conductor of the 

Indianapolis Symphony since 2002, has 

extended his contract with the orchestra until 

2017. 

Patrick Summers, music director of the Houston 

Grand Opera since 1998, has also been 

Here & There 

Appointments, Awards, & News 

appointed the company’s artistic director, and 

Perryn Leech has moved from chief operating 

officer to managing director, following the 

departure of General Director Anthony Freud 

to head the Chicago Lyric Opera. 

Louis Langrée became chief conductor of the 

Camerata Salzburg this September with a fiveyear 

contract. He has been music director of 

Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival since 

2002 and recently extended his contract there 

to 2014. 

After 17 years Emmanuelle Boisvert, 47, has 

left her No. 1 position as concertmaster of the 

Detroit Symphony for the No. 4 associate concertmaster 

position with the Dallas Symphony, 

following Detroit’s six-month strike that 

resulted in significant pay cuts. 

Francesca Zambello has been appointed artistic 

advisor of the Washington National Opera. 

She holds the same post with the San Francisco 

Opera and is general and artistic director of 

the Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York. 

Bill Lively, 67, who began as president of the 

Dallas Symphony part-time on April 1 and was 

to begin full-time June 1, resigned suddenly on 

April 29 for health reasons. Doctors advised 

him to give up all professional responsibilities 

due to stress-related symptoms and a family 

history of serious strokes. David Hyslop, former 

CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra, St Louis 

Symphony, and Oregon Symphony, has signed 

on as interim DSO president. 

Bruce Coppock has become managing director 

of the Cleveland Orchestra’s Miami Residency 

that combines subscriptions concerts 

with educational collaborations and community 

engagement. He succeeds Sandi Macdonald, 

who has become president and CEO of the 

North Carolina Symphony. Coppock was formerly 

president of the St Paul Chamber 

Orchestra and executive director of the St 

Louis Symphony. 

At the San Francisco Opera both General 

Director David Gockley and Music Director 

Nicola Luisotti have extended their contracts 

through 2016, which Gockley said will be his 

final year. He took firm aim at the “sleepdepriving” 

financial challenges facing the 



company, whose contracts with its two principal 

unions expired in July. 

In June David Chambless Worters suddenly 

resigned as president and CEO of the Van 

Cliburn Foundation after only six months on 

the job. He cited personal reasons, adding, “I 

don’t have sufficient passion for this.” 

Anne Parsons, president of the Detroit Symphony 

and the object of much criticism during 

the orchestra’s recent long strike, has extended 

her contract for three additional years with no 

pay raise or cut. 

Michael Elliott, director of culture in London 

and former CEO of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, 

becomes CEO of the Royal Scottish 

National Orchestra on August 1, replacing 

Simon Wood, who became executive director 

of the Seattle Symphony in April. Elliott will 

work closely with Music Director Stephane 

Deneve and Peter Oundjian, who replaces 

Deneve in 2012. 

Pianists Conrad Tao, 17, and George Li, 15, 

have been awarded the 2012 Gilmore Young 

Artist Award. Each receives $15,000 to further 

his career and education plus $10,000 to commission 

a new work, and both will perform at 

the 2012 Gilmore Festival in Kalamazoo, 

Michigan. Tao begins a combined degree program 

this autumn at Columbia University and 

the Juilliard School; Li attends the New England 

Conservatory’s Preparatory Division. 

At this year’s Tchaikovsky International Competition 

in Moscow, Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov 

(a student at the Cleveland Institute), 

Armenian cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan (a student 

at the New England Conservatory), and 

two South Koreans, soprano Sun Young Seo 

and bass Jong Min Park, were gold medal winners. 

No violinist won gold; a Russian and an 

Israeli were awarded silver medals, and Americans 

Nigel Armstrong and Eric Silberger 

placed fourth and fifth. Also, Korean Yeol Eum 

Son, who came in second at the 2009 Van 

CliburnCompetition, was second prize winner 

in Moscow. 

The Kronos String Quartet has been awarded 

two prizes: the 2011 Avery Fisher Prize of 

$75,000, given to American individuals or 

chamber ensembles for outstanding achievements 

and excellence in music; and in Sweden 

the 2011 Polar Music Prize of $155,000 “for revolutionizing 

the potential of the string quartet 

genre in both style and content”. 

reduction in the first year, a freeze the second, 

and a “wage opener” in the third. Also, retirement 

benefits have been changed for newer 

members, and there is more flexibility regarding 

electronic media. 

The Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, 

founded by Alondra de la Parra in 2004, has 

suspended operations for the 2011-12 season. 

It finished the 2010-11 season with a balanced 

budget but found the fundraising outlook for 

the new season to be “highly uncertain”. 

Chairman Martin Lewis said the board considers 

this “the most responsible action when it 

comes to protecting the orchestra’s future.” 

Obituaries 

Czech violinist Josef Suk, 81, died on July 6 in 

Prague from prostate cancer. He was the 

grandson of the composer Josef Suk, who had 

married Dvorak’s daughter. In addition to a 

famed solo career and many recordings, he 

founded the Suk Trio with cellist Josef 

Chuchro and pianist Jan Panenka in 1952 and 

the Suk Chamber Orchestra in 1974. 

Bass Giorgio Tozzi, 88, who reigned at the Met 

from 1955 to 1975, died of a heart attack on 

May 30 in Bloomington IN, where he was on 

the faculty at Indiana University’s School of 

Music. Born in Chicago, he played the Doctor 

in the premiere of Barber’s Vanessa and also 

was the singing voice for Rosanno Brazzi in the 

movie South Pacific. 

Cellist Bernard Greenhouse, 95, died in his 

sleep on May 13 at his Massachusetts home on 

Cape Cod. Born in Newark NJ, he founded the 

Beaux Arts Trio in 1955 along with violinist 

Daniel Guilet and pianist Menahem Pressler, 

with whom he played until 1987. He then continued 

to play and teach into his 90s. 

Richard Holmes, 69, timpanist of the St Louis 

Symphony since 1969, died at home in Lake St 

Louis on June 5 from lung cancer. Music 

Director David Robertson said, “The timpanist 

precisely defines the rhythmic personality of 

the whole orchestra. Rick Holmes was perhaps 

the best rhythmic friend I ever had.” Leonard 

Slatkin added, “In my mind, virtually all timpanists 

are judged by Rick’s standards.” 

In June Pittsburgh Symphony musicians settled 

on a new three-year contract beginning 

this September that includes a 9.7% wage 

Johanna Fiedler, 65, daughter of conductor 

Arthur Fiedler and author of Molto Agitato, a 

fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the Metropolitan 

Opera based on her experiences as 

the Met’s chief press liaison from 1975 to 1989, 

died at her home in Manhattan on May 27, following 

an extended illness. 



Concerts Everywhere 

David Robertson 

St Louis Symphony 

Rouse: Symphony 3 

(world premiere) 

agonized atonal ruminations, or dramatic 

expressionism. Instead it stays resolutely tonal; 

even the dissonances seem stimulating rather 

than grating. Rouse also offers many islands of 

consonance so a listener’s musical GPS is 

always on target. The busy percussion section 

You’d never know it from the advertising, but 

there was something else on the program May 

5 at Powell Hall besides Carl Orff’s Carmina 

Burana. For the St Louis Symphony’s last concert 

of the season, Christopher Rouse was present 

for the world premiere of his Symphony 

No. 3, conducted by Music Director David 

Robertson. 

According to Rouse, the unusual form of 

his symphony was patterned after Prokofieff’s 

Symphony No. 2, which was inspired by 

Beethoven’s final piano sonata. All three works 

have two main parts, an aggressive, declarative 

opening movement followed by a theme and 

variations. 

Commentators on Rouse’s music often use 

words like “exciting” or “energetic”, and from 

the opening trumpet fanfare I heard what they 

mean. Unlike much new music, there are no 

extended excursions into serial techniques, 

offers a constant underlying rhythmic pulse 

that is picked up by other instruments from 

time to time, takes hold, and doesn’t let go. 

The five variations in the second part vary 

in mood and style, beginning with a gentle, 

romantic statement of the theme on the English 

horn floating over a soft cushion of strings. 

Then in between a couple of snappy swinging 

variations (that include a “killer” clarinet passage) 

is one for strings alone with low bluesy 

opening bass lines that gradually work their 

way up through the high violins. 

The final variation takes off like a rocket, as 

little flashes of texture from each section punctuate 

the orchestral fabric. The music eventually 

comes full circle, abruptly reprising the 

gentle English horn theme of the first variation, 

before charging to the end with the vigor 

of the first movement. 

Rouse said he had no extra-musical subtext 

in mind, and this symphony is just fine 



without one. The unique orchestrations and circular sound screen around the orchestra 

breezy lyricism seemed fresh, playful, and and soloist. 

introspective rather than derivative, superfi- Violinist Jennifer Koh plunged into the 

cial, or coldly cerebral. The work, reminiscent music, making bold, decisive statements when 

of the formal clarity of Hindemith and at some the score called for them, and elsewhere going 

points of the gentler minimalism of John with the flow of dance rhythms, both earthy 

Adams, has the primal energy of, yes, Prokofi- and metaphysical. Koh, who performed Juggler 

eff and Beethoven, and could easily become a in 2009, was an experienced hand in how to 

programming staple. 

coexist with an oddly-equipped orchestra. The 

Speaking of staples, in Carmina Burana consummate multi-tasker Eschenbach and the 

soprano Cyndia Sieden had the right voice— NSO kept the textures clear, the tempos lively, 

clear and sweet with just the right touch of and the dynamics carefully balanced. 

vibrato. David Adam Moore’s rich baritone So why was the response disappointing? 

would have been even more impressive had he Start with the audience size, a mild turnout 

added a more confident personality to his despite Thomas’s reputation with the NSO. 

character. Tenor Richard Troxell did a perfect Perhaps the crowd expected a more dominant 

turn as the roasting swan. The St Louis Chil- violin presence; maybe they were caught off 

dren’s Choirs sounded properly sweet and guard by the way the concerto gradually 

innocent, and the St Louis Symphony Chorus expired. Concertos come with some precon- 

roared to life with crisp articulation and solid ceptions. A better designation for the piece 

intonation. With a great orchestra and conduc- would be “Juggler in Paradise for Violin and 

tor at the top of their form, and a full house Orchestra”. A pair of bracketing Schumann 

(including lots of enthusiastic young people), opuses, on their own, offered no guarantee of a 

the concert was a satisfying conclusion to a packed house. 

highly effective season. 

Eschenbach did at least supply another 

JOHN HUXHOLD “first”, the NSO’s maiden voyage with the 

Overture to Die Braut von Messina, a dramatic, 

Washington DC 

effective curtain raiser that Schumann wrote 

after his Symphony No. 2, the concluding and 

Thomas: Violin Concer- 

most substantial work on the bill. Whatever 

drama might have been lacking in Thomas’s 

to 3 (US Premiere) 

concerto, Eschenbach and the NSO compensated 

for it in their fiery Schumann collabora- 

The checklist of Christoph Eschenbach’s first 

season as music director of the National Symphony 

and the Kennedy Center for the Performing 

Arts included three themes: orchestral 

song, three weeks’ worth of material influenced 

by Indian culture, and new works commissioned 

by the NSO (a long-standing tradition). 

His final program of the 2010-11 season 

brought Augusta Read Thomas’s Violin Contions. 

It’s far too early to predict how their relationship 

will grow. Ask retiring NSO trumpeter 

Adel Sanchez, who was honored at the June 9 

concert for 42 years of dedicated service under 

six administrations. A single season is but a 

sprint for a marathon man. 

CHARLES MCCARDELL 

certo No. 3 (Juggler in Paradise), a NSO cocommission, 

to these shores for the first time. Berlin Philharmonic 

Thomas and the NSO have a history that 

extends back to the Rostropovich era in 1992, Fleming, Hampson, and 

when her Symphony No. 1 (Air and Angels) 

was given its world premiere. In less than 20 Thielemann 

years the NSO has presented eight Thomas 

works—impressive for such a forward-thinking 

composer still in her 40s. 

Juggler in Paradise, composed in 2008, is a 

challenging, engaging piece that, if anything, 

errs on the side of brevity. It is a single-movement 

arch barely 20 minutes in length, and it 

avoids empty bravura cliches from the soloist 

and assigns much of the orchestral color to six 

percussionists employing dozens of instruments, 

including nine triangles (the triangle 

gets the last word). Stravinsky and Varese are 

composers Thomas admires, and their inspiration 

was felt even in the bongo cadenza. Eight 

players in the back of the stage formed a semi- 

Richard Strauss occupies an ambiguous place 

in history that is all the more difficult to define 

when confronted with the breadth and versatility 

of his musical language. His somewhat 

pompous Festmusik der Stadt Wien for brass 

and timpani, premiered in 1943, inevitably 

conjures his complicity with the Nazi regime, 

while songs from his early period evoke an 

introspective, deeply musical individual who, 

after the war near the end of his life, may have 

looked at the world in despair from his Bavarian 

villa. 

The Berlin Philharmonic presented an all- 

Strauss concert on May 5 at the Philharmonie 



with soloists Renee Fleming and Thomas 

Hampson and guest conductor Christian 

Thielemann. With much of this season’s program 

revolving around Russian repertoire, a 

return to the orchestra’s native roots, led by a 

conductor who specializes in the late German 

romantics and brought to life by two of the 

world’s most respected vocalists, made a 

musically probing evening. 

Fleming’s timbre has lost some of its luster 

and velvety sheen in recent years, but her 

interpretations of Strauss remain magnetically 

fresh and compelling. She created immediate 

intimacy with the audience for her first song, 

an orchestral adaptation of ‘Traum Durch die 

Dämmerung’, as she melted into the music’s 

dusky lyricism. Thielemann elicited an unusually 

sleek and intense pianissimo from the 

orchestra. 

In ‘Gesang der Apollopriesterin’, a dark, 

tormented work despite its celestial theme, 

Fleming revealed a lower range that has grown 

even richer in maturity, while her top notes 

were sometimes pinched. The swift, triumphant 

‘Winterliebe’ was more flattering to 

her as she opened the song with bell-like tones 

and then revealed untarnished metal as she 

and the BPO wandered through emphatic, 

craggy melodies. Following enthusiastic 

applause, she and Thielemann offered the 

dreamy ‘Waldseligkeit’ as an encore. 

Hampson gave just as gripping interpretations, 

sometimes inadvertently conjuring the 

spirit of Gustav Mahler. ‘Pilgers Morgenlied’, 

while glowing with romantic emotion, had a 

subtle touch of irony alongside the orchestra’s 

forceful playing. The baritone gave careful 

attention to the poetic arc of ‘Hymnus’, accentuated 

by finely-crafted harmonic turns in the 

orchestra. In the nightmarish ‘Notturno’, he 

evoked palpable torment and deathly shadows 

with booming, enveloping tones. Against 

Hampson’s impassioned singing, the eerie 

melodies of Concertmaster Daishin Kashimoto, 

while elegantly executed, left a somewhat 

cold impression. 

Following a vigorous prelude to the third 

act of Arabella, Hampson and Fleming shared 

the stage with natural chemistry for two duets 

from the opera. Hampson was a steadfast, 

seductive Mandrynka, while Fleming conveyed 

a touch of youthful innocence. The 

orchestra carried the singers with taut phrases. 

Just as the emotive melodies of “und du wirst 

mein gebieter sein” lingered in the hall, the 

performers reprised the final two stanzas with 

plangent affection. 

The concert, which opened with the Berlin 

Philharmonic’s first performance ever of Festmusik 

der Stadt Wien, ended with Strauss’s 

Festival Prelude for large orchestra and organ, 

written to inaugurate Vienna’s Konzerthaus in 

1913. The BPO’s consistently refined playing 

was even further polished under Thielemann, 

yet lacked the burnished quality one notices 

under Music Director Simon Rattle. 

As Berlin grows into an international city of 

the future, the concert was a throwback to 

another era. 

REBECCA SCHMID 

Hampton VA 

Danielpour: 

Inventions on a Marriage 

(world premiere) 

Some chamber musicians play together as 

married couples, but how many get to perform 

a piece written to celebrate their 35th wedding 

anniversary? That pleasure was enjoyed by violinist 

Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson 

(husband and wife) along with pianist 

Joseph Kalichstein on May 21 at the American 

Theatre. The occasion, part of the Virginia Arts 

Festival, was the world premiere by the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson 

Trio of Richard 

Danielpour’s Inventions on a Marriage. 

In pre-performance remarks, Danielpour 

called the short, seven-movement work “a set 

of musical snapshots of married life”. Each 

movement carried a title: Mirror Image, Heroics, 

As You Were Sleeping, Argument, Reconciliation, 

Celebration, and Good Night. The 

entire work seemed to define the arc of a relationship. 

Danielpour writes in a very accessible style 

with flashes of dissonance and an emotional 

accuracy that captured the different phases of 

a marriage. ‘Heroics’, with its rapid string passages, 

describes the frenetic pace of two people 

trying to balance busy lives with the 

responsibilities of marriage. ‘Argument’ with 

its tango-like melodies has the push-pull 

rough edge of two tempers sparring. And the 

violin melody in ‘Good Night’ brought out a 

dreamy, slightly sad quality, almost suggesting 

a couple in the final stages of their relationship 

looking back over a long life together. 

Danielpour said the piece was not specific 

to Laredo and Robinson, but it was fun to 

observe their gestures as they made their way 

through it. Laredo smiled briefly at the close of 

the ‘Argument’, and the couple seemed especially 

in tune with the bittersweet sounds of 

‘Good Night’ as the work drew to a close. 

As a couple, they played beautifully, especially 

when weaving together Danielpour’s 

melodic lines. Without any real fireworks, the 

piece has a comfortable, almost everyday feel 

that perfectly suggests what most marriages 

are all about. 

That certainly wouldn’t work for the tor- 



mented personal life that Tchaikovsky lived; 

his more smber trio closed the program. Written 

as an elegy to his mentor, pianist and 

teacher Nikolai Rubinstein, the work is laid out 

in two large movements with the second a 

series of variations. 

Giving this sprawling work a cohesive 

framework fell to Kalichstein, who emerged as 

the unspoken leader of the trio in taming what 

he described beforehand to the audience as an 

“inspired, touching, and difficult” work. His 

firm hands harnessed the almost symphonic 

chords and thick passages that Tchaikovsky 

built into the piece. Especially in the set of 

variations, he brought out the individual qualities 

of each with remarkable attention to 

dynamics, adding weight in one part and playfully 

skipping across the keys in another. 

Laredo and Robison threw their own formidable 

abilities into this mix, and the results 

made for a riveting performance. Robinson 

pulled from her instrument a mournful tone 

that Tchaikovsky suggests as the theme of the 

work, and Laredo used carefully controlled 

playing to bring order to the composer’s effusiveness. 

The evening opened with Beethoven’s Trio 

No. 2, a piece that Tchaikovsky could not have 

imagined writing. Stately and clean, the work 

begins with a soft piano melody that is repeated 

in the violin and cello. The KLR Trio seemed 

to feel very much at home with Beethoven’s 

graceful work that gives each player an equal 

role. Kalichstein was a strong voice but playful 

as well, and the violin and cello took an almost 

reserved approach until all three players broke 

ahead like race horses in the final spirited 

movement. 

DAVID NICHOLSON 

Ojai Festival 

Crumb: 

The Winds of Destiny 

For over 50 years, the arched acoustical shell in 

Ojai’s Libbey Bowl hovered over the likes of 

Aaron Copland, Pierre Boulez, Michael Tilson 

Thomas, and other luminaries who made 

music at the venerable, lovable Ojai Music Festival. 

But the shell grew old and dilapidated, 

infested with termites, beyond easy repair. So, 

with remarkable speed this little town (pop 

8,226) managed to raise $3.93 million to build 

a new facility well in time for the 2011 Festival. 

For a longtime festivalgoer, entering the 

new Libbey Bowl came as a bit of a shock. The 

surrounding grounds were reconfigured, 

crowned by a spiked arch, designed by the 

composer-inventor Trimpin, that plays music 

when you enter. Gone are the rustic wooden 

benches set in uneven asphalt and dirt; they’re 

replaced by rows and rows of green plastic 

seats set in concrete. The sightlines are much 

better now owing to the steeper rake of the 

seating area and the relocation of obstructing 

tree trunks. The new shell is shaped like the 

old one, only bigger and turned slightly 

counter-clockwise so that it now faces the rear 

lawn directly instead of at an awkward angle 

(it’s still tough for lawn people to see the stage, 

but we’re told that the height of the lawn may 

be raised in the future). If you look straight 

ahead, the scene is familiar; but look around, 

and you are reminded of Ticketmaster and the 

other sterile encroachments of urban outdoor 

concert life. 

One thing that doesn’t change at Ojai is the 

adventurous bent of the programming. For the 

more-or-less official opening concert June 10, 

this year’s Music Director Dawn Upshaw 

brought her frequent collaborator, professional 

provocateur Peter Sellars, to stage George 

Crumb’s song cycle The Winds Of Destiny, 

where American folk songs and spirituals of 

the Civil War period and beyond are planted in 

Crumb’s ethereally twinkling, crashing, haunting 

sound world. 

Naturally, Sellars came with an agenda: 

protesting current US involvement in three 

wars. So he had Upshaw play the role of a 

returning Afghan war veteran whose sleep was 

constantly disrupted by flashbacks (with 

apologies to Esa-Pekka Salonen, the piece 

could have been retitled Insomnia). He also 

prefaced the long evening with a three-way 

discussion between himself, Crumb, and 

pianist Gilbert Kalish, and followed the Crumb 

cycle with an absorbing set of Afghani music 

by the Sakhi Ensemble (based in Fremont CA) 

that should have opened the concert. 

Yet, despite the heavy-handed politically 

correct concept, Upshaw was brilliant, 

immersing herself completely in the premise, 

panting and moaning as if in extreme pain but 

also singing luminously at the drop of a hat. So 

were Kalish and the percussion ensemble Red 

Fish Blue Fish as they played the score with an 

aggressive ferocity and wistful drifting quality 

that went beyond any other performance of 

this work that I’m familiar with. 

The performance was well amplified by the 

new sound system. And with the lights out, the 

dark night sky overhead, and the frogs and 

crickets adding to the night ambience that fed 

into the idea of disturbed dreams, the magical 

Ojai ambience took hold, undeterred by all 

that plastic and concrete. 

RICHARD S GINELL 



Los Angeles Phil New Music Group 

Works by Kahane, Norman, 

and Mazzoli (world 

premieres) 

Steven Mackey 

John Adams, the creative chair for the Los 

Angeles Philharmonic’s new music activities, 

made only one appearance in Walt Disney 

Concert Hall in the 2010-11 season on May 24, 

and not a note of his own music was heard. 

Instead, he generously devoted a Los Angeles 

Philharmonic New Music Group “Green 

Umbrella” program to world premieres by a 

trio of young composers born between 1979 

and 1981, now clustered in Brooklyn, plus one 

work by Steven Mackey, an “oldster” at 55 who 

made the transition from rock ‘n roll guitar to a 

Princeton professorship in only a decade. 

Besides conducting the three premieres with 

encouraging enthusiasm, Adams gave us an 

ingratiating peek into the workshop, musing 

how performances of new music often begin in 

chaos and self-doubt at the first rehearsal, 

gradually increase in confidence by the dress 

rehearsal, and work out fine at the actual concert. 

The young composer who seemed to have 

the most self-confidence also had the most 

effective piece, perhaps even a breakthrough. 

He is Gabriel Kahane, whose bio doesn’t try to 

conceal the fact that he is the son of wellknown 

conductor-pianist Jeffrey Kahane. 

More important, in Orinico Sketches, his highly 

enjoyable song cycle based on his family history, 

he has figured out a way to merge credible 

classical music writing with a believable popmusic 

stance. The writing for a chamber 

ensemble was sophisticated, with beautifully 

formed inner voices constantly moving 

around, whether evoking the ocean waves of 

his grandmother’s voyage to the New World or 

the Afro-Cuban beat of Havana where she first 

landed. Kahane alternated between piano and 

guitar, singing in a pop tenor voice that summoned 

the timbres of figures like Sting or 

James Taylor. There was no condescension, no 

posing as “hip”; this felt genuine. 

Missy Mazzoli and Andrew Norman did 

not hide their initial forebodings about their 

assignments, Mazzoli because she was asked 

to expand on Bach’s ever-daunting Chaconne 

for solo violin, and Norman because he dearly 

wanted to write something worthy of a Disney 

Hall debut. Mazzoli’s Dissolve, O My Heart 

opened with the first stentorian Bach chord 

and continued agreeably in his spirit, with Jennifer 

Koh skillfully riding the frequent modern 

slides and Bachian multiple-stops. Norman’s 

Try opened with random craziness in search of 

a piece until the pianist, after a few tantrums, 

settled on a gentle downward motif and 

repeated it, but Try went flat. Perhaps he 

“tried” too hard. 

Mackey’s Four Iconoclastic Episodes 

amounted to a double concerto for his electric 

guitar, Koh’s violin, and a string ensemble. 

Much of the time, Mackey ran through his 

extensive vocabulary of rock guitar techniques, 

mellow and edgy but mostly mellow, while 

Koh’s part was mostly a showy display of traditional 

concerto virtuosity. The strings were 

often just along for the ride, not really engaged 

in the first three movements until the conclusions. 

As with Mackey’s Beautiful Passing [see 

Ginell’s article on the Los Angeles Master 

Chorale in this issue], the most inspired passage 

was the fade at the end. 




Opera Everywhere 

Opera Theatre of St Louis 

Adams: 

The Death of Klinghoffer 

John Adams’s second opera, The Death of 

Klinghoffer, is based on the 1985 hijacking of 

the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro by four 

Palestinian Liberation Front terrorists who 

demanded the release of 50 Palestinians held 

in Israeli jails and murdered disabled American 

Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer in the 

process. The Opera Theatre of St Louis’s June 

production, the work’s first major revival since 

its 1991 premiere, was one of the most compelling, 

emotionally involving performances 

I’ve ever seen. As Marilyn Klinghoffer sings in 

the opera’s final words, “I wanted to die.” 

Is Klinghoffer an opera or an oratorio? I 

think it really is an oratorio, but one of power- 

John Adams 

ful emotion and intellectual intrigue. Adams 

based its form on the great Bach passions 

where extensive choral sections alternate with 

more operatic-like scenes with arias. The choruses 

represent the Israeli and Palestinian 

points of view evenhandedly; neither side 

escapes criticism or sympathy. Just as the choruses 

are extensive, so are the arias, most of 

them taking up an entire page or more. My 

only criticism is of Alice Goodman’s extensively 

wordy libretto. Its complexity and the use of 

many unusual words make the text difficult to 

understand. The projected titles were a necessity. 

To call the music minimalist is not quite 

correct. True, it is repetitive, particularly in the 

orchestra; yet, unlike Philip Glass’s music, it is 

complex, melodic, and varied, more suited to 

the text and emotional situations. Tender 

emotion and violent outburst capture the ear. 

There is not a lot one can do in staging the 

work, but stage director James Robinson did 



quite a bit. The opera began with a shocking 

coup de theatre. One sat a moment or two in 

complete darkness. A single shot rang out, 

then a brilliant light from above illuminated 

Klinghoffer’s empty wheelchair as water cascaded 

over it from above. Lights out. Two massive 

black panels giving the appearance of the 

sides of a ship formed the background. A 

broad panel for projections of sea water, 

waves, etc, spanned the stage. The massive 

choruses of Palestinian and Israeli refugees, all 

carrying luggage, were symmetrically arranged 

and static, then burst into complex patterns. 

The Act I finale was a startling vision of 

hate between the two choruses. When a small 

Israeli boy and a small Palestinian boy, both 

carrying peace branches, attempted to play 

together, they were violently separated with a 

wall of luggage built between them and the 

warring choruses. Also, the death of Klinghoffer 

was movingly portrayed by a terrorist slowly 

pushing the dead Klinghoffer in his wheelchair 

across the stage as the projection panel 

displayed a wheelchair submerged in water. 

The performances were flawless. Two massive 

voices dominated: Nancy Maultsby (Mrs 

Marilyn Klinghoffer) and Brian Mulligan (Leon 

Klinghoffer). The ship’s Captain was the capable 

Christopher Magiera. The Terrorists were a 

varied lot led by the rather subdued, creepy, 

Rambo-like Paul La Rosa. But it was tenor 

Matthew Di Battista (Molqi) who shattered the 

sonic sound barrier with his bright, brilliantly 

sung portrayal. Aubrey Allicock (as minor terrorist 

Maoud) and mezzo Laura Wilde (Omar) 

with her sensuous voice rounded out the 

group. A saucy British comedienne-dancer, 

Swiss grandmother, and Austrian women were 

delightfully portrayed by Lucy Schaufer. 

The only concern I had beforehand was 

how the chorus would do ,given their extensive 

involvement. Nothing to fear. The 29-member 

chorus was outstanding! It was the collective 

heart of the opera (and the story). Kudos to 

Chorus Master Robert Ainsley. Michael 

Christie, using the new reduced orchestration, 

led members of the St Louis Symphony with 

plenty of delicacy, power, sweep, and emotion. 

CHARLES H PARSONS 

Opera Company of Philadelphia 

Henze: Phaedra 

(US Premiere) 

The Opera Company of Philadelphia’s season 

closed in June with the US premiere of Hans 

Werner Henze’s Phaedra. Its initial run played 

mostly to full houses, with some audience 

members returning at two added performances. 

Director Robert Driver and his production 

team went for high-concept multi-media with 

sleek design elements. The results proved to be 

thrilling opera-theater very suited to OCP’s 

developing chamber series, presented here at 

the Verizon Center’s more intimate space, the 

Perelman Theater. In the initial Labyrinth 

scenes, Henze, using Greek oratorical conceits, 

has his characters singing directly to the audience 

instead of each other. This device could 

be shrill and worked against drawing one into 

the story. In contrast, Philippe Amand’s gliding 

set and lighting design with its projections of 

harrowing physical and psychic landscapes 

was completely absorbing. 

The high drama was drawn from the Phaedra 

plays by Euripides and Seneca, as well as 

symbolic allusions from Henze’s life. The composer 

and librettist Christian Lehnert shortened 

the convoluted and steamy tale of Phaedra 

into a challenging five scenes in 90 minutes 

that condenses the lurid tale of the vanquishing 

of a mythical Minotaur, Phaedra’s 

incestuous desire for her stepson Hippolyt, 

and the warring goddesses Aphrodite and 

Artemis. The death and rebirth of Hippolyt 

explores a universal story of outcasts that 

leaves sympathy even for the Minotaur. Indeed 

this is time-traveling, trans-cultural, androgynous 

Olympian soap opera. 

The opera was composed in 2007, the year 

that Henze’s partner of 40 years (Fausto 

Moroni) died. Driver interpreted part of the 

story from Henze’s struggle for personal freedom 

and boldly used subtexts that reflected 

the composer’s experience of being condemned 

by his father (a Nazi) for being gay 

and his self-liberation on the isle of Nemi, 

where he and Moroni lived. 

Mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford played 

Phaedra with clamorous vocal menace as she 

stalked Hypopolyt. She appeared in a nude 

body stocking with swirl piping around her 

breasts a la Theda Bara, and was pretty campy 

as she belted out Lehnert’s lusty German dialog. 

But Driver framed it all with a seductive, 

dreamy theatricality, floating the singers 

around each other. 

William Burden had a lot of tenor heavy 

lifting as Hippolyt, but started to reveal the 

“interiors” subtly, as he staggered from one 

torturous scene to another. He was most 

vibrant in his noble rejection of Phaedra and 

later in his transfiguration when, as the caged 

Virbius, he was freed with a kiss by Artemis. 

Elizabeth Reiter, a sultry soprano who just finished 

her training at the Curtis Institute, was 

just as commanding as the scheming, icy 

Aphrodite. Another winning touch by Driver 

had her shadowing Phaedra and mouthing her 

lines—an example of effective character counterpoint 

that added an unexpected emotional 

dimension. 



The dreamscape was jarringly broken in 

Act II by the re-animation of Hippolyt into Virbius, 

which alludes to Henze’s actual emergence 

from a two-month coma he suffered in 

2005. Burden, now a zombie, was flopped 

around on a gurney as Monty-Python-esque 

visuals of body parts and grisly hardware 

loomed above him. This supplied some comic 

relief but seemed a bit loopy. Otherwise, the 

template of panels gliding in and out, or triangulating 

the projections of nature and of the 

scenes played out in silhouette, was fluidly 

executed—dazzling stagecraft achieved without 

overwhelming the music. 

Giving the most dimension to a character 

both vocally and dramatically was Anthony 

Roth Costanza. Alternating faux-castrato and 

countertenor, his performance was a labyrinth 

of interpretive vocal skills that powerfully dispatched 

the complexities of Artemis—in platform 

sandals no less. 

There are many stand-alone vocal passages, 

but too often they straight-jacket the 

singers with Henze’s circular vocal lines that 

retreat into barky resolutions. In contrast, the 

appearance of the serene bass Jeremy Milner, 

playing Minotauros (not the monster one 

anticipated) in the finale, was an unexpected 

delight. 

Compared to Henze’s vocal lines, his 

orchestral template was more liberated, having 

narrative scope even with seeming nonsequiters. 

The atmospherics included an array 

of haunting effects—dizzying vibes, an architectonic 

piano, a vaulted cello, shadowy violin 

or oboe lines, and Japanese Noh theater cymbals, 

just to mention a few, all cohesively 

brought together by conductor Corrado 

Rovaris. 

LEWIS WHITTINGTON 

Long Beach Opera 

Shostakovich: Moscow, 

Cherry Town 

Nikita Khrushchev, whose term as the boss of 

the Soviet Union now seems like a relatively 

enlightened time between the eras of Stalinist 

terror and gray Brezhnev conformity, had a 

scheme. Apparently concerned about the 

plight of the average comrade, Khrushchev 

ordered the mass construction of cheap, fivestory, 

concrete-block apartment buildings, 

whose units were doled out to the people amid 

tangles of red tape. 

This scheme became a ripe topic for entertainment 

purposes, and who should be asked 

to contribute a score to one such project but 

the newly-rehabilitated Dmitri Shostakovich. 

Moscow, Cherry Town (Cheromushki), 

Shostakovich’s first and only musical comedy, 

was the result; and Shostakovich fans who 

come to the score for the first time could be 

excused for wondering if the completion date, 

1958, is wrong. (Actually, the crazed galop that 

underpins a Moscow taxi ride was lifted from 

the 1935 ballet The Limpid Stream.) The opera 

is a delightful, madcap, sometimes silly, tuneful, 

quote-filled, often waltz-driven romp of a 

score—a throwback to the wacky Shostakovich 

of the 1920s and early 30s before Stalin cracked 

down. Some of Cheromushki is a wildly satirical 

poke at the bureaucracy, but there is also 

an innocence about the piece, the triumph of 

love over the corrupt guys in charge. It remains 

a rarity in the catalog. There is an abridged 

recording from the British premiere, a “complete” 

recording on Chandos, and the 1963 

Soviet film on DVD. So the intrepid iconoclasts 

at Long Beach Opera stepped into a large 

breach when they presented it. I caught a 

runout performance in Santa Monica’s Barnum 

Hall the afternoon of May 22. 

LBO general director-conductor Andreas 

Mitisek vigorously led a two-act, 13-piece pitband 

version of the score, with some numbers 

deleted. Stage director Isabel Milenski resisted 

the temptation to update, setting the piece 

squarely in 1959 Moscow with an abstract allpurpose 

set of Soviet-constructivist architecture 

and symbols (including a large all-pervasive 

“eye” that was supposed to represent Big 

Brother). The cast, mostly young, spirited, and 

evenly-matched in voice, cavorted, despaired, 

plotted, and celebrated to a rhyme-happy English 

translation that sometimes made the 

libretto sound like Gilbert & Sullivan. The prevailing 

color of the lighting was, of course, red. 

This remains in danger of being consigned 

to the tall pile of dated music-theatre works, 

what with some longueurs in the plot and its 

time-specific setting in a vanished political 

system (though it is true that young people, 

especially in the sky-high rental market of Los 

Angeles-Santa Monica, still have trouble finding 

their own places to live). But Long Beach 

Opera kept things moving along in a lively, 

bubbly, zesty production that illuminated a 

side of Shostakovich (composer of some of the 

most uproariously funny music ever written) 

that doesn’t get much of a hearing. 


Criticism is a necessity if the culture is to be 

protected from decay. 

—Roger Scruton 

That means all criticism is really about the 

whole culture. 



Critical Convictions 

Voices of Stone and Steel: the Music of 

William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and 

Peter Mennin 

by Walter Simmons 

Scarecrow Press, 425 pages (+CD) 

As Walter Simmons points out in the introductory 

chapter of Voices in the Wilderness, his 

2004 book on six American modern-romantic 

composers (May/June 2004), the narrative outline 

directing the typical history of American 

concert music since 1900 starts with provincial, 

tradition-bound imitations of European 

masters. As the new century progresses, American 

composers begin to find their own voice 

and assert their artistic independence and 

national pride. Copland, Harris, Gershwin, and 

others begin to incorporate homegrown vernacular 

music—jazz and folk tunes—into their 

works. But by midcentury an influential “new 

music” arrives from post-War Europe. Even 

Schoenberg’s dodecaphony appears outdated 

to the proponents of this movement, who— 

claiming that tonality is “exhausted,” that the 

old rhetoric is irrelevant to a post-War world— 

adopt the austere, cerebral serialism of 

Webern as their touchstone. Stockhausen 

leads the experimentalists, Boulez the more 

severe and brittle pointillists. The “new music” 

is quickly taken up by university-based composers 

and leads to an efflorescence of fragmentation, 

relentless chromaticism, kaleidoscopic 

instrumentation, sudden and extreme 

contrasts in dynamics and register, and all 

sorts of new performance techniques. Melodic 

lyricism and tonal harmonies—and the openly 

romantic emotion they convey—become 

passé, even scorned. 

Meanwhile, the turn-of-the-century innovations 

of Ives are rediscovered and canonized 

as adumbrations of the newly ascendant 

avant-garde, as are the somewhat later experiments 

of Cowell, Ruggles, Crawford-Seeger, 

and Varese. All of these native forerunners and 

European eminences are seen to lead, by an 

inexorable teleological progression, to the 

dominance of serial techniques and other 

kinds of “contemporary” procedures, culminating 

in the 1950s and 60s in the rebarbative, 

complex, atonal, special-effects-heavy works 

and their accompanying ideologies of such 

Book Review 

commanding personalities as Elliott Carter, 

Milton Babbitt, George Crumb, John Cage, 

Morton Feldman, and Conlon Nancarrow. No 

matter that audiences hate the avant-garde— 

indeed, that’s a big part of its validation; its 

best-known composers gain stature, fame, 

even notoriety; its lesser figures get professional 

approval and academic tenure. 

And what of the many unenlightened composers 

who continue to write old-fashioned 

tonal music using the hallowed forms and procedures? 

Their efforts are denigrated by musical 

ideologues and taste-makers as quaint, 

anachronistic, or obsolete; their place in the 

story of modern American music is diminished 

to the merely incidental. Such music is, the upto-date 

feel, at best merely peripheral to the 

grand narrative outlining the historically 

inevitable march to modernist supremacy; it is 

not to be taken as “serious” or “important”. 

Worship of the newest thing is very old, of 

course. In the 20th Century the high priest of 

musical modernism was Theodore Adorno, 

whose early and harshly doctrinaire promulgation 

of the view that tonality and traditional 

styles had outlived their usefulness (to be 

replaced by strict Schoenbergian dodecaphony) 

was hugely influential. Copland and other 

American “populists” merited only disdain, 

Adorno felt, in their hopeless pursuit of outworn 

ideals. By the late 1950s his dogmas had 

expanded their reach (and intensified their 

exclusivity) in such French critics as René Leibowitz 

and André Hodeir, the latter excoriating 

anything not adhering to the brittle pointillism 

of Boulez and Barraqué, specifically singling 

out (in his polemical screed Since 

Debussy) almost all modern-era American 

music as hopelessly irrelevant and reactionary. 

Most of it, he claimed indignantly, was no better 

than the hackneyed rubbish spewn out by 

such dinosaurs as Shostakovich. 

Soon this denigration of tonal music 

spread to American critics wanting to keep up 

with the latest fashions. See, for example, the 

dismissal of Barber’s “easygoing, sentimental” 

and “amusing” Violin Concerto in his 1966 

High Fidelity review by the esteemed critic 

Alfred Frankenstein. Eric Salzman’s widely 

used and admired 20th-Century Music: An 

Introduction (1967, revised edition 1974) en- 

50 September/October 2011


dorsed this attitude with a bit more subtlety by 

simply concentrating on avant-garde developments. 

Everything else was secondary and 

therefore given only cursory (if any) attention. 

Academic journals such as Perspectives in New 

Music reflected the same bias for many decades. 

“New music” was atonal music, as any 

issue from the 1950s or 1960s will illustrate. 

(An added attraction was that serial techniques 

present seductive opportunities for 

impressively abstruse analysis.) 

The view that avant-garde music represents 

progress, that it is the only proper goal of 

a natural and beneficial aesthetic evolution, 

superseding hidebound tonal, traditional 

music, remains persistent in American music 

criticism still, in for instance Kyle Gann’s 

American Music in the 20th Century, published 

in 1997. Even Alex Ross, in his eloquent and 

impressive 2008 overview of modern music, 

The Rest Is Noise—which is particularly good in 

evoking the historical and cultural context of 

20th Century music—is nevertheless strongly 

skewed toward “the progressive path from 

Debussy to Boulez and Cage” (as he puts it). 

American experimental composers are given 

far more space and attention than the more 

traditional figures, with the clear implication 

that they represent the dominant and more 

significant evolutionary strain. 

Walter Simmons’s Voices in the Wilderness 

was the first in a series of books with the overarching 

title 20th Century Traditionalists 

intended to present a corrective to that story 

about modern American music. Simmons 

explicitly rejects both the teleological argument 

that “the evolution of the tonal system 

proceeded according to a linear progression 

that led inevitably to the dissolution of tonality” 

and the underlying assumption “that music 

is fruitfully studied as any sort of linear progression, 

with some hypothetical goal toward 

which all contenders are racing”. Simmons’s 

history of American music instead places 

much more value on the intrinsic and particular 

virtues, as well as the effect on actual concert 

audiences, of the music written by the 

many American composers who (in different 

ways) maintained their allegiance to traditional 

melody, harmony, textures, and forms, as 

well as to the warmth, engagement, and immediate, 

visceral effect these elements convey. 

Those composers also, of course, made many 

innovations, as all imaginative artists do, but 

for specific communicative reasons, not in service 

of an ideology of “originality” for its own 

sake. They refused to abandon the time-honored 

musical virtues of shapely melodic lines, 

tonal-based harmonic tension and release, 

clear formal logic, sensuous instrumental 

color, and the expressive purposes to which 

these qualities have traditionally been put— 

their frank appeal to pleasure, their immediate 

and obvious ability to arouse and ennoble 

human emotion. 

Before going on I should add that just the 

fact that audiences hated so-called “new 

music” doesn’t mean that all of it was bad. 

Much was, of course—as indeed could be said 

of the music in any stylistic idiom however 

new-fangled or old-fashioned. But “new 

music” was, at first, almost impossible to 

judge, so undifferentiated did it sound to its 

earliest audiences. With time it became clear 

that the idiom’s trademark excesses and 

extremes quickly degenerated into cliches and 

(unintentional) self-parody, especially when 

taken up by the legions of Boulez’s inferior 

imitators. Furthermore, its most devoted practitioners 

tended to run out of worthy ideas and 

lapse into silence early in their careers. Nevertheless 

there are many well-made and expressive 

compositions that employ atonality and 

avant-garde techniques, even of the iciest and 

most forbidding mode. I’m not arguing that a 

more traditional, tonality-based music is 

always or inevitably better—or somehow more 

“natural” or “proper”—than more difficult 

“new music”. There are no doubt certain emotions 

that can only be conveyed by “contemporary” 

styles and devices. My point is that 

individual works in any and all styles should be 

judged, and their significance assessed, on the 

basis of their merits and not on rigid a priori 

ideological assumptions about what is or isn’t 

fashionable or privileged by an imputed evolutionary 

inevitability. Nor should musical history 

be distorted by such assumptions. We need 

to take a longer view; no one today disparages 

JS Bach for being “old-fashioned”—which he 

was, by the standards of his own time. 

Just such a “longer view” is what Simmons 

tries to encapsulate in the notion of “20th Century 

traditionalist”. This, in Simmons’s use of 

the term, is a wide, encompassing category. 

There are many different “traditions” and so 

many different varieties of “traditionalists”. 

Fervent romantics like Bloch, Hanson, Barber, 

Creston, Giannini, and Flagello (discussed in 

Voices in the Wilderness) are one kind. Others 

are nationalist and populist composers like 

Copland, Harris, Gershwin; “multiculturalists” 

like Hovhaness and Harrison, who drew on 

exotic modes and tried to transmit non-Western 

emotional states; neoclassic composers 

influenced by Stravinsky and Hindemith like 

Piston and his students Harold Shapero, Irving 

Fine, and Ingolf Dahl; “modernist traditionalists” 

like Schuman, Persichetti, Mennin, and 

Diamond, whose bolder harmonic vocabulary 

expanded their range of expressive possibilities; 

and so-called “new romantic” composers 

like George Rochberg and John Corigliano who 

have since the 1970s reasserted the late- 

American Record Guide 51


romantic heritage of Strauss, Mahler, and Puccini. 

All of these in-one-way-or-another “traditionalists” 

adopted and adapted in their works 

time-honored structural patterns and procedures, 

including tonally-derived harmony and 

classic outlines—passacaglia, fugue, sonata, 

theme-and-variations, rondo, and aria and 

dance forms. That, after all, is a considerable 

part of what it means to be a “traditionalist”. 

But each group had distinct and differentiating 

characteristics, as of course did the individual 

composers themselves. For Simmons’s second 

volume in his projected series he has singled 

out three “modernist traditionalist” composers 

who came to prominence in the 1940s and 

50s—William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, 

and Peter Mennin—who he thinks exemplify 

(and indeed mark the summit) of this particular 

strand in tradition-based American composers 

of the past century. That all three were 

long associated (as teachers and administrators) 

with the Juilliard School of Music is a less 

important but by no means negligible point of 

connection among them. 

Though all three were heralded during the 

early part of their careers as bold, strongly profiled 

personalities and brilliant craftsmen 

(which they certainly were), they suffered from 

a kind of two-sided neglect as more avantgarde 

figures came to prominence. Like such 

renowned figures as Stravinsky, Bartok, and 

Hindemith (whose music they learned from), 

they were more “modern” and adventurous 

(especially in their use of dissonance and chromaticism) 

than the more melodious, openly 

romantic Barber and Hanson, but they 

abstained from the post-Webernian pointillism 

and more extreme “contemporary” effects 

and procedures of the avant-garde (including 

doctrinaire serialism). As a result, typical concert 

audiences found them too difficult, and 

on the other hand “sophisticated” audiences 

(such as there were) found them too old-fashioned 

and lacking in cutting-edge caché. As 

Simmons points out, their explorations of a 

more searching and chromatic vocabulary and 

other recent techniques were disdained by the 

cognescenti as merely belated attempts to 

update their image, “while more conservative 

listeners failed to distinguish their work from 

that of the avant-garde and viewed such efforts 

as ‘selling out’”. As a result “their work was 

increasingly marginalized and supported by a 

dwindling number of advocates”. Hence the 

need for a reappraisal of their achievement. 

As in Voices in the Wilderness, each chapter 

in Simmons’s new book offers offers a detailed 

biographical sketch, a description of individual 

stylistic features of each composer, an assessment 

of the important and representative 

works that identifies both strengths and weaknesses, 

and a depiction of the larger social and 

cultural context out of which the music arose. 

There are many and extensive quotations from 

critical opinions (often at some variance with 

each other) and hundreds of citations in the 

notes for each chapter, as well as bibliographies 

and discographies for each composer— 

and even a compact disc with works by all 

three of them. 

Among the many pleasures and sources of 

enlightenment offered by the book are Simmons’s 

penetrating (and sometimes surprising) 

comments about how the personalities of 

these composers were reflected in their music. 

He is particularly sensitive to the contradictions 

and mysteries that invest the complex 

relationship between the artist and his creations. 

Schuman, for example, like his music, 

was bold, assertive, confident of his own 

stature, impatient with academic dogma. He 

had both the inclination and assurance to 

compose large-scale, serious, imposing compositions—especially 

symphonies. There’s no 

doubting the importance and striking individuality 

of his best works: the Third Symphony, 

Violin Concerto, and Fourth String Quartet all 

show his declamatory power, lofty eloquence, 

nervous tension, kinetic vigor, and the unmistakable 

stylistic fingerprints—the dramatic 

gestures, plangent clashing triads, rich yet 

transparent scoring, multi-layered polyphony—that 

make his music instantly recognizable. 

His muscular sprung rhythms and optimism 

are felt as “American”, yet there is a 

strong tragic vein also in his music—for example, 

in the Sixth Symphony and The Young 

Dead Soldiers. 

On the other hand Schuman is not, as Simmons 

notes, immune from accusations of 

rhetorical posturing: some commentators 

have found the sonorous but gloomy Eighth 

Symphony (which I love) more grandiose and 

oratorical than authentically felt. It elicits reactions 

“divided between those who hear it as a 

profound abstract statement and those who 

hear it as...straining to sound profound [with] 

parts that are stunning in their impact and 

others...the backdrop for something striking 

that never occurs”. Curiously, even in his most 

pessimistic or post-tonal, chromatic music, 

Schuman often ended his works—however 

peculiar and incongruous this became—with a 

major triad. “One can only speculate as to the 

meaning of this practice for the composer. 

Was it a statement of loyalty to tonality? An 

inability to relinquish hope, or a spirit of optimism?” 

The precociously gifted, likable, easygoing, 

generous, witty, astonishingly fluent, 

stylistically chameleonic Persichetti presents a 



wonderful contrast to Schuman. There is no 

hint of self-importance in the man or his 

music, and though he wrote nine symphonies 

and many concerted works, big orchestral 

works don’t dominate his output as they do for 

Schuman or Mennin. But Persichetti’s facility 

and wide-ranging stylistic eclecticism (ranging 

from clear tonality to highly-fragmented 

atonality), along with a certain characteristic 

emotional coolness—a “classic” rather than 

“romantic” cast—have exacted a cost: his 

music lacks the strong individuality that would 

make it instantly identifiable, and as a result 

it’s never gotten the attention from press, listeners, 

performers, and recording companies 

that Schuman’s music has. Nevertheless there 

are riches in Persichetti’s oeuvre that as Simmons 

points out are among the high-points in 

modern American music, including the cycle 

of 12 piano sonatas, the Concerto for Piano 

Four-Hands, the Third String Quartet, and the 

Fifth Symphony. These works evince “a summation 

of modern classicism” combining “a 

spirit of spontaneous improvisation with the 

definitiveness of total premeditation. The 

result is highly cerebral music with charm, wit, 

grace, tenderness, and dynamism”. 

Mennin, the third of this New York triad, is 

a very different sort of man and composer 

from both Schuman and Persichetti. Stern, 

aloof, and aristocratic in demeanor, he was a 

deeply private man. Behind his humorless, 

businesslike facade was an uncompromising 

dedication to his aesthetic goals; a seriousness 

and consistency of style, vision, and purpose; 

and a burning intensity (darkening into febrile 

obsessive mania and deep pessimism as he 

aged) that blazed forth in the rigorous, densely-woven 

counterpoint of his muscular allegros 

and grave, elegiac adagios. There is nothing 

frivolous about Mennin; he had absolutely 

no interest in writing “minor” or merely 

charming pieces, and his career exhibits a single-minded 

and “continuous process of compression 

and increasing intensification of 

expression” that, Simmons notes, recalls 

Bruckner (an astonishing comparison I would 

never have thought of, but—whatever one 

thinks of Mennin’s symphonies—a very acute 

one). One consequence of Mennin’s aesthetic 

and stylistic predilections is that he (unlike 

Schuman and Persichetti) doesn’t sound particularly 

American, but instead is closer to 

such Europeans as Rubbra, Holmboe, and 

Simpson (and ultimately to Beethoven), composers 

who “develop abstract ideas logically 

and coherently, while seeming to allude to or 

address profound existential issues...without 

recourse to extramusical references, but as if 

from a lofty, somewhat depersonalized perspective”. 

Mennin’s symphonies are tough 

nuts to crack, for me as for many listeners. I 

still find them often impenetrable: too opaque 

and airless, too filled up with notes, and too 

lacking in clearly shaped and separated phrases 

that I can easily hold in memory. Still, Simmons’s 

comments on his character helped me 

to approach them with a more open mind— 

and I’ve come to admire Mennin’s 1957 Piano 

Concerto (recorded by John Ogdon) and his 

magnificent (though not yet commercially 

recorded) 1963 Piano Sonata. 

Simmons’s extraordinary ability to advocate 

for these composers yet see them whole, 

with all their virtues, difficulties, and failings, is 

a triumph of sensitivity and a lifetime spent in 

thoughtful listening, research, and adjudication. 

He loves these men and their music yet 

makes careful, nuanced discriminations about 

them, raises questions about their accomplishments 

(sometimes unanswerable), and gives 

full credit to the intricate and unfathomable 

workings of personality and circumstance that 

bring forth artistic creation. Together with the 

many detailed and perceptive analyses of individual 

works (strictly verbal—there are no 

music examples) it is this celestial balance of 

judgement and mercy, knowledge and enigma, 

light and dark, that makes Voices of Stone and 

Steel indispensable for anyone studying or 

simply curious about the achievement of these 

three distinguished and emblematic “modern 

traditionalist” American composers. 

LEHMAN 

Meet the Critic: Don O’Connor 

Don O’Connor was born in London, England 

to Irish parents. He became a US citizen in 

1954. In 1963 and 1964 he got his Bachelor’s 

and Master’s Degrees in Industrial Design 

from Syracuse University, where he also studied 

post-graduate level musicology. 

He won five national kitchen and bath 

design awards and in 2007 was inducted into 

the National Kitchen and Bath Industry Hall of 

Fame. 

His lifelong interest in classical music 

included a time as the music critic for the 

Syracuse Post-Standard (1967-1971) and the 

Syracuse Herald Journal (1971-1973). From 

1977 to 1980 he wrote a local record review 

column. He joined ARG in 2006. 

From 1974 to 1978, he was the tympanist 

and program annotator for the Susquehanna 

Valley (now Williamsport) Symphony Orchestra 

and from 1980 to 1985 choir director at St 

Peter Lutheran Church in Kreamer PA. He was 

also a contributor to the Millennium Edition 

of Groves Dictionary. His memberships 

included the Syracuse Cinephile Society, the 

Havergal Brian and Felix Draeseke Societies, 

and the Susquehanna Valley Art Society. 



Guide to Records 

ACTOR: Saxophone Concerto; Dance Rhapsody; 

Horn Concerto; Opening Remarks; Celebration 

Overture 

Debra Richtmeyer, sax; Karol Nitran, hn; Slovak 

Symphony/ Kirk Trevor 

Navona 5848—70 minutes 

Lee Actor (b 1952) pursued parallel careers in 

composition and software engineering, working 

in the Silicon Valley video game industry 

while studying at San Jose State and UC- 

Berkeley. In 2001 he quit his day job to be a 

full-time composer. He is a multipurpose 

member of the Palo Alto Philharmonic: a 

member of the violin and percussion sections, 

assistant conductor since 2001, and composerin-residence 

since 2002. 

He writes good, very enjoyable music. 

‘Opening Remarks’ (2009) is a six-minute program 

opener, full of energy, thematically taut, 

with propulsive drive until a quieter lyrical section, 

and with a winsome harmonic language. 

Celebration Overture (2007) began the Palo 

Alto Symphony’s 20th season and preceded a 

performance of Beethoven’s 9th. While it 

opens with an old movie-style fanfare, much of 

the 12-minute work is suspenseful. Dance 

Rhapsody (2010) is a 16-minute potpourri with 

a waltz, slow and fast tangos, and a fandango. 

The 13-minute Horn Concerto won first 

prize in the 2007 International Horn Society 

composition contest. I is moderate in technical 

challenge and heroic in character. II is 

poignant with a passionate middle section, 

while III is a rousing rondo. It’s a good piece, 

and the reading by Slovak Radio Symphony 

principal horn Karol Nitran is good, too. But 

close miking makes his tone seem a bit tubby, 

and we are too aware that his pitch seems a bit 

shaky in I. 

The album opens with the serious and dramatic 

orchestral introduction to Actor’s 22minute, 

three-movement Saxophone Concerto 

(2009). II has a film noir sound that fits the saxophone 

well, and III has the character of a 

whirling tarantella. It’s a terrific piece, and 

University of Illinois saxophone professor 

Debra Richtmeyer gives it a wonderful reading. 

She has the requisite technical skills and a flair 

for the dramatic, and she expertly walks the 

classical saxophone’s timbre tightrope: playing 

with a mostly velvety tone, mostly avoiding the 

saxophone’s rasp, but never sounding wimpy. 

Kirk Trevor encourages fine playing. 

KILPATRICK 

ADAMS, JL: 4000 Holes; And Bells Remembered 

Callithumpian Consort/ Stephen Drury 

Cold Blue 35—43 minutes 

In Four Thousand Holes (2010), a trio for 

piano, percussion (vibraphone and orchestra 

bells), and synthesizer (what the composer 

calls “electronic aura”), John Luther Adams 

explores an extended progression of radiant, 

overlapping triads glowing with a resigned 

majesty until they support a slowly ascending 

line leading to an ecstatic climax that caps off 

its 32-minute journey. The effect is meditative 

and spiritual, absorbing, and probably in its 

essence more overwhelming than its modest 

scoring allows. 

And Bells Remembered (2005), a shorter 

piece for a quintet of chimes, vibraphone, 

orchestra bells, bowed vibraphone, and bowed 

crotales, consists of quiet blocks of gently ringing 

overlapped pentatonic sonorities, giving 

the piece a somewhat Asian flavor. Unassuming 

and unlike the later piece relatively devoid 

of heat, the work goes about its business without 

undue complication. 

GIMBEL 

ALWYN: Violin Concerto; Miss Julie Suite; 

Fanfare for a Joyful Occasion 

Lorraine McAslan, v; Liverpool Philharmonic/ 

David Lloyd-Jones 

Naxos 570705—58 minutes 

William Alwyn’s Violin concerto is in three 

movements, with the first two a study in 

melodic, free-flowing lyricism. This is not the 

Alywn who composed those five dramatic, 

often sweeping cinematic symphonies, but 

one who is more intimate and searching. The 

concerto begins in a lively manner, but I 

adopts its true spirit when a yearning Elgarian 

theme takes over. From there on the violin 

goes on a reverie, often soaring over the 

orchestra like a bird looping over the countryside. 

It has a few bravura moments, but for the 

most part it allows the orchestra to handle the 

stirring interludes. 

II is similar but slower, as if reviewing the 

thoughts of I at a reduced pace. The influence 

is more Vaughan Williams, especially in the 

folk-like tune in the violas near the end. Both 

movements end quietly with the violin at its 

highest and softest, and in the ending of I its 

most sublime. World War II was just hitting 



Britain in 1939, and the sometimes troubled 

mood of these movements sounds like wistful 

gazing on more pleasant times in the past. The 

music is not English pastoralist, though. Alwyn 

was a 20th Century romantic, as his winding, 

exploring melodic lines and chromatic harmonies 

make clear. 

III is the only fast movement—actually 

Allegro Moderato. It is also the main source of 

violin pyrotechnics, which its episodic structure 

makes room for. Alla Marcia is indicated, 

and it does exude the spirit of a British march. 

There are celebratory moments in the passages 

with chimes, but its wistful main tune 

keeps III from entirely breaking away from the 

reverie of I and II. 

It is hard to believe this is just the second 

recording of the work and that it was performed 

in public only in a violin-piano 

arrangement with violinist Frederick Grinke 

with Clifford Curzon in 1940, a year after it was 

completed. Henry Wood looked into conducting 

it, but the BBC turned him down, and that 

was that until 1993, when violinist Lydia Mordkovitch 

recorded it with Richard Hickox for 

Chandos. Alwyn’s Violin concerto is as accessible 

as any 20th Century work and for two 

movements an effective study in melody. The 

length of over a half-hour may be a problem. 

So may the similarity of the first two movements, 

though they are so lovely that I’d hardly 

call that a problem. Perhaps the piece is not 

showy enough to appeal to soloists. 

Miss Julie (1976), Alwyn’s last completed 

opera, is based on the play by August Strindberg. 

Philip Lane drew his Miss Julie Suite from 

all three acts of the opera. By relying heavily on 

the waltz theme to tie things together, Lane 

creates a dark, troubled, stormy, and spooky 

piece that recalls Ravel’s La Valse with a touch 

of Bernard Herrmann. The result does not capture 

the entire essence of the opera, but this 

very dramatic suite is outstanding in its own 

right. 

Alwyn wrote Fanfare for a Joyful Occasion 

(1958) in honor of percussionist James 

Blades—hence the lengthy display for percussion. 

That aside, the work combines brass 

writing typical of Walton and what sounds like 

a rallying of cinematic troops. 

This new performance of the concerto is 

incisive and dramatic, with a strong emphasis 

on structure despite the music’s flowing 

nature. McAslan’s style is direct, with notes 

squarely articulated. Naxos’s recording is 

clean, detailed, and clear cut, with a deep 

sound stage and the violin somewhat closely 

miked. The approach seems to say this music 

is so romantic and lyrical that we serve it best 

by presenting it clearly and with conviction. 

That works in I and II. The finale is good, but a 

performance so clearly delineated exposes its 

episodic structure a bit. 

The only competition is Mordkovitch and 

Hickox. Hickox’s textures are more blended 

and romantic, while his tempos are 3 minutes 

slower in I and II combined and a little faster 

in III. Mordkovitch plays with a singing, sweet 

tone and lyrical styling that is more loving and 

more of a reverie, and her articulations come 

closer to (but never achieve) portamento. 

McAslan is just as good but more upright. The 

Chandos performance reveals less detail but 

more emotional content, and I like the way the 

more polished London Philharmonic and 

Chandos’s more blended and distant sound 

lend III more sweep and smooth its episodic 

nature. I like both, but Naxos’s direct approach 

and the detail of its acoustic may serve better 

as a single recording and as an introduction to 

the piece. Naxos also gives us the only Miss 

Julie Suite. That makes it a must, even if you 

own the complete opera. 

Andrew Knowles’s excellent notes are 

comprehensive, detailed, and especially useful 

for their coverage of the Miss Julie Suite. 

HECHT 

ARCADELT: Mass, Ave Regina Caelorum; 

Motets 

with pieces by Palestrina, De Silva 

Musica Contexta; English Cornett & Sackbut 

Ensemble/ Simon Ravens 

Chandos 779—68 minutes 

Since Candlemas (February 2) is not a wellknown 

feast in many countries, the booklet 

notes should indicate how the Feast of the 

Purification, the introduction of the young 

Jesus to the Temple, and the role of the elder 

Simeon all tie together. This would explain 

why the music chosen here fits Candlemas so 

well. For example, Simeon’s canticle is the 

Nunc Dimittis (here in a setting by Palestrina) 

and Simeon’s description of Jesus as “a light to 

lighten the Gentiles” is the reason for the association 

of the feast with candles and the origin 

of the word Candlemas. And in case you are 

wondering, yes, there IS a direct connection to 

Groundhog Day: see the matchless Oxford 

Companion to the Year (pp. 62-64) about the 

ancient roots of Candlemas as a day of weather 

prediction. 

This splendid program contains the Ave, 

Regina Caelorum Mass and two motets by 

Jacques Arcadelt (c 1507-68), with the motet by 

Andreas De Silva (c 1475-c 1530) the Mass is 

based on. Four chant passages, two Palestrina 

motets, and one other by De Silva round out 

the program. The forces range from multi-part 

vocal and instrumental ensembles combined 

(‘Pater Noster’) to solo voice with brass (‘Hodie 



Beata Virgo Maria’) to the reverse combination 

of solo brass with choir (‘Agnus Dei’) to a cappella 

singing. The performances, repertoire 

choices, and sequencing are first-rate, the contrasting 

textures animate the music, and the 

spirit is uplifting. 

Notes, texts, translations. First recordings 

for all except the Palestrina pieces. 

C MOORE 

ARENSKY: Caprices; see GLAZOUNOV 

ASENCIO: Suite Valenciana; Col-lectici 

Intim; Suite Mistica; 

RODRIGO: Invocacion & Danza; 

TARREGA: Capricho Arabe; Recuerdos de la 

Alhambra 

Yorgos Arguiriadis, g LMG 2096—53 minutes 

The link here is Valencia, one of Spain’s largest 

cities, southwest of Barcelona, and home of 

the three composers. Like the Catalonians, the 

Valencians speak their own dialect. The notes 

are in Catalan, Spanish, and English. 

Rodrigo and Tarrega are well known to any 

guitar lover, but Vicente Asencio less so. Most 

experienced players have heard or played one 

or two works, but his music isn’t widely performed, 

so it was good to have a generous 

sample of three multi-movement works here. 

It deserves a wider audience. 

Asencio studied with Turina and Ernesto 

Halffter, and was strongly influenced by Falla. 

These influences show in his music, especially 

Turina. Each of the three suites displays an 

interesting balance between folkloric influences, 

especially Andalusian, and modern 

compositional techniques. My favorite is the 

Suite Mistica—the three movements, ‘Dipso’, 

‘Getsemani’, and ‘Pentecostes’ have a deep, 

almost prayerful character. 

Greek guitarist and composer Yorgos 

Arguiriadis is an effective advocate for this 

music. His playing is stylish and accomplished, 

fiery or meditative as needed. But he is up 

against considerable competition in the Rodrigo 

and the Tarrega. His Invocacion y Danza is a 

fine performance, though it falls short of Scott 

Tennant’s exquisite one on GHA—and even 

that is outclassed by Xuefei Yang’s wild and 

spontaneous performance on EMI (M/J 2011). 

His Tarrega is dark and muscular—qualities 

not normally associated with Tarrega—but, for 

me, disfigured by an over-indulgent rubato. 

KEATON 

BABAJANYAN: Piano Pieces; 

see RACHMANINOFF 

BABELL: Oboe Sonatas 

Karla Schroeter; Concert Royal Cologne 

Musicaphon 56924 [SACD] 73 minutes 

I typically don’t pop in a recording of, say, 12 

sonatas by the same (relatively unknown) 

composer unless I know it is really good music. 

And when I do, I have to work quite hard to 

find some level of enthusiasm. Now I know 

that this is really good music and performed 

really well. 

My appreciation for what the musicians of 

Concert Royal Cologne have done here goes 

deeper. In the last three years I have reviewed 

two of their recordings, and each one has been 

higher quality than the last. Reflecting on the 

first review (Musicaphon 56889, Jan/Feb 

2008), it almost seems that the musicians took 

some of my criticisms to heart. For example, 

Karla Schroeter seemed too intent on swelling 

through notes; it distracted me, and I lost 

appreciation for the performance. I also 

thought that the recording levels disproportionately 

elevated her sound over the accompaniment. 

Here, though, both problems have 

been fixed. 

So, in this lovely collection of the baroque 

sonatas, whether listening to them as background 

or engaging yourself completely, you 

will find a depth to the music and their performance 

that yields various layers of appreciation. 

Like a perfectly manicured garden where 

not a flower or stem is out of place, no instrument 

overshadows the next. So, while listening 

to a program with nothing but one type of 

music has its demands, this one brings great 

rewards. 

SCHWARTZ 

BACH, CPE: 3 Cello Concertos 

Truls Mork; Les Violons du Roy/ Bernard Labadic 

Virgin 69449—68 minutes 

One thing that strikes this listener about the 

music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach is that 

with all his classical energy and lively rhythmic 

movement, he has an inherited sensitivity to 

harmonic emotion that contributes depth to 

his music. Particularly in the slow movements 

of all three of his cello concertos, the use of 

chromatic movement and voice-leading 

makes these works very special. 

The energy and accuracy of Mork’s performances 

puts them up with Anner Bylsma, 

Hidemi Suzuki, and Antonio Meneses. Labadic 

and the King’s Violins contribute a great deal 

to the precision and energy here, and it is 

recorded with an immediacy that also helps. 

Excellent balance between orchestra and cello 

clinches a very positive recommendation. 

D MOORE 



BACH, JC: Symphonies, opp 6, 9, 18; La 

Calamita Overture 

Netherlands Chamber Orchestra/ David Zinman 

Newton 8002065 [2CD] 146 minutes 

These recordings, made from 1974 to 1977 and 

originally released on Philips, made me ask, 

“Johann Christian Bach, where have you been 

all my life?” Here’s wonderful, incredibly 

inventive music in performances that are simply 

the best. 

Over the last decade, Zinman, who is now 

75, has given fresh, contemporary performances 

of Beethoven’s symphonies. But now I 

know why it was his tenure (1973-85) that has 

been the high point so far in the history of the 

Rochester Philharmonic. First, he has the 

Netherlands Chamber Orchestra playing with 

the Rolls Royce unanimity of tone, tuning, and 

ensemble of the very finest large orchestras 

from Vienna and Amsterdam to Prague and 

Chicago. Second, even 35 years ago he was 

using all the finest principles from early music 

scholarship and period performance practice: 

crisp articulation, upbeat energized rhythms, 

transparent textures, and a gossamer lightness 

even to the lower strings that enables counterpoint 

and harmonic shifts to move on their 

toes rather than their heels. 

Above all, Zinman captures Bach’s style 

with a can’t-sit-still infectiousness that made 

me want to dance in the fast movements and 

sing in the slow middle ones. In all of these 

symphonies two fast movements frame a middle 

Andante. In III of Opus 18:4, made of up little 

rounds, as Bach repeats a phrase twice and 

then extends it the third time, Zinman propels 

each entry with a slight inflection, brightening 

the music as the textures add voices. Winds, 

especially the solo oboe, are as gorgeous as the 

strings; and the continuo player has such a 

subtlety that you hardly notice the harpsichord 

as it adds just a touch of color. In III of Opus 

6:6 the player takes full advantage of the one 

place in these works where some really inventive, 

delightfully clever improvisation can 

stand out. 

And it’s not just the quick outer movements 

that Zinman shapes with convincing, 

flowing pace; in the slow movements he shifts 

to a caressing pseudo-romantic lyricism and 

expressively shaped lines that let the music 

breath and embrace you. 

The music itself I never found boring, even 

after sitting through the six symphonies in 

Opus 6, three in Opus 9, and six more in Opus 

18, plus the overture (also a mini-symphony 

with its fast-slow-fast form). In most cases 

Bach allows the choice of oboes or flutes; Zinman 

gives us oboes, with flutes added when 

called for. Add French horns and a rare trum- 

pet or timpani, and from that meager pallet 

Bach invents the most imaginative tone colors, 

reminding me sometimes of Mahler. He develops 

sections with incredible variety, using 

memorable tunes, clever modulations, shifts 

in the course of a melody line from half-notes 

to 16th and 32nd notes. 

In Opus 9:1 Bach gives long phrases first to 

strings alone, then doubles the line with woodwinds, 

then lets the woodwinds alone sail 

away with the melody. Opus 9:2 has the most 

sumptuous slow movement: muted violins 

over pizzicato strings with a faint muted harpsichord 

sounding like a guitar; then he adds 

French horns and finally woodwinds before 

returning to the simplicity of the muted violins 

over pizzicato. Opus 6:3 has an Andante whose 

walking style is straight out of Schubert’s 

Ninth. 

When all is said and done, the unteachable 

magic element in music is having the right 

style. You’ve either got it or you haven’t. And 

here Zinman has it in spades, captured in the 

best engineering I’ve heard in ages—warm, 

ambient, natural, embracing, and best seat in 

the house. 

By the way, there are frequent repeats in 

the scores of Opus 6, fewer in Opus 6, and only 

a couple in Opus 18. Zinman takes none of 

them, making some of the movements in Opus 

6 feel very short. But with performances this 

good, it matters little. 

FRENCH 

BACH: Solo Cello Suites 

Ophelie Gaillard 

Aparte 17 [2CD] 140 minutes 

Martin Rummel 

Paladino 4 [2CD) 120 minutes 

Helen Callus, va 

Analekta 9968 [2CD] 133 minutes 

It’s an interesting month for the Bach suites. 

We have a new performance by Gaillard, who 

recorded them once before in 2000 (Ambroisie 

9906, July/Aug 2002). Then there’s Rummel, 

whom we will hear from again in this issue 

with his recording of Beethoven’s cello works. 

And finally we have violist Callus playing them. 

Isn’t it interesting, the differences in timing of 

these three sets? All the players take all the 

repeats, so what is the reason for this? 

Starting at the top, Gaillard plays now with 

a remarkable involvement in all aspects of 

early music performance, including the improvisation 

that most cellists don’t employ. She 

didn’t do this in her earlier recording, but now 

she has made it an integral part of her performance, 

managing to improvise without 

destroying our awareness of what the original 

notes were. She interprets the bowings, 



unclear in the “originals”, sensitively, tending 

to slur scalewise passages and separate the 

ones that have arpeggios, resulting in 

increased harmonic clarity. She also has a tendency 

to hesitate before certain downbeats 

and divide passages into long-short units a la 

Francaise. That works for me sometimes but 

not always. Still, these performances show a 

great deal of musical imagination and technical 

polish. She tunes her A string down to G for 

Suite 5 and uses a five-stringed violoncello piccolo 

for Suite 6. Altogether, hers is a well balanced 

reading, up there with the best I have 

heard. 

Rummel is a virtuoso in style. Both he and 

Callus employ the Johann Peter Kellner edition 

that contains a small number of different notes 

from the norm, particularly in Suite 6. Rummel 

is a rapid player but a generally expressive one, 

not as given to detail or introspection as one 

might wish, but with a technical enthusiasm 

and brilliance that helps make up for the lack 

of depth. He also likes to improvise, when his 

love for speed and gutsy sound doesn’t override 

that desire. He appears to play Suite 5 

with the A string tuned down, but seems to be 

playing Suite 6 on four strings, giving him 

almost no impetus to improvise. As the music 

gets more difficult, his tone gets scratchier and 

more irritating, though the notes are well handled. 

This is not one of my favorite readings, 

though it is technically remarkable and the 

more relaxed sections are beautiful. 

Playing these suites on the viola works very 

well, of course, since the tuning of the strings 

is identical the cello’s an octave higher. Callus 

plays with polish, in a modern style, with 

vibrato, She is utterly literal—no improvisation 

whatever. Unfortunately, she plays Suite 6 

transcribed from D into G, meaning that she 

can play it without going as high as the cello 

but has to raise some of the lower passages. 

This kind of arrangement I can do without. 

Violists hate to play in high registers, and the 

sonority of this piece works well this way, but I 

miss the greater range of the original composition. 

This reading is superior to Michael Zaretsky 

on Artona (July/Aug 2005). 

The vote goes clearly to Gaillard, though 

Rummel has attractive enthusiasm and great 

fingers and Callus has a fine sound that makes 

the music sound effortless and lyrical. 

D MOORE 

BACH: French & English Suites 

Stefan Temmingh, rec; Domen Marincic, gamba; 

Axel Wolf, lute 

Oehms 795—74 minutes 

The selections on this recording were chosen 

to emphasize the lyrical aspects of Bach’s writing. 

Arrangements were necessary because 

Bach wrote no solo music for the recorder. The 

second English Suite and French Suites 3 and 5 

form the bulk of the program. Interspersed 

between the suites are solo pieces for viola da 

gamba and for lute. 

I had high praise for Temmingh’s last 

recording, a joyous romp in some Handel 

(Oehms 772; Jan/Feb). His playing, once again, 

is touching and masterly. The recorded sound 

is close and has a wonderful presence. The 

effect is intimate, like the three musicians are 

playing just for us. The choice to record this 

music with lute and gamba was based on the 

fundamentally intimate quality these instruments 

have. 

The notes are titled “Vintage 1685—A 

Fresh Glass from a Good Year”; they explore 

the connections between wine and musical 

arrangements. It sounds ridiculous, but actually 

it is thought-provoking, and the last sentence 

brilliantly drives home the point. 

This recording is a breath of fresh baroque 

air for anyone who needs it. 

GORMAN 

BACH: Suites & Partitas 

Dom Andre Laberge 

Analekta 9767—65 minutes 

Here are four harpsichord transcriptions of 

pieces originally intended for lute, lute-harpsichord, 

and violin. The program opens with a 

suite in C minor for lute followed by a suite in 

E minor for the lute-harpsichord. The remaining 

pieces were originally for the violin: the 

Sonata in D minor, S 964, after the Sonata for 

Solo Violin, S 1003, and the Chaconne from the 

Partita for Solo Violin in D minor, S 1004. Dom 

Laberge plays with precision and ease. I 

enjoyed his strong yet gentle way of delineating 

larger musical forms. His ornamentation is 

fluid and always enhances the overall message 

of the music. He plays the Chaconne in G 

minor and the sound is majestic and full of 

gravity. 

Dom Andre Laberge is Abbot and organist 

of the Benedictine Abbey of St-Benoit-du-Lac 

in Quebec. He appears in a photograph on the 

cover of the liner notes in monk’s robes, sitting 

at the harpsichord with his head bowed, as if 

in prayer. His cross is concealed by the nameboard 

of the harpsichord. Open up the booklet 

and the friar appears in another photograph, 

smiling and laughing, his cross displayed 



prominently on his chest. These images 

brought to my mind the first movement of 

Bach’s Cantata 56, Ich Will den Kreuzstab 

Gerne Tragen. 

KATZ 

BACH: Magnificat in D; Lutheran Masses (4) 

Barbara Bonney, Birgit Remmert, Rainer Trost, 

Olaf Bär; RIAS Chamber Choir; CPE Bach Chamber 

Orchestra/ Peter Schreier 


This is a reissue of a recording made in November 

of 1993. It does not appear to have 

been reviewed in ARG then. Peter Schreier has 

assembled a very well matched quartet of 

soloists with an outstanding chamber choir 

and orchestra for performances that certainly 

are worth re-hearing. 

All the works on this recording are settings 

of Latin liturgical texts imported from the 

Catholic to the Lutheran liturgy. Perhaps less 

obvious is the fact that the pieces as presented 

here are re-workings of earlier compositions. 

One of Bach’s first festive works for Leipzig 

was the Magnificat in E-flat, first performed on 

Christmas Day of 1723. In addition to the Magnificat 

text, this work included four Christmas 

movements inserted between the verses. Some 

years later Bach reworked the piece, transposing 

it down to D, omitting the Christmas 

movements, and making some further revisions 

to the score to produce the familiar Magnificat 

in D recorded here. 

The four Lutheran Masses are compiled 

from earlier cantata movements. Each is a setting 

of the Greek Kyrie and Latin Gloria texts. 

Each of the Glorias is cast as five movements. 

The outer movements are for chorus and the 

inner three are for solo voices. One of these is a 

duet (‘Domine Deus’ from the Mass in G, S 

236). Some critics have disparaged these works 

as mere parodies. Oddly enough, a good part 

of the Mass in B minor consists of adaptations 

of cantata movements, and I do not recall critical 

disparagement of the work on that ground. 

The four Lutheran Masses are substantial 

works that display considerable care and skill 

in the selection and reworking of the earlier 

material. The presence of track timings in the 

booklet with the present recording induces the 

listener to take note of the nearly epigrammatic 

concision of the Magnificat movements as 

compared with the more broadly conceived 

cantata movements that are the basis of the 

four masses. 

Although not specifically mentioned in the 

booklet, the instruments here sound modern, 

though the performance style has a crispness 

and articulation that one associates with period 

instrument performances. All four soloists 

have moderately hefty vocal tone, but they 

never sound ponderous or labored when executing 

Bach’s most athletic vocal lines. And the 

chorus has more vocal heft than we might 

expect from choirs that specialize in early 

music, but the choral lines are always clearly 

delineated, no matter how intricate or rapid. 

One of many outstanding examples is the 

opening of the Gloria in the Mass in F (S 233). 

On the whole these are solid, mainstream 

performances, mostly free of annoying mannerisms. 

My one complaint is that too many of 

the movements, especially final ones, tend to 

conclude with minimal ritardando and almost 

a coy lightness rather than a solid grounding. 

Such endings are just too cute for Bach. In 

other places Schreier’s understatement can be 

very effective, as in the ‘Omnes Generationes’ 

chorus from the Magnificat. The harpsichord 

on this recording has a metallic tinkle that 

draws too much attention to itself for a continuo 

instrument. Worthy of special praise is the 

exquisitely subtle and sensitive rubato in the 

oboe d’amore obbligato of ‘Quia Respexit’. 

GATENS 

BACH: Partitas, all 

Irma Issakadze, p 

Oehms 781 [2CD] 150 minutes 

Ms Issakadze is a young Georgian pianist who 

studied in Munich and Hanover (with Vladimir 

Krainev), finishing in 2003. Unlike many Russian 

pianists I have heard, her sound is quite 

buoyant. She has no difficulty inflecting Bach 

with extreme phrasal rubato and sudden, dramatic 

changes. To name two, from the third 

partita (in A minor): the opening movement 

makes several subtle but convincing tempo 

changes, and various arrival points are lingered 

on as one might with, say, Chopin (the 

movement is called a “Fantasia”, after all), 

while she heavily pedals certain chordal passages 

in the gigue, also to good effect. She 

savors Bach’s polyphonic textures and will not 

hesitate to emphasize one of the inner voices 

(Minuet 2 of Partita 1); but the emphasis is 

never overdone (as it sometimes could be with 

Glenn Gould). I thoroughly enjoy the first disc 

(Partitas 1, 3, and 4); the performances of the 

remaining suites seem less deeply considered 

and in some cases nonsensical (as in the Rondeaux 

of Partita 2—willfully distorted and frenetic—and 

the Passepied from Partita 5, which 

is absurdly slow). 

For comparison, I turned to Murray Perahia 

on Sony (July/Aug 2008); his playing is 

less dramatic but no less nuanced (Fantasia 

from Partita 3); sometimes tempos are slightly 

slower, which makes for more convincing 

phrasing (Praeambulum from Partita 5). All in 

all, Perahia’s playing is more elegant and 



suave. I can’t imagine anyone could play Bach 

on the piano better than he. 

HASKINS 

BACH: St John Passion 

Hans-Jörg Mammel, Evangelist; Matthias Vieweg, 

Christ; Maria Keohane & Helena Ek, s; Carlos 

Mena & Jan Börner, a; Jan Kobow, t; Stephan 

MacLeod, b; Ricercar Consort/ Philippe Pierlot 

Mirare 136 [2CD] 114 minutes 

In keeping with scholarly consensus, this performance 

of the St John Passion is given with 

slender forces: a small chamber orchestra and 

a grand total of eight voices to discharge all the 

solo and choral responsibilities. It is worth 

bearing in mind that the work was written for 

the Good Friday liturgy in Leipzig and would 

have been first performed from the west 

gallery of a church with forces no greater than 

these. The forces may be slender, but there is 

nothing weak or apologetic about their sound. 

This is in every way a powerful and imposing 

performance of a sacred masterpiece. 

It would be hard to find fault on technical 

grounds with the quality of this performance. 

The singers and players are all first rate, and 

judging from the photographs in the booklet 

appear to be in their 30s and 40s. Their vocal 

production is clear and capable of power, but 

lithe enough to manage Bach’s often athletic 

lines. Tenor Hans-Jörg Mammel is eloquent in 

his declamation as the Evangelist. Matthias 

Vieweg has the gravity needed for the role of 

Christ, but there is nothing turgid about his 

performance. Countertenor Carlos Mena is 

slightly overbalanced in ‘Von den Stricken’ in 

Part I, but one could hardly ask for a more 

heartrending ‘Es ist Vollbracht’ in Part II. Bass 

Stephan MacLeod is impressive in his bass 

arias, especially in ‘Himmel Reisse’ from the 

version of 1725. 

Philippe Pierlot gives us essentially the first 

(1724) version of the work. There were at least 

three later versions. In 1725 Bach made some 

modifications and wrote three new substitute 

arias. He also concluded the work with the 

concerted chorale ‘Christe, du Lamm Gottes’ 

borrowed from Cantata 23 in place of the fourpart 

chorale ‘Ach Herr, Lass Dein Lieb Engelein’. 

Pierlot includes the ‘Himmel Reisse’ 

and the chorale ‘Christe, du Lamm Gottes’ in 

addition to the movements of the 1724 version. 

While they are not exactly redundant 

when used this way, I find that they interfere 

with the flow of the piece. Other recordings 

have included the 1725 additions as an appendix, 

and I think that the more advisable course. 

In 1732 Bach eliminated the new movements 

of 1725 and deleted two passages of narration 

taken from the Gospel of St Matthew. In his 

final version of 1749 Bach reverted to his origi- 

nal conception of the piece, but with some 

expansion in the instrumentation. 

The pacing of the drama is always a challenge 

in the St John Passion. One school of 

thought views the narrative portions of the 

work as an opera of sorts to be projected with a 

theatrical intensity. It is worth noting that at 

least one of the Leipzig dignitaries who 

appointed Bach to his position specifically 

advised against writing theatrical church 

music. In the scenes that involve lively action 

or vehemence—the arrest in the garden and 

the mob outside the judgement hall—Pierlot 

gives us a fast-paced, almost breathless presentation. 

These scenes sound more prodded 

than urgent here. The theatrical approach is 

not necessarily the best. A reading, whether of 

words or music, does not have to be histrionic 

in order to be expressive. Elsewhere Pierlot 

allows a more considered pace in the unfolding 

of the story, and nowhere to better effect 

than in the two interrogations before Pilate— 

the scenes that in so many ways are the dramatic 

heart of the entire work. 

On the whole, this is a very fine performance 

of a great work. Occasionally Pierlot 

allows movements to end with an almost offhand 

lightness—for example, ‘Ach, mein Sinn’ 

from Part I—that sounds to me affectedly cute, 

but such moments are exceptional. I am 

pleased to report that the chorales are treated 

with the dignity and gravity they deserve. 

BACH: Violin Sonatas 1-4 

James Ehnes; Luc Beausejour, hpsi 


GATENS 

Our editor was very kind to send me this first 

volume of a two-volume set (I reviewed Volume 

2 in July/Aug), so I now have all of Ehnes 

and Beausejour’s superb Bach readings, and 

they are my modern-instrument readings of 

choice. 

There is a wonderful excitement about the 

way Ehnes sustains long pitches, and some of 

the most engaging moments in this recording 

actually happen during sustained notes. He 

combines intelligent historical interpretation 

(good musicianship) with a rich vibrant (and 

vibrating) sound, and plays with a modern 

bow and a modernized instrument (the Ex- 

Marsick Stradivarius of 1715). The fast movements 

are exceedingly difficult to play cleanly 

and clearly. Actually, they are difficult to play 

at all, and they require at least as much technique 

as the solo sonatas and partitas. They 

also require a superb harpsichordist. Beausejour 

is able to match Ehnes’s violin articulation 

and maintains momentum and excitement 

through Bach’s landscape of puzzling counter- 



point and odd harmonic progressions (without 

the aid of a reinforced continuo). 

FINE 

BALYOZOV: 3 Capriccios; Bestiary; 2 Children’s 

Stories; Welcome, 20th Century; Mozart 

a la Schnittke; InVENTSions 

Ventseslav Nikolov, vc; Radoslav Nikolov, p 

Gega 349—72 minutes 

Rumen Balyozov (b 1949) is a Bulgarian cellistcomposer 

who writes imaginative music with 

neat titles. His Wedding Capriccio for solo cello 

puts on both Mendelssohn and Wagner in 

semi-atonal guise in quite amusing fashion. 

Bestiary is a 25-minute suite for cello and 

piano covering descriptions of eight animals, 

from the sloth to the hippopotamus. Children’s 

Stories is a tiny two-part suite for piano including 

vocal reactions by the pianist to what he is 

playing. It is very funny. Welcome, 20th Century 

for solo cello was actually written in welcome 

to the 21st Century and includes nods to 

jazz, dodecaphony, and modernism. This matter 

is covered in the liner notes in a dialog 

between composer and cellist that is worth the 

price of admission. There are at least four 

more possible movements to this suite, but I 

think the ones chosen are sufficient. Then 

comes a Capriccio on another occasion, Mozart 

a la for cello solo, followed by a Moz-art a 

la Schnittke for piano. Both pieces regale us 

with slightly distorted quotes from the master. 

InVENTSions is for cello (naturally, considering 

the performer’s name) and piano, and the 

program ends with a Happy Birthday capriccio 

for cello alone. 

All in all, this is a friendly program with a 

good deal of wit. As the cellist points out to the 

composer, “If you are alluding to higher sales, I 

can tell you right away that such albums are 

usually intended to be given as gifts, rather 

than to be sold.” To which the composer 

responds. “I think I will easily survive this.” I 

think he will. The playing is very good and so is 

the music. 

D MOORE 

BARTOK: Sonata for 2 Pianos & Percussion; 

see STRAVINSKY & Collections 

BAX: Winter Legends; Saga Fragment; 

Morning Song; Maytime in Sussex 

Ashley Wass, p; Bournemouth Symphony/ James 

Judd 


Bax wrote these piano-with-orchestra works 

for pianist Harriet Cohen, his lover and longtime 

companion. He completed Winter Legends 

in 1929, between the Second and Third 

Symphonies, and called it “a northern nature 

piece full of sea and pine forests and dark leg- 

ends’. The plan was to dedicate it to Sibelius, 

but Bax switched to Cohen and dedicated the 

Fifth Symphony to the Finnish composer. Bax 

thought of Winter Legends as a sinfonia concertante, 

or even a symphony, with the piano 

as another orchestral instrument, emphasizing 

its percussive and chordal capabilities. 

Regarding the work’s programmatic aspects, 

he wrote, “The listener may associate what he 

hears with any heroic tale or tales of the 

North...Some of these happenings may have 

taken place in the Arctic circle.” If Winter Legends 

were a symphony, it would be well placed 

stylistically as well as chronologically between 

the Second and Third. 

Bax described I as “not in sonata form, 

[but] rather...an assembling and fusion of various 

elements for the forging of a great climax”. 

Pay attention to the opening tattoo in the percussion, 

for its rhythm is a major motif, repeated 

often. This rhapsodic movement imparts 

images of a trek across a Northern wilderness, 

with pauses for reflection that often touch on 

impressionism. The anger that marked Bax’s 

first two symphonies had not entirely dissipated, 

but there are passages here and elsewhere 

of uplifted spirit and heroic triumph. 

Lento opens with the piano lost in reflection. 

What follows, annotator Andrew Burn 

hears as a “dialog between the soloist and 

orchestra, as if a conversation around the winter 

fireside hearth”. The piano dominates, with 

the orchestra offering commentary ranging 

from bright notes to a passage for muted middle 

strings. When the brass enter with a chant 

based on the tattoo, the piano picks it up first, 

then the rest of the orchestra. Suddenly the 

timpani roars, the piano returns to the big 

chord style of I, and the timpani marches forth 

like the leader of an expedition. The orchestra 

follows, but soon the dreamy music from I 

returns. The pull between the march and 

reflective music yields to the latter in the form 

of an extended section of Baxian pastoralism 

with horn and violin solos, impressionist 

strings, rolling pianism, etc. Finally, the piano 

strides in with more defined chords, and the 

movement ends quietly. 

The finale opens with a mysterious tuba 

solo under piano arpeggios. After a short fanfare 

and stirring in the orchestra, the piano 

begins another powerful march. This one leads 

to several lively episodes alternating with mysterious 

chords in the violins. After quiet musing 

by piano, strings, and solos in the woodwinds 

and horn, the contrabassoon leads quietly 

to the Epilog, which, in Bax’s words, 

“may...suggest the return of the sun and warm 

air from the south after the long northern winter”. 

Saga Fragment (1933) was Bax’s response 

to Cohen’s request for a piece for her Ameri- 



can tour. He arranged it for piano and small 

orchestra from his one-movement Piano 

Quartet from 1922. This “savage little work 

much admired by Bartok” (Cohen) opens with 

short string chords, eerily anticipating the 

beginning of Bernard Herrmann’s score to Psycho, 

and goes on to assume a tough Bartokian 

quality with a Baxian accent. The long Andante 

relaxes considerably in Bax’s pastorale mood 

with a large part for solo violin. That is followed 

by a folkish dance for violas, accompanied 

by piano. The mood turns darker with 

piano accompanying muted trumpets and 

what sounds like an ominous gathering of the 

orchestra. When the viola dance returns it is of 

“more sinister character” (Burn) though it 

gives way to some light-hearted martiality 

before concluding with a bit of stridency that 

anticipates Lennox Berkeley. 

Bax wrote Morning Song: Maytime in Sussex 

(1947) for Princess Elizabeth’s 21st birthday—part 

of his duties as Master of the King’s 

Musick. It is light-hearted “Spring” music, 

nothing deep, but certainly pleasant. 

One must compare this performance of 

Winter Legends and the Chandos with pianist 

Margaret Fingerhut and the London Philharmonic 

conducted by Bryden Thomson. Both 

are first-rate and different enough for admirers 

to want both. Judd walks the line between 

symphony and tone poem. His tempos are 

faster—he takes five minutes less than Thomson. 

Pianist Wass is a muscular player, who 

digs into the notes to produce big, solid chords 

and a tone that is rich on the bottom and 

bright on top. He is most effective in the powerful 

sections and at catching the raw and 

heroic elements of the work—and slightly less 

so in the impressionist ones. Thomson predictably 

leans to a tone poem approach. He is 

more romantic, perhaps even impressionist, 

softer in articulation, and more French. His 

pianist, Fingerhut, follows suit with playing 

that is less heroic and more poetic. She doesn’t 

lean into her notes so much as her touch floats 

over her passages, making notes a little longer 

and more blended. I sense she has to do this to 

make Thomson’s slower tempos work. Naxos’s 

sound is closer to the listener, more solid, 

articulated, and powerful, and more detailed 

than the distant and blended Chandos 

acoustic. 

Andrew Burns’s notes are up to Naxos’s 

best standard and are especially good on Winter 

Legends. 

HECHT 

BECKER: Sortie Solennelle; Cantilena; Toccata; 

Organ Sonatas 2+3; Supplication; 

Marche Triomphale: Ite Missa est 

Damin Spritzer, org 

Raven 925—78 minutes 

Damin Spritzer presents a new name to the 

professional organ world with this, her first 

recording. The very attractive performer is 

Associate Director of Music and Organist at 

the University Park United Methodist Church, 

Dallas. Her debut recording is a program of 

organ music by Rene Becker, the first recording 

of this little known composer. Becker 

(1882-1956) was born into a musical family, his 

father a noted organist in Alsace. In 1904 he 

came to America. Ms Spritzer researched 

Becker’s life and compositions for her forthcoming 

dissertation at the University of North 

Texas. 

The venue for this recording is the Church 

of Saint-Salomon-Saint-Gregoire, Pithiviers, 

France; the organ is a 3-72 Isnard, 1789 

(Cavaillé-Coll, 1890, restored Cattiaux, 2008). A 

detailed history of the alterations to the instrument 

gives a clear picture of the changes from 

1784 to 2008. 

Becker’s music seems to echo the styles of 

Dubois, with perhaps a bit of Boellmann, Guilmant, 

Vierne, and Mendelssohn. The selections 

are properly crafted (e.g. the use of 

ternary form in the sonatas). Boisterous 

pieces—Sortie Solennelle the Toccata, and 

Marche Triomphale—make appropriate 

accompaniment to ceremonial pomp. Becker 

seems at his best with the quieter works, especially 

the slow movements of the sonatas. They 

are lovely, though they border here and there 

on the saccharine. 

Overall, a well engineered disc of a very talented 

organist. I would hope her next album 

has more variety. 

METZ 

BEETHOVEN: Cello Sonatas; Variations 

Martin Rummel; Gerda Guttenberg, p 

Paladino 11 [2CD] 142 minutes 

David Geringas; Ian Fountain, p 

Hänssler 93272 [3CD] 196 minutes 

These two albums of Beethoven’s cello music 

have some curious aspects. Rummel and Guttenberg 

were recorded in 2004 and 2006 and 

show a distinct change in attitude between the 

early sonatas and variations recorded on the 

earlier date and the Opus 69 and 102 sonatas 

recorded later when Rummel was developing 

into the aggressive personality evident in the 

2010 recording of the Bach solo suites 

reviewed above. The later performances have a 

certain stubborn character about them, with 

some strangely exaggerated dynamics. Some 



of this is explained in the odd liner notes, written 

by Wolfgang Lamprecht as a sort of freeassociation. 

He gives a number of opinions 

and quotes from the cellist, including “a nearly 

scientific precision, based not only on Jonathan 

del Mar’s urtext edition but also on 

Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s philosophy and 

Beethoven’s manuscripts and the first editions 

of the works”. Lamprecht also points out that 

these players have worked together for a long 

time and have a remarkable unity of approach. 

All of this is true, and these are highly interesting 

readings; but they are a bit laid back and 

lacking in humor and spontaneity. The variation 

sets on Handel’s ‘See, the conquering 

hero comes’ and two different tunes from 

Mozart’s Magic Flute are more unified in 

approach than usual, making them sound 

more mature than they sometimes do. The 

recorded sound is excellent. 

Geringas and Fountain, on the other hand, 

sound very natural and inspired by the 

music—not by the idea of pointing out things 

you might not have heard before. Of course, 

one reason for making this monster collection 

is the fact that Geringas and Fountain are the 

editors of Henle’s new edition of Beethoven’s 

cello music. Among musicians that ranks very 

high for accuracy. The edition includes not 

only the original five sonatas but also the transcriptions 

by the composer of his horn sonata, 

Opus 17 and the String Trio, Opus 3, to which 

he gave a new opus number, 64. These are fine 

pieces, of course, though they do not replace 

their original scorings. On the other hand, the 

horn sonata does seem to gain a certain depth 

in this form, and the six-movement 42-minute 

string trio is well worth study. All in all, this is a 

collection worth investing in for the warmth of 

its interpretations as well as its completeness. 

D MOORE 

BEETHOVEN: Christ on the Mount of 

Olives; Leonore Overture 2 

Ann Petersen, s; Adam Zdunikowski, t; Ole 

Stovring Larsen, b; Soranus Chorus; Torun Chamber 

Orchestra/ Knud Vad 

Scandinavian 220557—68 minutes 

This is one of those recordings that probably 

should never have been released. The vocal 

forces come from Soro, Denmark, where conductor 

Vad has led the chorus since 1967; the 

orchestra comes from Torun, Poland. The performance 

of the oratorio, here quaintly translated 

as “Christ on Olive Mountain”, is certainly 

adequate if your standard is a good provincial 

performance. 

Zdunikowski is an attractive tenor, but a 

little undernourished for the part. Soprano 

Petersen is also generally good, despite some 

out-of-tune singing in the big trio. The chorus 

sounds like a fine community chorus, but 

nothing more. The orchestra does well, but 

does not compete with better, larger groups. 

This shortcoming is very apparent in the 

Leonore Overture, which in the right hands can 

be a very thrilling piece. It is not here. And the 

sound is a bit distant and dull. 

So, I think you can skip this. If you want 

the oratorio, Nagano’s recording on Harmonia 

Mundi 901 802 would be a much safer bet. 

ALTHOUSE 

BEETHOVEN: Diabelli Variations 

Paul Lewis 

Harmonia Mundi 902071—53 minutes 

A few years ago, I donated two of my three 

recordings of the Diabellis to my school 

library—Barenboim on Erato (Sept/Oct 1994) 

and Richter on Philips (Sept/Oct 1989)—thinking 

that I could do very well with just one: 

Brendel’s 1990 for Philips. Paul Lewis gives 

Brendel a run for his money, but the differences 

are primarily ones of temperament and 

acoustics. Brendel’s performance is very typical 

of his work in the 90s: the sound is clear, 

almost clinical; and the interpretation, while 

not quite as “by the book” as, say, his 

Beethoven sonatas from the same era, still 

seems almost too “proper”. 

Lewis’s recording runs about the same 

amount of time as Brendel’s, yet it seems more 

expansive. He often projects the inner voices 

(literal or implied) in a more convincing way 

than Brendel (Var. 7); takes more liberty with 

phrasing, to great expressive effect (the sudden 

turn to A minor in Var. 18); and, when the 

piece demands it, he makes more of the 

bizarre shifts of mood in a single variation (21). 

The recorded sound includes more ambiance, 

which benefits slow variations like 14 and 29- 

31. 

Still, Brendel’s characteristic restraint 

doesn’t run counter to the spirit of this strange 

piece, loaded as it is with irony, wry humor, 

and compositional ingenuity. A work as great 

as the Diabelli Variations benefits from radically 

different approaches, and so I’ll keep 

Lewis in my library. 

HASKINS 

BEETHOVEN: Egmont 

Maria Bengtsson, s; Tobias Moretti, narr; Vienna 

Radio/ Bertrand de Billy 


Here is yet another recording of Beethoven’s 

Egmont Music. I can’t claim to have them all 

but this is the ninth that I have that includes 

both a soprano and a narrator. There are few 

that I would consider perfect. Some have narrators 

that have less than ideal voices, and oth- 



ers have unsatisfactory sopranos. Some have 

more text than Beethoven actually set (Szell, 

De Billy, and Albrecht). Abravanel uses Netania 

Davrath, who isn’t quite ideal as Clarchen, 

though Walter Reyer is one of the more satisfactory 

narrators. Szell’s performance of the 

music is perhaps the greatest there is, and his 

soprano, Pilar Lorengar, is also one of the best; 

but I don’t care for his narrator, Klaus-Jurgen 

Wussow. His performance of the overture is 

staggering. It lasts 11.29 compared to Abbado’s 

8.05! Most of the others are around 9.00, 

though De Billy at 7.46 is unbelievably quick. 

Abbado’s Berlin performance lacks the 

proper stature in the music, and his narrator, 

Bruno Ganz, is not ideal though better than 

some. Cheryl Studer is better than most of the 

sopranos. Heinz Bongartz with Elisabeth 

Breul, Horst Schulze, and the Staatskapelle 

Berlin give a good performance. My favorite 

recording is my first one: Hermann Scherchen 

for Westminster in about 1955 with Magda 

Laszlo, Fred Liewehr, and the Vienna State 

Opera Orchestra. The major factor is Liewehr’s 

stunning reading. This new reading is near the 

bottom of my list. The narrator has too light a 

voice, the soprano is also less than satisfactory, 

and it’s all much too quick. It is well recorded 

and has good notes. 

BAUMAN 

BEETHOVEN: Fidelio 

Birgit Nilsson (Leonore), Jon Vickers (Florestan), 

Hermann Uhde (Pizzaro), Oskar Czerwenka 

(Rocco), Laurel Hurley (Marzelline), Charles 

Anthony (Jaquino); Metropolitan Opera/ Karl 

Böhm 

Sony 85309 [2CD] 129 minutes 

I reviewed in May/June a historic performance 

of Fidelio from the reopening of the newly 

reconstructed Vienna Opera in 1955 (it had 

been severely damaged by US bombs on January 

23, 1945). That is not only an historic occasion 

but a historic performance, conducted by 

Böhm and compromised only slightly by sonic 

limitations of the time and the circumstances. 

Here we have the same Böhm at the helm, at 

the Met five years later, in 1960, with an equally 

powerful roster of singers. 

The strength of the singing cast is compromised 

in several ways. The recording was obviously 

made at the old Met house at 39th and 

Broadway, a good locale acoustically, but with 

a relatively small orchestra pit, one that 

packed to the max could accommodate only 

about 70 players. This is on the small side for 

Fidelio and suffers in comparison with the spacious 

Vienna Opera, which holds the whole 

VPO comfortably—for this work about 95 

musicians. 

There is also the fact that the Met orchestra 

was, to put it mildly, not the VPO. Karl Böhm 

by this time has had three stints of two months 

or so to work on it—obviously one of the reasons 

why he was hired by his friend Rudolf 

Bing immediately after leaving Vienna abruptly 

in December 1956. I explored the situation 

online and found that he was critical of the 

Met horns to the extent that he tried to get one 

particularly recalcitrant player fired. Of course 

he failed, presumably because of the iron grip 

of the Musicians Union. 

The problem surfaces in this recording in 

the very first bars of the overture, where the 

horns are terribly insecure, to put it as mildly 

as possible. Fortunately, they get warmed up 

thereafter, but they seldom reach the total 

security and refinement of their Viennese 

rivals. For example, though Leonore III is generally 

quite good, and hard to fault in detail, it 

does not quite reach the level of the Vienna 

performance, and it’s not the conductor’s 

fault. The audience is often noisy, and does 

not hesitate to applaud, so the continuity of 

the performance is often interrupted. 

Birgit Nilsson offers a strong, indeed commanding 

performance as Leonore; she’s if anything 

overqualified for the part. Jon Vickers 

also is most convincing as Florestan, strong 

vocally and totally in command in all aspects 

of this difficult role. 

Oscar Czarwenka is convincing and strong 

vocally as Rocco. Hermann Uhde as Pizarro is 

sensitive and musically impeccable, though 

his voice lacks the strength and power demanded 

by the role. ‘Ha, Welch ein Augenblick’, 

for example, though sensitive and technically 

flawless, does not attain the power and 

authority demanded by the aria. Laurel Hurley 

and Charles Anthony are satisfactory, though 

not as wholly convincing as the others. The 

Met chorus performs splendidly, but with less 

than the conviction of the Vienna group. 

So this recording is interesting and satisfying 

example of Karl Böhm’s art at the Metropolitan, 

though it is excelled musically by the 

sense of presence, power, authority, sonic 

richness, and conviction of his Vienna performance 

on Orfeo 813102. 

MCKELVEY 

BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonatas, all 

Jean Muller 

Bella Musica 3113 [9CD] 651 minutes 

I don’t know what the impetus was for creating 

this release. Muller probably committed himself 

to presenting the full run of Beethoven 

sonatas at the Centre des Arts d’Ettelbruck in 

his native Luxembourg. Then it occurred to 

him: “Wait! What if I just go ahead and record 

the whole thing?” And that’s what he did, warts 

and all. 



I didn’t really enjoy listening to a single 

one of the sonatas. Even in the best tracks, the 

playing always remains edgy and tense. The 

piano is too bright, newly entering voices are 

marked with too much accent, and the tempos 

and dynamics are too excitable. This all happens 

in the slower movements, too. Though a 

shade darker, none is expansive or sublime 

enough to qualify as a true adagio. Another 

problem is Muller’s hit-and-miss handling of 

melody. There are times when everything 

comes together, as in II of the Appassionata. 

This movement is more than well sung; it is 

well scripted, with the full volume and energy 

of the music ebbing and flowing deliriously. 

Usually, though, the slow movement melodies 

are delivered in a monotone with noticeably 

clunky decorative figures. This is the case, for 

example, with II of the Fourth Sonata. 

At worst, the music is barely listenable. All 

of the allegros are splashy, with many awkward 

transfers between the hands whenever running 

notes are involved. With any presto finale, 

you’re pretty much guaranteed to hear at least 

a couple of flubbed chords. (III of the Appassionata 

has more howlers than I cared to 

count.) All this amounts to music that, though 

spirited, is not enjoyable. I will go so far as to 

credit Muller as a decent player with a bright 

style. His considerable finger strength especially 

in the left hand makes him a natural fit, 

technique-wise, for Beethoven. These are the 

only saving graces I could discern in the midst 

of playing that generally sounded rough and 

unready. 

AUERBACH 

BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonatas 1-3, 15, 21, 31 

Lars Sellergren 

Sterling 1672 [2CD] 2:09 

Lars Sellergren taught piano at the Stockholm 

Royal College of Music while performing in 

concert and on radio and television broadcasts. 

These Beethoven performances have 

been mined from the archives of Swedish 

radio, so the sonics are variable. In the first 

three sonatas (taped in 1982) the piano sound 

that emerges from the tape hiss is not very 

enticing; sometimes it sounds as if the instrument 

needed tuning. Sonata 15 (from 1957) is 

also burdened with hiss and isn’t even in 

stereo. Fidelity improves with 21 (the Waldstein) 

and 31, the most recent of the performances; 

but even here the dynamic range is 

limited. Whether this is attributable to the 

engineering or to restraint on the part of Mr 

Sellergren is difficult to say. But there’s a lot 

more character to these works than emerges 

from these careful renditions, certain to be lost 

in a field thick with more distinguished recordings. 

Notes by the pianist, translated from 

Swedish, are more illuminating than the performances. 

KOLDYS 

BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonatas 22, 24, & 29 

Idil Biret 

IBA 571269—75 minutes 

This release comes off a shade better than the 

last one I reviewed from Biret (May/June 

2011). This time around, her Hammerklavier is 

cleaner in I and IV. The playing in these allegros 

is deliberate, but doesn’t sound tired as 

before. I can see the advantages of this performance 

style: beyond making all the notes and 

lines eminently clear, there is a general sort of 

old-world charm in this more restrained, epiclength 

Beethoven. Still, I think Biret takes 

things too far. She makes only the barest effort 

to contrast soft with loud, and there are no 

effective sforzandos anywhere. The finale 

remains a contrapuntal exercise instead scaling 

the expressive heights, as it was meant to. 

III also suffers from expressive flatness, with 

the color remaining always the same. 

The two other sonatas produce occasional 

pleasure, but neither as whole is a dramatic or 

interesting performance. The best thing that 

can be said about Sonata 22:I is that it projects 

a deep, soft and relaxed atmosphere. This 

occurs largely through the full, rounded tones 

in the bass registers and carefully measured 

tempos. II is played correctly as an agitated 

moderato, but somehow it lacks vitality. She 

does not work hard enough to differentiate the 

surface of this perpetual motion piece: there is 

no zip or humor, and barely any syncopation. 

Sonata 24:I is songful enough, but suffers from 

a general air of sluggishness and a lackluster 

conclusion. The usually joyful II is rendered in 

somewhat bleak tones—again: no levity to be 

found anywhere—with the added detriment of 

the continual blipped 16th pairs coming across 

like belligerent crushed-note figures. 

AUERBACH 

BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonatas 30-32 

Penelope Crawford, fp 

Musica Omnia 308—65 minutes 

The fortepiano is a Conrad Graf, from Vienna 

in 1835, and Crawford currently teaches early 

performance practices at the University of 

Michigan. No mere academic, she not only 

brings a wealth of experience to her instrument, 

but performs Beethoven with all the creative 

energy and disciplined freedom one 

could wish for. 

Because the instrument has both its admirers 

and detractors, the latter group need read 

no further. Her only one-disc competition 

comes from Ronald Brautigam, who has cou- 



pled these last three sonatas with Sonata 28 

(not reviewed). 

I am a strong admirer of Brautigam’s 

accomplishments, especially in these sonatas. 

Ms Crawford’s performances, while quite different, 

can be strongly praised as well. With 

the splendid sound of her instrument and a 

recording that captures all of her subtleties 

and inflections, Beethoven is extremely well 

served. 

Brautigam takes a more dramatic view of 

this music, with playing that offers strong 

dynamic contrast and little apology for the 

more aggressive sound of his instrument. 

Crawford’s approach is a gentler one, with the 

sound of her instrument falling more gratefully 

on the ear. The Prestissimo of Sonata 30 clearly 

demonstrates this as, confronted with the 

opportunity to come crashing down, she never 

produces a harsh tone, though the music is 

certainly not underplayed. The theme-andvariations 

closing movement is stunningly 

beautiful, with deft contrasts between the variations 

and a display of some impressive technical 

agility. 

Sonatas 31 and 32 offer further delights as 

Crawford continues to control her dynamics 

and phrasing with great aplomb. Above all is 

her ability to play very softly, thereby keeping 

the loudest passages in manageable proportions. 

Once again, it is in the final movement 

of Sonata 31 that her exquisite playing really 

shines. The sadness is almost palpable before 

the extended fugue steals in before returning 

to the initial depths. But this is short lived, as 

the fugue returns for the climax. This is a 

movement where all is well balanced and very 

well thought out here. 

The two movements of Sonata 32 are a 

structural challenge for any artist. Crawford 

holds things together without making the 

music sound like a patch job. This is especially 

difficult to accomplish in the long Adagio 

molto semplice e cantabile. Her ability to color 

her phrases brings real distinction to the performance. 

If Brautigam claims the ultimate prize by 

including an additional sonata, Crawford easily 

takes an honored place besides him in my 

affections. With excellent notes by Boston College 

Professor Jeremiah W McGrann and a 

stunning 1824 reproduction of a canvas by 

Caspar David Friedrich, the album should capture 

the imagination of all who value artistic 

presentation. 

BECKER 

BEETHOVEN: Symphonies, all 

Sinead Mulhern, Carolin Masur, Dominik Wortig, 

Konstantin Wolff; Les Elements Choir; Chamber 

Philharmonic/ Emmanuel Krivine 

Naive 5258 [5CD] 330 minutes 

This offering is a lot better than it might 

appear at first. The Chambre Philharmonique 

is big enough at around 80 players to compete 

with large conventional orchestras, particularly 

in view of its absolutely first-class players. 

Naturally, you must live with the plaintive tone 

of gut strings and the limited spectrum of natural 

horns and trumpets—limitations that 

would make it impossible to play, for example, 

Bruckner 4—but they handle the Beethovens 

impressively, if not always with ease. But 

Emmanuel Krivine is less aggressive and fierce 

in matters of tempo and rhythmic flexibility 

than Norrington, Goodman, et al. So this set is, 

overall—with a single exception—worthy of 

your consideration. 

The voluminous notes by Mr Krivine (b. 

1947) outline his method in detail, and I will 

try only to hit the major items. I’ve reviewed 

quite a number of his earlier recordings, and 

some are very good. One of the finest is a 

splendid performance of Scheherazade with 

the Philharmonia on Denon about 15 years 

ago. He has been less active in recording in 

recent years. In a 1965 interview Karl Böhm 

apparently advised him to pursue a career as 

conductor. Böhm was not known for encouraging 

conducting hopefuls, though he played 

this role for a favored few, most conspicuously 

Sixten Ehrling and Herbert Kegel, who worked 

as his assistants. 

Krivine in 1976 became permanent guest 

conductor of the Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique 

de Radio France. In 1987 he became 

Music Director of the Lyon orchestra, where he 

remained until 2000. Since then he has 

become a familiar face on the world concert 

stage, in Europe as well as the US. He founded 

the Chambre Philharmonique in 2004 and has 

served as its conductor and music director 

since then. 

I started off with Symphony 5, a work that 

many conductors seem to regard as a contest 

to see who can be the loudest, fastest, and 

angriest. The winners in this assault are 

LSO/Haitink, who murders it in 29 minutes, 

while Reiner and Norrington are runners-up at 

a distance substantial but hardly respectable. 

As I tried Krivine I thought, “well here comes 

another member of the club”. But though he 

did not let the grass grow under his feet, I was 

wrong. At 32:36, he fashioned a performance 

that included all the expected repeats—even 

the rarely played exposition repeat in IV! 

Moreover, by a clever management of tempos, 



he manages to make things sound slower than 

the numbers would suggest. In particular, the 

great C-major fanfare at the opening of the 

finale is weighty and definitely not too fast. It 

also follows a pattern found in Ansermet’s 

Decca recording, of a generally fast framework 

wherein grand climaxes are given time to 

flower. It will not replace historic recordings by 

Weingartner, Furtwängler, and Böhm, but it’s 

high up on the next short list, if you are not 

opposed to the sound of period instruments. 

The Eroica shares these general outlines 

and occupies a similar place in the firmament 

of the many choices offered by the existing catalog. 

It is fast, but not excessively so, with a 

flexibility of tempo and dynamics that also 

summons the specter of the long gone but 

fondly remembered Weingartner. The horn 

solos in III, played on valveless instruments, 

are flawless. Overall time is 46:10. 

No. 9 also benefits from these moderate 

performance practices. At 64 minutes he is 

very close to Weingartner’s speed, and the 

treatment of individual movements is also 

similar, except for the inclusion of the repeat 

of the scherzo. The orchestra is flawless, the 

soloists and chorus also reasonably good, 

though the bass falls short of the ease and 

solidity of Richard Mayr for Weingartner or 

Gottlob Frick in Böhm’s great Frankfurt performance 

on Archipel—the best of his six 

recorded performances. 

To make a long story short, Symphonies 1, 

2, 4, and 6 follow the same prescription set up 

by Weingartner and followed by Ansermet. Did 

you know that in the period when both were in 

Switzerland, Ansermet sought Weingartner’s 

guidance about how the Beethoven and 

Brahms symphonies should be performed? 

This leaves 7 and 8. It would be satisfying 

to report that they also follow these performance 

practices. Alas, it is not so! We’re now 

back in the world of faster is better. In No. 7 it’s 

not evident from the published timing of 38 

minutes, for every possible repeat (along with 

some that aren’t) is dutifully played; but trust 

me, without them it would last barely 30 minutes. 

BPO/Böhm (DG) at 37 minutes without 

all the optional repeats is obviously slower. 

Finally it is useful to observe that the final 

movement of No. 7 is marked allegro con brio. 

Con brio means merely with spirit, bravura, 

not faster. Had the composer wished a faster 

speed, he would have marked it allegro molto e 

con brio or some equivalent. 

These performances are well served by 

Naive’s engineers. The recordings are clear, 

transparent, and undistorted, with excellent 

balance and realism. The sound levels are 

higher than the norm by 2 or 3db, a matter 

easily compensated for on the playback end. 

You must really secure other performances of 

7 and 8, but otherwise this set is easy to recommend 

to listeners whose ears are not offended 

by the sounds of period instruments. 

MCKELVEY 

BEETHOVEN: Symphonies 4+7 

Flemish Philharmonic/ Philippe Herreweghe 

Pentatone 5186 315 [SACD] 76 minutes 

As I recall, Herreweghe made a period instruments 

recording of these works several years 

ago. He has apparently changed his thinking in 

the interim, for these recordings employ a 

large orchestra and conventional instruments. 

Moreover, his shaping of them is conventional, 

indeed conservative. I’ve no clue about what 

caused this radical change, but I support it in 

spades. The main advantage is in the SACD 

sound, which is spacious, detailed, and transparent 

to the extent that it has disappeared 

altogether, leaving only the performance itself. 

Tempos are not too fast, particularly in the 

scherzos, as they are in many other recordings. 

For example, in Beethoven 7 the trio sections 

of III are not unduly hasty. But his tempo in 

the final movement of 4 is simply too fast. 

Weingartner performed this section to 

absolute perfection at a leisurely 7:33. Herreweghe’s 

tempo, at 6:45 is 10 percent faster. 

Moreover, in both works he takes most of the 

possible repeats, which impedes their progress 

and makes them unnecessarily long. 

The Antwerp-based orchestra is splendid 

and displays no technical flaw. These two performances 

are flawless in execution but less 

remarkable in conception. There are stereo 

recordings by Böhm, Krips, Walter, and Colin 

Davis (with the Staatskapelle Dresden) that 

excel this one artistically if not sonically. 

MCKELVEY 

BEETHOVEN: Violin Concerto 

Gidon Kremer; Academy of St Martin in the 

Fields/ Neville Marriner 

Newton 8802064—44 minutes 

I reviewed this performance 29 years ago when 

it appeared on Philips LP. What distinguished 

it then (and now) were the cadenzas, which are 

by Alfred Schnittke (1934-98) and eclectic in 

style—that is, you can hear echoes of Bartok, 

Berg, Shostakovich, and Brahms, along with 

periods of modern dissonance. Back in the 80s 

I didn’t like the juxtaposition of styles very 

much, since the essential core of Beethoven’s 

message seemed violated by such shenanigans. 

The defense of Schnittke, if you want 

one, is (to quote the notes) that he believed “in 

the essential unity of musical thought through 

all the changes in style across the centuries”. 

Coming back to it, I still think the cadenzas 



are more a curiosity than anything else, but I 

guess I don’t find myself as “offended” as I 

was. Nonetheless, the first movement cadenza 

seems too long, and I still find the shifts 

between Beethoven and Schnittke too abrupt 

and unsettling. First time around I was happy 

with Kremer’s playing and Marriner’s orchestra, 

but now I find the first movement too static 

and lacking in expressive feeling. So, buy for 

the curiosity, but not if you’re looking for a 

good standard performance of Beethoven’s 

concerto. 

ALTHOUSE 

BESTOR: Symphony 1; Requiem; Horn 

Concerto; The Long Goodbye 

Laura Klock, hn; William Hite, t; Cayuga Chamber 

Orchestra/ Lanfranco Marcelletti 

Albany 1255—60 minutes 

This is poignant and moving new music—personal, 

intimate, complex, and beautifully presented 

by university faculty musicians and a 

regional chamber orchestra. In my review 

(Nov/Dec 1995) of a previous collection of 

works by Charles Bestor, a former professor 

and department head at the University of 

Massachusetts-Amherst, I said that he has a 

confident and distinctive voice and a command 

of sonority, texture, and flow of ideas. 

He passes easily between classical and jazz 

styles, and between tonal warmth and pungent 

dissonance. His music seems free and unforced; 

it goes where he wants to go. 

Two of these works deal specifically with the 

death of Bestor’s wife of Alzheimer’s disease. An 

11-minute Requiem is scored for tenor soloist 

and chamber orchestra, while The Long Goodbye 

is a four-movement work that ends with a 

very sad, polytonal setting of ‘Now the Day is 

Over’. And while his wife’s death is not the subject 

of Three Ways of Looking at the Night, 

Bestor’s 24-minute Symphony 1 (1996), it is 

melancholy enough to fit the program perfectly. 

Bestor’s 10-minute Horn Concerto breaks 

from the program’s theme. For me the listening 

experience is somewhat uncomfortable, 

and I think the recording setup—close miking 

of soloist Laura Klock—is to blame. Sometimes 

the solo material seems as if it is just one of the 

contrapuntal lines, and it would sound better 

if it were not so front-and-center. And while 

there is natural ambience in the orchestra’s 

sound, there is none in the horn’s. It’s too intimate; 

we hear too many details. 

The soloists (Ms Klock and the fine tenor 

William Hite) and conductor Lanfranco Marcelletti 

are faculty members at the University 

of Massachusetts-Amherst. Marcelletti is also 

music director of the Cayuga Chamber 

Orchestra, a fine ensemble based in Ithaca, 

New York. It is a pleasure to hear them play 

with such security, sensitivity, and expression. 

And Marcelletti does a superb job of holding 

this challenging new music together and making 

sense of it. 

KILPATRICK 

BIBER: Vesperae Longiores ac Breviores 

Yale Schola Cantorum & Collegium Players/ 

Simon Carrington—Carus 83.348—59:30 

This is a commercial reissue of a recording first 

released by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music 

in 2005. In my earlier review (Jan/Feb 2006), I 

did note that this is a modest performance by 

an excellent collegiate ensemble but that it 

probably does not represent Biber’s practices 

at Salzburg Cathedral but a more modest 

church. The 24 singers of the Yale Schola Cantorum 

sometimes overpower the six string 

players (with organ) and there are some blemishes 

owing to the vagaries of concert performance. 

One thing I did notice on this reissue is 

that the ambient audience noise is much less 

evident. This is still a significant recording of 

these works and deserves the wider distribution 

that it will have from Carus. 

BREWER 

BLOCH, T: Missa Cantate; Sancta Maria; 

Cold Song; Christ Hall Blues; Christ Hall 

Postlude 

Jorg Waschinski, s; Thomas Bloch, instruments; 

Jacques Duprez, va; David Coulter, musical saw; 

Paderewski Philharmonic/ Fernand Quattrocchi 


French composer Thomas Bloch (b 1962) studied 

at the Paris Conservatory, where he concentrated 

on the rare instruments ondes 

Martenot, glass harmonica, and cristal 

Baschet. As a composer, he was influenced by 

the minimalists. And so, here we have minimalist-influenced 

music that involves rare 

instruments—and male soprano. 

I was dubious and ready to dismiss this as 

gimmickry, but Thomas Bloch is a good composer 

and no slouch when it comes to playing 

these odd and very interesting instruments. 

His music won me over right away—it’s beautiful 

music that you can lose yourself in. The 

10-movement, 44-minute Missa Cantate (1999) 

is like an amalgam of Pärt (especially in I), 

Duruflé, and Fauré. The chord progressions 

are heavenly, and male soprano Jorg Waschinski 

has a lovely, very high voice. There are no 

rare instruments in this work; the Paderewski 

Philharmonic accompanies. 

The rare instruments figure prominently in 

the rest of the pieces. In ‘Sancta Maria’ (1998), 

composer Bloch plays glass harmonica, cristal 

Baschet, keyboards, and crystal bells while 

Jacques Dupriez plays a mournful viola, and 



Waschinski sings four overlapping parts. 

Waschinski’s voice has a haunting, ethereal 

quality that matches the rare instruments 

amazingly well. 

‘Cold Song’ (2009) is cristal Baschet and 

waterphone with seven tracks of Waschinski 

for six mesmerizing minutes. ‘Christ Hall 

Blues’ (1990, rev 2005) has a very spooky 

Recitativo and Aria, with the eerie sound of 

David Coulter’s musical saw along with 

Bloch’s cristal Baschet, glass harmonica, bells, 

and ondes Martenot. Waschinski sings 12 

parts. The album ends with the somber, otherworldly 

‘Christ Hall Postlude’ (2008) for crystal 

bells, cristal Baschet, and musical saw. 

This is a fascinating and very unusual listening 

experience. See Bloch’s web site 

(www.thomasbloch.net) for videos and information 

about these instruments. 

KILPATRICK 

BLOW: Venus & Adonis 

Amanda Forsythe (Venus), Tyler Duncan (Adonis), 

Mireille Lebal (Cupid), Boston Early Music 

Festival/ Paul O’Dette, Stephen Stubbs 

CPO 777614—65 minutes 

Nowadays, when CD booklets are slipping into 

oblivion in favor of notes and lyrics to be 

downloaded off the Internet—or worse, no text 

at all—I feel compelled to say, first off, that this 

is one of the fattest and most satisfying booklets 

I’ve seen in a long time, complete with 

beautiful cover art. 

And, in this case, the adage “you can’t tell a 

book by its cover”—or a CD—is proved wrong. 

This is a beautiful release in every aspect. 

Recordings of this charming work have not 

been plentiful. For a thorough look at what 

was available a few years ago, I recommend 

John Barker’s review of the Jacobs reading 

(Nov/Dec 1999—it was rereleased in 2008). 

The other three that he mentions—under 

Anthony Lewis, Anthony Rooley, and Charles 

Medlam—were all deleted at the time and still 

are, apparently. Two more performances 

besides this one are now available for a total of 

four: a rendition under Philip Pickett (apparently 

recently re-released) and a brand new 

recording under Elizabeth Kenny. 

It’s a little embarrassing to admit this, but I 

like Venus and Adonis better in terms of sheer 

listening pleasure than Purcell’s Dido and 

Aeneas, which is often mentioned in the same 

breath as the opera in whose shadow Venus 

and Adonis lies. While both are tragedies, this 

work does not have the sinister elements of 

Purcell’s; rather, despite its sad ending where 

boar-hunting Adonis dies as Venus laments 

her immortality, this opera is lighter hearted, 

with more humorous elements. 

The choice of performers here is, by and 

large, superior. The two major players, Venus 

and Adonis, are quite youthful, which is fitting 

enough. The casting of Cupid remains a problem. 

The notes point out (as does Mr Barker in 

his review) that when this work was first performed, 

Cupid was sung by Lady Mary Tudor, 

who was probably no more than 10 years of 

age at the time. It’s surprising that a boy chorister 

has not been cast in this role. A boy choir 

is used here for the little Cupids, and it’s very 

effective and funny (especially when they’re 

learning their “lessons”). 

Overall, though, this is a topnotch production, 

and I would not hesitate to recommend it 

for a first choice or only one for people who 

are less than die-hard collectors. 

Rounding out the program is an ode for St 

Cecilia’s Day, a dashing piece titled ‘Welcome, 

ev’ry Guest’. Also included is a Ground in G 

minor (for two violins and continuo) and a 

roundelay from John Dryden ‘Chloe found 

Amynatas Lying all in Tears’, gorgeously sung 

as a male trio by two tenors—Jason McStoots 

and Zachary Wilder—and bass-baritone Douglas 

Williams. 

A collector’s delight and a superior release 

in every way. 

CRAWFORD 

BOISMORTIER: 6 Cello Sonatas; 2 Trio 

Sonatas 

David Bakamjian, vc; Brooklyn Baroque 

Quill 1010—73 minutes 

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier bears a certain 

resemblance to PDQ Bach since, according to 

the listing on this disc, his dates are 1789-1755. 

He was actually born in 1689, two years after 

Lully died. His contribution to instrumental 

music ended up second only to Telemann’s in 

volume. At least from a cellist’s point of view, 

his output of sonatas is decidedly ambiguous, 

since they were published as works for viol or 

bassoon as well and have been recorded that 

way. 

I am acquainted with one other record of 

the cello sonatas, by Douglas McNames with 

Brandywine Baroque (Plectra 2007, May/June 

2008). There are a good many duplications, 

and the general interpretations sound valid to 

the ear on both discs. McNames is a bit 

smoother in articulation where Bakamjian is a 

bit livelier, but both seem to take the music 

seriously and put it across with a second cello 

and usually a harpsichord. Certain movements 

are played without keyboard accompaniment. 

Bakamjian plays Op. 26:3-5 and Op. 50:1, 2, 

and 4 while McNames adds Op. 50:3 and 

another called Op. 50 Quarta that I can’t identify. 

His program is all cello sonatas, while the 

one under review adds the trio sonatas, Op. 

37:5 and Op. 50:6. Here we meet a problem, 



since the baroque flute in the Brooklyn 

Baroque group plays distinctly flat, particularly 

in the slow movements. This tends to spoil 

what was otherwise a good cello program. 

D MOORE 

BOITO: Mefistofele 

Ferruccio Furlanetto (Mefistofele), Giuseppe Filianoti 

(Faust), Dimitra Theodossiou (Margherita, 

Helen), Sonia Zaramella (Marta), Domenico 

Ghegghi (Wagner), Monica Minarelli (Pantalis); 

Teatro Massimo, Palermo/ Stefano Ranzani 

Naxos 660248 [2CD] 2:14 

A 2008 theatrical performance, this release has 

all the attendant pros and cons. The pros are 

some good singing, especially by the three 

leads. Filianoti’s Faust has both power and 

sensitivity. It’s a pleasure to hear this role sung 

rather than belted out. Furlanetto’s Mefistofele 

is vigorously sung and acted, though I do wish 

he’d indulged the tradition of trying to whistle 

down El Supremo in the closing pages. 

True, the music stacks the deck against 

Mefistofeles—the Angelics sing and Faust 

caves—but a real Adversary should go down 

fighting. Another asset is good cast interaction, 

which makes the garden scene coherent and 

Theodossiou in the prison scene deeply touching. 

The cons include a lot of stage clatter and 

applause after every scene, plus some ragged 

ensemble. In the difficult children’s choruses, 

the youngsters are audibly struggling. The 

orchestral accompaniment is routine, with 

poor brass tone quality and slack phrasing. 

The score does mark some of their fanfares 

“shrilly”, but they’re too flaccid even for that. 

This opera needs great brasses as much as 

Berlioz or Mahler, whose work it often matches 

in grandeur. 

The sound is adequate, but lacks the element 

of space. In the Prologue, e.g., far older 

recordings have been more effective conveying 

the antiphonal fanfares echoing across the 

heavens. The shorter playing time is owing to a 

few small cuts. There’s extensive cuing, but 

you’ll have to go to www.naxos.com/libretto/660248htm 

for a complete libretto, in Italian 

only. 

O’CONNOR 

BOWEN: Miniature Suite; see DALE 

BRAHMS: Clarinet Quintet; 

WEBERN: Quartet, op 22 

Marty Krystall, cl, sax; Richard Stoltzman, cl; 

Peter Serkin, p; Ida Kavafian; Cooker Quartet 

Vivace 8802—58 minutes 

(M Krystall, 1748 Roosevelt Ave, LA CA 90006) 

ingly dissimilar composers actually have in 

common. In reality, though, this is more of a 

trip to the attic of noted Los Angeles reed player 

Marty Krystall. The Webern Quartet, Op. 22 

for violin, clarinet, tenor saxophone, and piano 

was recorded in concert in 1974 with members 

of TASHI; and the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, 

Op. 115 was recorded in 2000 with the Cooker 

Quartet. 

In between the headliners are three improvisations 

for tenor saxophone recorded in 1978 

with TASHI pianist Peter Serkin. Krystall 

explains that the improvisations originated in 

a 1977 TASHI tour of the East Coast and that 

they were inspired by Stravinsky’s Three Pieces 

for Clarinet Solo (1919) and the hunchbacked 

character Igor in the 1931 Frankenstein film. A 

year later, Serkin invited Krystall to Cal Arts to 

record them. Serkin placed a portable cassette 

recorder on a piano and then opened the 

dampers on the instrument to create overtones 

and an echo effect. In II and III Serkin 

joins in on the keyboard, adding subtle commentary. 

The performances are spirited but wildly 

uneven. The Webern has plenty of postromantic 

angst, but the woodwind playing 

often lacks clarity; and the tracks suffer from 

manipulation, perhaps to enhance the ensemble’s 

extremes in dynamics. The improvisations 

may reflect the Third Stream mentality 

popular at the time, fusing jazz elements with 

abstract avant-garde language. Whatever the 

case, they are rarely inspiring; and while the 

liner notes explain the amateur recording, the 

performance comes across as little more than 

an esoteric college student jamming on his 

Conn saxophone in an empty second-rate 

recital hall. 

The Brahms is more professional, even if it 

doesn’t belong in the same league as more 

renowned performers. Krystall and the Cooker 

Quartet play with pleasant timbres, sincere 

phrasing and color, and good chamber awareness, 

and their product would be justly 

applauded at a Sunday afternoon church concert. 

Even so, Krystall needs more control and 

refinement, especially at loud volumes and in 

his high register. His articulation is curiously 

breathy and ineffective, as if he’s afraid to 

touch the reed with his tongue, and his erratic 

intonation often creates problems. The quartet 

could use a bigger and richer romantic sound; 

their effort comes across as more appropriate 

for early Haydn, and if they ventured into the 

19th Century, they might solve some of the 

more pressing balance questions. 

HANUDEL 

The pairing of Brahms and Webern is a clever 

one, inviting a discussion of what these seem- 



BRAHMS: Quartet 1; 

SCHOENBERG: Transfigured Night 

Amsterdam Sinfonietta/ Candida Thompson 

Channel 30411 [SACD] 64 minutes 

Pairing these works makes sense. Not only was 

Schoenberg a lifelong Brahms admirer, but his 

article ‘Brahms the Progressive’—still one of 

the best ever written on that composer—uses 

examples from this quartet to support his case. 

Even devoted Brahms fans like Malcolm Mac- 

Donald regard the textures in his Quartet 1 as 

dense. Whether or not you agree, this arrangement 

by bassist Marijn van Prooijn is a treat 

for the ear and the intellect. Partly it’s the playing 

of the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, but the 

sheer beauty of sound and wealth of detail it 

illuminates are a revelation. 

Arnold Schoenberg built expression into 

his music via dynamics, phrasing, and voicing. 

In Pierrot Lunaire he cautioned against pumping 

his music up, noting that such addition 

often ends in subtraction. In Transfigured 

Night, the emotional content is so intense that 

it can easily become hysteria. Thus, Thompson’s 

reading, which avoids just that, is deeply 

satisfying, with good pacing and balances. The 

recorded sound is as fine as the playing. 

O’CONNOR 

BRAHMS: Serenade 1; 

FARRENC: Nonet in E-flat 

Minerva Chamber Ensemble/ Kevin Geraldi 

Centaur 3092—68 minutes 

Brahms wrote his first serenade in the late 

1850s for the court of Lippe-Detmold. The first 

version was a nonet for winds and strings, 

which Brahms destroyed after making later 

versions for orchestra. This nonet, though, was 

performed in Hamburg in 1859, probably (the 

notes tell us) in five movements; the first 

scherzo was added later. On this rather sketchy 

evidence Alan Boustead has reconstructed the 

piece as a five-movement nonet (flute, two 

clarinets, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, 

and bass). We do not know how closely this 

conforms to Brahms’s original conception, but 

Boustead’s work is very convincing, even if it 

seems a little uncharacteristic for Brahms (who 

didn’t leave us pieces mixing strings and winds 

like this). Larger chamber ensembles will want 

to get their hands on this fine arrangement. 

Louise Farrenc (1804-75) through the influence 

of Hummel had knowledge of the chamber 

music of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. 

She wrote extensively for piano (her instrument) 

as well as three symphonies and several 

well-regarded chamber works. Her Nonet was 

written in 1849 and achieved some renown. It 

is a quite well constructed piece with good thematic 

material and an imaginative use of the 

nine instruments. The first movement has particularly 

fine interplay among the voices, while 

the succeeding sections are more homophonic 

and more typical of romantic fare. 

Both pieces are beautifully done by the 

Minerva Ensemble, which draws most of its 

members from the University of North Carolina 

at Greensboro. Congratulations to all for 

bringing two seldom heard works to light in 

such fine performances. 

ALTHOUSE 

BRAHMS: Songs, Volume 2 

Christine Schäfer, s; Graham Johnson 

Hyperion 33122—76 minutes 

As in previous Graham Johnson productions, 

this contains a broad spectrum of the composer’s 

works. They span many decades and 

include many songs that you probably won’t 

know (or in my case don’t remember!). 33 in 

all, they include the five short Ophelia songs 

(WoO22) and six Mädchenlieder, drawn from 

four opus numbers. The recital closes with six 

songs from the Deutsche Volkslieder. 

The chief reason to buy this recording— 

and I would certainly encourage you to do 

so!—is the perceptive, informative liner notes 

by Johnson. He takes song poetry seriously 

and finds connections to the music that illuminate 

every piece and take you ever deeper into 

Brahms’s world. Not every piece will yield up 

its beauties on first hearing, but Johnson will 

lead you quickly to greater understanding and 

appreciation. 

Christine Schäfer sings well, but I wished 

after a time for more color and differentiation 

among the songs. It’s a lovely voice, but not so 

beautiful (as with Elly Ameling) that you don’t 

care if everything sounds the same! Johnson, 

as you would expect, is an expert partner. My 

complaints aside, if interested in lesser-known 

Brahms songs, you will find treasures here. 

ALTHOUSE 

BRAHMS: Symphonies, all 

Netherlands Philharmonic; Radio Philharmonic/ 

Jaap van Zweden 

Brilliant 94074 [3CD] 2:41 

with Haydn Variations & Tragic Overture 

Vienna Philharmonic/ Carlo Maria Giulini 

Newton 8802063 [4CD] 3:43 

with Alto Rhapsody & Haydn Variations 

Berlin Symphony; Berlin Radio Chorus; Annette 

Markert 

Profil 11019 [4CD] 3:31 

Giulini was never a man in a hurry, either on 

the podium or in his career. As a young violist 

in the St Cecilia Academy Orchestra before 

WW II, he played under Bruno Walter, Wilhelm 



Furtwangler, Fritz Reiner, Pierre Monteux, 

Stravinsky, Richard Strauss, Victor de Sabata, 

and Klemperer, not to mention plenty of local 

Italian conductors. He didn’t like the dictatorial 

ones but loved and respected Walter, the 

maestro whose leadership style his own 

mature style most resembled. After the War, he 

led opera at La Scala and Covent Garden, 

made a debut with the Chicago Symphony in 

1955 that led to a highly productive 25-year 

relationship, made his famous EMI recordings 

with the Philharmonia Orchestra, gave up 

opera entirely after the late 1960s because he 

detested opera house politics, and—rather a 

surprise to many—accepted the music directorship 

of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 

1978. Despite a schedule that was more akin to 

a principal guest conductor and exemption 

from administrative duties (including fundraising 

schmoozing), he left the LA post in 

1984 after his wife became ill. He never came 

back to the US and operated strictly as a guest 

conductor in Europe, not wanting to travel 

more than a day or two away from his wife. 

Fortunately, he made recordings for DG with 

the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Concertgebouw 

Orchestra, and an ensemble 

pulled from the ranks of the La Scala opera 

house orchestra. 

Although Giulini could muster plenty of 

fire when needed—think of the Dvorak 7th 

with the Chicago Symphony or Verdi’s Don 

Carlo—his performances often showed an otherworldly 

serenity and spiritual purity. They 

also became increasingly slower, as in these, 

set down from 1989 to 1991. Elderly conductors 

seem to take two tacks: the Toscanini 

approach is to whip up the tempos and play 

everything faster, to show that old age isn’t 

slowing him down; the Klemperer approach 

seemed to be to slow everything down, to not 

want to let go of a note because he was afraid 

he may play it again. 

Where such pacing from an ordinary conductor 

would lead to a deadly dull listening 

experience, Giulini keeps the line clear, the 

underlying pulse of the music strong while he 

revels in the remarkable inner detail of Brahms’s 

scores. I’m not saying that sometimes he 

doesn’t try the patience, but on balance one 

walks away from these performances consistently 

revitalized and refreshed. I’m not suggesting 

the Giulini Approach is the best for 

Brahms, but I dare a true lover of this music to 

walk away unmoved. 

Symphonies 1 and 4 can handle a massive, 

heavy-duty approach, as can, perhaps, the 

nostalgic II of No 2. It works less well in III and 

the sunny, carefree IV of 2, or in 3, which can 

easily bog down into a tedious slog of thick 

textures and meandering pacing—as here. 

Things perk up a bit in the finale, but not 

enough. Some of this disappointment is 

assuaged by the Haydn Variations that fill out 

the program. Giulini imparts a warm, magisterial 

serenity to the initial statement of the original 

wind partita theme, lovingly traverses 

each variation, and builds to a grand, powerful 

finale. 

Giulini recorded the First about a decade 

earlier with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the 

LA Phil is not in the VPO’s class, but the performance 

has more energy and the old fire of the 

Chicago Giulini, so I prefer it. He also recorded 

Symphony 2 in Los Angeles; I prefer the 

warmer, more genial, more gemutlich tone of 

the Vienna Phil. 

His Brahms 4 with the Chicago Symphony 

from 1969 was hardly a house afire either, but 

the extra edge to the CSO’s sound gives the 

performance an urgency and drama lacking 

here. Still, I can think of few conductors this 

side of Celibidache who could play the finale 

as slowly, yet with such devastating effect, as 

Giulini does here. The Tragic Overture is not as 

exciting as the performance he led in Los 

Angeles a decade earlier, yet the conductor still 

balances weight with urgency. 

The Vienna Philharmonic has the perfect 

sound for Giulini’s interpretations: rich, velvety, 

unstressed, brass not overwhelming 

strings; and DG’s all-digital sound from the Big 

Hall of the Musikverein is superb. The high 

point of Giulini’s sunset years will continue to 

be his Bruckner 8 with this orchestra and his 

devastating Beethoven Ninth with the Berlin 

Phil. Newton makes exploring this Brahms set 

more affordable than it was originally: it’s selling 

for about 20 bucks. 

In contrast, Jaap van Zweden may not be a 

young man in a hurry, but he does move his 

Brahms along a lot more expeditiously than 

Giulini. These are straightforward, mainstream 

performances, professional, polished, well 

played, and very well recorded. Although the 

two orchestras may not be in the class of the 

Concertgebouw, they do play satisfyingly well. 

This conductor knows how to balance the 

accelerator and the brake, letting us dally to 

see the important sights, yet getting us to our 

destination without lollygagging or snapping 

our necks with unexpected acceleration. It’s 

Brahms you can get from any one of about 

four dozen other recordings. Nevertheless, 

these are “baseline” accounts that would be 

nice to turn to when you just want to hear the 

music without fussing or conductorial interpretation. 

It’s OK, but does one really need this 

set when Giulini, Walter, Szell, Karajan, Furtwangler, 

Toscanini—how many other great 

Brahmsians can I name off the top of my 

head?—are readily available. 



Now for Sanderling. Oh my. His actual timings 

run slightly faster, but he seems SO much 

slower—and duller—than Giulini. The Berlin 

Symphony, even when it is recorded in the 

Berlin Philharmonic’s recording venue, the 

Jesus-Christuskirche, will not be mistaken for 

the Vienna Philharmonic. These recordings 

were laid down in 1990, so they’re triple-D 

commercial productions. Sanderling was in his 

late 70s at the time (in fact, one year shy of his 

100th birthday, he is still alive, though he 

retired from the podium in the early 2000s). He 

was a conductor of the Giulini generation, 

whose life experience reached back to the days 

when the great romantic era conductors were 

still active (he shared the conductorship of the 

Leningrad Philharmonic with Mravinsky for 

some years). So one might reasonably hope for 

some insights into the music brought on by a 

direct line to Brahms’s own era. 

Not the case, I’m afraid. 

These are slow, tired performances, indifferently 

played and murkily recorded. Sanderling 

has his cult following among record collectors; 

they should not be deterred by my lack 

of enthusiasm. He tends to gloss over detail— 

maybe not helped by the somewhat distant 

recording acoustic—and the Berlin Symphony 

can’t dazzle us with a glorious blanket of luscious 

sound. Symphony 1 is mostly heavy and 

cumbersome; 2 lacks Mozartean free spirits, 

lyrical effusion, and lilt. No 3? No dice. The 

Fourth is a heavy, hard-going, rough account. 

The Alto Rhapsody makes a nice interlude, well 

sung by Annette Markert, ably supported by 

the gentlemen of the radio chorus, but that’s 

not a lot to justify a 4-disc set. It’s also a bit 

heavy, murky, and Wagnerian—I never made 

the spiritual connection between this piece 

and the Norns from Gotterdammerung. 

For mainstream listeners, either of the 

other two sets is a better choice. 

HANSEN 

BRAHMS: Symphony 1; 

ELGAR: Enigma Variations 

BBC Symphony/ Adrian Boult 

ICA 5019—78 minutes 

Sir Adrian Boult is often described as sound, 

correct, dedicated, but finally uninspired or 

even terminally boring. This release presents 

evidence that simultaneously supports and 

refutes this suggestion. The plusses are impeccable 

orchestral work by the BBC orchestra, 

vintage 1971 for Elgar and 1974 for Brahms, 

and stereo sound that is undistorted, well balanced, 

and reasonably detailed—quite good 

by the standards of its time, though not fully 

up to current levels. 

As to interpretation, the Brahms is steady, 

correct in tempos and shaping of phrases and 

longer paragraphs, but lacking in conviction 

and individuality. It is just a little sleepy and 

boring. Karl Böhm and John Barbirolli (both 

with the VPO, on DG and EMI) at slower tempos 

manage to invest the work with a sense of 

progression, integrity, and overwhelming conviction 

and power altogether missing in 

Boult’s reading. Ansermet’s performance on 

Decca Eloquence, obviously inspired by Weingartner, 

is also very good. Finally, Boult himself, 

in a 1973 EMI recording, gives a much 

more tightly structured and convincing performance 

than this one. 

The Elgar Enigma is a different story altogether. 

It is much more concise and tightly 

organized than the soggy Brahms. The tempos 

vary obviously from one episode to another, 

but are appropriate in all events. The recorded 

sound is brighter and more detailed than in 

the Brahms. Finally, the sound is enhanced by 

the pedal notes of the organ—played by G 

Thalben Ball—which contribute mightily to a 

thunderous conclusion, particularly if you 

employ a good subwoofer. I really can’t think 

of a more thrilling performance. In the end, 

this release earns its price on the merits of the 

Elgar alone. 

MCKELVEY 

BRAHMS: Violin Concerto; 

MENDELSSOHN: Violin Concerto 

Henryk Szeryng; Concertgebouw Orchestra/ 

Bernard Haitink 


Although one of the giants of the last century, 

Szeryng (1918-88) did not fit the typical role of 

virtuoso. His playing, rather, was thoughtful 

and musical with a minimum of flashiness. 

The Brahms, recorded in 1973, bears out this 

generalization. The tempos are on the slow 

side, and the spirit is more contemplative than 

confrontational. The first movement seems 

constrained in emotional range, though the 

coda after the cadenza (Joachim’s) is very nice. 

And the finale sounds measured and needs a 

sense of gypsy abandon. The slow movement, 

though, is lovely and touching. 

The Mendelssohn, recorded in 1976, is 

taken at a relaxed pace, and lots of subtle 

detail comes through. A performance like this 

will remind you of what an incredibly beautiful 

piece this is, warm and romantic. It is compromised, 

though, by Szeryng’s sometimes 

unsteady tone and thin sound, particularly in 

the first movement. II is quite lovely, but the 

finale could use more energy (and a slightly 

faster tempo). 

General listeners should pass it by. 

ALTHOUSE 



BRUBECK, C: Danza del Soul; 

GANDOLFI: Line Drawings; 

FOSS: Central Park Reel 

Wendy Putnam, v; Owen Young, vc; Lawrence 

Wolfe, db; Thomas Martin, cl; Vylas Baksys, p; 

Daniel Bauch, perc—Reference 122—64 minutes 

This is perhaps the most amusing release I’ve 

heard this month. It begins with Dave 

Brubeck’s talented son Chris (b 1952) in a halfhour 

work that opens like Haydn’s Farewell 

Symphony in reverse, in a movement called 

Introductions and Flirtations where all of the 

players listed above gradually arrive on stage, 

meet and interact musically with wit and variety. 

Then we have The Loneliness of Secrets, a 

slow movement, followed by Celebracion de 

Vida, a jazzy event to close. It is an imaginative 

and very positive composition, played with 

verve and recorded with clarity. 

Michael Gandolfi (b 1956) then offers a 

series of five pieces for violin, clarinet, and 

piano written in the spirit of Picasso. Perhaps 

it is his proud announcement that he wrote 

each one in less than three days, but I find 

them a bit less engrossing than Brubeck; 

though undeniably amusing and enjoyable, 

there’s a bit more repetition sometimes than 

my attention span can encompass, well played 

though they are. 

The program closes with Lukas Foss’s reel 

for violin and piano. This amusing piece really 

puts Putnam and Baksys through their jazz 

paces. This is a beautifully-played, up-mood 

program with pleasantly jazzy overtones. 

D MOORE 

BRUCH: Violin Concerto 1; Romance; 

String Quintet 

Vadim Gluzman, Sandis Steinbergs, v; Maxim 

Rysanov, Ilze Klava, va; Reinis Birznieks, vc; 

Bergen Philharmonic/ Andrew Litton 

BIS 1852 [SACD] 58 minutes 

Gluzman plays beautifully in the Violin Concerto. 

The problem here is the interpretation. 

In a work filled with cadences, both he and Litton 

never miss an opportunity for a cadential 

retard. Tempos change constantly but don’t 

relate to one another. Litton completely misses 

the charging, ecstatic build of the big orchestral 

passage in the first movement as he turns 

it into a smarmy, overblown series of 

chopped-up phrases. Tempos are all over the 

place in II as well. In III Gluzman can’t quite 

articulate the triplet on the second beat followed 

by four eighth notes that ends the thematic 

opening phrase, and Litton’s introduction 

to the second theme is again portentous 

rather than soaringly lyrical. The same treatment 

is given to the Romance, taken slower 

than the marked tempo of 69 beats per 

minute. It is also very frontal and forte for a 

“romance”. The engineering is warm and balanced. 

Only the String Quintet is of interest here. 

It’s a well-written work in four movements 

with memorable melodies, solid structure, and 

superb writing for strings. In the opening 

introduction, I feared the players were going to 

turn the work into yet another formless, 

smarmy mess, but not so. Once they hit the 

main body of I, forward movement in a solid 

structure reigned. Only in III, a great Adagio 

with an extremely wide melodic range, do they 

fail to catch the rapture. 

The sound in the Quintet, recorded in Germany, 

has more resonance than the orchestral 

works do. While the second violin is hard to 

hear sometimes, the interlacing of the players 

comes across very well, and the passages 

where Gluzman plays the melody against the 

other four players are extremely effective. 

There isn’t a word in the liner notes on the 

Quintet’s players. Gluzman, of course, is the 

lead violinist; Ilze Klava is listed on the Bergen 

Philharmonic’s website as principal violist. 

FRENCH 

BUCHOLTZ: Piano Pieces 

Marco Kraus—CPO 777635—56 minutes 

Helen Buchholtz was an early 20th Century 

composer from Luxembourg, In reading the 

essay, I was struck by one particular word used 

to describe her piano sonatas. The word is 

“polished”. Here we have some very polished 

piano works. They are well composed and 

developed appropriately. We are not dealing 

with an amateur, but yet I leave with very little. 

The Ballade is certainly the best work, and 

the Barcarolle is also perceptive; it is reminiscent 

of Schumann. Sometimes this music is 

dark and deals with what I interpret as themes 

of solitude, which matches her personal life 

according to the essay. Marco Kraus can be too 

sentimental with this material, but overall 

gives a balanced performance. 

I am not captivated by this music, but I 

also do not have anything to say that is particularly 

dismissive. I am left with a very unsettling 

combination of contentment and apathy—and 

I do not feel compelled to listen 

again. 

JACOBSEN 

BUSONI: Bach Transcriptions 2 

Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue; Prelude & Fugue in 

E-flat (St Anne); 6 Choral Preludes; Little Prelude 

& Fugue in D 

Maurizio Baglini, p—Tudor 7156—65 minutes 

Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) wrote three 

times as much original music as transcriptions, 

but is perhaps still best remembered for 



his arrangements and editions of Bach. With 

Bruno Mugellini and Egon Petri he edited 25 

volumes of Bach’s keyboard music and, over a 

30-year period, published seven volumes of 

Arrangements, Transcriptions, and Free Transcriptions. 

Baglini recorded Volume 1 of this 

series in 2006 (Tudor 7139, Mar/Apr 2007). 

That was favorably reviewed in these pages, 

and I regularly listen to it. It was well worth the 

five-year wait for Volume 2. To the complete 

concert transcriptions of Bach, this disc adds 

one of Busoni’s most interesting editorial 

efforts, the Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue. I 

found it very enlightening to compare my 

modern, scholarly edition of this masterpiece 

to the Busoni edition performed here. While 

there is little difference in the notation of the 

Fugue, the Fantasy has a number of sections 

that do not sound like the same piece. 

Since keyboard players get very little guidance 

from Bach’s manuscripts in terms of 

phrasing or dynamics, there are multitudinous 

editions with vastly different approaches to the 

music. Busoni’s musical intellect makes his 

editions worth performance and analysis. In 

his essay, Wert der Bearbeitung (The of 

Arrangements, 1910), Busoni states “Every 

notation is already a transcription of an 

abstract thought. As soon as the pen takes 

over, the thought loses its original shape.” 

Even though historically accurate performance 

practice has been in the forefront of both 

teaching and playing of Bach in the past few 

decades, Busoni’s 100-year-old approach can 

now be viewed as just another historical performance 

practice. We rely on the pianism of 

Baglini to faithfully follow all of the markings, 

additions of notes, realization of ornaments, 

altering of harmonies that Busoni did. 

Through these exceptional performances, we 

can experience another era of pianistic performance. 

Baglini (b. 1975) has studied with both 

Lazar Berman and Maurizio Pollini and is one 

of the finest young pianists before the public 

today. He has all the musicianship and technical 

expertise to be logically considered an Italian 

pianist in the line that goes back through 

Pollini and Michelangeli to Busoni. The massive 

sonorities called for by Busoni are never 

harsh. The intricate voices, so often doubled at 

the octave, still are shaped and phrased with 

all the skill one might expect of a great organist 

playing single notes. Special mention should 

be made of the excellent booklet notes and the 

spectacular sound of the Fazioli concert grand, 

recorded at the Fazioli Concert Hall. Taken all 

together, this is an essential release, and 

should be enjoyed in tandem with the earlier 

volume. 

HARRINGTON 

BUSONI: Liszt Transcriptions 

Paganini Etudes; Hungarian Rhapsody 19; 

Mephisto Waltz; Fantasy & Fugue on Ad Nos, ad 

Salutarum Undam 

Sandro Ivo Bartoli, p 

Brilliant 94200—79 minutes 

It is ironic that Liszt, who in the course of his 

career made hundreds of transcriptions and 

paraphrases, would eventually have his own 

original compositions subjected to the same 

treatment. But how strange it is—how presumptuous, 

really—for the upstart Busoni to 

concentrate his efforts on rewriting not the 

elder master’s tone poems, but his solo piano 

pieces! This is not the first time I’ve heard the 

arguments supporting this misguided enterprise. 

Bartoli rehearses several of them in his 

program notes, claiming that new lines are 

revealed and that novel nuances are instilled 

when the pieces are viewed through Busoni’s 

eyes. I accept only that these recompositions 

may have fit Busoni’s technique better. Musically, 

the newer versions always sound doctored. 

That said, it is impossible not to notice in 

spots how well Bartoli plays. These are extremely 

complicated and difficult works— 

essentially “showpieces squared” that two virtuosos 

designed for their own use—and they 

are delivered with aplomb. The playing is light, 

brisk, fiery, and clean. The second etude is a 

dazzling gem, full of humor. Those flourishes 

are perfection! The fourth, fifth, and sixth ones 

are also strong, with ample opportunity for 

him to show off his crisp octave work and 

smooth finger technique. The playing is glassy, 

but backed up with power: clearly this performer 

is not averse to digging deeply into the 

keys. 

Aside from the etudes, the other track 

worth hearing is the fantasy and fugue on 

Meyerbeer’s chorale. Since it started out as an 

organ work, I have no objection to hearing it 

translated to piano. Bartoli does a fine job with 

it, playing it straight and unromantically. But 

the music still overwhelms us with its power 

by virtue of its contrapuntal thickness and volume. 

I rank the Hungarian Rhapsody third. He 

handles the extroverted passages well, but he 

is not very adept at building suspense in the 

recitative passages. In terms of pacing, it feels 

like the performance is all business. Each 

episode and transition is well constructed, but 

none feels particularly personable, and they 

rush by too quickly. 

Despite the grace of a few bright spots, I 

cannot endorse this release. The sound quality 

and acoustics are poor, making the piano 

sound tinny and clunky. There is also the origi- 



nal concern that not one of these pieces really 

is that great. I’ve always disliked Busoni’s transcription 

of Mephisto, for instance, and here it 

goes over once more like a lead-filled balloon. 

AUERBACH 

CAGE: Credo In US; Imaginary Landscapes 

Percussion Group Cincinnati 

Mode 229—60 minutes 

Cage made his first real mark as a composer of 

percussion music (his Clarinet Sonata 

notwithstanding). Percussion, for Cage, meant 

sounds that hadn’t been domesticated by 

equal-tempered pitch space; soon afterward 

electronic sounds began to appeal to him for 

the same reason. This release collects all five of 

the Imaginary Landscape series and so gives a 

wonderful sense of Cage’s music from around 

1940 to 1952, when he turned to chance composition. 

It also claims to be the first recording 

to employ, in the first Landscape, the actual 

test-tone recordings and variable-speed 

turntables the work was composed for. 

Steve Reich, John Rockwell, and many others 

hold that Cage’s percussion music remains 

his best music. I find an early piece like Credo 

in US (for percussion, piano, and a performer 

equipped either with a radio or phonograph 

recordings of classical music) charming but 

comparatively unremarkable. It’s fun to play, 

though, and the Percussion Group Cincinnati 

likes it so much that they include two performances 

(one with a single recording of 

Shostakovich 5 under Bernstein, the other with 

vintage recordings including Mengelberg’s 

Beethoven Eroica). As for the second and third 

Landscapes, both influenced by Cage’s distress 

over World War II, the pieces are sonically 

attractive but musically thin. (Cage probably 

sensed this, too, since the bulk of his music 

from the 1940s is very different in character.) 

There are also two realizations of Imaginary 

Landscape No. 5, where chance operations 

determine when and how long various excerpts 

from recordings will appear (the piece 

was originally used for a dance by Jean Erdmann). 

The first realization uses vintage jazz 

recordings; the second Cage compositions 

including String Quartet in Four Parts, Roaratorio, 

Apartment House 1776, and Credo in US. 

The performances are stunning, the sound 

fantastic, and the liner notes informative and 

thought-provoking. 

HASKINS 

CALDARA: La Conversione di Clodoveo Re 

di Francia 

Allyson McHardy (Clodoveo), Nathalie Paulin 

(Clotilde), Suzie LeBlanc (San Remigio), Matthew 

White (Uberto); Le Nouvel Opera/ Alexander 

Weimann—ATMA 2505 [2CD] 93 minutes 

First performed in Rome in 1715, this oratorio 

tells of the pagan Clodoveo, King of the Franks. 

Over the years his Christian wife, Clotilde, has 

told her husband that hers is the only true 

God, but he has not understood the truth. The 

King departs for war, and on news of the 

army’s defeat, Clotilde prays for Clodoveo’s 

conversion yet fears his death. Having survived 

the fight, and rallying his scattered and depleted 

warriors, the King converts and is victorious. 

Reunited, the couple celebrates Clodoveo’s 

baptism and offers thanksgiving to God. 

Antonio Caldara (1670-1736) captures the 

dual love theme—mortal and divine adoration 

intermingle in the story—with soaring melodies, 

animated dialog, and florid arias. Unusual 

scoring, such as using only violin in unison 

with the solo voice for the hero’s aria ‘Come 

Cerva Che Ferita’ (Like A Wounded Doe), 

points out key moments in the tale. 

The Nouvel Opera ensemble plays with 

fine rhythmic balance and well-judged tempos: 

violins imitate trumpets’ call to battle; 

recitatives and dialog are underlined effectively 

with varying instruments; drama and movement 

are well sustained. The singers convey 

many emotions: San Remigio’s fervent and 

beautiful triple-meter aria ‘Se Mesta L’Alma’ 

on the contrasts between the hope-less and 

hope-filled soul, and Clodoveo’s earnest declaration 

to spill blood on the battlefield to compensate 

for Clotilde’s tears in ‘Rasserenatevi’ 

(with an inventive rippling accompaniment) 

are just two examples. 

Especially towards the end of the oratorio, 

a lack of forward motion weakens the conviction 

of the interpretation. Part of this is that 

the ensemble, however fine, isn’t quite large 

enough. Even three or four more players (say, 

two more violins, one cello, a second wind 

player) would be a much better match to the 

scale of the music and would allow the singers 

to sing out more. I kept increasing the volume 

to compensate, but that didn’t help. 

Notes, texts, translations. The Caldara 

discography is not large, and this is a welcome 

addition. 

C MOORE 

CAPRICORNUS: Taffel-Lustmusic 

I Capricorni; Cantobaleno Quartet 

Cornetto 10029—70 minutes 

We get a glimpse of Samuel Capricornus’s 

genius on this recording of works from the 



1671 collection titled Continuation der Neuen 

Wohl Angestimmten Taffel-Lustmusic. Doris 

Blaich makes clear in her notes that scholars 

are not entirely certain of its authenticity, suggesting 

that Capricornus’s authorship has 

been established on circumstantial evidence. 

For example, the collection of Taffel-Lustmusic 

takes its name from a famous building in 

Stuttgart known as the “Neue Lusthaus”. 

Capricornus served as Kapellmeister to the 

Württemberg court in Stuttgart, and the music 

reflects typical aspects of Capricornus’s style. 

In his time, Capricornus’s music was 

beloved in nearly every corner of Europe, as 

many publications and extant manuscripts 

indicate. Yet, when one considers the great 

German composers of the 17th Century, I 

doubt whether anyone now would put Capricornus 

in the same class as, say, Heinrich 

Schütz. On the basis of what we hear on this 

release, I would say that his modern reputation 

as a kleinmeister is not entirely warranted. 

The secular vocal pieces in Latin and German 

do sound a bit stodgy and lack some of 

Schütz’s talent for expression. The singers 

sound lovely, but they haven’t got as much to 

work with as the players. The string sonatas, 

on the other hand, are inspired examples of 

dissonant expression and virtuosic decoration. 

Notes and texts are in English. 

LOEWEN 

second concerto the most, where their playing 

is free and unapologetic, wonderfully energetic 

and engaged. 

What I find most interesting about the 

string quartet arrangement of these pieces is 

the spirit of Schubert that suddenly becomes 

apparent, especially in the second concerto. It 

might be that the intimacy of a quartet underlines 

the rhetoric of the second concerto more 

effectively than an orchestra. The concerto celebrates 

evolution, negotiating between the 

early language of romanticism and a new 

romanticism of Chopin’s invention. A large 

orchestra muffles this. The only movement 

where I miss the orchestra is 2:II. The low 

strings open with an atmospheric presence, 

forming a layer of clouds, which gently floats 

as the piano cuts through delicately. This effect 

is lost with the quartet, but that’s a small price 

to pay for the overall picture of these performances, 

which are thoughtful and highly satisfying. 

JACOBSEN 

CHOPIN: Piano Concerto 1; see Collections 

CHOPIN: Piano Sonata 3; Nocturnes; Ballade 

in F minor; Polonaise-Fantasy 

Alexis Weissenberg 

Hänssler 93710—68 minutes 

CHAUSSON: Concert; see MATHIEU 

CHOPIN: Piano Concertos 

Gianluca Luisi, Ensemble Concertant Frankfurt 

MDG 903 1632—73 minutes 

This is an exquisite 1972 recital. The engineering 

is well done, and the playing is sublime. Of 

particular relevance to our current Chopin 

Renaissance are the C-sharp minor, Op.post 

and the C-minor Op.48:1 Nocturnes, and the 

sonata. 

In the C-minor Nocturne, the rubato is 

This is a performance of the Chopin piano perfect; every phrase is given nuanced care 

concertos arranged for piano and string quar- and attention, every give-and-take of time is 

tet. Let me assure you that this is the only way carefully executed, and every great moment 

to listen to the concertos. Chopin probably can stand in isolation. There simply is no care- 

heard these pieces as concertos, but his hearless passage. The large octave section before 

ing may have been slightly misguided. Chopin the “Dippio” movement, like the finale of the 

is the master of the piano, but his competency sonata, sounds desperate, yet is flawless. Weis- 

in orchestral writing is non-existent. I always senberg here never descends, to quote our 

feel sympathy for the orchestra that performs Overview (July/Aug), to “bombastic and vul- 

these pieces, as after they play an introduction, gar” playing like Horowitz. 

the accompaniment is rather boring. 

I am also listening to the Third Sonata with 

Luisi is a fascinating player, primarily joy. Argerich has long been my model of a solid 

because his virtuosity is so soulful. Even performance, but Weissenberg makes it much 

though he blazes thru demanding passages more human performance—not as driven and 

with great facility, his playing is casual and rigid as Argerich. I also love Harasiewicz, for 

warm. He takes romantic playing to a different his radical and memorable interpretations. 

level. I must admit, some of his rubato is huge- Weissenberg is just as memorable and does 

ly overdone, but I sit at the edge of my seat, not allow his ego to take center stage, which 

waiting for the resolution of century-long Harasiewicz sometimes does. 

phrase endings that he holds onto forever—it The C-sharp minor Nocturne is extraordi- 

is terribly exciting and authentic. Luisi is a nary—luscious, poetic. and highly seductive. 

spectacular Chopinist and pianist. 

The D-flat is also wonderful, but the large Con 

Ensemble Concertant Frankfurt does very Forza ornament towards the end is executed 

well with this music. I enjoy the opening of the rather bizarrely—it sticks out like a sore thumb 



from the texture. Another complaint I have is 

the tempo in the Ballade: why rush the opening? 

Let it come to life slowly and delicately. 

Save the drive and gymnastics for the end! 

Everything else, including the Polonaise-Fantasy, 

is exceptional. 

JACOBSEN 

CLEMENTI: 12 Monferrinas; Piano 

Sonatas in D, G minor 

Byron Schenkman 


Byron Schenkman is gradually becoming 

known for his wide-ranging and elegantly 

played repertoire. In this recording made at 

WGBH in Boston he plays several Clementi 

works with great polish and considerable flair. 

The 12 Monferrinas are dance movements 

in a popular Italian style that are quite enjoyable. 

The Sonata in G minor, also known as 

Didone Abbandonata, is a major four-movement 

work, and the Sonata in D is short piece 

that is also well written. 

Good notes and a fine recording complete 

this attractive release. 

BAUMAN 

CLOUD: Songs 

Deborah Raymond, Eileen Stempel, s; Judith 

Cloud, mz; Ricardo Periera, t; Tod Fitzpatrick, bar 

Summit 562—72 minutes 

This is the debut recital of seven vocal works 

by the Arizona singer-composer Judith Cloud. 

Texts are by Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, 

Kathleen Raine, Betsy Andrews, and others. 

The various singers are only adequate (some 

have shockingly wobbly vibrato), but the 

music is evocative, pleasantly lyrical, and sensitive 

to the texts. 

SULLIVAN 

COLINA: 3 Cabinets of Wonder; Goyescana; 

Los Caprichos 

Michael Andriaccio, g; Anastasia Kitruk, v; London 

Symphony/ Ira Levin 

Fleur de Son 57999—72 minutes 

Another great discovery. Michael Colina is not 

a typical composer, with academic training. 

He grew up in North Carolina at the height of 

the civil rights struggle in the 60s. His father 

was Cuban, and he remembers a youth that 

was surrounded by Santeria ceremonial music 

along with popular rhythm and blues. He 

wrote mostly jazz and film music, and only 

turned to composing for orchestra eight years 

ago. 

I heard the music before reading about its 

background, and the film score connection 

was obvious. His music is tonal, neo-romantic, 

lush, and energetic. His orchestration is amaz- 

ing—he packs a lot into the music, yet it never 

seems too busy or too thick. 

Los Caprichos is a purely orchestral work, 

inspired by the sketches of Francisco Goya by 

that name. The 11 movements are brief, some 

lasting only a minute or so. But that is the 

essence of Goya’s sketches—each concocts a 

scene, often horrific or grotesque, in a critique 

of contemporary Spanish mores. Their emotional 

effect can be powerful, and Colina has 

captured that in a masterly fashion. 

The other two works are concertos, one for 

violin and one for guitar. Three Cabinets of 

Wonder, for violinist Anastasia Kitruk, has 

three wildly imaginative scenes as programmatic 

underpinnings. The first movement, 

‘Fanny’s Brother’, is based on some incomplete 

sketches from Fanny Mendelssohn 

Hensel, which Colina has re-imagined as a 

tribute to her beloved brother Felix. The slow 

movement, ‘Buddha’s Assassin’, portrays the 

Buddha stalked in a Thai jungle by a being that 

becomes not his threat but his lover. ‘Guardian 

of the Glowing’ is also set in a jungle, a mystical 

encounter with such intensity that we run 

from it, though it represents enlightenment 

that we will now never obtain. The images are 

strange and wonderful, and so is the music. 

Goyescana was written for the distinguished 

gutiarist Michael Andriaccio. The 

images here are less mystical, but no less 

evocative. The opening movement is a tango, 

‘Fantasma Azul’ (blue ghost), with themes that 

recur in the final movement, ‘Goyescana’. That 

last movement quotes ‘La Maja de Goya’ 

briefly in the cadenza, but the real heart is in 

the beautiful melody of the second movement, 

‘Serenata’. Colina writes that this was a memory 

of his childhood visits to Cuba. 

Performances are uniformly excellent. The 

London Symphony under Ira Levin sounds 

glorious. Violinist Kitruk’s playing is not only 

technically secure, but she conveys the mystic 

intensity of Colina’s imagery beautifully. And 

Andriaccio’s performance is, as expected, 

excellent. He brings a mature musicality to this 

music and plays with real joy. 

I am particularly excited to discover a new, 

and very fine, work for guitar and orchestra— 

too many recent guitar concertos struggle with 

the problem of balance by pretending it can all 

be fixed in the studio, and have little hope of 

frequent performance. Colina’s Goyescana has 

just the right balance and has plenty of beautiful 

themes and a great solo part. I hope others 

take up the work soon. 

KEATON 



COMPERE: music; see OCKEGHEM 

CONSTANTINIDES: Quartets (3); Dedications; 

Preludes; Elegy 

Sinfonietta Quartet; Nevsky Quartet; Valcour 

Quartet 


Dinos Constantinides is an American composer 

now based in Louisiana. The liner notes 

offer a long list of his performances and 

awards, along with blurbs from critics. He has 

a fair amount of music on records, though this 

is the first I’ve heard of it. But these six works 

for string quartet have not prompted me to 

seek out anything else by him. 

The music is an uncomfortable melange of 

effusive sentiment draped in luxuriant tonal 

attire—imagine dreary, debased, drug-addled 

late-Schubert quartets with themes drawn 

from lugubrious Greek popular songs—and 

harsh-sounding atonal interruptions and 

superimpositions laced with jabbing lunges, 

grating discords, glassy tone-clusters, raucous 

squealings, slithery glissandos, and various 

other modish effects. In addition the music is 

often incoherent, with one episode following 

another in a seemingly random sequence, as if 

narrated by a dithering but insistent drunk. 

Tempos are mostly slow, with little relief from 

the prevailing aura of mournful solemnity. 

Textures (whether harmonically conventional 

or “contemporary”)—especially in these leaden, 

intonation-challenged performances and 

Centaur’s muddy and recessed but still piercing 

sonics—are heavily plush and viscous. 

With the exception of the outer movements of 

the three Preludes—short, simple, modally 

harmonized hymn-like folk tunes—I found little 

to enjoy in this music despite the composer’s 

evident sincerity. 

LEHMAN 

COOMAN: Preludes; Piano Pieces 

Donna Amato 

Altarus 9015—65 minutes 

Carson Cooman’s Nine Preludes (2007) were 

written for Marilyn Nonken, but are played 

here by frequent Cooman collaborator Donna 

Amato. They are in a harmonically very free, 

basically conservative style, with vague wisps 

of tonality floating through on occasion; but 

the tonal constructions are in general pretty 

fuzzy. 

The set opens with an homage to Brahms 

(very beautiful, and the best piece here), and 

goes on to refer to other friends and influences 

like Donald Martino, Richard Wilson, and 

Michael Finnissy. Prokofieff seems to be an 

influence (in 8, especially), but most of the 

pieces are in a somewhat generic academic 

style, not very striking in character and not 

notably memorable—a condition particularly 

evident in the finale, which is said to recapitulate 

material from the preceding eight Preludes. 

The remainder of the program has seven 

piano pieces written between 2006 and 2009. A 

couple are inspired by material from the 

Renaissance (Alonso, Marenzio). Rameau is 

said to be an inspiration for a ‘Lullaby’, but 

neither his work cited nor the Marenzio 

appear literally (lucky for them, since they 

don’t have to endure what poor Alonso is put 

through in the ridiculous Concert Piece after La 

Tricotea of 2006). William Bland and Max Lifchitz 

get dedications, and Vincent Persichetti 

is said to be behind 2007’s Summer Solstice. 

The program closes with a lively if bombastic 

Toccata on Appalachian-style folk tunes. 

Ms Amato does her best with this weak 

material, but she’s not very engagingly recorded. 

GIMBEL 

CORIGLIANO: Piano Pieces 

Ursula Oppens, Jerome Lowenthal 

Cedille 123—60 minutes 

Five pieces for one and two pianos by John 

Corigliano. This release may be considered an 

upgrade over Andrew Russo’s well-played but 

less complete 2006 program on Black Box 1106 

(N/D 2006), which duplicates some, but not 

all, of these pieces. 

Winging It (2007-8), the program’s title 

piece, is new. These are three Corigliano 

“Improvisations for Piano” captured on a 

MIDI synthesizer and then “doctored” rhythmically 

by collaborator Mark Baechle to supply 

versions performable by Ms Oppens, to 

whom the piece is dedicated. There is a 

humorous march, a dreamy slow movement, 

and a rumbly finale—which, as it turns out, 

combine to make an entertaining virtuoso 

concert piece. This is its first recording. 

Jerome Lowenthal joins Ms Oppens for 

Chiaroscuro (1997), the piece for two pianos 

tuned a quarter tone apart last heard on the 

Black Box release with Russo and collaborator 

Steven Heyman (N/D 2006). I mentioned in 

that review that performances of the work 

were sure to be few and far between owing to 

the tuning demands, but here’s another one. 

The clarity of the tuning seems even more 

vivid here for some reason. Both are well 

played and conceived. 

1985’s Fantasia on an Ostinato has been 

recorded before in its version for piano solo, 

including Mr Russo on the Black Box release. 

The disposition of the repetitions of the patterns 

in the central section is left up to the performer, 

so performances may differ, particu- 



larly in length, though Russo and Oppens take 

about the same time. Both performances are 

suitably hallucinatory. 

Kaleidoscope (1959), for two pianos, was 

written when Corigliano was a student at 

Columbia in Otto Luening’s composition class. 

Spirited and filled with youthful energy and 

Bernsteinian lyricism, the piece demonstrates 

once again what a precious talent Corigliano 

had as a young man. 

The program closes with 1976’s Etude Fantasy, 

also recorded by Russo. This forbidding 

group of interrelated etudes has been well 

served on records; and, as would be expected, 

Oppens offers a formidable contribution. 

This will likely be the standard reference 

for this repertoire for some time to come. 

Notes by the composer. 

GIMBEL 

CRUMB: Makrokosmos, all 

Berlin PianoPercussion 

Telos 93 [2CD] 126 minutes 

Except for the humor, Crumb reminds me very 

much of Flannery O’Connor, the great Southern 

writer whose novels and stories are suffused 

with the mysterious—and yet all too 

familiar—landscape of small towns and farmland, 

as well as an aspiration toward a mystical 

spirituality. Crumb’s compositional voice was 

influenced, too, by the sense of limitless possibilities 

commonly felt in the later 1960s and 

1970s: his music contains quotations from 

Bach, Chopin, and others, along with melodies 

resembling Eastern music and a number of 

gestures that draw from a vast storehouse of 

20th Century sounds. All these elements 

appear and reappear so often, and in such a 

straightforward manner, that it’s easy to understand 

why some people find his music comes 

dangerously close to kitsch. (The same people 

would probably have felt the same about 

Berlioz in 1830.) I imagine that a discerning listener, 

as familiar with the individual moments 

of Crumb as many are, say, with Mahler’s tightly-woven 

skein of references in his symphonies, 

savor the multiple appearances of his 

familiar ideas for the countless new perspectives 

they give to his work as a whole. 

I am not (yet) such a listener, but I have no 

trouble lauding the times when I sense that 

this large, unruly universe of sounds comes 

together to make an absolutely stunning emotional 

impression, as in the final movement of 

Music for a Summer Evening, where pentatonic 

melodies of Crumb’s own design suddenly 

coalesce with the quotations of Bach’s Dsharp-minor 

fugue from WTC II and then 

gradually evaporate into a stillness that recalls 

nothing so much as the glorious ending of 

Mahler’s Lied von der Erde. 

These concert performances are everything 

I could ask from an artistic account of 

Crumb’s music; I marvel at the tonal variety 

and extreme control in soft passages commanded 

by Ya-ou Xie, who performed the two 

books of the solo Makrokosmos and also performs 

in Summer Evening. While other pianists 

have contributed just as stunning performances 

of the solo pieces (David Burge and 

Margaret Leng Tan spring readily to mind), the 

musicians of Berlin PianoPercussion are every 

bit as fine; and the collection of all four works 

in a single set makes the package even more 

attractive. 

HASKINS 

CZERNOWIN: Shifting Gravity; Winter 

Songs 3 

Diotima Quartet; Nikel Ensemble; Ascolta/ 

Jonathan Stockhammer; Ensemble Courage/ 

Titus Engel; Ipke Starke, electronics 

Wergo 6726—57 minutes 

Chaya Czernowin (b 1957) is a composer of 

sounds. She, according to the liner notes by 

Jorn Peter Hiekel, “distances herself from conventional 

expressivity”. She deals more with 

the “replicating processes of DNA molecules”. 

To give her her own due, “I believe the most 

beautiful thing there is, is to gaze into the 

inner darkness.” This she does by almost disguising 

the sounds of every instrument she 

writes for, from continuous loud scratching for 

strings, grunting trombones, sliding up and 

down and generally avoiding anything that 

might be considered melodic. This is not to say 

that her music is all loud or unpleasant in 

effect; but it is all abstract, not only in tonality 

but in the very sounds produced. The notes 

continually stress a relationship to the music 

of Robert Schumann. I don’t understand that. 

Czernowin isn’t even writing notes. How can 

this relate to someone who did? It doesn’t 

seem fair to Schumann. 

If this attracts you, go for it! It is played 

with sensitive involvement (I think) and it is, 

shall we say, different. 

D MOORE 

DALE: Piano Sonata; Prunella; Night 

Fancies; 

BOWEN: Miniature Suite in C 

Danny Driver—Hyperion 67827— 65 minutes 

I welcomed Mark Bebbington’s recording of 

Dale’s youthful sonata just recently (Mar/Apr 

2011). Here, just a few months later is yet 

another recording of this monumental work, a 

staple of many pianists in the first half of the 

20th Century. Driver adds two additional short 

works by Dale, as well as Bowen’s brief suite, 

which has yet to make it to Joop Celis’s series 

for Chandos. 



Dale’s sonata, written when he was 17 and 

dedicated to Bowen, is a massive work—here 

given 11 tracks where Chandos takes 10 (Hyperion 

divides Variation 7 into Prestissimo and 

Andante). While it bears influences from a host 

of romantic composers, nothing is merely imitative. 

Choosing between these two excellent 

recordings would not be easy. 

Bebbington plays with more romantic 

ardor and encompasses a wider spectrum of 

imaginative touches and phrase shaping in the 

opening movement. Driver is more classically 

poised and pushes the movement along with 

greater certainty. The slow movement, scherzo, 

and finale bring delights from both performers, 

while Driver brings greater flash and virtuosity 

to the faster variations of the scherzo. 

To complicate things further, Bebbington 

includes the only recording of William Hurlstone’s 

Chopin-like Sonata in F minor. Driver’s 

additional pieces include ‘Prunella’ a wistful, 

nostalgic miniature not unlike Elgar’s light 

music, and Night Fancies, a mostly gentle 

essay that eventually becomes a wild caprice 

with echoes of the middle of the slow movement 

from Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. 

Bowen’s Miniature Suite has three short 

movements and charm aplenty. This is light 

music totally without pretense and played with 

just the right touch of whimsical delight. The 

Finale is a whirlwind of brilliantly lit froth. 

Excellent notes, fine sound. Buy both, but 

do not miss the Hurlstone. 

BECKER 

DANZI & TAFFANEL: Wind Quintets 

Soni Ventorum—Crystal 251—65 minutes 

This is a re-release of 1975 and 1978 recordings. 

Soni Ventorum was loosely formed while 

some of its members were in high school and 

before they attended the Curtis Institute. During 

its more than 40 years performing with various 

personnel, the quintet became an institution 

and, without question, influenced the 

level of artistic excellence for all woodwind 

quintets to follow. 

Danzi’s quintets get considerably less 

attention from musicians today than they did 

when these recordings were made, perhaps 

because there is now so much more repertoire. 

They are commonly an essential part of the 

woodwind performance curriculum at schools 

and conservatories. 

A good complement to these early 19th 

Century works is the late 19th Century quintet 

of Taffanel. See Collections for a new recording 

of this work by Quintet Chantily. One expects 

newer recordings to have the best players and 

to somehow be better. This is the case with the 

Chantily recording, but not by a wide margin. 

The Soni Ventorum quintet was at their peak 

when they recorded this, and the performers 

were the country’s best. Only a few timbral differences 

exist between a few of the instruments, 

and they are merely the result of evolving 

concepts of tone production. 

Had it not been for Soni Ventorum, who 

performed these works with such style and 

refinement, the music might not have inspired 

contemporary woodwind quintet compositions. 

SCHWARTZ 

DAVIS: The French Lieutenant’s Woman; 

Pride and Prejudice; Cranford; Hotel du Lac 

Philharmonia Orchestra/ Carl Davis 

Carl Davis 10—77 minutes 

“Heroines in Music” is the theme that unites 

these scores, refashioned for concert performance 

and newly recorded in sumptuous 

sound. The French Lieutenant’s Woman is the 

only theatrical film here, and it’s regarded as 

one of Davis’s best efforts. It’s played by a 

mostly string orchestra set against a quartet of 

solo performers. If you know your Vaughan 

Williams you won’t find this concept especially 

ground-breaking, but it works beautifully for 

Davis. The eight movements make for a more 

affecting listening experience than the film’s 

soundtrack, where the intimate score was 

repeatedly interrupted by source music (extraneous 

snippets of now-dated party music). 

Pride and Prejudice is the best of the television 

scores. The three-movement suite begins 

with whooping horns and Mozartean piano 

runs (played to perfection by Melvyn Tan) and 

is one of the composer’s own favorite pieces. 

There’s a pseudo-classical-era sound to much 

of this music, furthered by brief quotes from 

Mozart and Cherubini. 

The seven-movement suite from Cranford 

(and the sequel Return to Cranford) has a 19th- 

Century feel, along with dramatic scoring for 

the emotional ups and downs of the story. 

From Hotel Du Lac Davis has chosen his ‘Nocturne’, 

here arranged for full orchestra; the 

guitar solo is given to the piano but the alto 

saxophone part remains. At first it sounds treacly, 

but it quickly improves, though at nearly 

11 minutes it’s a bit long-winded. 

The Philharmonia sounds ideal in these 

works, and the string soloists (Matthew 

Trusler, Patrick Savage, Lawrence Power, 

Jonathan Aasgaard) deserve special praise. 

KOLDYS 

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DEBUSSY: Early Piano Duets 

Adrienne Soos & Ivo Hagg 


Debussy’s piano music for four hands, 

whether at one or two pianos, has come my 

way for review with increasing regularity; and 

a number of these works can be considered 

mainstream repertoire for piano duo teams. I 

have also admired previous discs by the excellent 

Swiss duo piano team of Soos and Hagg. 

They have made somewhat of a specialty of 

finding obscure works (Moscheles & Weber, 

Hungaroton 32492, Nov/Dec 2008; Honegger 

& Messiaen, Guild 7331, May/June 2010) and 

then giving us great performances that have 

made me wonder why the repertoire is not 

better known. Such is the case here. These are 

all works for two pianists at one piano, composed 

in the 1880s (Debussy’s late teens and 

early 20s). Most are projected orchestral works 

that were never orchestrated: Symphony in B 

minor, Intermezzo, Divertissement, Overture 

Diane, Le Triomphe de Bacchus. Two are duet 

versions of orchestral works (L’enfant Prodigue 

excerpts and Printemps). 

The youthful energy and excitement to 

these virtuoso works is perfectly realized by 

Soos and Haag. Duets were a favorite pastime 

of the young Debussy, especially in his years in 

Italy. He often programmed them in his concerts 

and was unquestionably a great pianist. 

Soos and Haag have been a team for over 15 

years and have recorded much of this music 

before (in 1995, Pan 510 076, not reviewed). I 

have not heard that release, but, given all of 

the superb qualities of the new recording 

(2009), I can only hope for more Debussy from 

this duo. 

HARRINGTON 

DEBUSSY: Suite Bergamasque; Petite Suite; 

Printemps; En Blanc et Noir; Symphony 

Lyon Orchestra/ Jun Markl 


The sixth volume of the Debussy series with 

Jun Markl and the Lyon orchestra is a set of 

orchestral transcriptions carried out by the 

composer’s colleagues and later arrangers. The 

first four are fairly standard repertoire for 

orchestra. 

If you have been pleased with this wonderful 

series, there is no reason not to acquire this 

new entry. The performers continue to display 

a flair for Debussy, lending his music elegance, 

grace, saturated colors, and enthusiasm, while 

Markl’s tempos and pacing are unerring. I 

would give this volume a try even if you don’t 

care for the works. They are not exactly on my 

Debussy hit parade, but a smile appeared on 

my face at the first notes of Suite Bergamasque 

and remained there. This is a real mood lifter. 

Suite Bergamasque (1905—the dates in this 

review are of the piano compositions) is based 

on Verlaine’s Fêtes Galantes. ‘Claire de Lune’ 

was orchestrated by Andre Caplet; Gustave 

Cloez arranged the other three. Notice the 

delightful turns of woodwind phrases in the 

Prelude. The Minuet is so elegant that it 

reminds me of Ravel. ‘Claire de Lune’ is sweet 

and moving, but devoid of the indulgence that 

drags down some performances. 

Petite Suite (1889) was originally a piano 

duet. Henri Busser orchestrated the familiar 

version. This lyrical performance fits the title 

with gentility and a touch of the childlike. 

Debussy wrote Printemps (1887) to fulfill 

part of his obligations as winner of the Prix de 

Rome. The original was lost in a fire at the 

publisher’s, but Busser reconstructed it, working 

with the composer from a piano duet 

score. The Academie des Beaux-Arts warned of 

its “impressionism”, and they were correct: 

good for Debussy. I’ve always wondered why 

this colorful portrait of Spring is not more popular. 

It’s one of the composer’s most engaging 

works. 

En Blanc et Noir (1915 for two pianos) was 

written during the war and orchestrated in 

2002 by English composer Robin Holloway. 

The modern orchestration may explain its 

overt and bright-toned character. I is a call to 

patriotism. ‘Lent Sombre’ is dedicated to a 

friend killed in the war: note the reference to 

Germany in the quotation of ‘Ein Feste Burg’. 

III is a praise of summer. 

Debussy took a stab at writing a symphony 

in 1880. He completed only one movement, 

was not happy with that, and went no further. 

(Many people believe La Mer qualifies as a 

symphony). He sent a score to Nadezhda von 

Meck in Russia, who hoped to hear him play it, 

but apparently never did. The score survived, 

and a two-piano score was published in 1933. 

Tony Finno’s orchestration turned the single 

movement into three: a lively I, a cantabile II, 

and a march finale. No hint of the impressionist 

to come is heard in this attractive little bit of 

romanticism. If anything, its clear-toned 

nature, at least in this orchestration, makes it 

sound almost English sometimes. 

Good notes. Great sound. 

HECHT 

DELIUS: Appalachia; Song of the High 

Hills BBC Symphony & Chorus/ Andrew Davis 

Chandos 5088 [SACD] 64 minutes 

Almost 20 years have passed since Davis first 

demonstrated his Delius credentials in a stunning 

program for Teldec’s British Line series. 



That program is still available, and at a much 

reduced price. Davis, a Vice President of the 

Delius Society, now presents us with more 

Delius, along with the promise of additional 

recordings to come in the composer’s 2012 

Bicentennial Year. 

Appalachia: Variations on an Old Slave 

Song is Delius’s tribute to North America, or 

more particularly, to the deep South he knew 

in his days as an orange grower in Florida and 

as a violin teacher in Danville, Virginia. As 

Andrew Burn’s thorough notes point out, it is 

based on a song he heard the black tobacco 

factory workers singing in Danville. The 

lament about being “sold down the river” 

reflects the sadness that split families and 

lovers, though the final choral peroration takes 

a more positive note as “the dawn will soon be 

breaking”. 

Add the excellent Davis to a list that includes 

Hickox, Beecham, and Barbirolli. It is a 

most sensitive interpretation, and one where 

the variations follow each other without pause. 

Baritone Andrew Rapp is an effective singer 

and avoids sounding like he’s singing an oratorio, 

though some day I would like to hear the 

brief part sung by a negro. The choral contribution 

is atmospheric, and the orchestra, 

given a slightly distant perspective, reasonably 

detailed. The bass-shy SACD recording is not 

as sympathetic to the timpani as I would have 

liked, and the emotional thrust of the music is 

sometimes compromised as a result. There is 

also a general lack of warmth to the sound, and 

the volume needs a hefty boost, but so do 

many SACD recordings. For first choice I 

would incline towards the Hickox, where the 

1977 sound comes up as fresh as the day it was 

issued. 

A more serious problem occurs in the Song 

of the High Hills, inspired by the mountains of 

the composer’s beloved Norway. The performance 

at 28:34 veers towards the slower side 

of the spectrum, though Fenby tops this at an 

almost unheard-of 29:43. Like Fenby, the distant 

recording lends atmosphere, but the allimportant 

timpani again fail to do more than 

suggest their presence, and the thunder is 

always kept at bay. In the climaxes the sound 

flattens out, as if Davis’s engineers had decided 

to allow no further growth and bloom 

beyond the contained fortissimo limits they 

have set. 

Soprano Olivia Robinson and tenor 

Christopher Bowen handle the wordless roles 

very well; they seem to almost imperceptibly 

emerge from the choral mass. They do, however, 

seem to increase in volume towards a more 

forward placement than I would have preferred. 

Sir Andrew obviously loves this music, 

and he is most effective at molding phrases 

and keeping it from contemplative meandering. 

Still, a slightly more forward perspective 

for the orchestra would have lent greater 

expressivity to the wind solos, and to what 

could have been the lush and rippling sounds 

of the harp. 

Of the other recordings, it’s too bad that 

Beecham’s monaural efforts are let down by 

sound of little splendor, though few manage 

the quiet magic the way he does. Sir Charles 

Groves’s recording sounds much improved on 

its reissue and will probably find its way to the 

shelves of any true Delian since it fills out his 

set of the opera Koanga. Forced to choose, I 

would probably choose Eric Fenby on Unicorn. 

As the composer’s amanuensis for several 

years, his interpretation carries a special 

validity and importance. This newcomer is 

also an essential purchase despite my grumblings. 

Delius admirers are for once given an 

abundance of excellent choices. 

BECKER 

DILLON: Violin Pieces 

Danielle Belen; David Fung, p 


Nine violin works by Lawrence Dillon (b. 

1959), written from 1983 to 2008. Mr Dillon, 

the youngest composer to have earned a Juilliard 

doctorate (as a student of Vincent Persichetti), 

currently teaches at the North Carolina 

School of the Arts. He has stated his wish 

“to connect with the classical music heritage”, 

a respectable project that should be welcomed 

by many listeners. 

The opening track, Mister Blister (2006), 

properly belongs with 15 Minutes, a collection 

of 15 one-minute solo violin pieces. Facade 

(1983), written while he was still a student at 

Juilliard, thumbs his nose at the modernist faculty 

with a corny 19th Century salon waltz, 

contrasted with a modern-musicky middle 

section that prompts a faintly nauseating 

recap. ‘Bacchus Chaconne’ (1991), for violin 

and viola (Jean-Miguel Hernandez here), came 

about owing to a cancelled cello concerto 

commission. The five-minute piece opens with 

a despondent but very beautiful canon and 

ends with a sarcastically rock-ish chaconne. 

The 2008 Violin Sonata (with piano) is in 

three movements and is the most substantial 

piece on the program. Subtitled Motion, the 

piece plays its neoromantic card skillfully. The 

first movement works with an obsessive triplet 

rhythm. II divides between impassioned dissonance 

and mysterious quietude, with heavenly 

harp strumming in between. The finale ups the 

energy level and ends with “wildly antic 

homages to early rock-and-roll” (I would say 

“mildly”). There is another extended quiet 



middle section. The piece was originally for 

flute and piano—this is a transcription. 

Spring Passing (1997) is a transcription of a 

song dealing with the composer’s mother’s 

response to his father’s untimely death. It is 

scored here for marimba (Stan Muncy) and 

piano. It is appropriately moving, but might be 

more so with sung text (which is included in 

the notes). 

15 Minutes (2006) is a set of one minute 

pieces for solo violin, humorous, and well written 

for the instrument. They end with a 

Chopin-esque ‘Minute March’. 

Another transcription closes out the program. 

The Voice (2008) is an arrangement of an 

aria from a 2001 opera, text included: beautiful 

and expressive, it makes one wonder what the 

opera is like. 

All told, the scraps that make up this program 

give the impression of a serious and talented 

composer, though one will have to look 

elsewhere for more substantial examples 

(check indexes). Ms Belen is a fine player, and 

Mr Dillon’s work fits her well. 

GIMBEL 

DURON: Tonos Humanos 

Musica Ficta 

Musica Ficta 7—72:47 

This selection of tonos humanos (secular art 

songs), tonos divinos (sacred songs), and an 

excerpt from a zarzuela by Sebastian Duron 

makes an excellent companion to the recent 

recording of the Guerra Manuscript (July/Aug, 

p 252), which included in addition to a few 

anonymous works only songs by Juan Hidalgo 

and José Marin. Duron’s songs are filled with 

the same infectious rhythms and playful texts, 

and this anthology offers a broad sample of his 

songs in many different moods. Various Hispanic 

instrumental works by Martin y Coll, 

Gaspar Sanz, Santiago de Murcia, and Diego 

Xarava are supplied as interludes between the 

songs. 

The excellence of this same ensemble in 

their recording of baroque music from Bogota 

(May/June 2011: 221) is evident on this new 

recording, though I would observe that Carlos 

Serrano is not as proficient on bajon (early 

bassoon) as he is on recorder. Two extra 

singers and three viola da gambists are added 

to the performances of three songs in honor of 

the Holy Sacrament, and this offers some additional 

variety. 

As in the earlier recording, Jairo Serrano’s 

interpretation of these songs is very effective, 

though the long reverberation of the Abbey of 

St Meinrad, where the recording was made, 

while acceptable for the instrumental selections, 

it is quite distracting in the songs. This 

intimate chamber repertoire should be record- 

ed in a more appropriate venue. While all the 

improvised accompaniments and interludes 

by the members of Musica Ficta are all very 

well done and never distracting, I still have a 

slight preference for the simpler approach of 

the recording of the Guerra Manuscript—just 

voice and harp. The booklet offers an extensive 

introduction to Duron and his songs, with full 

texts and translations, though the English is 

sometimes a bit stilted and unclear. 

BREWER 

DUSSEK: Piano Concertos in G minor, Bflat; 

Tableau Marie Antoinette 

Andrea Staier, fp; Jean-Michel Forest, narr; Concerto 

Koln 

Capriccio 5072—67 minutes 

This same disc was issued by Capriccio as 

10444 in 1992. I have long cherished it. It was 

part of a series called Piano Concertos of 

Beethoven’s Time. 

Dussek, born in 1760 and died in 1812, was 

Czech-educated before moving west. He settled 

in Belgium, the Netherlands, and France 

before fleeing to England in 1789, where he 

remained for 10 years. He eventually returned 

to Paris in Napoleon’s time. 

Dussek wrote a good number of piano concertos; 

I have seven. These two are among his 

most brilliant ones and display his fondness 

for John Broadwood’s 5-1/2 octave instrument 

built for him. Also included is a recitation, with 

piano accompaniment, based on the execution 

of Marie Antoinette of France. This probably 

won’t interest collectors as much as the 

concertos, but it is interesting to hear once or 

twice. 

Andreas Staier plays marvelously and is 

well accompanied by Concerto Koln on period 

instruments. Good notes are again supplied. 

BAUMAN 

ELGAR: The Violin Music 

Marat Bisengaliev; Benjamin Frith, p; Camilla 

Bisengalieva, ob; West Kazakhstan Philharmonic/ 

Bundit Ungrangsee 

Naxos 572643 [3CD] 194 minutes 

Two of the discs in this set are reissues of Black 

Box recordings (J/F 2001 & N/D 2001), and the 

new material is the Violin Concerto, the Serenade, 

and a short fugue for violin and oboe. 

I find the reading of the concerto rather 

clinical. Bisengaliev’s violin playing is strong 

and secure, but this reading doesn’t present 

the piece as something that can stand up to its 

reputation as one of the great violin concertos. 

Perhaps it has something to do with the winds 

of the West Kazakhstan Philharmonic, which 

are not up to the level of the strings. The Sere- 



nade, which, of course, doesn’t have a solo violin, 

is really quite nice. 

FINE 

ELGAR: Enigma; see BRAHMS 

ELLING: String Quartets; Piano Quintet 

Engergard Quartet; Nil Andres Mortensen, p 

Simax 1304—64 minutes 

Catharimus Elling (1858-1942) is a Norwegian 

composer, a lesser-known contemporary of 

Grieg. His music is certainly enjoyable, but not 

captivating. He got his start as a music critic, 

which makes me somewhat sympathetic. He is 

a huge fan of Grieg’s work and reviewed his 

music enthusiastically. This resulted in a letter 

of recommendation from Grieg to encourage 

Elling’s composition training and the start of a 

long friendship. 

This music is enjoyable but quite conservative 

for the time, the Piano Quintet in particular 

(1901). Sometimes it is delightful, but 

everything about it had been conveyed 40 

years before—and said more effectively. The 

first movement is rather adolescent. I hear talent 

but very little sophistication. Some of the 

melodies are innovative but they go nowhere. 

Even if this music is a very early “neo-romantic” 

idiom, it just does nothing with what 

seems to be a very obvious approach to composing. 

Rachmaninoff’s work is a perfect 

example of what I think Elling is trying to 

achieve here. Rachmaninoff holds on to a “traditional” 

idiom, but he never lets it get in the 

way of his innovation and reshaping of language. 

Rachmaninoff’s music is “dated” perhaps, 

but in many ways entirely new and revolutionary. 

The string quartets are better—classical in 

form, and they keep me interested. The Aminor 

Quartet evokes Haydn meeting an early 

Schumann. It gets bogged down in a longwinded 

exposition. Some of Elling’s ideas have 

great potential but development is lacking. 

The ensemble is really involved in this 

music—I hear that clearly. Some sections are 

impressive—the second movement of the 

Piano Quintet, for example. But I expected 

more. 

JACOBSEN 

FACCO: Violin Concerto; see VIVALDI 

FARRENC: Nonet; see BRAHMS 

FAURE: Barcarolles; Romances sans 

Paroles 

Charles Owen, p 

Avie 2240—63 minutes 

People either hate or love the Fauré Barcarolles. 

If played plainly and literally, they can 

be rather boring. But Charles Owen really 

makes them into beautiful swaying songs of 

romanticism. 

I’ll just get this out of the way: The A section 

of the first Barcarolle sounds like a slow 

version of the Chimney song from Mary Poppins—it 

drives me crazy. But the second section 

is gorgeous. The F-sharp minor is certainly 

one of the best, and Owen’s playing is filled 

with life. His pedaling through all these performances 

is particularly memorable for his precise 

attack and tasteful coloring. Also worth 

noting is his exceptional playing of the E-flat; 

his left hand sounds like rapidly falling drops 

from recently melted ice—vigorously sparkling 

as they explode on the ground. 

The Romances sans Paroles, Fauré’s Op. 17, 

are also nicely done. Charles Owen is a wonderful 

pianist. I am still enthralled by his playing. 

It is remarkably simple and honest. He 

understands the flowing nature of the music, 

and while he maintains an impressive legato, 

he never lets it turn to mush or that underwater-mezzoforte 

thing people often descend 

to. If you are looking to add the complete Barcarolles 

to your collection, this is it. 

JACOBSEN 

FEINBERG: Violin Sonata; see KREIN 

FERKO: Stabat Mater 

Juliana Rambaldi, s; Choral Arts/ Robert Bode 

Rezound 5019—54 minutes 

The day I discovered Frank Ferko’s transcendental 

Stabat Mater nearly a decade ago was a 

happy one indeed; I couldn’t stop listening to 

Cedille’s excellent recording of it for at least a 

week. From his glowing review (M/A 2001), Mr 

Bond felt the same way. I’ve often wondered 

since why we haven’t gotten more recordings 

of this glorious work, as most knowledgeable 

contemporary choral aficionados consider 

Ferko one of America’s handful of truly great 

choral composers. I was thus thrilled to get 

this particularly luminous and celestial-sounding 

rendition from a most accomplished Seattle 

choir. 

Ferko creates his unique brand of choral 

magic by means of a particularly effective synthesis 

of ancient and modern forms and styles. 

In distinctly contemporary context, the seasoned 

choral listener will hear echoes of chant, 

organum, canon, Renaissance polyphony, and 

baroque counterpoint. He further employs a 

staggering variety of tonal schemes, including 

ancient church modes, standard major and 

minor keys, chromaticism, and exotic scales 

(whole-tone, octatonic). Of the work’s 25 textsettings, 

only one (No. 13) is strictly atonal. 

One of the composer’s avowed goals in this 

music (from his own revealing notes) was to 

create and sustain a constant interplay 



between whole steps and half steps. However 

he did it, the end result is a constantly shifting, 

kaleidoscopic array of beguiling harmonic colors 

and effects. With such different tonal 

approaches to each separate text-setting, 

more’s the wonder that Ferko achieves such 

consistency of deep sacred sentiment and 

sheer beauty. 

The work’s basic text is the classic 13th 

Century Latin hymn (in 20 stanzas) by Franciscan 

friar Jacopone da Todi, describing the Virgin 

Mary’s searing emotions as she bears 

grieving witness to her son’s agony and death 

on the cross. But Ferko seeks to update and 

amplify the basic theme of a mother’s outrageous 

loss of her child with five additional 

interpolated texts in English that speak of 

human losses most of us have experienced in 

the course of our lives—whether from war, disease, 

murder, suicide, or tragic accidents. 

Performance quality is beyond reproach. 

Mr Bode draws absolutely ravishing and emotionally 

wrenching singing from his choir; their 

rich, smooth sonorities gain a particularly 

ethereal bloom in the heavenly acoustics of 

Seattle’s St James Cathedral—where this 

recording was made in concert. Soprano 

soloist Juliana Rambaldi is superb. The Cedille 

recording—from His Majestie’s Clerks, a 

slightly smaller ensemble—offers a slightly 

more transparent and purer-sounding 

account, with somewhat clearer separation 

between the choral parts. But this choir’s tonal 

opulence and sacred intensity sets their performance 

apart. 

If you don’t know Ferko’s wondrous choral 

music (he also writes amazing music for 

organ), this recording is sure to make a convert 

of you. Check out his shimmering Hildegard 

Motets (N/D 1996) while you’re at it. 

KOOB 

FEVRIER: Pieces de Clavecin 

Charlotte Mattax Moersch 

Centaur 3084 [2CD] 98 minutes 

Harpsichordist and organist Pierre Fevrier 

(1699-1760) came from a musical family. His 

father was an organist and his cousin, Charles 

Noblet, was harpsichordist at the Paris Opera. 

Fevrier’s harpsichord students included the 

celebrated Claude-Benigne Balbastre (1727- 

99). Fevrier published two books of harpsichord 

music in 1734 and 1735. The influence 

of Rameau is evident in pieces like ‘Le 

Labyrinthe’ (the figurations bring to mind 

Rameau’s ‘L’Egyptienne’) and the fugue of the 

third suite; its theme is reminiscent of ‘La Forqueray’ 

from Rameau’s Pieces de Clavecin en 

Concerts. Fevrier includes fugues in his second 

and third suites. The fugue was very uncommon 

in French harpsichord music. I imagine 

Fevrier’s beautiful fugues might have gone a 

long way in convincing the 18th Century 

French public that the harpsichord was just as 

fit for contrapuntal music as the organ. Mattax 

makes a lovely transparent sound at the harpsichord 

and plays with a great deal of grace. 

KATZ 

FORQUERAY: Harpsichord Pieces 

Michael Borgstede 

Brilliant 94108 [2CD] 151 minutes 

Borgstede’s playing is fresh, beautiful, and 

rhetorical. He has a superb sense of narrative. 

In ‘La Clement’ flowers of sound bloom from 

his fingers, and he deploys the rondeau after 

each couplet like the moral of a fable. The 

whole piece feels like a collection of fables, 

each different but with the same moral. In ‘La 

Mandoline’ he paints a vivid picture of that 

instrument by differentiating between plucked 

and “strummed” sounds (though the harpsichord 

really only plucks). And what a joyful 

burst of sound at the end! ‘La Mandoline’ is 

the music I imagine Watteau’s commedia 

characters would be playing, if one could hear 

that music. It is full of simplicity, modesty, 

humor, and love. Borgstede’s reading of ‘La 

Jupiter’ is an astounding feat of characterization. 

This Jupiter can barely handle his own 

strength. When he finally gets around to 

throwing thunderbolts the gesture is not so far 

removed from a two-year-old’s wild tantrum. 

This release is profoundly rewarding. The 

sound of the harpsichord, tuned in A = 392, in 

a temperament ordinaire after Rameau (1726) 

is rich and earthy. One need only look at the 

character markings for the pieces to find apt 

descriptors for Borgstede’s interpretation: 

spirit, lightness, nobility, aplomb. 

KATZ 

FURTOK: Double Bass Quartets 2+5; 3 

Pieces for 4 Basses 

Boguslaw Furtok, Cristian Braica, Simon Backhaus, 

Ulrich Franck, db 

Zuk 333—64 minutes 

The Frankfurt Radio Symphony has a rather 

marvelous bass section that has developed a 

repertoire of their own. They call themselves 

the Flying Basses. Here we have them playing 

some works written by their leader, Boguslaw 

Furtok, from 2002 to 2006. This would be hard 

to guess by the music; the idiom sounds earlier—anything 

from Schubert up to WW I. It is 

undeniably beautiful music, and the use of 

four basses definitely brings us up to the present 

day; but you will find no dissonances for 

their own sake, no minimalism, and the formal 

structures are basically 19th Century. As a 

sneaky romantic at heart I enjoy it quite thoroughly. 

In fact, I hope that they will see fit to 



record the other three Furtok bass quartets 

soon. They are grand pieces and are played 

with an easy flair that makes one stop thinking 

of the instrument as an ungainly elephant. It 

becomes a virtuoso in its own right. 

D MOORE 

GAL: Symphony 3; 

SCHUMANN: Symphony 3 

Orchestra of the Swan/ Kenneth Woods 


This is the first recording in a projected cycle 

of all four of Hans Gal’s symphonies—none of 

them, as far as I can tell, ever before recorded. 

Why on earth then does Avie pair Gal’s heretofore 

unknown Third Symphony with Schumann’s 

Third? Why not include what all who 

buy this disc will want: an additional Gal symphony? 

Is Avie this obtuse, or greedy? 

Gal (1890-1987) was a superb but backwards-looking 

craftsman who fled his native 

Austria when the Nazis came to power and settled 

in England where, by a cruel irony, he was 

imprisoned during the Second World War in 

an English internment camp as a suspicious 

alien. Of course (as he himself pointed out) he 

got vastly more humane treatment than the 

Nazis would have offered. But still. 

Several programs of Gal’s chamber and 

piano music have been issued in the past few 

years, but the only other orchestral music on 

CD that I’ve seen until now is the Triptych and 

two violin concertos on Avie 2146—all very 

nicely played and recorded, but not among 

Gal’s best efforts: too bland and placid to make 

much of an impression. Likewise his Idyllikon 

(also for orchestra) on the Amadeo LP doesn’t 

have a strong enough profile to prompt me to 

return to it. That’s the typical pitfall of staunch 

musical conservatives who pointedly reject 

most modern-era developments—like Gal, 

who wrote carefully reassuring tonal music following 

classic procedures very much in the 

tradition of Mozart, Schumann, Brahms, and 

Dvorak, with some later importations from 

such unthreatening figures as Saint-Saens and 

Fauré. 

Not surprising, then, that Gal’s musical 

personality is decorous and gentlemanly; he 

avoids anything excessive or self-dramatizing, 

tragic or erotic, grand or monumental. Instead 

he is sunny, serene, chaste, contemplative, 

wistful, whimsical, celebratory, or merry. 

Despite these self-imposed limitations Gal 

could and did write some very good music, if 

not consistently. His 24 Preludes and Fugues, 

now available in two recordings (Pan 51041, 

Nov/Dec 2002 & Avie 2064, May/June 2006) 

are excellent—and among his most daring 

works, with some piquant touches that sound 

just a bit like Prokofieff or Hindemith. (Gal was 

an exceptionally lucid and elegant contrapuntalist.) 

One notices faint echoes of Zemlinsky and 

Strauss, as well as Mahler’s Fourth Symphony—his 

most pastoral and innocent—in Gal’s 

nicely written 1952 Third (in three movements 

lasting 35 minutes). But there’s little of the 

romantic heroism that, for instance, infused 

the responses of more emotional composers 

like Shostakovich to the global conflict all had 

recently lived through. This isn’t to say that 

Gal’s symphony isn’t, in part, quite serious—it 

does incorporate, in the first movement, considerable 

(though never harsh) turbulence and 

struggle; but these are sharply controlled and 

limited in scope and power; and the lyrical, 

palliative impulse dominates and encloses 

them. What remains in mind are gentle 

melodies, delicate harmonic shadings, sensuous 

but transparent scorings, and a sense of 

verdant natural beauty—a Viennese expatriate’s 

version of English pastoralism, perhaps. 

The musical flow is untroubled and unforced—”organic”, 

in a word—and carries the 

listener along from one felicitous turn of 

phrase to the next. 

Anyone who enjoys the old-fashioned, 

well-made symphonies of Miaskovsky, or 

Stenhammar, or Alfano, or (the recently rediscovered) 

Weingartner, or many another polite 

20th Century composer who remained comfortable 

speaking a late-Victorian-era language, 

would most likely enjoy Gal’s Third, 

especially in this dulcet performance (by the 

Stratford-on-Avon-based Orchestra of the 

Swan) and clear, richly glowing sonics from 

Avie. 

LEHMAN 

GANDOLFI: Line Drawings; see BRUBECK 

GAUBERT: Flute Pieces; 

DEBUSSY: Syrinx 

Immanuel Davis, fl; Kathe Jarka, vc; Timothy 

Lovelace, p—MSR 1356—59 minutes 

Philippe Gaubert (1879-1941) was a French 

composer, performer, teacher, and conductor 

whose career peaked in the interwar period. He 

wrote in all genres, including the most important 

one, flute music. This disc offers a sample 

of his pieces performed on official instruments 

of the Paris Conservatory. It was this particular 

sound Gaubert became accustomed to when 

he was a student there in the 1890s. The flute 

timbre is almost indistinguishable from what 

we recognize today, while the piano (an 1899 

Erard) mostly sounds different, depending on 

the writing. Although the differences won’t 

jump out at you, these instruments suit the 

music in subtle ways. I was immediately struck 

by the clarity and voicing of the piano part. The 



liner notes point out that Erard made both 

pianos and harps, and the rapid, harp-like 

decay of their pianos contrasts with the long 

decay of a modern Steinway. 

Since flutists are universally schooled in 

the merits of the French aesthetic, it would be 

immediately apparent if Davis got anything 

wrong. His playing (on a Louis Lot) epitomizes 

French style. Flexibility is the key word that 

comes to my mind, along with an effortlessness 

and accuracy that I think were central to 

Gaubert’s own playing. Davis navigates the 

instrument’s various registers with ease and 

excellent intonation and control. 

This program includes the Sonatas 1 and 3, 

Fantaisie, and Nocturne et Allegro Scherzando. 

Like his other chamber music, Gaubert’s Three 

Watercolors for flute, cello, and piano (1915) 

are not heard often enough—and this reading 

leaves you willing to play them again. All his 

music sounds wholly French. The final movement 

of the third sonata opens in canon with a 

Franckian nod. It sums up Gaubert’s style to 

say you would truly need a heart of stone to 

dislike any of it. 

The instruments are picked up closely, in a 

way that is direct and not resonant, so the 

overall sound is more raw and honest than 

produced. The intention was surely to present 

the instruments with clarity and to preserve 

the clarity of the music. It makes for very 

pleasant listening, and the flute and cello are 

splendid together. Mr Lovelace [who used to 

write for ARG] knows just when to push forth 

and hold back, both in loudness and in tempo. 

As part of the standard repertory, 

Gaubert’s flute pieces are often recorded in 

collections with music by his contemporaries. 

His output has been surveyed at greater length 

by Susan Milan (Chandos 8981; Jan/Feb 1992) 

and Fenwick Smith (three releases on Naxos; 

see our Index). Nonetheless, this is a worthwhile 

and welcome addition to the Gaubert 

discography. 

GORMAN 

GETTY: Plump Jack Overture; Ancestor 

Suite; Homework Suite; Tiefer und Tiefer; 

Fiddler of Ballykeel; Raise the Colors 

Academy of St Martin in the Fields/ Neville Marriner—Pentatone 

5186 356—60 minutes 

Gordon Getty (b 1933) is a San Franciscobased 

businessman, the son of oil tycoon J 

Paul Getty. He is also a fine composer who 

speaks a very tonal language. This collection of 

orchestral works shows that, while vocal music 

is Getty’s specialty, he obviously has no trouble 

working with instruments. 

The 12-minute Overture to Plump Jack 

(Shakespeare’s nickname for Falstaff) is a collection 

of loosely connected themes and 

episodes, some contemplative, others dramatic, 

all easy on the ears. Ancestor Suite (2009) is 

a ballet score written for the Russian National 

Orchestra. The 12-movement, 36-minute work 

is about Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher, where 

the living (Poe and friends) meet the immortal 

members of the Usher family at a ball. Much of 

the time, you’d swear you are hearing 19th- 

Century ballet music, but the interesting twists 

and turns are contemporary. 

‘Tiefer und Tiefer’ (Deeper and Deeper, 

1991) is a haunting little waltz. Homework 

Suite is an orchestrated version of a piano 

piece Getty wrote in 1964; its five little movements 

are character-pieces with solo lines for 

oboe, piccolo, violin, English horn, and harp. 

‘The Fiddler of Ballykeel’ and ‘Raise the Colors’ 

salute Getty’s Irish roots. 

If you want new music that sounds old yet 

fresh, this is for you. Polished readings. 

KILPATRICK 

GIBBS: Violin Pieces 

Robert Atchison; Olga Dudnik, p 

Guild 7353—73 minutes 

The only piece that I am somewhat compelled 

by in this collection is the Sonata in E. It is the 

most seriously thought-out of all. The Three 

Pieces are very charming and sensitive. Most 

of these pieces seem to be pastoral meditations 

and have a distinctly English sound. Bartok 

seems to be an influence on Gibbs, particularly 

in ‘March Wind’, whose opening closely 

resembles the Violin Concerto. The players are 

OK. 

As for everything else, I just do not get it. 

Some of the melodies are painfully obvious 

and dumb, like the opening of the Phantasy, 

Op. 5. I think if Gibbs would have started with 

the arpeggio accompaniment that appears 

later in the piece rather than the clumsy 

stomping of the piano the effect would be less 

offensive. Other pieces are just bizarre. The 

‘Prelude’ in the Suite, Op. 101, for example. 

What is it? It has absolutely no direction. The 

rest of the Suite is just as tedious. I suspect 

Gibbs was trying to write a neo-baroque violin 

suite in the style of Bach. 

JACOBSEN 

GILARDINO: Concerto di Oliena; 8 Transcendental 

Etudes 

Cristiano Porqueddu, g; Ermanno Brignolo Asti/ 

Sardinia Chamber Orchestra 


This is Gilardino’s third concerto for guitar and 

orchestra. His music is bold and intense— 

often beautiful and evocative, always challenging. 

He once said that, in years past, there were 

no guitarists who had the ability to perform his 



music properly. Those days are over, and in 

Cristiano Porqueddu he has a virtuoso fully 

capable of realizing his demands. 

This was evident in Porqueddu’s earlier 

recording of Gilardino’s massive set of Studi di 

Virtuosita e di Trancendenza. The title was 

taken from Liszt, but instead of one set of a 

dozen Transcendental Etudes, Gilardano 

wrote five—a set of 60 works, nearly all programmatic, 

each exploring a different challenge 

or set of challenges for guitar. Porqueddu’s 

recording of that huge work (N/D 2009), 

on five discs, was on my Critic’s Choice list of 

2009, and it remains one of the greatest guitar 

recordings I’ve ever encountered. He plays 

Gilardino’s music as if he wrote it himself— 

none of the considerable demands are beyond 

him. If you don’t know those works from the 

complete recording, here is your chance to 

sample a set of eight, drawn from each of the 

five books. If you enjoy them, I urge you to 

seek out the full set on Brilliant. 

The concerto is a fascinating work. The 

music hovers in and out of tonality, with an 

expressionist character. The orchestra is actually 

a large chamber ensemble, one player to a 

part. The double reeds sound so absolutely 

even in their notes that sometimes I could 

have sworn they were synthesized. The work is 

in the standard fast-slow-fast arrangement, 

and problems of balance between guitar and 

orchestra are met mostly by having the guitar 

alternate, rather than play with the orchestra. 

Each of the three movements is based, to some 

extent, on repeating pitch patterns like an ostinato, 

used as a foundation for development. 

Gilardino says that he wrote the work without 

reliance on any philosophical, mathematical, 

or pictorial foundations. The latter claim is 

quite evident—though he describes the namesake 

town of Oliena with a pastoral affection, 

the music is mostly intense and even angry, 

when not brooding. 

These are great performances of fascinating 

music. If you’re up for the challenge, it’s 

worth your efforts. Brilliant should, however, 

seek out some better translators. The notes 

have some interesting references to a “kettle of 

drums” and to “arches without divides, to 

allow for a chamber execution with only one 

arch per section”. The “arch” is surely a mistranslation 

of the Italian arci, referring to 

bowed strings. 

KEATON 

GINASTERA: Cello Concertos 

Mark Kosower; Bamberg Symphony/ Lothar 

Zagrosek 


Alberto Ginastera (1916-83) wrote his first cello 

concerto in 1968, his second in 1980. They are 

both about 34 minutes long in these performances 

and are highly colorful works, the second 

written for performance by Ginastera’s 

wife Aurora Natola, who has issued several 

recordings of his works, including these two 

concertos (Pieran 34, Sept/Oct 2009). Not to be 

outdone, Kosower has also made a disc of the 

cello-piano works (Naxos 570569), and he 

includes at least one piece that Natola missed. 

Natola was at something of a disadvantage, 

since she was not young when she recorded 

these works; Kosower is more solid technically. 

His Concerto 2 is taken from an exciting performance. 

Concerto 1 was done in the same 

hall, but without an audience. Concerto 1 is 

rather a grim work, very difficult to play, but an 

event for the listener. Concerto 2 shows more 

popular influences. Both are fine compositions 

that take us to other worlds of sound and feeling. 

These are very good readings that make a 

deep impression. 

D MOORE 

GLASS & SUSO: The Screens+ 

Martin Goldray conducting 

Orange Mountain 66—59 minutes 

Jean Genet’s play The Screens, as Philip Glass 

explains in his liner notes, “takes place in the 

early 1960s in Algeria during the revolutionary 

struggle for independence from France” and 

combines “themes of colonialism, exploitation, 

and the European notion of ‘Arab-ness’”. 

When Joanne Akalaitis directed a production 

of it in Minneapolis, she hoped to have incidental 

music written by the African composer 

Foday Musa Suso in collaboration with a Western 

composer. Glass, who had known Suso 

since the early 1980s, volunteered. The result is 

one of the most satisfying scores of Glass’s 

career. The two men, Glass reports, actually 

worked together, contributing ideas or continuations 

as they proceeded; the result sometimes 

sounds like Glass, sometimes like Suso, 

but never simply like one or the other. No texts 

or translations for the pieces sung by Suso. I 

just saw that the original CD (distributed by 

Point Music) now sells for anywhere from $55 

to almost $200; this release contains all the 

original music from the Point Release as well 

as two tracks from concert performances. 

HASKINS 

GLAZOUNOV: Piano Sonatas 1+2; 

LIADOV: Polish Variations; 

ARENSKY: 6 Caprices 

Martin Cousin 

Somm 100—77 minutes 

The Russian Piano Sonata is one of my favorite 

genres. So it is with a little shame that I 

acknowledge that the two Glazounov works 



were not familiar to me before this came 

along. Written together in 1901, they just predate 

some of my favorites—Balakirev (1905), 

Rachmaninoff 1 (1908), Scriabin 4 (1903)—but 

sound different. With almost a complete lack 

of Russian characteristics, these could easily 

be mistaken for central European works, heavily 

under the influence of Chopin, Schumann, 

and Liszt. 

The piano sonata by Sinding (1909) was 

also brought to mind as I listened to this. The 

Liadov Variations and the Arensky Caprices are 

very much in the same vein—melodic, very 

tonal, in a romantic idiom, and totally charming, 

but not at all in keeping with the Russian 

nationalist compositional goals of Balakirev 

and his “Mighty Handful”, who were contemporaries 

of Glazounov. Some of the Liadov 

Variations are very reminiscent of Chopin 

Etudes in style, and one might very well expect 

that, given the Polish theme. Of the enchanting 

Arensky Caprices, the fifth is clearly based 

on Chopin’s most famous Nocturne in E-flat 

Op. 9:2. 

The sonatas are big works, each in three 

movements and over 25 minutes long. Initially 

I was a bit cool towards them, but Cousin’s 

technically secure and beautiful performances 

won me over. This is absolutely gorgeous playing 

of works that are quite difficult, with page 

after page of nasty figurations tossed off seemingly 

without effort. While Cousins might disagree 

with that statement, the auditory effect is 

not one of someone struggling with the notes. 

His engaging performances make the most of 

the big romantic sweep. I definitely feel the 

need to become well acquainted with these 

sonatas, and can’t think of a better way than 

with this marvelous recording. 

HARRINGTON 

GODARD: Symphonie Orientale; Piano 

Concerto 1; Introduction & Allegro 

Victor Sangiorgio, Royal Scottish Orchestra/ Martin 

Yates 

Dutton 7274—70 minutes 

Just as “Turkish” or “Janissary” music seized 

the imagination of composers in the 18th Century—one 

need only think of Mozart’s Abduction 

from the Seraglio, Haydn’s Military Symphony, 

or for that matter the alla marcia section 

of the final movement of Beethoven’s 

Ninth—so too in the 19th Century were artists 

of every persuasion drawn to the Orient, and 

to (as one writer wryly puts it) “the mysterious, 

the fabulous, the forbidden, the sensuously 

erotic...everything that aroused European 

imagination but that the narrow morality of 

the 19th Century prohibited”. In 1820 Victor 

Hugo inflamed French sensibilities with Les 

Orientales, and five years later Delacroix with 

his Women of Algiers—just like Mozart before 

him—celebrated the languorous charms of the 

harem. In the concert hall we may think first of 

Felicien David, whose grand “Ode Symphonie” 

Le Desert in 1844 helped open the door to Orientalism 

in French music, followed five years 

later by the “Oriental symphony in five pictures” 

Le Selam (The Greeting) by Louis Etienne 

Ernest Reyer, who modeled his symphony 

closely after David’s. (If you have the September/October 

1992 issue on your shelf, you 

can read reviews of both scores as released by 

Capriccio.) 

The fact that Benjamin Godard was able to 

achieve such a triumphant success with his 

Symphonie Orientale written 35 years later in 

1884 shows what a great draw “Turkish music” 

continued to be for many years to come— 

annotator John Warrack perceptively likens it 

to Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Scheherazade written in 

1888. Even if that’s your only reference point, 

you’ll surely welcome this brilliantly conceived 

example of Orientalism a la Française. 

Godard prefaced each section of the symphony 

(there are five in all) with a poem, starting 

out with Leconte de Lisle’s Les Elephants 

for ‘Arabia’—not exactly an elephant stomping 

ground. (Were there wild elephants roaming 

Arabia a hundred years ago?) Godard aptly 

images the pachyderm caravan shuffling along 

the sands, beginning with the heavy tread of 

the basses set against string tremolos a la 

D’Indy and continually gaining strength, then 

waning in intensity. Here the obvious cognate 

is Moussorgsky’s heavily laden oxcart (‘Bydlo’) 

from Pictures at an Exhibition, just as the 

ensuing Chinoiserie (‘China’) after Auguste de 

Chƒtillon with its chirping woodwinds and 

piquant touches of percussion calls to mind 

Moussorgsky’s ‘Unhatched Chicks’ if perhaps 

via Gliere’s Red Poppy. I’m pleased to have in 

my collection a concert performance by New 

York City’s Jupiter Symphony under its excellent 

conductor (and oboist par excellence) Gerard 

Reuter, who gets what Godard is after a lot 

better than Martin Yates, allowing the great 

beasts a full two minutes longer to reach their 

destination (that’s also why I still count Reiner’s 

Pictures as my favorite!). 

Even more curious than Godard’s Arabian 

elephants is the third movement, where the 

Orient is expanded to include Greece—a 

vignette from Victor Hugo’s Orientales subtitled 

‘Sara la Baigneuse’ (also set memorably by 

Berlioz)—yet it might just as easily be a Venetian 

barcarolle, a gentle rocking rhythm 

adorned by woodwind filigrees that limns the 

fair Sara swinging indolently in a hammock 

while bathing in the waters of a fountain 

drawn from Athens’s Illyssus, the river that 

flows through the city. But there’s no question 



Persia is essential to our Oriental travelog, and 

IV, setting a poem by Godard himself, tells of 

‘Le Rêve de la Nikia’, a beautiful young Persian 

girl who dreams of reigning as Queen over 

some distant land. Godard entrusts the soulful 

solo to the oboe, who in turn defers to the clarinet 

yet returns near the close (after a rather 

stormy scene) where he plays Don Quixote to 

the nattering bassoon’s Sancho Panza. 

But Godard saves the big brass (and I do 

mean big!) for the closing ‘Marche Turque’. 

Another of Godard’s quatrains praising Allah 

sets the scene. Clearly these Turks are clad in 

their most formidable battle gear, and you 

won’t hear anything approaching the wit and 

effervescence of either Beethoven’s or 

Mozart’s quickstep. Truly this is a feast for the 

brass, who resound from far and near—I was 

beginning to wonder if Godard actually called 

for an offstage band, but finally resigned 

myself to the fact that the raucous effect was 

directly traceable to the slapdash playing of 

the Scottish brasses who sound like they came 

straight from some Glasgow pub, unfortunately 

made even worse by the echo-ridden hall. 

But this music surely must have come like 

manna from Heaven to the absolutely glorious 

Jupiter Symphony brass, who without ever 

sounding anything less than refined and 

absolutely professional, simply throw it out to 

the enthusiastic audience with such joy that 

you can tell they’re really having a blast. Oh, 

how I wish they might open up their vault of 

concert performances to the world. I can at 

least point you to their website, www.jupitersymphony.com. 

Still, the Scots make enough 

of a racket that I imagine your neighbors will 

come a’knocking at your door just the same. 

Since the ‘Berceuse’ from Jocelyn—once 

standard fare on “pops” programs—has apparently 

become passe, most record buyers these 

days are likely to know Godard mainly from his 

Concerto Romantique (May/June 2008)—hardly 

a stretch for a student of Vieuxtemps—yet 

he also composed prolifically for the piano, 

including two concertos. The First Concerto, 

in A minor, saw the light of day nine years 

before the symphony and like the Brahms Bflat 

is cast in four movements rather than the 

usual three. A pensive introduction sets up a 

four-note motto that will pervade the opening 

movement, soon taken up effusively by the 

soloist; and there’s a secondary motif that 

sounds very much like its counterpart in the 

finale of Anton Rubinstein’s Fourth Concerto 

written 11 years before. A free-wheeling “Fantasia” 

in E major forms something of a movement 

within a movement, while frequent outbursts 

by the brass seem to have elbowed their 

way in from the Berlioz Requiem—unfortunately 

just as raw as in the symphony. A 

Mendelssohnian Scherzo follows, and one 

might wish Victor Sangiorgio could “trip the 

light fantastic”; unfortunately he seems to trip 

over his own shoelaces, gawky and prosaic. 

Here I happily turned to my German aircheck 

with Gerhard Puchelt, who is far more nimble 

and light of foot; and he also manages to keep 

III from turning into a funeral cortege as it 

does here. But once Sangiorgio gets to the 

finale he handily trumps Puchelt with an 

urgent and sparkling account of this delightful 

romp, spelled by a “Papageno” motif (or is it 

“Papagena”?) that soon spills over into witty 

passagework for the soloist. You might expect 

more of the same from the Introduction and 

Allegro, but here the music suggests Saint- 

Saens, most of all Africa (actually written 11 

years later) until Godard piles on the cymbals 

and bass drum and it sounds like a carnival 

cootch dance. Sangiorgio takes the opening 

Lento quite slowly, saving up his energy for 

Godard’s exhilarating development. 

Sound tends to thicken in loud passages, 

and Martin Yates’s apparent proclivity for letting 

the brasses (especially the trumpets) go 

hog wild doesn’t help any. Just the same, I 

hope Sangiorgio and Dutton plan to follow up 

with Godard’s Second Piano Concerto; and a 

generous look at Felicien David’s other symphonies 

would be welcome too. 

HALLER 

GODOWSKY: Java Suite; 

SAINT-SAENS: Danse Macabre 

Carl Petersson, p 

Sterling 1671—57 minutes 

The Java Suite is Godowsky’s journey through 

“distant lands” and an account of his fascination 

with “strange people”. Most of this music 

is repetitive and filled with aimless whirlwinds 

of virtuosity. Most of these pieces are not that 

interesting. Just when you think something 

meaningful is going to be said, in comes overstated, 

with rapid arpeggios in the upper register 

of the piano to remind us we are far away. 

Some of Godowsky’s harmonic language is 

interesting, but most of the virtuosity is distracting 

fluff. If you think early Liszt can be 

over-the-top, make way for Godowsky. 

Carl Petersson is quite good. His playing is 

captivating, and he is good at introspective 

music. He should give the Debussy Preludes a 

go. His playing of the Danse Macabre is OK. He 

certainly executes the showman element of the 

piece effectively. I have always thought that 

such a large piece—conceptually—does not 

belong on the piano. It’s too loud. 

JACOBSEN 



GOMPPER: Violin Concerto; Ikon; Flip; 

Spirals 

Wolfgang David, Peter Zazofsky,v; Royal Philharmonic/ 

Emmanuel Siffert 


David Gompper is an Academy Award-winning 

American composer. He has worked 

internationally as a pianist, conductor, and 

composer. This is the first time I have heard 

his music, and I am very impressed. I feel 

refreshed that such exceptional music is still 

composed in these times of artistic apathy. 

The incredible Wolfgang David takes the 

stage with the Violin Concerto. This Austrian 

violinist is extraordinary. His playing is exceptionally 

rich and opulent and can also be 

frighteningly delicate and distant when necessary. 

The concerto begins with a violent solo 

violin gesture that explodes into a dense texture, 

Stravinskian in quality. The violin dances 

around to a very American tune, yet reflects a 

staple 20th Century violin concerto. Shostakovich 

seems to be of influence in passages of 

very involved counterpoint in the winds, 

which serve as support for the cadenza-like 

passages in the violin—as in the Op. 99 scherzo. 

The frantic exchange is interrupted by a 

beautifully meditative section. As the agitation 

begins to brew once more, the desperate counterpoint 

between the strings and winds comes 

to a drastic halt with a booming brass call that 

melts back into a meditative vision. The ending 

seems to be in the style of Shostakovich— 

this time, the end of the Fourth Symphony. 

The second movement is an agonizing 

moment, with a never-ending violin line that 

reaches a transformative climax. III is certainly 

the high point of this piece. I cannot get 

enough! I am listening obsessively to the riveting 

ending. Again, it seems to redefine, yet celebrate 

the great violin concertos with sounds 

of Bartok and Shostakovich. David Gompper 

also does something rather rare these days: 

compose a good tune; it’s glorious. 

The other pieces are also very satisfying— 

especially the emotionally charmed Ikon and 

Spirals, inspired by the Fibonacci sequence. 

What an absolute delight! 

JACOBSEN 

GOULD: Freedom Fanfare; St Lawrence 

Suite; Jericho Rhapsody; Clarinet Derivations; 

Band Symphony 4 

Stephanie Zelnick, cl; University of Kansas Wind 

Ensemble/ Scott Weiss 


This collection of concert band works by Morton 

Gould (1913-96) has introduced me to several 

works I wish I had played back in my band 

days. The UK Wind Ensemble’s exciting reading 

of ‘Fanfare for Freedom’, composed in 

1942 for the Cincinnati Symphony, has all the 

block triads well balanced and in tune. From 

the same period is the 12-minute Jericho 

Rhapsody (1941), based on ‘Joshua Fit the Battle’ 

and in eight lively, creative sections that 

correspond with events in the Biblical story. 

Also quite attractive is Saint Lawrence Suite 

(1958), in four movements, each opening with 

a two-trumpet fanfare (symbolizing US-Canadian 

cooperation), and each with much quiet 

playing. It is good to hear Gould’s Symphony 4 

(1952), subtitled West Point, composed for that 

institution’s sesquicentennial. In two movements, 

the work opens with a seemingly long 

(though only 12 minutes) ‘Epitaphs’ and concludes 

with the uplifting ‘Marches’. 

The program also includes Derivations for 

Clarinet (1955), given a smooth, swinging 

reading by University of Kansas clarinet professor 

Stephanie Zelnick. She is miked quite 

closely, and other musicians seem to move in 

and out of proximity. Apparently the engineers 

played an active role in how this piece 

sounds—but it sounds good. 

Scott Weiss, director of bands at the University 

of Kansas since 2007, has his ensemble 

operating at a high level. I hear lots of great 

moments and no weaknesses. Fine playing 

and music-making! 

KILPATRICK 

GOUNOD: Sacred Music 

Missae Breves 5+7; Noël; Bethleem; 7 Words of 

Christ on the Cross; Evening Service (Anglican); 

Pater Noster 

Raphaela Mayhous, s; Christa Bonhoff, a; Tobias 

Götting, org; I Vocalisti Chamber Choir/ Hans- 

Joachim Lustig 

Carus 83161—65 minutes 

Requiem in C; Mass in C minor 

Charlotte Müller-Perrier, Valerie Bonnard, 

Christophe Einhorn, Christian Immler; Vocal & 

Instrumental Ensemble of Lausanne/ Michel Corboz 

Mirare 129—63 minutes 

Charles Gounod (1818-93) could be passionate 

about church music, and he was not shy when 

it came to expressing his strongly held convictions 

about it. He was an ally of Charles Bordes 

(1863-1909) in seeking the reform and elevation 

of church music in France to the standing 

it had enjoyed before the Revolution. He 

deplored the sentimental popular church 

music of his day, described in a letter of 1892 

to Bordes as “the mush of romance and all the 

sweets of piety” (toutes les guimauves de la 

romance et toutes les sucreries de pieté). His 

exemplars were Palestrina and Bach. Much of 



Gounod’s vast output of church music should 

be viewed in the light of his work with amateur 

choirs as well as his zeal for reform. 

Most of the music on the Carus disc could 

be described as liturgical gebrauchsmusik: 

works conceived in scale and character to be 

suitable for the ordinary parish mass and modest 

enough in their technical demands to be 

accessible to amateur singers. In all, Gounod 

wrote more than 20 mass settings. Ten are designated 

Brief Masses. Eight are more ambitious 

technically and larger in scale and are 

designated Solemn Masses. These include the 

well-known St Cecilia Mass. Four of Gounod’s 

masses are Requiems. 

The Carus recording includes two Missae 

Breves with organ accompaniment, both in the 

key of C. Missa Brevis 7 was first published in 

1877 for two equal voices and organ. The version 

recorded here dates from 1890 and is recast 

for soprano and alto soloists and a fourpart 

mixed choir with organ. In place of ‘Benedictus 

qui Venit’ after the Sanctus there is a 

setting of the Eucharistic hymn ‘O Salutaris 

Hostia’. Missa Brevis 5 is for TBB soloists and a 

three-part men’s choir (also TBB) with organ. 

It was first published in 1871, and on its reissue 

in 1892 the designation “aux seminaires” 

was added to the title. The warmth of Gounod’s 

writing for lower voices is especially 

attractive. Both masses are predominantly 

homophonic and neither includes a setting of 

the Creed. 

During his years in Rome (1840-42) Gounod 

was profoundly influenced by the music of 

Palestrina. His understanding of the vocalpolyphonic 

idiom is eloquently displayed in 

The Seven Words of Christ on the Cross for 

unaccompanied choir and a quartet of soloists. 

Much of the work could pass for early music— 

if not Palestrina himself, then perhaps Allegri 

or Anerio. Two notable departures from the 

historic idiom are the chromatic setting of the 

word “Sitio” (I thirst) and the final movement, 

where Gounod allows himself more 19th-Century 

harmonic writing. 

Mendelssohn and Gounod were among 

the few non-English composers to make direct 

contributions to the Anglican cathedral repertory. 

(Excerpts from oratorios sung as anthems 

don’t count, and composers like Handel or 

Berthold Tours, who were of foreign birth but 

settled permanently in England, are in a slightly 

different category.) The Carus recording 

includes an Evening Service (Magnificat & 

Nunc Dimittis, using the English text of the 

Book of Common Prayer) that dates from 1872, 

when Gounod was living in England. It is a 

concise, mainly chordal setting in what I 

would describe as the Victorian short service 

idiom. One may detect the influence of com- 

posers like SS Wesley and Henry Smart. A simple 

but eloquent ‘Pater Noster’ and two 

charming Christmas pieces with French texts 

complete the program. One of these, ‘Bethleem’ 

(1882), is claimed as a world premiere 

recording, as are Missa Brevis 5 and ‘Pater 

Noster’. 

I Vocalisti, founded in 1991, is a 30-voice 

choir of young singers from northern Germany. 

Their choral sound is delicate and 

refined with a fresh and youthful character 

that is well suited to the present repertory. 

There are flaws in their English diction in the 

Evening Service, and I suspect a native French 

speaker could find similar faults in the two 

Christmas songs, but on the whole these are 

very fine performances that exhibit this unfamiliar 

repertory to good advantage. 

The recording by Michel Corboz and his 

Lausanne Ensemble from Mirare presents two 

larger-scale liturgical works by Gounod. The 

Requiem in C was written in memory of the 

composer’s grandson, Maurice Gounod, who 

died at the age of five in January of 1889. 

Although Gounod considered the work complete 

in 1891, he continued to revise it until 

February of 1893 when he submitted the score 

to the Societé des Concerts du Conservatoire. 

He died in October of that year. The Requiem 

had its first performances at the Paris Conservatoire 

on Good Friday and Holy Saturday 

(March 23 & 24) of 1894. In October of that 

year it was performed as part of an official 

memorial concert at La Madeleine on the first 

anniversary of the composer’s death. Gabriel 

Fauré directed that performance, and among 

those in attendance were Ambroise Thomas 

and Giuseppe Verdi. 

Gounod authorized his colleague Henri 

Büsser (1872-1973; yes, he died a little over two 

weeks shy of his 102nd birthday) to produce 

versions of the work apart from the full orchestral 

score. The version heard on the present 

recording is for a quartet of soloists, mixed 

choir, string quintet, harp, and organ. Program 

annotator Michel Daudin writes that this version 

achieves the best balance between the 

dramatic character of the work and its intimate 

feeling. Presumably this reflects Corboz’s 

judgement. It is a work that springs from a 

deeply personal grief that seems to be reflected 

in the music. An understated ‘Dies Irae’ may 

sound like a contradiction in terms, and while 

Gounod’s setting is not without moments of 

intense menace, it is also notable for its quiet 

penitence. It is very different from the melodramatic 

ferocity of Verdi. Daudin suggests 

that Gounod’s Requiem may have been a key 

influence on Fauré. 

The Choral Mass in G minor is the fourth 

of Gounod’s big masses. It was first performed 



in Reims Cathedral on June 24, 1888 at the 

beatification of Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, who 

had been a canon of Reims. It may be significant 

that in February of that year, at a festival 

in Angers, Gounod met the great plainsong 

scholar Dom Joseph Pothier of Solesmes 

Abbey, who urged the composer to write a 

mass based on Gregorian themes. Gounod visited 

Solesmes and was highly impressed with 

the flowing style of plainsong chanting there in 

contrast with the slow and ponderous delivery 

then common elsewhere. The mass is based 

on the intonation of Credo IV. It is treated not 

as a cantus firmus but as a motto that pervades 

the work. 

The mass is scored for a mixed choir and 

small choir organ in dialog with the large 

organ in the west gallery. In contrast with the 

Seven Words, it is not a close imitation of early 

music, but the vocal-polyphonic style is clearly 

Gounod’s point of departure. On the whole, 

the work sounds unmistakably of the 19th 

Century. It expresses the liturgical text but 

with a ceremonial objectivity that contrasts 

with the highly personal flavor of the Requiem. 

Michel Corboz founded the Lausanne 

Vocal Ensemble in 1961. They enjoy a distinguished 

reputation for their concert performances 

and more than 100 recordings. As 

heard here the choral discipline and tone are 

exemplary. It is a somewhat more robust 

sound and perhaps not quite as youthful in 

character as I Vocalisti. The two choirs are 

about the same size. 

My only real complaint concerns the 

organ. It appears that the organ parts of the 

Messe Chorale have been realized on a single 

instrument, as only one organist is listed 

among the players. A photograph in the booklet 

shows a small two-manual organ that is evidently 

the one used here. It has a lovely, warm 

flute tone, but its chorus is thin and weak. It 

may be satisfactory for the organ writing in 

Büsser’s scoring of the Requiem, but it is hopelessly 

inadequate as a stand-in for a large west 

gallery organ. Gounod’s writing presupposes 

the imposing power, richness, and spaciousness 

of a large French romantic organ speaking 

into a vast interior. After all, the piece was 

intended for Reims Cathedral. 

Readers who wish to explore more of 

Gounod’s shorter sacred vocal works may like 

to consider a recording I reviewed a few years 

ago by the choir of Gonville & Caius College, 

Cambridge, under the direction of Geoffrey 

Webber (Centaur 2848; May/June 2008). 

GATENS 

GRAENER: Trios 

Hyperion Trio; Albrecht Pöhl, bar 

CPO 777 599—63 minutes 

Paul Graener (1872-1944) is certainly a genius 

who deserves to be better-known in the 

greater classical music community. As suggested 

in the essay, there is a reason he is almost 

unknown today. He was a Nazi with a lot of 

influence as the vice-president of Reichmusikkammer, 

the regime’s “good German 

music” association. He became vice-president 

after conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler refused 

his appointment in protest of the ban on Hindemith’s 

Mathis der Maler. Of course, a more 

notable member of Reichmusikkammer was 

the president and Nazi critic, Richard Strauss, 

who took the post primarily to protect his Jewish 

daughter-in-law. Before that post, Graener 

was a widely known composer, conductor, and 

professor. He was president of the Salzburg 

Mozarteum, taught composition at the Leipzig 

Conservatory, and was director of the Haymarket 

Theatre in London. I encourage you to 

research this fascinating man. Perhaps most 

curious is that his career took off in London, 

where he acquired British citizenship in 1909, 

a small fact the Nazi leadership was unaware 

of when he rose to prominence in the party in 

the 1930s. 

I am thrilled that a world-class ensemble 

like the Hyperion Trio is recording and performing 

this important music. Their musicality 

is admirable. 

The Suite for Piano Trio is a dazzling threemovement 

miniature (8 minutes)—an exciting 

and colorful piece, narrating a story of youth 

and innovation. The first movement reminds 

us of the many nature walks we take with 

Schubert in his art songs. II is a mediation on 

the expansive landscapes of Beethoven, while 

III is a brief and spontaneous eruption, only 

possible through the language of Schumann. 

The Second Trio, Kammermusikdichtung, 

is a one-movement work that truly points out 

the brilliance and talent of this composer. Like 

the Piano Suite it is quintessentially German. 

The opening is brilliant, a dramatic sweeping 

gesture, Brahmsian in quality. 

The third trio is entirely different. Here I 

hear an orchestral Graener. It is definitely the 

work of a late German romantic. His music 

seems to be a melting pot of the German 

idiom, weaving together a language of the 

greats. The rhetoric of Bruckner runs through 

it, while the most vulnerable passages exemplify 

the anxiety and harmonic maturity of 

Strauss. French impressionism is also present. 

The last trio, Theodor-Storm-Musik, is profound. 

Graener moves through a varied array 

of musical languages, gestures of anti-roman- 



ticism as well as elements of late expressionism. 

After numerous hearings, this piece still 

manages to catch me off guard. Well into the 

piece—near the end—emerges a reference to 

the late Brahms Intermezzos. Albrecht Pöhl 

sings the famous text, ‘Es liegen Wald und 

Heide’. It ends in spectacular tragedy. As in 

Schubert’s ‘Erlkönig’, there is no question at 

the end that it is over. 

JACOBSEN 

GRAINGER: Shepherd’s Hey; Gamelan 

Anklung; Irish Tune From County Derry; The 

Lonely Desert Man Sees the Tents of the 

Happy Tribes; Eastern Intermezzo; Crying for 

the Moon; Arrival Platform Humlet; 

Bahariyale V. Palaniyandi; Sailor’s Song; 

Sekar Gadung; Under a Bridge; Country Gardens 

; 

BACH: Blithe Bells; 

DEBUSSY: Pagodas; 

GARDINER: London Bridge; 

RAVEL: La Vallee des Cloches 

WOOF! 

Move 3222—54 minutes 

Percy Grainger arranged these works for percussion 

ensemble but never published them. 

They have recently been rediscovered and 

WOOF!—an Australian percussion ensemble— 

has a habit of performing them. They even use 

the staff bells and stella marimba that Grainger 

had built for him. 

To be honest, although I like Grainger, 

these arrangements leave me cold. They are 

well played, very well annotated, and nicely 

recorded. Fine, if you are fond of percussion, 

but I’ll take the piano. 

BAUMAN 

GRAUN: Montezuma 

Encarnacion Vazquez (Montezuma), Dorothea 

Wirtz (Eupaforice), Conchita Julian (Tezeuco), 

Lourdes Ambriz (Pilpatoe), Angelica Uribe 

Sanchez (Erissena), Maria Luisa Tamez (Cortes), 

Ana Caridad Acosta (Narves); Cantica Nova; German 

Chamber Academy/ Johannes Goritzki 

Capriccio 7085 [2CD] 134 minutes 

This 1992 performance of Carl Heinrich 

Graun’s 1755 opera might seem a bit old-fashioned 

by today’s standards of performing 

baroque and early classical works: male roles 

sung by female singers (no countertenors to 

take on castrato parts) and a non-period 

instrument orchestra. Written to be performed 

before Frederick the Great, who was the librettist 

(did Frederick see himself in this part?), 

Montezuma mixes fact with lots of fiction. 

Cortes is a deceitful bad guy who brings the 

peace-loving Montezuma and the Aztec 

empire to ruin. And of course Montezuma has 

a love interest: his adoring wife Eupaforice. 

This was an important opera in its day. 

Carl Heinrich Graun, who died four years after 

its premiere, composed a melodic score dominated 

by secco recitative-aria format. Not all of 

the set pieces are in da capo form, at least as 

heard here. In this recording things seem a bit 

stilted; and a certain sameness seems to dominate 

singers, chorus, orchestra, and conductor. 

A newer recording is needed. There’s no real 

drama in the proceedings. Everyone is walking 

on egg shells. But the performers do get points 

for voices able to cope with music that sometimes 

sounds like Handel minus his most 

fiendish vocal demands. 

Orchestral playing and conducting are very 

competent but also, like the singers, lacks the 

fire to make these attractive tunes sound like 

they have some drama in them. Libretto without 

English translation; but there are background 

notes. 

MARK 

GREGSON: Chamber Orchestra Pieces; 

Trombone Concerto; 2 Pictures; Song for 

Chris 

Peter Moore, trb; Guy Johnston, vc; BBC Concert 

Orchestra/ Bramwell Tovey 


English composer Edward Gregson (b 1945) is 

probably known best by brass players, since he 

has enriched their modest repertories with fine 

concertos and ensemble works. I first became 

aware of him in the early 1980s when his jaunty 

Tuba Concerto made a hit. Then William 

Richardson presented the Trombone Concerto 

(Jan/Feb 1990: 125) with piano accompaniment. 

To my knowledge, the 1979 work has no 

other recordings, so this one by Peter Moore 

and the BBC Concert Orchestra is most welcome. 

The 16-minute, single-movement work 

has a melodic motif that undergoes various 

transformations and orchestral textures that 

allow the soloist to be heard with ease. What 

makes this recording unusual is that the soloist 

is 14 years old (violin and piano prodigies are 

more common than brass ones). Peter Moore 

was named BBC Young Musician of the Year at 

age 12 in 2008. He seems to have it all: consistently 

full yet clear tone quality, fine technical 

skill, and easy high register. He sports a variety 

of articulation, and he plays with musical 

understanding and heartfelt expression. 

Also quite young (the BBC Young Musician 

of the Year in 2000) is cellist Guy Johnston, 

soloist in A Song for Chris (2007). Composed 

for Gregson’s Northern College of Music colleague 

Christopher Rowland, who was dying of 

cancer, the 18-minute, four-movement work 

opens quietly, takes on form and energy, and 

ends optimistically. Fine recorded sound 

allows us to hear details of cellist Johnston’s 



tone, which sounds especially vibrant in the 

unaccompanied moments. 

Two works for chamber orchestra complete 

the program. Music for Chamber Orchestra 

(1968) has the then 22-year-old composer 

reflecting on Shostakovich’s Symphony 5. The 

Two Pictures for String Orchestra were composed 

with 13 years between them. BBC violist 

Timothy Welch is the fine soloist in ‘Goddess’ 

(2009), a response to a painting by Dorothy 

Bradford. Its most striking moment—intense, 

overlapping, descending minor scales—brings 

to mind Arvo Pärt’s Cantus In Memory of Benjamin 

Britten. Gregson describes ‘Stepping 

Out’ (1996) as “John Adams meets Shostakovich, 

with a bit of Gregson thrown in”. 

KILPATRICK 

GRIEG: Symphonic Dances; Peer Gynt 

Suites; Funeral March 

Cologne Radio Orchestra/ Eivind Aadland 

Audite 92651 [SACD] 73:22 

This is a beautiful recording. The Cologne 

orchestra has a gorgeous sound, the engineers 

convey it perfectly, the conductor loves the 

music and never rushes thru anything. I was 

impressed right away by the slow tempos. All 

four Symphonic Dances are slower than Jarvi 

in Gothenburg. The first is especially good at 

this speed. The second—always the most popular—sounds 

luscious here. My Jarvi recording 

(DG) has developed irritating “swish” sounds 

that I cannot remove, so I was glad for a new 

recording. 

The Funeral March is the familiar one for 

Richard Nordraak. 

The Peer Gynt Suites (pronounced Pair Jint, 

by the way) are also among the best I’ve heard. 

While I was comparing timings to all the other 

recordings I have, I noticed that this conductor 

is slower than all—except Beecham, whose 

Peer Gynt has always been my favorite. 

Beecham and Mr Aadland take about the same 

tempos, but both are slower than anyone 

else—and the music can take it. (Barbirolli was 

also slow.) Beecham does more of the Peer 

Gynt music but only one of the Symphonic 

Dances (No. 2). As with most of what Beecham 

conducted, he is peerless—but this comes very 

close. And this has the best sound I’ve ever 

heard in this music—and that is partly the terrific 

orchestra. What rich string sound! By the 

way, there is no singer for Solveig’s Song. 

Solveig’s Song comes before Peer’s homecoming 

in the incidental music, but in Suite 2 

here it comes after—it ends the suite. Some 

conductors do it the other way around—seems 

logical—but it was Grieg himself who published 

Suite 2 in this order. He wanted it to end 

quietly. 

Mr Aadland grew up on Grieg as a violinist 

in the Bergen area; he was also concertmaster 

of the Bergen Philharmonic for many years. He 

seems to feel this music like a true Norwegian, 

and he claims to know all the folk tunes and 

rhythms from childhood, because his father 

played Norwegian folk music on a Hardanger 

fiddle. It seems to me that the main thing 

operating here is a great love and respect for 

the music. Too many conductors treat it as 

something light and forgettable. 

VROON 

GRIFFES: Piano Pieces 

Solungga Fang-Tzu Liu 


For someone wanting a one-disc selection of 

the composer’s piano music this will do nicely, 

though Joseph Smith’s superior interpretations 

(now available again) should not be forgotten. 

If you want all of the music try Michael 

Lewin’s two Naxos discs—good, if not outstanding 

performances. Liu, initially from Taiwan, 

is now a part of the US scene, and has the 

skill and technique to bring these pieces off. 

Ideally they could benefit from a little more 

imagination. 

The Pleasure-Dome of Kubla Khan may 

surprise some since it differs in many respects 

from the composer’s later orchestral version. 

While it still has more than a wisp of perfumed 

elegance, the composer’s later ideas are infinitely 

more inventive and structurally far more 

sound. While sumptuously done, Lewin’s 

more straightforward approach has none of 

the overindulgence of this new entry. 

The rather unusual one-movement sonata 

has had many advocates over the years. Liu 

easily matches them and has been given excellent 

sound to boot. Lewin, with sound of less 

depth and richness, delivers in this piece as 

well. The powerful ideas and unexpected dissonances 

from semitones and augmented seconds 

make their presence felt in both performances. 

Roman Sketches, which includes ‘The 

White Peacock’, is probably the best known of 

the composer’s piano works. Liu easily carries 

full honors here in a performance of sensitivity 

and beguiling color. That is also the case with 

the other movements from this suite. 

The Three Tone Poems, Op.5, and Fantasy 

Pieces Op.6 also benefit from Ms Liu’s languorous 

treatment. For the most part, these 

impressionist pieces gain from her slightly 

slower tempos and richer, deeper sound. Once 

one is immersed in Lewin’s performances, 

they too have much to offer, including many 

additional pieces well worth having. Liu will 

join Lewis on my Griffes shelves, but I do have 

that luxury. 

BECKER 



HALFFTER, R: Chamber Music 

Soloists of the Madrid orchestra 


HASSE: Requiem in C; Miserere in C minor 

Johanna Winkel & Marie Luise Werneburg, s; 

Wiebke Lehmkuhl & Marlen Herzog, a; Colin 

Balzer, t; Cornelius Uhle, b; Dresden Chamber 

Choir & Orchestra/ Hans-Christoph Rademann 


Here we have Part 2 of a phenomenal collection 

of chamber music by Spanish composer 

Rodolfo Halffter. Halffter’s music is quite varied, 

strikingly different as you move through Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783) was probably 

his early, middle, and late periods. I lean the most famous and most celebrated com- 

towards his early period. His late works, such poser of his day. He was one of the last pupils 

as Espinicio, Op. 42, included here, are not of Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples and soon 

very interesting and seem to lack direction. His 

middle period—pieces like Laberinto—have 

that sort-of-tonal, sort-of-not, modernist 

sound. It reminds me very much of the first 

Shostakovich Piano Sonata and the Aphorisms, 

Op.13—his most unattractive works. 

I am most impressed with the guitarist, 

Miguel Angel Jimenez, from his vibrant, pure, 

and clean sound to his magnificent “subito 

pianos”. Also extraordinary is the playing of 

harpist Beatriz Millan; the Tres Piezas Breves, 

Op.13a, are perhaps the best on the program. 

The Divertimento, Op. 7a, is a masterly work. It 

reflects Halffter’s time in Mexico. What I find 

most interesting is this: I have never been a big 

fan of “Latin” classical music—if we can call it 

that—because composers tend to throw a 

Latin rhythm into a piece and it sounds inauthentic. 

Colombian Cumbia and Brazilian 

Samba were composed for drums and rattles— 

not symphony orchestras. In the Divertimento 

however, the sound is authentic. Halffter 

allows the simplicity of the music to shine. 

This is a marvelous introduction to Spanish 

chamber music. 

JACOBSEN 

HARTMANN, E: Nordic & German Songs 

Iben Vestergard, s; Cathrine Penderup, p 

Danacord 712 [2CD] 125 minutes 

acquired a reputation as a composer of Italian 

opera. In 1733 Elector Frederick Augustus II of 

Saxony appointed Hasse to the post of Kapellmeister 

at the Dresden court. He retained this 

position until 1763, the year the Elector died. 

The Requiem in C was written for the funeral 

and was performed each year until 1850 on the 

anniversary of the Elector’s death. 

Hasse was certainly not a prisoner of the 

Dresden court. He had ample opportunities to 

visit Italy and other European musical centers, 

often for extended periods. Concurrently with 

his position in Dresden he was the director of 

music at the Ospedale degli Incurabili in 

Venice, one of the celebrated orphanages of 

that city noted for the musical training and 

artistry of their residents. The Miserere on this 

recording was written for the young ladies of 

the Incurabili. A surviving manuscript proves 

that the arrangement for mixed voices heard 

here is Hasse’s own. 

The quiet trumpets and timpani in the 

introduction to the opening movement of the 

Requiem remind us that it was written for a 

court solemnity. On the whole, the musical 

idiom does not stray far from the 18th-Century 

operatic stage. The Dies Irae in particular has a 

certain operatic vehemence. The Requiem is a 

thoroughly professional and mellifluous piece 

of writing by a master of his art who knows 

Danish composer Emil Hartmann (1836-98), how to write effectively for the human voice. I 

the son of JPE Hartmann, deserves a wider cannot describe the piece as movingly pro- 

audience than he now enjoys. His songs are found. It will not make us forget the Mozart 

beautifully crafted and give much enjoyment, Requiem. The Miserere is elegant and graceful, 

but he needs better advocacy than this. Sopra- but not really an evocation of the intensely 

no Iben Vestergard does her best, but she does penitential character of the text. 

not have a voice of sufficient calibre to warrant This is a concert recording from Septem- 

two hours of listening. A choral section leader, ber of 2010 at St Mary’s Church, Marienberg, 

yes, perhaps an album of duets, but heard as part of the Erzgebirge Music Festival. The 

alone she only just reaches the level of a pro- choral discipline is very fine, and while none of 

fessional, and certainly not the level of a the soloists has what I would call a big voice, 

soloist. Her voice is just too thin and lacking in they display a purity and refinement of tone 

body. 

that admirably suits the repertory. The soloists 

Pianist Cathrine Penderup plays well, and are not exactly overbalanced, but I suspect 

her piano is vividly recorded. In an album of their sound would have been more prominent 

Hartmann’s piano works she would have man- in a studio recording. 

aged to pull it off, but she can’t rescue this While the Dresden Chamber Choir has a 

effort by herself. 

distinguished reputation for a wide-ranging 

BOYER repertory, it is hardly surprising that they 

should devote special attention to composers 



who served the Dresden court, from Heinrich 

Schütz to the generation of Heinichen, Zelenka, 

and Hasse. They have also recorded of Hasse’s 

Requiem in E-flat, written in 1763 for the 

funeral of Frederick Augustus II’s successor. It 

is paired with another Miserere (Carus 83.175; 

May/June 2006). 

GATENS 

HAYDN: Harpsichord & Violin Concerto in 

F; Violin Concerto in G; Sinfonia Concertante 

Emanuel Borok, v; Fyodor Stroganov, hpsi; 

Alexander Gotgelf, vc; Olga Tomilova, ob; Mikhail 

Furman, bn; Kremlin Chamber Orchestra/ Misha 

Rachlevsky & Emanuel Borok 

Eroica 3293—57 minutes 

This Russian production is quite satisfactory 

aside from slightly dry, close sound and notes 

that completely ignore Haydn. Emanuel Borok 

has lived in the USA for some years and has 

been associate concertmaster of the Boston 

Symphony and concertmaster of the Dallas 

Symphony. Misha Rachlevsky has also lived in 

the USA, where he founded the New American 

Chamber Orchestra in 1984. After 1991 he 

returned to Russia and organized the Kremlin 

Chamber Orchestra. The other soloists are 

mostly Russian educated. All play Haydn well 

on modern instruments. If you want this combination 

of works you should be well satisfied. 

BAUMAN 

HAYDN: Piano Sonatas 18, 35, 37, 44, 47 

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet 


Bavouzet, born in 1962, is new to me. He has 

recorded the complete piano works of 

Debussy and Ravel; concertos by Pierné, Ravel, 

and Bartok; and works by Liszt, Ohana, and 

Schumann. He was a protege of Georg Solti. 

French pianism can be a good match for 

Haydn. The clarity, careful voicing, and attention 

to rhetoric going back to the French harpsichord 

masters serve Haydn’s drama and contrapuntal 

writing well. Heavy tone is not often 

helpful in Haydn’s music and not often characteristic 

of French playing. Also, there was a 

hint that good things might be on this disc. 

The earliest recording by Bavouzet that I was 

able to find out about was a Haydn disc from 

1991 that had a lovely performance of the great 

two-movement Sonata 48 in C. 

As it happened, the first sonata here is a 

different C major piece, No. 35. Though the 

two works are very different, it was instantly 

clear that Bavouzet has used the last 20 years 

well and still is very attuned to Haydn. 

All the sonatas here are first-rate pieces 

(Haydn’s piano sonatas are, overall, better 

than Mozart’s), but I will take a closer look at 

one of the greatest of all, 44 in G minor. G 

minor is not a common key for Haydn. It was 

Mozart’s special key for tragic music, but for 

Haydn that was F minor. Haydn sometimes 

wrote mock-tragic music in G minor, perhaps 

to tease Mozart (think of the opening of Symphony 

83). This sonata, though, was written in 

1765-7, when Mozart was about ten years old 

and he and Haydn were at least 15 years away 

from meeting. 

The first movement starts with a gloomy 

theme that repeats itself like an obsessive 

thought. After a little bit of contrasting material, 

Haydn starts to take his opening theme 

apart and vary the moods widely as each fragment 

seems to take on its own character: a 

song fragment, a march, and so on. As the 

movement goes into its development section, 

about 3:30 into the track, the fragments begin 

to build up tension with short melodies in the 

right hand answered by arpeggios from the 

left, then arpeggios in the right with responsive 

fragments in the left, on to what sounds like a 

Schumann or Beethoven gathering storm. 

Haydn takes the music through a wide range of 

moods in a short time until he comes to a dramatic 

pause at 5:30. The recap that follows is 

even stranger and wider-ranging. Nothing 

sounds quite as one would expect from what 

had gone before; everything is subtly off and 

unsettling. There’s a quasi-vocal cadenza and 

Haydn brings things to a gloomy end. 

The next movement (this is a two-movement 

work) is a minuet. Haydn was the king of 

minuets, and this is another great one. It’s in G 

minor, of course, and its main theme has a 

kind of skip-step rhythm to it and a chromatic 

sigh. The trio is in the major, of course, but 

doesn’t sound reassuring—more like the 

jumpy spirit of the minuet is trying, very hard, 

to calm itself down. The seeds of Mahler are in 

this music. 

Of course, as David Hurwitz once said so 

well, all of Western music after Haydn is either 

a further development of what he started or a 

response to it. 

As I have become steeped in Haydn’s 

music in all genres, it has become clear to me 

that, like the music of many of the great 

baroque composers, his music reaches back to 

before there was what we think of as music, to 

the music and rhythms of speech through the 

art of rhetoric. If you read what Aristotle, 

Cicero, and Quintilian wrote about how to 

express yourself in speech, you will be well on 

the way to understanding how to make Haydn’s 

keyboard music speak. I have no reason to 

think that Haydn’s education actually encompassed 

these authors in any depth, but the 

intellectual life of Europe from Medieval times 

through the Enlightenment and beyond rested 

on three subjects that were taught as the basis 



for all further learning: grammar, logic, and 

rhetoric. To go on to the deeper learning of 

arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, 

you had to have the basic language skills, the 

mechanics of how ideas are put together, and 

the mechanics of how to express yourself in a 

persuasive way. It was only after these seven 

arts were mastered that you could go count 

yourself ready to tackle the complexities of 

philosophy and theology. 

Haydn’s education, from what we know of 

it, would have been a practical one. He 

became part of the boychoir at St Stephen’s in 

Vienna at age 8. He would have encountered 

rhetorical principles in his basic education and 

in the music he studied and performed. 

The notion, common in some circles not 

very long ago, and still with us in various disguises, 

that pre-romantic composers expected 

their music to be performed in some kind of 

Asperger-syndrome style, devoid of overt 

expression or even inflection, seems to me 

contrary to everything we know about human 

beings in those times. They were full of emotions 

and vitality; and the elite, who listened 

to, performed, and sometimes wrote art music 

were trained in composing and delivering 

speeches and other formal utterances. They 

would be taught about pauses, changes in 

pace, changes in volume, and so on. It seems 

misguided to believe that they delivered their 

words one way, their music in a very different 

one. 

So the best Haydn keyboard players, at 

least, recognize the principles of persuasive 

speech that apply to his music and use them in 

their performances. It’s no accident that 

Haydn is the composer of pauses. 

Bavouzet joins Andras Schiff at the top of 

the list of keyboard performers who have 

assimilated Haydn’s musical language and can 

speak it eloquently. His approach to the first 

movement of the G-minor Sonata is a model of 

how such things should be played. He knows 

when to press forward, when to relax, when to 

attend to color (what he does with the arpeggios 

when Haydn begins to play with his 

theme fragments in the first movement development 

is a wonderful application of sound 

and texture), when to dry things out to build 

for the next overt expression. Like all of the 

best French pianists he seems to have dozens 

of different staccato, legato, and in-between 

articulations at hand; and he uses them with 

unfailing taste. Schiff is his equal in these 

maaters, though his basic keyboard sound is a 

little broader-toned and he likes bigger gestures. 

Schiff’s buildup to the first pause is 

almost a Beethoven piling-on of sound. 

Bavouzet is quiet. Both are superb. 

I can’t go on enough about how endlessly 

great this music is. In Sonata 37 in D the slow 

movement is a kind of short chorale. Terse. 

Mysterious. Beethoven’s music comes from 

this place. So does Schubert’s. 

The pianist adds his own note on performance 

to the fine program notes. He writes 

about repeats and ornamentation, both of 

which he has thought carefully about. He 

winds up in a sensible place on both of them. 

He repeats when the repetition makes sense, 

for example in first-movement expositions, 

and feels free to ornament in a discreet and 

tasteful way. 

The piano sound is lovely. 

This was an hour of pleasure. It’s the second 

in a Haydn series. I am going to find the 

first one and keep an eye out for the others. So 

should you. 

CHAKWIN 

HAYDN: The Seasons 

Miah Persson, s; Jeremy Ovenden, t; Andrew Foster-Williams, 

bar; London Symphony & Chorus/ 

Colin Davis 

LSO 708 [2SACD] 129 minutes 

Hilde Gueden, s; Waldemar Kmentt, t; Walter 

Berry, b; Vienna Singakademie & Philharmonic/ 

Karl Bohm 

Melodram 40087 [2CD] 123 minutes 

Böhm recorded Die Jahreszeiten in the studio 

for DG, and that is still one of the best Big 

Band accounts you can buy. Solti and 

Beecham in English join it on the top rung. 

Sawallisch (July/Aug 2010) is a notch-and-ahalf 

below them. So why on earth would you 

want this 1965 concert performance caught in 

faded, far-off sound? True, these soloists come 

off pretty well; but with Janowitz, Schreier, and 

Talvela having joined Böhm in the studio, 

where’s the incentive to dig into the archives? 

Orchestral sound is distant and opaque, while 

the choir’s contribution is substandard, both 

technically and sonically. So if for some reason 

you’d care to own a Haydn oratorio where the 

big choruses are the weakest element, here 

you go. There are no notes, libretto or translations 

either, in case you still care. 

Needless to say, the LSO is one of the 

biggest of the Big Bands; but there’s nothing 

ponderous about Colin Davis’s approach, 

which is lithe and very energetic. Some may 

feel that other conductors (Beecham!) have 

established more vivid emotional connections 

with the libretto. This ‘Komm, holder Lenz’ 

might be a little too zippy to conjure up the 

gentle greening of a world in springtime. In 

‘Juchhe’, the autumnal ode to the glory of the 

grape, the singers sound more breathless with 

excitement than tipsy with joy. But for overall 

brio, this is Haydn to be reckoned with. Davis 

tends to keep the counterpoint under wraps as 

the various choruses begin, but has it bloom- 



ing splendidly when it counts. The choir is 

fine. Complementing their singing is some of 

the finest playing you’ll ever hear: fragrant 

woodwinds, golden horns, incisive strings, and 

nifty ruffles and flourishes from the harpsichord. 

Haydn’s accompaniments to his choral 

writing are nothing short of miraculous; and 

when playing of this caliber is combined with 

superb engineering, you wind up with exquisite 

displays of melodic and harmonic embroidery. 

For those special touches alone, this is a 

Jahreszeiten worth acquiring. 

I wish I liked the soloists better. Best of the 

three is the lighter-than-usual bass who’s 

impressively dexterous when Haydn trots out 

the coloratura. (He’s terrific in Autumn when 

the dog races toward the hunter’s prey. Some 

of the tubbier voices get into trouble there.) 

The soprano can be quite good, especially in 

‘Licht und Leben’, her wintry cavatina. But I 

miss the radiant charm and flair for storytelling 

we get from the likes of Barbara Bonney 

(Gardiner), Marlis Petersen (Jacobs), Genia 

Kuhmeier (Harnoncourt) and, of course, Gundula 

Janowitz, who cooed her way through the 

score so gorgeously with Böhm. The tenor is 

spirited, but nasal and way too bright. Notes, 

texts, and translations are included in a firstrate 

booklet. While this may not be the Seasons 

for all seasons, there are so many things to 

admire and enjoy it’s impossible not to recommend 

it. 

GREENFIELD 

HAYDN: Quartet, op 54:1; see MOZART 

HENSEL: Quartet; 

MENDELSSOHN: Quartet 6; 4 Pieces 

Merel Quartet 

Genuin 11204—70 minutes 

There are dozens of excellent recordings of 

Felix Mendelssohn’s Four Pieces, published as 

Op. 81, and even more of his last Quartet, Op. 

80, the piece he wrote in memory of his sister 

Fanny Hensel; but there are relatively few 

available recordings of Hensel’s String Quartet, 

a piece she wrote in 1834. (I know of one 

other—M/J 2000.) 

Fanny’s brother criticized the liberties she 

took with form, and the movement he liked 

best, the Scherzo, sounds like something he 

would write (or wished he had written). Fanny’s 

response to her brother, as printed in the 

liner notes, shows a great deal of self-deprecation 

concerning her “ability to sustain ideas 

properly and give them the necessary consistency”. 

Her music, however, contradicts her 

self-criticism. And, in the hands and arms of 

the Merel Quartet, we can continue to be 

delighted with the continual surprises (more 

than 500, so far) that have made their way out 

of the Mendelssohn family archives. 

It’s loosely based on Beethoven’s Harp 

Quartet. (R. Larry Todd discusses the work at 

length in Fanny Hensel: The Other 

Mendelssohn, published by Oxford University 

Press in 2010.) The Merel Quartet plays this as 

a piece of forward-thinking music written by 

an extraordinary composer working in the 

generation after Beethoven. She had an adoring 

little brother who also composed exceedingly 

well, as you can hear. 

FINE 

HONEGGER: Cello Concerto; see MARTINU 

HOWELLS: Piano Quartet; String Quartet; 

Clarinet Quintet 

Patricia Calman, Harriet Davies, v; Nick Barr, va; 

David Daniels, vc; Michael Collins, cl; Andrew 

West, p 

Metier 92003—53 minutes 

Much like Russian nationalism two decades 

earlier and American nationalism two decades 

later, English nationalism at the dawn of the 

20th Century involved a breaking away from 

German models and an embrace of native 

songs, sounds, and dialects. English efforts, 

though, developed during a difficult transition 

in Western music. They quickly fell behind 

modernist whirlwinds, and by the end of 

World War II they were dismissed as quaint. 

While Russian and American nationalists are 

still towering figures in the repertoire, English 

nationalists remain an afterthought from a 

busy period, living on only in vocal music, 

band music, and chamber music. 

Nevertheless, some leading British musicians 

maintain that English nationalism still 

has a place on contemporary concert programs. 

On this 2007 release, originally recorded 

in 1992, clarinetist Michael Collins, pianist 

Andrew West, and the Lyric Quartet present 

three early chamber works of Herbert Howells 

(1892-1983). A favorite pupil of the Germantrained 

Charles Stanford at the Royal College 

of Music in London, Howells was considered 

the most promising talent of the British generation 

of composers that came of age during 

World War I. Like George Butterworth and 

Gerald Finzi, Howells skillfully balanced traditional 

form with English pastoralism and folk 

song; and like Gordon Jacob, he admired English 

Renaissance and baroque music. His 

teacher, though, had the greatest influence; no 

matter the source of his materials, Howells 

infused his works with warm romantic lyricism. 

The program begins with the highly atmospheric 

Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 21 (1916), 

a full-length three-movement work that 



weaves several English folk melodies into its 

formal structure and bears a dedication to a 

specific place in the English countryside. The 

Phantasy Quartet, Op. 25 (1917) refers to the 

old Elizabethan single movement instrumental 

piece with several contrasting sections, but 

after all the energetic dances it dies away with 

a solemn Piu Lento. The concluding Rhapsodic 

Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet, Op. 

31 (1919) is another single-movement work 

that ends with a slow meditation. It is unified 

not by a grand architectural scheme, but by 

only two ideas: an energetic motive in the 

strings and a beautiful melody in the clarinet. 

Collins, West, and the Lyric Quartet give 

thoroughly professional and profoundly moving 

performances that simmer with romantic 

angst, succumb completely to moments of 

intense contemplation, and have lively rhythmic 

episodes and the occasional tangy dissonance. 

The Quartet is a superb team that balances 

classical formality with folk playing, and West 

has unrivalled touch and color, especially 

when he begins the kind of quiet passage that 

words cannot express. Collins achieves a 

British timbre that is unusually rich and clear, 

matching the dark hue of the strings, phrasing 

with great color and sincerity, and making the 

fade-out in the closing measures of the Clarinet 

Quintet poignant and unforgettable. 

HANUDEL 

HOWELLS: Winchester Service; Jubilate 

Deo; Thee Will I Love; Rhapsody 4; Come, my 

Soul; Te Deum; Coventry Antiphon; A Flourish 

for a Bidding; Antiphon; The Fear of the 

Lord; Exultate 

Deo Simon Bell, org; Winchester Cathedral Choir/ 

Andrew Lumsden 


Herbert Howells (1892-1983) is better known 

for his earlier (1940-1950) choral compositions 

than for ones from his later years. This recording 

was done in the hope that a broader 

acquaintance with the selections heard here 

(1958-1976) might spark interest in his later 

pieces from choirs and choral leaders. The 

choir is configured 16-5-4-5; the organ is a 4- 

79 stop, 101-rank Willis (1851), Harrison & 

Harrison (1988). 

Winchester Service from 1967 is Howells’s 

contribution of Evensong canticles for one of 

the three choirs making up the Southern 

Cathedral Festival (Salisbury, Chichester, Winchester), 

an annual musical feast to balance 

the much older Three Choirs Festival 

(Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford). The Service 

includes many of the chromatic turns characteristic 

of his music. Don’t expect too many 

hushed, soothing passages. Both the Magnifi- 

cat and Nunc Dimittis maintain and finish 

with bold strokes. 

Jubilate Deo, Exultate Deo, and Te Deum 

are predictably assertive. The most attractive 

selections here are Winchester Service, ‘Come, 

my Soul’, ‘Thee I Will Love’, and ‘The Fear of 

the Lord’. For most of the louder pieces, the 

text seldom becomes intelligible—it doesn’t 

help that Winchester is the longest British 

cathedral. Considerable echo does help in the 

subdued passages. Sometimes the organ stops, 

and the closing cadence can be heard as in 

‘Thee Will I Love’, which concludes with a very 

drawn-out pianissimo. Another gem is the 

closing of ‘The Fear of the Lord’, with a suddenly 

quiet last line that ends with an unexpected 

but beautiful chord. Both organ solos 

are full of fury and not really attractive. The 

choral pieces demand choristers capable of 

performing close interval and shifting harmonies. 

The Winchester Choir is certainly up 

to the task, but just about everything heard on 

this recording is LOUD. Enunciation needs a 

good deal of repair. Without the texts in the 

liner notes, you’ll have a hard time knowing 

what the words are. I think this will appeal 

mostly to fans of Howells’s music and fans of 

this choir. 

METZ 

HUGHES: Shift; Slow Motion Blackbird 

Chris Hughes, electronics 

Helium 2—60 minutes 

Chris Hughes is a percussionist and record 

producer whose list of professional accomplishments 

includes drumming with Adam 

and the Ants, co-writing the Tears for Fears 

megahit ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’, 

and producing the band’s first two albums. His 

father took him to see the European premiere 

of Steve Reich’s Drumming in 1972, and since 

then he has been hooked. 

Shift, a four-movement composition that 

draws on material from Reich’s Drumming 

and Violin Phase, first appeared in 1994 and 

has been remastered for its current release. 

The best term for this music is ambient; Hughes 

recreates Reich’s phasing process deftly 

with recording technology and subtly enhances 

the rhythmic elan of Reich’s music by 

adding other percussion instruments and, 

here and there, ever so slightly accentuating its 

natural tendency to groove or swing. 

Slow Motion Blackbird takes its cue from 

Reich’s Slow Motion Sound and perhaps from 

Different Trains: the melody of bird song is 

tracked by a synthesizer and harmonized; then 

the entire recording is slowed down for repeated 

iterations without altering the pitch of the 

original. It only lasts about 6 minutes—I wish 



he’d extended it for at least 6 more. From 

Piano Phase is similar to Shift, but includes 

substantial passages from each of Piano 

Phase’s original three sections. The last track, 

Pendulum Music, seems more of a throwaway 

than the others, but never mind. 

I used to think that the close relationship 

of minimalism and then-current pop music 

was a sign of musical health for both worlds 

and augured a new kind of listener now on the 

scene. The new listeners are definitely here to 

stay and—with more than a little luck—they’ll 

expand their passions past Reich and into all 

sorts of other classical music from the present 

and the past. That’s my hope, anyway. As 

much as I like Steve Reich’s music, I think people 

should get past the idea that there should 

be only one style of contemporary music and 

one composer to laud as “the best”. 

HASKINS 

INCE: Hot, Red, Cold, Vibrant; Symphony 5; 

Requiem without Words; Before Infrared 

Anil Kirkyildiz, Tülay Uyar, Olca Kuntasal, s; Levent 

Gündüz, t; Güvenc Dagüstün, bar; Selva 

Erdener, voice; Turkish Ministry of Culture Choir; 

Bilkent Symphony/ Kamran Ince 


is so much space in our hearts for our love for 

you. Galatasaray”? 

Requiem without Words (2004) is for the 

victims of the 2003 terror bombings in Istanbul. 

Sustained minor harmony, whining wailings 

from a female “ethnic voice”, chestthumping 

bass drum poundings, and later 

some corny movie music will try the endurance 

of all but the most masochistic listeners. 

We should all sympathize with the emotions 

involved, but this crass 20-minute exhibition 

borders on the obscene. 

This unfortunate program closes with 

Before Infrared (1986), a Disney-esque sunrise 

scene that might make an effective overture, 

though the literature already has plenty such 

pieces and this one doesn’t offer a great deal of 

serious competition. It’s the best piece here, if 

that’s any consolation. 

GIMBEL 

IRELAND: Piano Pieces 3 

Mark Bebbington—Somm 99—76 minutes 

The Third and Fourth Symphonies of Turkish- 

Completing his survey of Ireland’s attractive 

piano music, Bebbington has turned up yet 

another unrecorded piece. The First Rhapsody 

is an early work dating from 1906. Special 

credit is due the John Ireland Trust for allowing 

this student work to be performed and 

recorded. As pointed out in the excellent notes 

American composer Kamran Ince (b. 1960) by Bruce Phillips of the Trust, it owes a strong 

appeared a few years ago on a Naxos release debt to Liszt and Rachmaninoff in an 

(557588, N/D 2005). Admirers of that release assertiveness and virtuosity not readily appar- 

might want to think twice before investing in ent in his later music. At over 12 minutes, it’s a 

this one. 

substantial piece, the longest in this program, 

It opens with Hot, Red, Cold, Vibrant and its inclusion helps to make Bebbington 

(1992), said to have the “explicit intent [to] the preferred artist when deciding which set to 

capture the driving energy of rock on [Ince’s] purchase, though few would give its derivative 

own terms”. I don’t have the slightest idea musical values high marks. 

what this piece has to do with “rock”, but I As with the first two volumes (J/A 2009, 

don’t question his intent. The piece is tonal, M/A 2010) Bebbington continues to distin- 

repetitious, throbbing, loud, has some shrieks guish himself in the performance and record- 

in the high winds, some drum thuds, and some ing of this repertory. The records contents 

vaguely bluesy melody. Maybe that’s what he (below) fill in the remaining Ireland gaps, and 

means. It is also painfully out of tune as played make it a mandatory purchase for all enthusi- 

by this dreadful orchestra, which has about as asts: 

much energy as a bad high school orchestra Rhapsody (1915) 

trying to get through a piece they can’t handle. Two Pieces: February’s Child, Aubade 

The Fifth Symphony (2005) stays with the 

pop-culture theme as it is dedicated to 

Turkey’s apparently fabled Galatasaray football 

(i.e. soccer) team. This is a four-movement, 

33-minute deeply felt, almost religious 

Four Pieces: The Undertone, Obsession, Holy 

Boy, Fire of Spring 

Four Preludes 

Ballade of London Nights 

Almond Trees 

homage to the team. The text, printed here in Three Dances: Gypsy, Country, Reapers 

English, is unintentionally hilarious when Prelude in E-flat 

matched up with the beautiful, entirely over- First Rhapsody 

wrought score. What does one make of With due respect for Eric Parkin’s pioneer- 

attempts to set lines like “Let’s compete to be ing effort, it comes down to either the com- 

European and defeat the non-Turkish teams” plete or the more complete. Both take three 

or “Prepare for the show, Be ready in the discs, and both performers show much sympa- 

stands, dress suitably in two colors” or “There thy for this composer’s expressive, sometimes 



wistful, sometimes impressionist, and always 

beautiful music. Somm’s recording easily wins 

in the engineering department. 

BECKER 

JADIN: 3 Quartets 

Franz Joseph Quartet 

ATMA 2610—66 minutes 

Hyacinthe Jadin lived only from 1776 to 1800 

and has been largely forgotten today. He died 

of tuberculosis, after living his life in Paris and 

Versailles. 

Based on these recorded performances I 

must say that Jadin’s music seems rather boring. 

Part of this response may be because the 

music is played on excessively thin sounding 

period instruments that I find difficult to listen 

to—and usually don’t. 

Decent notes and sound are supplied. 

BAUMAN 

JANITSCH: Chamber Sonatas II 

Notturna/ Christopher Palameta 


As Christopher Palameta reports in his notes, it 

is presumed that Johann Gottlieb Janitsch 

(1708-63) composed his sonate da camera for a 

series of freitagsakademien that he held in his 

own home in Berlin while serving as contraviolonist 

at the court of Frederick the Great. The 

sonatas on this release come from his Opusses 

1, 3, and 7 composed between 1752 and the 

end of his life. Some of them come from 

among the 13 sonatas that were rediscovered 

in Kiev, where they had been taken during the 

Second World War. Most of the sonatas are in 

three-movement form, similar to ones by 

Quantz. The instrumentation is sometimes a 

bit unusual, as Palameta tells us, calling for 

curious combinations of oboes, violins, traverso, 

and continuo. It all adds to the excitement. 

Janitsch’s style fits right in with his contemporaries, 

down to the learned-sounding fugato 

passages. 

These sonatas are quite a revelation. They 

remind me a lot of the chamber music of Telemann 

and Fasch. The playing here is excellent 

and nuanced. I love to hear the baroque oboe 

and oboe d’amore played so well. The notes 

are well written and full of useful information. 

LOEWEN 

grew up in England; she must be the only composer 

over the age of 4, living or dead, who 

doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry—I was trying 

to find out where she was actually born. Her 

music is not terribly inventive in scoring, 

melodic ideas, structure, or development. 

Even the texts are of little import: The Mermaid 

is based on her own fairy tale about a mermaid 

who befriends ocean animals, gets captured by 

pirates and rescued by her friends—a story 

remarkable for its absence of any drama from 

its characterless characters. Her music isn’t 

unpleasant at all, but it’s memorable only 

because it’s forgettable. I have the feeling she 

would make a decent arranger, because her 

music sounds playable and well balanced; but 

if I were a cellist or bassist, I’d go crazy having 

to play in Russian Tableaux (which sounds little 

different from Arabian Rhapsody Suite). 

The narrator seems to think that adding a 

tremor to his voice will communicate tension. 

Clare McCaldin’s diction in The Mermaid is 

particularly good and her voice grounded and 

pleasant; her phrasing is very musical—I’ve 

heard few singers who can sing 4-against-3 

rhythms and keep them from sounding 

square. The instrumentalists, too, play with 

elegance, charm, and good technique. Notes 

are in English; there are three pages of musicians’ 

biographies in lieu of texts and translations. 

ESTEP 

KISSINE: Zerkalo; see TCHAIKOVSKY 

KORNGOLD: Suite, op 23; 

MACMILLAN: Charpentier Variations 

Jonathan Swartz, Mark Fewer, v; Andres Diaz, vc; 

Wendy Chen, p—Soundset 1033—52 minutes 

Groteske is the title of this disc. It is also the 

name of the middle and longest movement in 

the Korngold suite. Both of these compositions 

are scored for two violins, cello, and piano. 

The idiom of both is somewhat similar, basically 

late romantic and very expressive. Kieren 

MacMillan was born in 1969 and studied at 

Rice University with Paul Cooper and Samuel 

Jones before moving to Toronto. His Fantasy 

Variations was commissioned by Swartz. Its 

idiom closely resembles the Korngold in its 

deep feeling and basic romanticism, though 

MacMillan is clearly happy in a number of historical 

idioms as well. The way he manages to 

KAKABADSE: Phantom Listeners; Arabian mingle these without losing our sense of his 

Rhapsody Suite; Mermaid; Russian 

own personality is quite remarkable and 

Tableaux; Song of the Shirt 

attractive. 

Kit Hesketh-Harvey, narr; Emma Brain-Gabbott, 

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) is 

s; Clare McCaldin, mz; musicians/ George Vass 

famous for his film scores but maintains a rep- 


utation among musicians as a composer of 

Lydia Kakabadse, of Georgian, Russian, Greek, serious music. This 33-minute piece is a prime 

and Austrian ancestry, was born in 1955 and example, full of imagination and passion. It 



was written for piano left hand in 1928, commissioned 

by Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost 

his right hand in WW I. It is in five movements, 

beginning with a Prelude & Fugue that sound 

like anything but—a waltz that seems, in this 

performance, at least, to be in the slow American 

style rather than the Viennese of the 

Strausses. Then comes ‘Groteske’, a scherzo of 

sorts, followed by one of Korngold’s Opus 22 

songs, and ending with a theme and variations. 

It is a strong work that repays listening. 

The variations help to pull the program together, 

since it opened with MacMillan’s 19minute 

set. 

Altogether, this is a very enjoyable coupling, 

played with warmth and stylistic unity 

by these musicians. My only regret is that the 

program is so short. If it is specifically the 

Korngold suite that attracts you, it has been 

recorded several times before with more music 

attached, mostly by Korngold. This reading is 

somewhat faster than the others, and is excitingly 

played, though one would hesitate to recommend 

it over such luminaries as Leon 

Fleisher, piano, Joseph Silverstein and Jaimie 

Laredo, violins, and Yo-yo Ma, cello (Sony 

48253, Nov/Dec 1998). That comes with Franz 

Schmidt’s Piano Quintet, also written for 

Wittgenstein. Another fine reading is by the 

Schubert ensemble of London, coupled with 

Korngold’s own Piano Quintet (ASV 1047, 

May/June 1999). Both of these works are also 

to be heard on a three-disc collection including 

numerous Korngold songs sung by Anne 

Sofie von Otter with Bengt Forsberg and 

friends (DG 459631, May/June 1999). Arved 

Ashby was enthusiastic, particularly about the 

Sony release, though the DG is good and the 

song performances are a must. Carl Bauman 

was not happy with the ASV, though his major 

complaint was about the music rather than the 

performances. But you see that this release is 

really about the MacMillan variations. Your 

move! 

D MOORE 

KORNGOLD: Symphony; Little Dance in 

the Olden Style 

Helsinki Philharmonic/ John Storgards 

Ondine 1182—62 minutes 

Recently (Mar/Apr 2011) I noted that Marc 

Albrecht’s recording of this symphony on Pentatone 

viewed it as a 20th Century work. Storgards 

sees it as 19th Century, with plusher textures 

and slightly slower pacing. It runs about 

three minutes longer than Albrecht’s. Though I 

prefer the 20th Century model, the work can 

support both viewpoints. 

Anyone who does like the more traditional 

approach will very much enjoy this recording, 

especially the slow movement, where Stor- 

gards builds the music to a stunning climax. 

(The intensity of this passage was so powerful 

that, as a lifelong admirer of FDR, the dedicatee 

of this symphony, I recalled the physical 

sense of loss we felt over his death when I was 

a kid in England.) The Little Dance is a cute trifle, 

here in its first recording. Though scored 

for a small orchestra, it shows Korngold’s usual 

ingenuity with color. Performances and 

recorded sound are both excellent. 

O’CONNOR 

KREIN: Violin Sonata; Poem; 

FEINBERG: Sonata 

Ilona Then-Bergh, v; Michael Schafer, p 


Grigorij Krein (1879-1957)—not to be confused 

with either his contemporary Alexander Krein 

or the younger Julian Krein—also, like him, 

Russian composers—hasn’t shown up on my 

radar screen before. He wrote in a late-lateromantic 

style somewhat influenced, the notes 

assert, by Scriabin and Reger, though his 

music is closer, perhaps, to early Szymanowski, 

Florent Schmitt, and Ernst Bloch. 

The Violin Sonata in G, from 1913, is rhapsodic, 

dreamy, opulent, and quite beautiful, 

spinning out its iridescent harmonies and glittering 

figurations with delectable freshness 

and verve. Its perfumed luxury and continual 

reaching for erotic ecstasies is characteristic of 

“decadent” art, though beneath the surface of 

its 20-minute, two-movement layout, one 

senses a persuasive and coherent formal unity 

of theme and mood. 

Krein’s 9-minute Poem, from about 1920, 

adds an exotic tint to his musical palette, with 

florid, “Hebraic” melodies and quasi-modal 

chorales. This too is a lovely work of its kind, 

full of bright colors and striking textures (in 

both instruments) though more relaxed and 

expansive in mood than the intense sonata. 

Samuil Feinberg (1890-1962) was better 

known in his native Russia as a pianist and 

teacher than composer, though he wrote a lot, 

especially for piano, a fair amount of it now 

recorded (see our index for reviews). Like 

Krein he was a late-late-romantic influenced 

by Scriabin, as well as Rachmaninoff, Busoni, 

and Szymanowski. Judging by his piano 

sonatas (recorded on BIS) and by the comments 

on his piano concertos by ARG’s reviewers, 

Feinberg’s music is typically bloated, cluttered, 

and bombastic, with torrents of notes 

that overwhelm any sense of clear shape or 

direction. Still, on the rare occasions when he 

writes with clarity and restraint—usually in his 

shorter, more modest efforts—he can produce 

engaging music of considerable delicacy and 

expressiveness. 

Feinberg’s 1960 Violin Sonata, written very 



late in his life, is one of the best works I’ve 

heard by him. One reason is surely because— 

though it lasts 26 minutes—there are five 

sharply contrasted movements of moderate 

length, and, especially in the first three of 

these, the composer resists his impulse to pad 

and thicken his music. Moreover the piano 

writing—too often excessive in Feinberg—is 

here quite lucid and disciplined, greatly 

improved by the composer’s adoption of a 

neo-classic (rather than excessive and heroically 

romantic) sense of proportion and poise. 

The first three movements are shapely and 

concise: I is a solemn, neo-baroque prelude of 

imposing nobility; II is an incisive, muscular, 

vaulting scherzo in six-eight time; III is a slow, 

halting, rather melancholy andante. IV and V 

are longer (7 minutes each), with more variety 

in tempo and emotion and more development 

and internal contrasts. Both rework ideas from 

the earlier movements, quite touchingly in 

places, V eventuating in a sonorous, broadly 

phrased recapitulation and bravura coda. 

Especially as rendered here, superbly 

played by Ilona Then-Bergh and Michael 

Schäfer and nicely recorded by Genuin, these 

works by Grigorij Krein and Samuil Feinberg 

are likely to interest all lovers of early-modernera 

violin music. 

LEHMAN 

KUMMER: Chamber Music 

Red Cedar—Fleur de Son 58008—64 minutes 

Gaspard Kummer (1795-1870) was a German 

flutist-composer whose music has faded from 

popularity since he died. He wrote a number 

of chamber works. Here we have the Serenades 

for flute, viola, and guitar, Opp. 81 & 83, 

the Divertimento for two flutes and guitar, Op. 

92:2, and the Quintet, Op. 75 for two flutes, 

viola, cello, and guitar. The two Serenades differ 

in size and ambition, with Op. 83 the better. 

The Op. 81 and the Divertimento are salon 

music, and the Quintet falls in the middle. 

Kummer uses held notes in all these 

pieces; another stylistic hallmark is homophony. 

This is conventional music, but at its 

best—the inner movements of the quintet, for 

instance—it offers plenty of reward. 

This is a performance on period instruments. 

The playing is excellent, and the tone 

qualities are charming. The viola sound is 

often thin and stringy, the guitar is soft and has 

little resonance. There is generally no vibrato. 

Yet I do like it. One thing I don’t: the staccatos 

for all in I of the Serenade, Op. 81 are just too 

thin (meant to sound playful). The intonation 

is spot on, and so is all the technique. The balance 

leaves the guitar just a little out of the texture. 

This is not the kind of guitar writing 

found in modern flute and guitar pieces that 

calls for a lot of tone colors; the guitar is there 

primarily for harmonic support. 

Flutists Jan Boland and Douglas Worthen 

carry this program, playing as one. Superb 

notes by guitarist John Dowdall and Boland 

trace the players’ history with this music to 

discoveries at the Library of Congress in 1980 

and 1999. 

Iowa-based Red Cedar Chamber Music 

have recorded eight other CDs for Fleur de 

Son, including one titled ‘Three Guys Named 

Mo’; we’ve covered seven of those eight, 

including the Mozart-Molitor-Molino program. 

The last recording we covered of music 

similar to this was a European group playing 

Molino (CPO 777448; Sept/Oct 2010), and it 

too was commendable. 

GORMAN 

LAITMAN: Vedem; Fathers 

Music of Remembrance—Naxos 559685—61 mins 

Music of Remembrance is a musical organization 

dedicated to remembering Holocaust 

musicians and their art, found in Seattle, 

Washington. They have made at least four 

other CDs for Naxos. This one contains a 49minute 

chamber oratorio on the subject of a 

clandestine magazine called Vedem (Czech for 

“In the Lead”), put together by the boys in 

Home 1 of Terezin’s concentration camp every 

week between 1942 and 1944 and containing 

articles and poetry by the children, most of 

whom were eventually killed. 

Mina Miller, founder and artistic director 

of Music of Remembrance and pianist here, 

commissioned Lori Laitman (b 1955) to compose 

this work. Laitman brought in poet David 

Mason to put together a libretto from the 800 

pages of material hidden away by one of the 

boys, brought back to Prague after the liberation 

and published in a book called We are 

Children Just the Same, published in 1995. 

The text as presented in the oratorio is a 

mix of description and poetry about the situation 

of the children and their reactions to it. It 

is most moving and leads me to wonder 

whether we human beings are really better 

than the other animals. We have some very 

destructive instincts that continue to kill off 

some of our most valuable citizens just 

because we don’t agree with some of their 

views. We can blame the Germans for the 

holocaust, but that doesn’t let the rest of us off 

the hook. 

Laitman’s music is smooth as a glove and 

suits the material to a T. It is warmly and simply 

romantic in idiom and lets the text do the 

talking. The only complaint I have about the 

production is that one must follow the text in 

the liner notes in order to understand it, partly 

because Angela Niederloh has an odd way of 



pronouncing certain words that makes it 

impossible to follow the text by ear. One 

should follow it by eye for other reasons as 

well, since it is the only way one can be sure 

whose text one is listening to, Mason’s or the 

children’s. Ross Hauck, the tenor, has a nice 

bright voice and the choir is beautifully balanced. 

There are also numerous child soloists 

who are a joy to hear. 

Fathers is a short song cycle based on 

poems by Sri Lankan poet Anne Ranasinghe 

and Russian poet David Vogel, both of whom 

disappeared under the Nazis. It is a sequel to a 

previous cycle called Daughters and is scored 

for piano trio and mezzo-soprano, again sung 

by Niederloh. Another fine expression of feeling, 

it completes this program effectively. 

Despite my reservations about her diction, 

Niederloh is a good singer and this is an 

important release. 

D MOORE 

LANGGAARD: Piano Pieces 2 

Berit Johansen Tange 

DaCapo 6220565 [SACD] 64 minutes 

Rued Langgaard was born in Copenhagen and 

lived from 1893-1952; he studied composition 

with his father, Siegfried, and counterpoint 

briefly with Carl Nielsen. He wrote 16 symphonies, 

an opera called Antichrist (DaCapo 

6220523, M/A 2007), and various other pieces. 

Volume 1 of the piano works, also with Tange, 

was reviewed by Mr Becker (DaCapo 8226025, 

S/O 2005). 

These pieces are a mixed bag of miniatures 

that remind me sometimes of Schumann (the 

Little Summer Memories) or Messiaen (Music 

of the Abyss, the first section of which ends 

with disconcertingly out-of-place major arpeggios). 

‘Album Leaf’, written when he was 11, is 

a touching little piece. Most of the album, 

though, is either pleasant but bland—or too 

insistent. Tange plays well, but the music is 

forgettable. 

ESTEP 

LEFKOWITZ: With/Without; Duo; 

(Sur)Real (Cine-)Music 1; Surfer’s Guide for 

the Perplexed; E Duo Unum; Canonical Variations; 

Fashionable Suite 

Julie Long, Jennifer Roth, fl; Ryan Zwahlen, ob; 

Jennifer Stevenson, Ralph Williams, Jonathan 

Sacdalan, cl; Daphne Chen, Julian Hallmark, v; 

Paul Coletti, Silu Fei, va; Carter Dewberry, vc; 

Walter Ponce, Stella Maksoudian, Jeanette-Louise 

Yaryan, Jeri-Mae G, Satolti, p; Buzz Gravelle, Sam 

Vierra, g; Andrea Thiele, hp 

Albany 1247— 79 minutes 

nell, and the University of Pennsylvania, working 

with Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, 

George Crumb, and Karel Husa. The music 

that results is not so much contradictory as it 

is a blend of styles and sources held together 

by a strong personality. The most curious 

composition is the first one listed. This derives 

from a ballet score for Desire under the Elms 

where a work for flute, cello, and harp is 

played either as solos, duos, or trio, each of 

which is played in the course of the eveninglong 

ballet. Here we are treated to the trio and 

the flute-cello duo as well as the solo parts for 

flute and harp, each interspersed between the 

other works in the program. The harp part is 

mostly repetitive figures that rather turn me 

off, but the other three versions are more varied. 

I am not impressed by the cellist’s intonation 

in the duo. 

The program opens with a nine-minute 

Duo for two pianos, an effective piece of energy 

and sensitivity. Then flute, violin, and two 

guitars give us (Cine-)Music 1, subtitled The 

Chase Through Escher’s Metamorphosen. The 

titles are considerably more complex than the 

outgoing and lovely music they intend to 

describe. The Surfer’s Guide is subtitled Jonah 

on the Raging Sea, though how this is supposed 

to relate to the colorful but hardly raging 

chamber piece it accompanies is anyone’s 

guess. Ah, that must be one of the contradictions! 

E Duo Unum is for two violas playing in 

hocket together. It is a great sound, though 

there is a bit of a repetition problem. Canonical 

Variations is for two clarinets. I rather 

expected more minimalism, but they are actually 

quite varied and entertaining. Finally we 

have two movements from a Fashionable Suite 

for piano solo, again on the simplistic side. 

Taken as a whole, Lefkowitz could do with a bit 

more contradiction in his style. His music is 

written in a pleasant idiom but it gets too close 

to minimalism too often for me to feel wholehearted 

about it. 

D MOORE 

LEIGHTON: Partita; Elegy; Solo Cello 

Sonata; Alleluia Pascha Nostrum 

Raphael Wallfisch, vc; Raphael Terroni, p 

BMS 439—61 minutes 

(www.britishmusicsociety.co.uk or phone 

01708 224795. Credit cards not accepted.) 

Kenneth Leighton (1929-88) wrote music of 

lyrical beauty from the beginning of his career. 

His Elegy, Opus 5 stems from an early cello 

sonata written in 1949 and has a romantic 

vocal mood that was on the way out in post- 

WW II music and is all the more welcome 

Music of Contradictions is the overall title of today. 

this release. David Lefkowitz is a native of New The Partita, Opus 35 with piano, is less 

York City who has been through Eastman, Cor- overtly tonal but just as lyrical, beginning 



again with an elegy, then a scherzo, and end- Leighton’s pieces are not conventional chorale 

ing with a theme and variations. The Solo Cello preludes but free improvisations on the tunes, 

Sonata dates from 1967 and is an effective even though fantasies sometimes include an 

blend of poise and activity demonstrating intact presentation of the melody. 

Wallfisch’s warm tone. Here I wish he had Missa de Gloria, Opus 82, also known as 

been somewhat more careful to make audible Dublin Festival Mass was commissioned for 

all of the inner notes in chordal passages. I the Dublin International Organ Festival and 

think we are missing something in clarity of first performed at St Patrick’s Cathedral in 

harmony in the last movement, ‘Flourish, Cha- 1980. It is a large-scale suite for organ based on 

conne and Coda’. 

the Sarum plainchants for Easter Day. The 

Finally, we have a 14-minute work again movements are named for the sung items of 

with piano, Alleluia Pascha Nostrum, written the Ordinary of the Mass, and Leighton’s 

in 1985, a particularly beautiful piece where music closely follows the structure and charac- 

the composer bids us and the cello farewell in ter of the liturgical texts. For instance, the Glo- 

a most moving way. This is an important ria is in three contrasting sections that reflect 

release, well played and recorded in a warm the distinct divisions of the Latin text, and 

sound. The material is not duplicated else- these are reinforced with quotations and 

where, to my knowledge, and it is a most development of the corresponding plainsong 

enjoyable addition to the cello literature. 

motives. The suite concludes with a character- 

D MOORE istic Leighton toccata on the chant for ‘Ite 

LEIGHTON: Organ Works 

Missa Est’. 

Since 2006, Greg Morris has been associate 

Et Resurrexit; Fantasies on Hymn Tunes (3); organist at the Temple Church in London. 

Dublin Festival Mass 

Before that he was assistant director of music 

Greg Morris 

at Blackburn Cathedral, where this was record- 


ed. The instrument was built in 1969 by the 

Kenneth Leighton was one of the most important 

composers of sacred choral and organ 

music in the 20th Century, though he is perhaps 

not as highly regarded outside his native 

Britain as he deserves to be. The present 

recording gives two of his major organ works 

and three selections from a set of shorter 

pieces. 

The three-movement suite Et Resurrexit 

dates from 1966. The composer stated that his 

object was “to give musical expression to the 

individual’s struggle for belief in the resurrection”. 

It seems to me that a great deal of 

Leighton’s music embodies a spiritual and 

emotional struggle towards a victory that is 

hard-won. The music is often ferociously dis- 

firm of JW Walker & Sons of Ruislip, and 

rebuilt in 2002 by Wood of Huddersfield. It is a 

generously endowed four-manual organ with a 

good variety of tone colors in a coherent tonal 

design. As recorded here the sound is spacious 

and powerful, even if somewhat distant as is so 

often the case with English cathedral organs. 

The strings sound rather chilly to me, but that 

often suits the severity of Leighton’s quieter 

writing, as does the plaintive quality of the soft 

reeds. Morris’s playing is authoritative and 

more than equal to Leighton’s virtuosic 

demands. Furthermore, this is clearly an 

instrument the artist knows well and can use 

to the greatest effect. 

GATENS 

sonant but never gratuitously ugly. The 

anguished harmony and counterpoint are 

always moving toward a final goal that cannot 

be reached any other way. That is certainly 

true of this work that begins with a brief movement 

to present the theme that pervades the 

whole. It is followed by a fantasy that freely 

LEIGHTON: St Thomas Mass; 

see MACMILLAN 

LENTZ: Ingwe 

Zane Banks, g 


develops the theme, and finally a fugue that Here’s another piece composed for electric 

concludes in triumph, though even here the guitar—in this instance a single, hour-long 

concluding major chord contains a raised work for solo electric guitar. I’ve been getting 

fourth degree that seems both to recall the more of these, and there really is no reason 

struggle and intensify the triumph as a mere why composers shouldn’t use the range of 

common chord would not. 

sounds that can be produced on electric gui- 

This is followed by the last three of tar. Most effective of the works I’ve heard was 

Leighton’s Six Fantasies on Hymn Tunes, Opus a concerto by Michael Nicollela, Ten Years 

72 (1975). The three tunes are the Irish melody Passed (M/J 2011). Ingwe is nothing if not 

‘St Columba’, the plainsong hymn ‘Veni ambitious, but you’ll have to judge whether its 

Emmanuel’, and the psalm tune ‘Hanover’ reach has exceeded its grasp. 

generally attributed to William Croft. Georges Lentz trained in Europe before 



emigrating to Australia in 1990. His work tends 

to be grandiose, inspired by religious imagery 

(since 1994 he has worked on a cycle of compositions 

collectively titled Caeli Enarrant..., 

“The Heavens are telling”). He is also inspired 

by nature, which in Australia is vast and overwhelming, 

and by Australia’s aboriginal cultures. 

The title of this work means “night” in 

the Aranda language. The notes make no mention 

of it, but I can’t help thinking that it is also 

a reference to the heavy metal guitarist Yngwie 

Malmsteen, whose name has the same pronunciation, 

and whose development of virtuoso 

technique is surely the model for much of 

this work. Malmsteen actually brought a number 

of students to classical guitar and classical 

music, and even performed the Paganini 

Caprices on electric guitar. 

But for all the grandiose, metaphysical 

claims the notes make about this piece, it is 

mainly an extension of techniques on electric 

guitar that were pioneered by Jimi Hendrix 

and developed and extended by Jimmy Page, 

Malmsteen, and others. It opens with 11 minutes 

of the sort of thing that might have been 

done by any of these players in an extended 

solo improvisation. Tempos are fluid (the 

notes say that there are four beats in every bar, 

but each beat might be a different duration— 

I’m afraid I don’t get that). And we’ve got bent 

notes, feedback, screaming scales, low-register 

dissonances, and power chords (open fifths 

and octaves at extreme volume—the device 

that produced a generation of young players 

who couldn’t distinguish between major and 

minor). Softer passages use tapping effects, 

playing by lightly brushing the strings, playing 

beyond the fingerboard, or playing with a bow 

to sustain the sound (Page originally used an 

actual bow—apparently it’s done electronically 

now). We also hear harmonics and passages 

that play with the volume control to eliminate 

the initial attack and produce the illusion of 

sustained sounds. There are passages of 

extreme crescendos, created by the amplification. 

The close of the work is a series of pounding 

notes on the lowest string, which is gradually 

lowered in its tuning until it ceases to 

vibrate and only rattles. 

The structure of the work is coherent, and 

if you find the concept interesting, you may 

want to hear this. Guitarist Zane Banks performs 

like an expert. He is trained in classical 

and jazz guitar and is active in the new music 

scene (not pop) in Australia. For me it went on 

far too long (as did some of those metal solos 

back in the day). Maybe I’m showing my age, 

but I just wanted to yell out “turn down that 

damned guitar!” 

KEATON 

LIADOV: Polish Variations; see GLAZOUNOV 

LISZT: Années de Pelerinage I 

Tomas Dratva, p 


The selling point of this release is not the 

soloist or the music, but the piano. The instrument 

is Wagner’s Steinway grand (Op. 34304) 

in Haus Wahnfried in Bayreuth. Dating originally 

from 1876, it has had a lot of work since 

then: it was overhauled completely in 1979. It 

is in good shape now. Based on its sound alone 

I would never have guessed its age. 

What I noticed most was that the instrument 

Dratva selected is not fully up to the task 

of handling Liszt. The recording has an overall 

pale quality resulting largely from the piano’s 

inability to go beyond a certain volume. 

‘Orage’, for example, never gets truly loud. 

Instead, it is a claustrophobia-inducing performance 

that sounds as if it were being played 

by a computer running Finale or Sibelius. ‘Vallée 

d’Obermann’ is also disappointingly flat. 

While some problems can be attributed to the 

instrument’s limitations, the performer 

exhibits some notable weaknesses too. In ‘Au 

Lac de Wallenstadt’, the melodies often trail 

off; in the ‘Pastorale’, the two contrasting 

themes are played with the exact same character. 

Most of ‘Au Bord d’une Source’ is under 

tempo, including the end. 

Dratva’s strongest attributes are his delicate-yet-full 

tone quality and his ability to pull 

back expressively for effect. In isolated 

instances these are effective, but would be 

more so if they were complemented by a larger 

array of tricks. Aside from the historical significance 

of the piano, then, little else sets this 

Liszt release apart from the rest. 

AUERBACH 

LISZT: Années de Pelerinage, all 

Julian Gorus, p—Hänssler 98627 [3CD] 187 mins 

This release is remarkable more for its slick 

packaging and ambitious program than for the 

playing. Gorus does show promise as a Liszt 

performer. He has, for example, sufficient 

strength and stamina to rocket through the 

Dante Sonata. And he has sufficient courage to 

both experiment and succeed with unusual 

interpretations: the restless tempo he chooses 

for the ‘Chapelle de Guillaume Tell’ imparts a 

much clearer sense of the piece than the noncommittal, 

hesitant approach favored by many 

others. 

Yet despite all that, too many factors 

remain that conspire to scuttle this project. 

One of these is the piano, which is soft and 

blurry and has a damper pedal that roughly 

brushes the strings. Another is the meandering 



and aimless quality of the softer, introspective 

pieces. There are plenty of pretty textures on 

hand, such as in the ‘Canzone’ from the supplement 

to Year 2 and for all the water-themed 

numbers from Year 1. These do not sufficiently 

compensate us for the sublime works that fall 

flat owing to incoherent melodies, among 

them ‘Les Cloches de Geneve’, ‘Sonnet 123’, 

and ‘Angelus’. The more aggressive numbers 

do not rescue Gorus’s case either. As engaging 

as they may be at first, later hearings diminish 

their luster. 

AUERBACH 

LISZT: Concertos 1+2; Hungarian Rhapsody 

6; Valse Oubliee 1; Petrarch Sonnet 104; 

SCHUMANN: Romance 2; Novelette 1; 

FALLA: Miller’s Dance; 

GUION: The Harmonica Player 

Byron Janis; Moscow Philharmonic/ Kiril Kondrashin; 

Moscow Radio Symphony/ Gennady 

Rozhdestvensky 


The concertos were recorded in Moscow in 

June, 1962; Janis was wrapping up his triumphal 

tour and Mercury brought its Living 

Presence equipment to the USSR rather than 

trusting the sonics to Melodiya. Mr Manildi 

was enthusiastic over the first appearance on 

silver disc (M/A 1991), praising the Horowitzian 

virtuosity tempered by “tonal subtlety and 

a true sense of Lisztian style”. These were often 

compared to the highly-regarded Richter performances 

(Overview, J/A 1990) but I don’t 

think the latter are as imaginative or colorful. 

Certainly Philips couldn’t match Mercury’s 

vivid, you-are-there sonics, one of the label’s 

earliest 35mm film recordings. The Russian 

orchestras are not always refined, and I’m not 

about to part with Pennario and Leibowitz 

(RCA). But these Janis performances rank with 

the very best and deserve to be made widely 

available again. 

The concertos can also be found in a fourrecord 

“Janis Edition” from Brilliant (9182) 

that adds concertos by Rachmaninoff, Prokofieff, 

Schumann, and Tchaikovsky, along with 

Moussorgsky’s Pictures. The set can be had at a 

bargain price, but you won’t get the encores 

included here. Mr Manildi considered them 

“exceptional” and I concur, particularly the 

dazzling Hungarian Rhapsody and a first-class 

Petrarch Sonnet. 

KOLDYS 

LISZT: Bellini & Verdi Paraphrases 

Giovanni Bellucci, p—Lontano 690748—63 mins 

This is astonishing playing. Almost everything 

Bellucci does feels almost impossibly grand in 

scale, and by this I mean the passion, volume, 

technique, and artistic vision alike. All these 

positive qualities are gilded further by an 

amazing studio sound, a straight through-thecenter 

tone that has no edge. It’s intensely 

vivid without ever becoming too bright. 

The offering from Norma is beautiful in all 

ways—in the “as powerful as a force of nature” 

way as much as it is in the “poignant and tender 

adagio” way. The piano has an especially 

vocal quality: for a demonstration one need 

only listen to the aria passages starting at 8:30. 

The paraphrase of Don Carlos illustrates 

another of his strong suits, the way he projects 

colors. The low, rumbling passages appearing 

at the center of the piece are as deep and black 

as night, yet are apt at any moment to dissolve 

into blissful, optimistic melodies guided forward 

by stirring accompaniments. Of course, 

in skipping to that section I do not mean to 

minimize the striking effect created by the 

bombastic, waltz-like opening. The music is 

forceful and driven, delightfully dry and sharp 

while still sounding full and orchestral. 

This release truly is a bounty of near-perfect 

moments. In addition to the ones I’ve 

mentioned are the magnificent squalls in 

Norma and Rigoletto that sweep the full length 

of the keyboard as the volume grows ever 

louder. Aida is an essay of grace, restraint, and 

suspense that culminates in an impossibly 

soft, vanishing ending. 

For fans of Liszt’s paraphrases, it probably 

does not get any better than this. Bellucci’s 

playing is powerful, deep, and smart. He is 

always placing something of musical interest 

before us, such that these lengthy pieces— 

which stretch out interminably when lesser 

musicians sleepwalk through them—pass by 

in a few breathless moments. Though ARG has 

remained strangely mute about this pianist, 

the magazine Diapason has declared this very 

release to be one of the ten best ever of Liszt’s 

piano music. I am not prepared to follow them 

all the way. I will go so far as to agree that it is a 

must buy for any serious pianophile who likes 

Liszt, opera, or over the top romantic piano. It 

is not necessary for you to like all three, 

though: checking just one of those boxes qualifies 

you as a good consumer target for this 

tremendously fine offering. 

AUERBACH 

LISZT: Wagner & Weber Transcriptions 

Steven Mayer, p 


The main reason I am writing this review is to 

warn readers not to expect too much. In contrast 

to paraphrases that might infuse the original 

tunes with new sensibilities and textures, 

these are transcriptions, pure and simple. I 



recommend them to you only if you really 

enjoy hearing pianists interpret opera music. 

As to the merits of the release itself, I am 

pleased to report that it is of high quality. The 

sound is outstanding. All the tones are pure 

and sweet, with not a single ugly strike to be 

found anywhere. Mayer’s technique is well 

suited to this difficult and ornate music: the 

scale work and flourishes are outstanding. In 

addition there are a few truly impressive 

moments, such as the concluding minutes of 

‘Am Stillen Herd’ from Meistersinger, where 

the initially soft tones grow imperceptibly into 

the thundering chords of the final cadence. 

Another highly satisfying experience is supplied 

by the ‘Entry of the Guests’ from 

Tannhäuser. This, one of the few works 

exhibiting any real zip, was scored modestly 

enough by Wagner that it translates directly 

into a piano piece of some interest. Most of the 

other the music cruises by cleanly and evenly. 

While not always thrilling (there is not a hint of 

urgency to the Venusberg music), this program 

is at least consistently enjoyable. 

AUERBACH 

but not by much. The Ave Maria benefits from 

a supremely light touch; the pure sonic experience 

of it is fantastic. The Hungarian Rhapsody 

absolutely flies: the late stages are full of 

light and vivacious playing coupled with a soft, 

calliope touch. It triumphs as a showpiece, giving 

evidence that we really do have a talented 

performer on our hands. On the other hand, 

the Miserere is done well but dispassionately. 

It’s not that this isn’t good playing. The problem 

is how far it is from Bellucci (above). So it 

is solid but not world-class Liszt. 

AUERBACH 

LISZT: Petrarch Sonnets; Dante Sonata; 

Legend of Saint Francis; Aida, Il Trovatore, 

Rigoletto Paraphrases 

Daniel Barenboim, p 

Warner 69785—75 minutes 

LISZT: Piano Sonata; Ave Maria; Hungarian 

Rhapsody 12; 2 Verdi Paraphrases 

Gabor Farkas 


Barenboim made this all-Liszt recital an Italian 

affair. The design is cleverer than that, though. 

By beginning with the sonnets and closing 

with the paraphrases, he opens and closes 

with the vocally conceived repertoire, reserving 

the middle for two flashy, pianistic works. 

It all hangs together brilliantly, and the musicmaking 

is of high caliber all the way through. 

About the only thing I didn’t love on this 

release is the piano’s sound, which is hot and a 

little hollow. The balance didn’t seem right 

Farkas, a Hungarian, has won a number of either, with the quiet sounds coming off too 

national and international competitions, quiet and sometimes ruining the intimacy. I 

including first places at the National Piano can lodge few complaints with the perfor- 

Competition of the Hungarian Radio and the mance, though, especially in the first three and 

Bartok competition in Baden bei Wien as well last three numbers. ‘Sonnet 47’ is unabashedly 

as third at the Liszt International in Budapest. lyric: the depth and force of the melody call to 

He has a polished style, with evenness seem- mind the idea of a stage singer with deep 

ingly prized above all. That is actually some- lungs. There is a more restrained mood in 

what of a drawback for Liszt, where occasional ‘Sonnet 104’, which I was initially tempted to 

growling (this is meant metaphorically) is mer- label as a sign of boredom. On deeper reflecited. 

It also makes for decidedly cool interpretion, I came to view it more favorably as symptations 

of some of this composer’s headiest, tomatic of a calmer, mystical reading. This 

most mercurial works. 

short set of works is rounded out by ‘Sonnet 

The Sonata in B minor starts off with nice, 123’, which swells impressively through its 

crisp tones that have appreciable power length, seemingly climbing higher with the 

behind them. Things go downhill from there, introduction of each new melodic pitch. The 

though, with humdrum passages appearing end is especially dramatic. It simultaneously 

with growing regularity. For example, nearly exudes stasis and tension—when is that 

all of the many eingangs separating the appoggiatura going to resolve?—before land- 

episodes float disappointingly without puring on that last, delightful, ringing chord. 

pose. So many wasted opportunities to wax A perfect counterbalance to these works is 

rhapsodic! Later, at the climax of the lyrical supplied by the Verdi paraphrases. The vocal 

episode directly preceding the final fugue, the lines in Aida are consummately shaped. What 

intensity of the melody drops off precipitous- impressed me more, though, is that the interly—precisely 

one note after the peak is jections of flowing arpeggio material are all riv- 

reached. As for that fugue, though it moves eting, too. Never just killing time, Barenboim is 

briskly and effervesces in the highest registers, relentlessly expressive. The works based on Il 

it failed to excite me. All in all, this is a solid Trovatore and Rigoletto are spectacular show- 

performance of this sonata that fails to distinpieces. The former is remarkable for its draguish 

itself from the mainstream. Perhaps that matic, dark colors and rich baritone melodies, 

is why he programmed it to appear last. 

the latter for its speed and intensity. 

The other works on the program are better, I’ve concentrated my efforts so far in 



describing the outer portions of the recital 

because that is where the most striking music 

lies. Barenboim does an admirable job with St 

Francis of Assisi, taking great care to set the 

peaceful scene between the ecstatic friar and 

the warbling birds. On the one hand it stands 

as a world-class lesson in proper leggiero technique. 

On the other, this struck me as a longwinded 

and gimmicky piece. The Dante 

Sonata is the only work that actually fizzles a 

bit, a result of him holding back on every climax 

except for the final one. This is only a very 

brief lull in quality, though. Just about everywhere 

else, Barenboim is golden. 

AUERBACH 

LISZT: Benediction de Dieu dans la Solitude; 

Don Giovanni Fantasy; Liebestraum 3; 

Polonaise 2; Rhapsodie Espagnole; Jeux 

d’eaux a la Villa d’Este 

Arto Satukangas, p 

Alba 303 [SACD] 65 minutes 

Satukangas is a Finnish pianist who, though 

having played on several continents, has 

remained most active and famous near home. 

His only noted win at a significant competition, 

for example, was in 1979 at the Maj Lind 

Competition in Helsinki. This present offering 

will not likely garner him appreciably more 

attention from the international community. It 

is not that it isn’t done well. He has a polished 

and pleasant sound that is put to good use primarily 

in the opening polonaise. While the 

opening is satisfyingly crisp, it is actually the 

soft, expressive passages that are the most 

impressive. He gets a remarkably large variety 

of colors in this bonbon of a work. 

The problem, here and elsewhere, is that 

the music fails to catch fire. In privileging 

evenness and restraint, the refrains of the 

polonaise come off as too light. The undulating 

accompaniment from the opening of the 

Benediction is suave, but doesn’t shimmer. In 

the Rhapsodie Espagnole, minutes go by where 

there is plenty of volume and speed, but the 

intensity level remains stubbornly flat. The 

lighter episodes are charming, in particular the 

Chabrier-like one that rockets by in triplet 16th 

notes. But the ending registers as only a minor 

event: strangely, it seems to get softer as each 

new theme enters, almost as if the music were 

suffering from a bout of shyness. 

I can detect no glaring weaknesses in 

Satukangas’s technical playing, but it remains 

wanting in expressiveness. The best Liszt playing 

in this round remains a three-way tie 

between De la Salle, Barenboim, and Bellucci. 

AUERBACH 

LISZT: Ballade 2; Dante Sonata; 

Funerailles; Mazeppa; Transcriptions of 

Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner 

Lise de la Salle, p 

Naive 5267—77 minutes 

This pianist is steadily emerging as one of the 

great talents of her generation. Margaret 

Barela praised her Bach for its intelligence, 

imagination, and poise (Sept/Oct 2005), and 

James Harrington marveled at her Prokofieff 

for its vitality and power (Sept/Oct 2007). And 

all this for projects completed well before she 

reached the age of 20! Here she returns with a 

Liszt offering that, while not as unequivocal a 

success as those earlier efforts, is certainly 

worth taking note of. 

De la Salle’s playing in unimpeachable in 

almost all respects. She boasts an uncommon 

technique that is more than up to the task of 

handling Liszt’s most difficult scores. In other 

words, her capacities far exceed the classic 

requirements of smooth scale work, supple 

arpeggios, and fast tremolos. Among them are 

her vast reserves of power and the astounding 

quickness of her hands. For example, she 

blazes through the leap-based episodes of 

Mazeppa like no one I’ve heard. I was further 

bowled over by two different spots in 

Funerailles. The initial section is delivered with 

about same energy and volume as a full 

orchestra belting out the overture to Prokofieff’s 

Romeo and Juliet. The march near the 

work’s conclusion absolutely gleams: again, 

few players could hope to match her vibrant 

sound and relentless forward momentum. 

At the same time, I do not regard this 

release an unqualified success. Her tone, for 

one thing, is too monochromatic. The piano 

she uses is consistently dark and full, and it 

facilitates her incredible release technique. As 

wonderful as that is, it made me miss the 

sharper, more brittle timbres that are necessary 

for creating drama in the frenzied parts of 

longer works like the second ballade. Another 

problem is her program, which sprinkles in 

minor transcriptions—Mozart’s ‘Lachrymosa’ 

from the Requiem, Schubert’s ‘Ständchen’, 

and Schumann’s ‘Widmung’—among the 

anchoring works. These works, having no real 

connection to types of sentiment expressed in 

original works by Liszt, create potholes in this 

otherwise serious program. 

I judge this release in the end to be extremely 

good. De la Salle’s Liszt is extremely 

polished and dependable. While there are not 

many lyric surprises on hand, the playing as a 

whole is too good to really pass up. It even has 

an additional attribute especially suggestive of 

its world-class heritage: it grows on you. The 

inimitable way she releases notes, or links 

them sinuously as in the opening of the Dante 



Sonata, echo in the mind long after listening. I 

can recall her sound vividly to mind even now. 

AUERBACH 

LISZT: Au Lac de Wallenstadt; Ballade 2; 

Consolations; Hungarian Rhapsody 3; 

Petrarch Sonnet 104; Valse Oubliee 1; 

Waldesrauschen 

Nelson Freire, p—Decca 4782728—58 minutes 

Freire is an international superstar of the keyboard 

who, according to the vast literature of 

reviews of his releases, it seems can do no 

wrong. I approached this release with high 

expectations (based in part on my familiarity 

with his superlative work with Chopin), but I 

am somewhat perplexed by it. Everything 

about the design and execution of the product 

indicates that I should like it, but I do not. As 

to why, I think the main culprit is the piano, 

which sounds like it has been miked too close. 

In the upper registers, anything louder than a 

mezzo forte registers as a hammered note. 

Whenever Freire puts effort in to bringing out 

the main melody, it sounds as if he’s trying too 

hard. 

The imbalance between melody and supporting 

harmony is great enough to derail 

some of the more significant offerings, including 

the second ballade. The left hand rumbling 

at the opening is too quiet; it is also too bright, 

making this music evocative of nothing. The 

first important climax near 5:00 is a halfhearted 

affair marked by very dry attacks and too little 

power. In ‘Sonnet 104’ the lyrical melody is 

plunked out too hard. Fortunately it is at least 

shaped well, with many expressive dynamic 

curves. Where the work gets more agitated 

near the end, the scrabbling loud chords 

sound forced and not very beautiful. Again, it 

sounds as if he’s trying too hard. 

One can find a few notable tracks that are 

beyond reproach. The Third Hungarian Rhapsody 

is wonderful all the way through. The 

start is all bold, fat tones. Soon after the color 

shifts and we enter the world of the exotic 

scales. The notes materialize and run off like 

water droplets and slide about with a seductive, 

dangerous air. Other great moments 

appear in the center of the Consolations. The 

third one adopts a very tender sound, incredibly 

sostenuto and liquid. Midway through it 

begins to get even better: the addition of more 

voices doesn’t disrupt the overall serene 

atmosphere, and the releases become even 

more delicate. No. 4 is just as good. It is a subtle, 

reserved, and poignant work highly reminiscent 

of Schumann’s ‘Der Dichter Spricht’, 

and Freire delivers it with all the solemnity and 

grace that it deserves. 

These few moments are a testament to this 

artist’s limitless talent. I only wish there were 

more of them gracing the full release. For anyone 

who goes ahead and purchases this, I recommend 

listening to it in your car to take 

some of the edge off the sound. No matter 

where I tried listening, though, I was never 

able to completely shake it. 

AUERBACH 

LISZT: Piano Concerto 2; see SCHUMANN 

LOEWE: 20 Songs & Ballads 

Florian Boesch, bar; Roger Vignoles 


If the tendency in voice recitals these days is to 

sprinkle some rarities in amidst the chestnuts, 

this recording breaks the trend. All the Loewe 

favorites are here—ballads like ‘Erlkönig’ and 

‘Edward’; cute songs like ‘Hinkende Jamben’ 

and ‘Die Wandelne Glocke’; even sappy pieces 

like ‘Die Uhr’. 

Florian Boesch is a fine singer, a bass-baritone 

in color even though the lowest notes are 

weak. He also characterizes well, particularly 

in the ballads where he has a horrific story to 

tell. Roger Vignoles’s accompaniments are as 

fine as you would expect from the seasoned 

pianist; he does a great job with the challenging 

conclusion to ‘Odins Meeresritt’. 

This is an ideal introduction to Loewe. 

Most of the good pieces are here in excellent 

performances, and the production is helped 

no small amount by the inclusion of good 

notes and texts in German and English. 

ALTHOUSE 

LOEWE: 9 Songs; 

SCHUMANN: Liederkreis, op 39 

Henk Neven, bar; Hans Eijsackers 

Onyx 4052—61 minutes 

Neven is a young Dutch baritone, a 2003 graduate 

from the Conservatory of Amsterdam; this 

is his first commercial recording. He has a fine 

voice, somewhat rugged in texture, but with a 

wide range of color and dynamics. I would like 

a little more freedom in his high notes, but 

basically his technique is in good shape. 

The lovely Schumann cycle is very nicely 

done, with careful, imaginative treatment of 

text, but I will admit that the loveliest 

moments (e.g. in ‘Mondnacht’) don’t have the 

same magic that other singers bring to it. More 

satisfying are the Loewe songs—mostly familiar 

ones—where the rugged, (should I say 

blue-collar?) quality of his voice contributes to 

the story-telling in the ballads. His ‘Hinkende 

Jamben’ (which Hotter did so well) is a touching 

example of his fine characterization; and 

longer works like ‘Tom der Reimer’, ‘Herr 

Oluf’, and ‘Odins Meeresritt’ have just the 

right amount of narrative tone. Neven is very 

capably accompanied by Hans Eijsackers, who 



earns his pay with a wonderful ‘Odins Meeresritt’. 

In short, a very nice debut record and a 

name to look for in the future. 

If you look for this recording, it carries the 

title Auf einer Burg (the seventh song in the 

Schumann cycle). Texts in German and English. 

ALTHOUSE 

LULLY: Bellerophon 

Les Talens Lyriques/ Christophe Rousset 

Aparte 15 [2CD] 2:13:46 

When Bellerophon was first given in 1679, Lully 

was still coping with the dismissal of Philippe 

Quinault from court for injudicious allusions 

to the King’s mistress, Madame de Montespan, 

in his libretto for Isis. When Louis XIV requested 

a new opera for 1679, the task of creating a 

new libretto fell to Thomas Corneille, who had 

never written the text for a complete opera 

before. Corneille was still upset by the failure 

of Psyché in 1678, a work he had to adapt for 

Lully in three weeks—it had caused him to 

considered never writing another libretto. 

When pressed, Corneille finally suggested the 

legend of the Greek hero, Bellerophon, who, 

while riding on the winged-horse Pegasus, had 

conquered the fire-breathing Chimaera. 

(Corneille later wrote the libretto for Marc- 

Antoine Charpentier’s Medee, which has a 

number of similarities with Bellerophon.) 

While the compositional process did cause 

occasional strain between the composer and 

librettist, the subject allowed Louis XIV to 

identify himself with the hero (and be suitably 

lauded in the prologue) and during its initial 

nine-month run, it was a clear success, and it 

was often revived in the 18th Century. It was 

also the first of Lully’s tragedies lyriques to 

appear in print. 

The music of Bellerophon also marked a 

change in Lully’s style, including a more colorful 

orchestration, his first use of accompanied 

recitative, extensive use of the chorus, and the 

establishment of a harmonious balance between 

the need for the ballet and the dramatic 

flow. All of these innovative qualities are evident 

in this, the premiere recording of 

Bellerophon. While I believe Rousset occasionally 

pushes the tempo too much, there is a 

clear excitement through the whole opera and 

a strong sense of musical flow. This contrasts 

strongly with the more stately interpretation 

modeled by William Christie’s Atys (Nov/Dec 

1987) and followed in a number of other 

recordings of Lully operas. 

All of the soloists are well chosen, especially 

Cyril Auvity for Bellerophon, Celine Scheen 

for the love interest, Philonoë, and Jean Teitgen 

for a number of the bass roles, including 

Apollo in the prologue and the magician 

Amisodar. Rousset also has the advantage of 

an orchestra filled with responsive musicians 

who sensitively support the singers. If I had to 

chose just two examples from the many on this 

recording of Rousset’s success, one would be 

the second-act air for Amisodar, where he is 

accompanied by the full string section in deep, 

dark tones as the stage is transformed into a 

horrible rocky prison. My second would be the 

extended description of Bellerophon’s combat 

by the off-stage chorus in Act IV. I would question 

Rousset’s occasional use of organ and percussion 

in a number of passages in the opera, 

but in this he is only following the current performance 

fashions and has the good taste to 

keep both within bounds. 

While I love Lully operas and admire many 

of the earlier recordings, this may be actually 

the first I would recommend to anyone unfamiliar 

with Lully’s style who wished to fully 

experience the musical drama of these essential 

compositions. 

BREWER 

MACMILLAN: Laudi alla Vergine Maria; 

Song of the Lamb; Invocation; Cantos Sagrados 

LEIGHTON: God’s Grandeur; St Thomas 

Mass; Quam Dilecta 

David Saint, org; Birmingham Conservatory 

Chamber Choir/ Paul Spicer 

Regent 348—75 minutes 

James MacMillan (b 1959) studied composition 

with Kenneth Leighton (1929-88) at the 

University of Edinburgh, so these are works of 

teacher and pupil. Many are claimed as first 

recordings: Leighton’s St Thomas Mass and 

‘Quam Dilecta’; MacMillan’s ‘Laudi alla 

Vergine Maria’, ‘Song of the Lamb’, and ‘Invocation’. 

Most of the pieces here can be better 

described as concert music with a sacred 

theme than as church music intended to be 

performed in the context of a liturgy. The principal 

exception is Leighton’s Mass (1962), commissioned 

by the Friends of Canterbury Cathedral 

to commemorate the 800th anniversary of 

the consecration of St Thomas Becket as Archbishop 

of Canterbury. It is a setting of the English 

texts from the Book of Common Prayer, so 

the Gloria comes as the final movement. 

MacMillan’s ‘Song of the Lamb’ (2008) and 

Leighton’s ‘Quam Dilecta’ (1967) could conceivably 

be sung as anthems, but they are too 

ambitious for any run-of-the-mill occasion. 

‘God’s Grandeur’ (1957) is Leighton’s setting 

for unaccompanied choir of a poem by 

Gerard Manley Hopkins. MacMillan’s ‘Laudi 

alla Vergine Maria’ (2004) sets a passage from 

Dante’s Paradiso for double choir and soloists. 

The concluding “Ave” contains a sly reference 



to a well-known melody from Gilbert & Sullivan’s 

Pirates of Penzance that would almost 

certainly elude the listener unless alerted 

beforehand. The piece was jointly commissioned 

by the Chapter of Winchester Cathedral 

and the Netherlands Chamber Choir. ‘Invocation’ 

(2006) is a setting for unaccompanied 

double choir of the English translation of a 

poem by Karol Wojtyla (later Pope John Paul 

II). It was commissioned by the BBC for the 

Oriel Singers, who gave the first performance 

at the Cheltenham Music Festival. 

MacMillan’s Cantos Sagrados (1990) has a 

more political connotation, as it springs from 

the composer’s interest in liberation theology 

applied to the circumstances in Latin America. 

In this substantial three-movement work, 

MacMillan combines English translations of 

poems by Ariel Dorfman and Ana Maria Mendoza 

with Latin liturgical texts. The work is 

deliberately dramatic, even gut-wrenching, 

but there is always a danger in such pieces that 

the subservience of art to an ideological agenda 

will result in propaganda or posturing. I 

cannot say that the composer entirely escapes 

this pitfall. 

A variety of influences is apparent in 

MacMillan’s musical language. Early in his 

career he was influenced by the avant garde, 

especially in its Polish form as represented by 

Lutoslawski and Penderecki. Leighton gave 

him a solid grounding in traditional harmony 

and counterpoint, and the contrapuntal element 

in particular is an important part of his 

style, as it was for Leighton himself. More 

recently MacMillan has displayed an affinity 

for the musical flavors of his native Scotland. 

Several of the pieces here show that in their 

melodic ornamentation. Varied and arresting 

harmonic and textural colors are a conspicuous 

part of his vocabulary, but his harmonies 

often seem static, produced chiefly for their 

color, where Leighton’s harmony more often 

sounds goal-driven and forward-moving. 

The Birmingham Conservatory Chamber 

Choir is a group of 24 students. Their performances 

here are technically accomplished and 

highly disciplined. They seem to be able to 

adapt their sound to the character of the music 

they are performing. In Leighton’s ‘God’s 

Grandeur’, for instance, the sound may be 

youthful, but it is not a close imitation of the 

English cathedral sound. In contrast, their 

sound is far more churchly in the Mass. Occasionally 

the choral tone is brash at climaxes; 

some of the male singers push the tone too 

hard at the expense of choral blend. On the 

whole, these are fine performances and the 

disc should be acquired by admirers of either 

composer. 

GATENS 

MACMILLAN: Jubilate Deo; Serenity; Magnificat 

& Nunc Dimittis; Tremunt Videntes 

Angeli; On Love; Here in Hiding; Give me 

Justice; The Lamb Has Come for us from the 

House of David; Tombeau de Georges 

Rouault 

Jonathan Vaughn, org; Wells Cathedral Choir/ 

Matthew Owens 


James MacMillan (b 1959) appears to be a hot 

item these days. In July/August we reviewed 

two concerts of his works in New York. The 

present program is entirely works by him, and 

it is worth noting that there is no duplication 

of repertory between it and the Leighton- 

MacMillan disc (above). 

The present program runs the gamut from 

fairly straightforward works with triadic harmony, 

sometimes within the capabilities of 

amateur choirs, and works of daunting complexity 

both in terms of technical virtuosity 

and in musical language. Program annotator 

Paul Spicer points out that MacMillan is adept 

at tailoring the technical demands of his music 

to the abilities of the performers without any 

compromise in aesthetic integrity. Two of the 

pieces were written as recently as 2009, and 

they represent perhaps the extreme ends of 

the range I have described. 

‘Jubilate Deo’ was written for Wells Cathedral 

and first performed in May of 2009. It is a 

curiously grim setting of a text that begins “O 

Be Joyful in the Lord”. The grimness derives 

from the composer’s obsession with the execution 

in Texas of a convicted murderer the composer 

had befriended for reasons he cannot 

fully explain. There is barely a mention of the 

elderly woman murdered in her home in a 

robbery in 1993. In writing about Kenneth 

Leighton, I have mentioned that his harmony 

can be fiercely dissonant but without gratuitous 

ugliness. I cannot say the same of 

MacMillan. 

The other piece of 2009 is ‘Serenity’, written 

for the 150th anniversary of St Aloysius 

College in Glasgow, where the composer’s 

children attended. The text is a combination of 

the Latin Eucharistic hymn ‘O Salutaris Hostia’ 

by St Thomas Aquinas with the famous ‘Serenity 

Prayer’ attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr. 

Here the harmony is mostly triadic and conventional, 

with a straightforward melody that 

includes some of the composer’s trademark 

ornamentation. 

The large-scale Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis 

(1999) was the result of two separate commissions. 

The Magnificat, originally with orchestra, 

was commissioned by the BBC for the first 

of their Choral Evensong broadcasts of 2000. 

The Nunc Dimittis was commissioned by Winchester 

Cathedral and first performed with the 



organ version of the Magnificat in July 15 of 

that year, the feast of St Swithun, Bishop of 

Winchester (d 862). The Magnificat is mostly 

quiet, with the choir singing slow-moving triadic 

harmony punctuated by Messiaen-style 

bird song in the organ—perhaps a bit too 

much like Messiaen for comfort. Jarringly loud 

and dissonant chords begin the doxology. 

‘Tremunt Videntes Angeli’ (2002), written 

for the dedication of the Millennium Window 

in St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, is for eightpart 

choir. The harmony moves very slowly 

and mysteriously with a feeling of time standing 

still that reminds me of certain pieces by 

Sir John Tavener (but with a Scottish accent). 

The text consists of three stanzas of the Ascensiontide 

office hymn ‘Aeterne Rex Altissime’. 

‘On Love’ (1984), text by Khalil Gibran, is 

for solo soprano and organ, written for the 

wedding of friends of the composer. ‘Here in 

Hiding’ (1993) is for unaccompanied malevoice 

quartet (ATTB) and was commissioned 

by the Hilliard Ensemble. The text is a conflation, 

even a jumble of the Latin hymn ‘Adoro 

Te’ by St Thomas Aquinas with Gerard Manley 

Hopkins’s English translation of it. On this 

recording it is nearly impossible to follow the 

printed text because of the conflation and 

because of the very reverberant acoustic of 

Wells Cathedral. As the work was written for 

professional singers, no quarter is given in its 

technical demands. 

‘Give Me Justice’ (2003) is one of the more 

accessible and straightforward pieces on the 

program. It is a setting of the liturgical Introit 

for the Fifth Sunday in Lent. It is a harmonized 

free chant punctuated by a refrain in the form 

of a unison chant over a pedal, again reminiscent 

of Tavener. The earliest work here is ‘The 

Lamb Has Come for Us from the House of 

David’ (1979). It was written for an ordination 

and sets a text by the Fourth-Century St 

Ephrem. 

The final work on the program is for solo 

organ: ‘Le Tombeau de Georges Rouault’ 

(2003), written for Thomas Trotter. It is a tribute 

to the French painter, much admired by 

the composer for “the way he embraces the 

divine by using quite ordinary, mundane, and 

profane images—of clowns and prostitutes, 

etc.” The piece consists of variations and 

developments of a strange melody whose 

character is defined by the interval of the 

minor ninth. It is a virtuoso showpiece that 

ranges from quiet apprehension to brash rowdiness. 

The performances by the Wells Cathedral 

Choir leave nothing to be desired technically. 

The same is true for organist Jonathan Vaughn, 

who has his hands full with many of the 

accompaniments, let alone the solo organ 

piece. ‘Jubilate Deo’, ‘Serenity’, ‘On Love’, and 

‘Le Tombeau de Georges Rouault’ are claimed 

here as first recordings. It is also the first 

recording of the organ version of the Magnificat 

& Nunc Dimittis. Admirers of the composer 

will certainly want this. 

GATENS 

MACMILLAN: Charpentier Variations; 

see KORNGOLD 

MADERNA: Ausstrahlung; Biogramma; 

Grande Aulodia 

Carole Sidney Louis, s; Thaddeus Watson, fl; 

Michael Sieg, ob; Frankfurt Radio Symphony/ 

Arturo Tamayo 

Neos 10935—73 minutes 

Bruno Maderna (1920-73) was born in Venice 

and, after World War II, was a conductor, composer, 

and teacher. For much of his career he 

practiced and taught the 12-tone composition 

technique. The works offered here, composed 

not long before he died, call for spontaneous 

decisions by conductor and performers about 

what will be played when. 

Ausstrahlung (Emanation, 1971) is scored 

for female voice, flute, oboe, orchestra, and 

pre-recorded tape. Ancient texts are read (by 

the singer and by others on the tape) in Persian, 

Indian, English, French, German, and 

Italian. Seven pieces of music (“emanations”)—some 

completely composed, others 

indeterminate—are performed in an order 

determined by the conductor. The music and 

readings take place simultaneously but seem 

to have little to do with each other. It is as if 

we’re listening to music in one room while the 

radio is on in another. And while the texts are 

lofty, the fact that most listeners do not speak 

or read multiple languages means that the 

texts (included but not translated in the notes) 

are really just collections of sounds. Their subject 

matter has no bearing on the listening 

experience—they could just as well be from Dr 

Seuss or the morning newspapers. It is a very 

strange and complex work, and it goes on for 

34 minutes. 

The other pieces are strange, too, and they 

have entertaining program notes. Biogramma 

(1972) is based on “highly divergent compositional 

procedures ranging between the 

extremes of maximum freedom and maximum 

rigor”. Silences separate events where “horizontal 

sound-surfaces alternate with vertical 

blocks of sonority; moments of great timbral 

compression alternate with others of scattered 

and discontinuous texture”. In other words, 

the 12-minute orchestral piece is all about 

contrasts. How goes the listening experience? 

Well, it is just a collection of abstract sounds 

and events, some nebulous and surreal, others 

grating. Occasionally we can hear things that 



might be called melodies, but mostly we hear 

random pitches and timbres. 

Grande Aulodia (1970) is a 27-minute work 

for flute, oboe, and orchestra. Some events are 

composer-prescribed, others improvised or 

aleatoric. Some listeners may be entranced, 

but others will find it a waste of time. 

KILPATRICK 

MAHLER: Kindertotenlieder; 

WAGNER: Wesendonck Songs; 

WOLF: 3 Möricke Lieder 

Waltraud Meier, mz; Orchestre de Paris/ Daniel 

Barenboim—Warner 67539—56 minutes 

This is a reissuel it was reviewed by Mr Vroon 

in November/December 1990. He liked it more 

than I do, though Meier is a singer (and vocal 

actor) that I’ve admired for many years, especially 

in her Wagner roles. She’s been one of 

the best Isoldes since Birgit Nilsson (and I 

can’t think of the others); so it’s no surprise 

that her performance of the Wesendonck Songs 

are superb here. They suit her voice, and perhaps 

her personality, better than the Mahler 

and Wolf selections. ‘Schmerzen’ and 

‘Träume’, were studies for Tristan und Isolde; 

and all are here given the full operatic treatment, 

but so are, alas, the Mahler and Wolf. 

Meier’s singing of the Kindertotenlieder 

lacks the haunting sense of intimacy that Kathleen 

Ferrier brought to these sad songs; her 

rich contralto made her the ideal singer of this 

music. She is a more subtle and more expressive 

interpreter than Meier, and she colors the 

words better. Other notable recordings were 

made by Janet Baker, Christa Ludwig, and, of 

course, Fischer-Dieskau. As for the Wolf songs, 

I wonder who orchestrated them; the notes 

can’t say, since there are no notes. But the 

results also sound like excerpts from a Wagner 

opera, the orchestra almost covers the singer, 

and the words get lost. It would have been better 

if Barenboim, who is, after all, a very distinguished 

pianist, had accompanied Meier at the 

piano. Sometimes more is less. No texts. 

MOSES 

MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde 

Timothy Sparks, t; Ellen Williams, mz; Duraleigh 

Chamber Players/ Scott Tilley 


Siegfried Jerusalem, t; Waltraud Meier, mz; Chicago 

Symphony/ Daniel Barenboim 


Siegfried Jerusalem; Cornelia Kallisch; SW German 

Radio/ Michael Gielen 

Hänssler 93269—63:31 

We have reviewed around 50 CD recordings of 

this. Some of them, like the first one here, are 

Schoenberg’s chamber reduction. I wouldn’t 

bother with them. I cannot understand why, in 

the age of recordings, anyone would bother 

with any kind of reduction. No Beethoven 

symphonies for two pianos for me! And Mahler 

is one of the great writers for a full orchestra 

and knows exactly what to do to make delicate 

passages delicate—no need for a reduced 

group of instruments. What’s more, I can’t 

stand either soloist on the Centaur. 

Siegfried Jerusalem turns up in the other 

two recordings, both made in 1992, when his 

voice was pretty good. But he sounds much 

better for Barenboim than for Gielen. The 

Barenboim was reviewed here by Kurt Moses 

(July/Aug 1992), who said it was good enough 

to be ranked with the very greatest ones. Even 

the sound is among the best ever. “This work is 

a symphony of songs, and its orchestral score 

is one of Mahler’s most original and imaginative; 

every detail deserves to be heard clearly 

and is here.” No orchestra has ever played this 

better on a recording. Barenboim is a cooler, 

less romantic interpreter than Bernstein or 

Walter or Klemperer, but he lets the music 

unfold naturally—and that works well. Some 

passages are as good as you will hear anywhere. 

Meier has a fresh and sensuous voice— 

she was the world’s best Wagnerian mezzo at 

the time. 

Gielen is slower all around, his orchestra 

excellent, his mezzo rather laid back and even 

nondescript. Gielen alone can make a Mahler 

recording great, when it’s only a symphony; 

but the singers don’t help here. 

In this contest there is a clear winner: the 

low-priced Warner reissue of the Chicago 

Erato under Barenboim. It still ranks as one of 

the three or four greatest. 

VROON 

MARTIN: Der Sturm (The Tempest) 

Robert Holl (Prospero), Christine Buffle (Miranda), 

Simon O’Neill (Fernando), Dennis Wilgenhof 

(Caliban), James Gilchrist (Antonio), Andreas 

Macco (Gonzalo); Netherlands Radio/ Thierry 

Fischer 

Hyperion 67821 [3CD] 153 minutes 

This is the Swiss composer Frank Martin’s first 

opera, composed when he was already 60 

years old. He had by then written a significant 

amount of music for the theater as well as 

church works, including Le Vin Herbé, a version 

of the Tristan legend. That was first staged 

at Salzburg in 1948, and it has been repeated 

there several times. Encouraged by his success, 

he composed a number of vocal works and 

finally, in 1952, without waiting for a commission, 

he began to compose Der Sturm, a musical 

setting of the Shakespeare play that uses 

the German translation by Schlegel, slightly 

cut, as its libretto. 



The music is through-composed; there are 

no arias or recitatives and no breaks in the 

orchestral score except for the division into 

three acts. It’s thoroughly modern and lacks 

melodic content; it seems to use Schoenberg’s 

12-tone serial technique. The music is expressive 

but only in a general way; it doesn’t identify 

the characters of the play or tell us much 

about their emotions. For that, we must still 

read Shakespeare. This opera is, to a considerable 

extent, a play with music rather than an 

opera. (This is true of many “modern” operas.) 

Some of the fairy-like atmosphere of the play is 

suggested, primarily, by the assignment of 

Ariel’s lines to the chorus; its music is charming 

and easy on the ears. There’s sometimes a 

striking resemblance to some of the choral 

music in Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s 

Dream. I wish that could be said of the rest of 

the score. 

Robert Hall, as Prospero, is the dominant 

singer in this cast (the role was intended for F- 

D). His powerful, vibrant baritone is pleasing 

even when the music isn’t. His German diction 

is impeccable. As his daughter Miranda, Christine 

Buffle shows us a pretty voice that is not 

always steady. When it is, it’s quite lovely. The 

heldentenor Simon O’Neill as Fernando, 

Miranda’s beloved, has a solid voice but it 

turns edgy in dramatic passages and so loses 

its appeal. Most of the other soloists are adequate. 

The orchestral music, often powerful, is 

dominated by brass and percussion; the Dutch 

orchestra handles it well under Fischer’s energetic 

leadership. The world premiere of the 

opera was given at the Vienna State Opera in 

1956, conducted by Ernest Ansermet. Text and 

translation are included. 

MOSES 

MARTINU: Cello Concerto 1; HINDEMITH; 

HONEGGER: Cello Concertos 

Johannes Moser; German Radio Saarbrücken/ 

Christoph Poppen—Hänssler 93276—63 minutes 

This is a nicely balanced program containing 

three 20th Century cello concertos that relate 

to each other very comfortably. This is 

Bohuslav Martinu’s first concerto for cello and 

chamber orchestra, written originally in 1930 

and revised for a larger orchestra in 1939 and 

1955, not to be confused with his earlier 1924 

Concertino for cello and winds. It is a lovely 

concatenation of his early brio with the greater 

breadth of his later works. 

Paul Hindemith’s concerto is from 1940, 

not to be confused with his much earlier effort 

from 1916. This also is from his mature years of 

compositional grandeur and power and is a 

fine example of these qualities. After these, 

Arthur Honegger’s 1929 Concerto is a minia- 

ture, little more than half as long as its companions 

but just as memorable in melodies 

and technique. 

These are demanding pieces for both 

soloist and orchestra. Moser and Poppen handle 

them with elan, and one is left with a very 

positive feeling about the project. There have 

been numerous recordings of each of these 

pieces, but if you haven’t already gotten them, 

these are some of the most polished readings I 

know. They are also three of the most listenable 

cello concertos of their time. 

D MOORE 

MARTINU: Songs 1 

Jana Wallingerova, mz; Giorgio Koukl, p 


Giorgio Koukl recently gave us the complete 

Martinu solo piano music on Naxos. At first I 

was doubtful about an Italian sounding name 

playing Martinu but it turned out that he was 

born and began his musical education in 

Prague. He is an ideal Martinu pianist. 

Jana Wallingerova is a Czech mezzo-soprano, 

who, typically, has a bit more vibrato than I 

would prefer but sings Martinu with considerable 

gusto and good inflection. 

There are 41 songs here. Naxos offers good 

notes and a superb recording. No texts are 

supplied but they are available on the internet. 

This collection of early Martinu songs is an 

ideal start of the complete set at a bargain 

price. 

BAUMAN 

MATHIEU: Trio; Piano Quintet; 

CHAUSSON: Concert 

Alain Lefevre, p; David Lefevre, v; Alcan Quartet 


Andre Mathieu’s music always looked backward. 

Though he lived from 1929 to 1968 his 

music has more in common with Fauré and 

Ravel than any of his contemporaries. 

Although most would consider it historically 

insignificant for this very reason—and that 

may very well be true—it is still beautiful, well 

written, thoroughly enjoyable music. In performances 

like these the appeal is obvious and 

immediate. The piano trio and the piano quintet, 

both two-movement works, are passionate 

and sumptuous, and these are lush, romantic 

performances. 

Chausson’s Concert is considered one of 

his best works, and it is striking and rich. Virtuosic 

in the extreme, it pits violin and piano 

soloists against string quartet—almost in the 

manner of a double concerto—and alternates 

moving climaxes with music of tender sensitivity 

and beauty. The texture is thick but never 

heavy. After an opening movement full of 



emotional indecision there is a graceful ‘Sicilienne’, 

then a ‘Grave’ of extreme pathos and 

lyricism. The Finale is virtuosic and fiery—a 

fitting end. 

BYELICK 

MENDELSSOHN: Elijah 

Michael Volle (Elijah); Andrea Rost, Letizia Scherrer, 

s; Marjana Lipovsek, a; Herbert Lippert, 

Thomas Cooley, t; Bavarian Radio/ Wolfgang 

Sawallisch—Profil 7019 [2CD] 121 minutes 

Both English and German audiences have a 

claim on Elijah. The first performance (1846), 

conducted by the composer, was in English 

even though the music had originally been set 

to German text. Mendelssohn probably would 

have considered it a German piece, but Englishspeaking 

countries have long embraced it as 

second only to Messiah. So we have recordings 

in both languages, and this one is in German. 

Performances of Elijah always run the danger 

of becoming sanctimonious, syrupy and, 

for me, finally dull. The score has, it would 

seem, countless opportunities for little touches 

and lingering; and the better, more dramatic 

performances always seem to be quickly 

paced. This certainly is the case with Sawallisch. 

The conductor made an earlier recording 

in the 1980s that moved well and captured the 

drama, even though it was hampered by a 

wobbly Theo Adam. This recording, made in 

2001, is in the same mold (with Michael Volle a 

better Elijah than Adam). The drama moves 

swiftly, always holding your attention and 

keeping you involved. Volle has a good understanding 

of the title role, and the large chorus 

and other soloists are also satisfying. This 

recording, then, makes a fine alternative to 

Masur’s (also German) with the Israeli Philharmonic 

and Alistair Miles as Elijah. The notes 

here are tri-lingual, but text is in German only. 

The question, though, is whether you want 

Elijah in German. For English our recent 

Overview (N/D 2008) recommended Hickox 

(Chandos), Marriner (Philips), and Ormandy 

(RCA). 

ALTHOUSE 

WORD POLICE: Palette, Palate, Pallet 

These three words are pronounced about the 

same (like imminent and immanent) but are 

quite distinct. A pallet is a bed, usually narrow 

and hard. The palate is the roof of the 

mouth but also refers to the sense of taste. A 

palette is a board where a painter mixes colors. 

Computer spell-checks can't prevent 

errors like the one on page 236 in 

January/February ("her variegated color 

palate"). And an editor who tends to pronounce 

questionable words to himself might 

not catch it either. Alert readers always do! 

MENDELSSOHN: Quartet 6; see HENSEL; 

Violin Concerto; see BRAHMS 

MESSIAEN: Petites Esquisses d’Oiseaux; 

Preludes; 4 Etudes de Rythme; Nativite du 

Seigneur; Banquet Celeste; Apparition de 

l’Eglise Eternelle; Poemes pour Mi; Chants de 

Terre et de Ciel; Quartet for the End of Time; 

5 Rechants; Visions de l’Amen; Offrandes 

Oubilees; Hymne au Sainte Sacrement; 20 

Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus; Harawi; Turangalila 

Symphony; Catalogue d’Oiseaux; Fauvette 

des Jardins; Reveil des Oiseaux; 

Couleurs de la Cite Celeste; Et Exspecto Resurrectionem 

Mortuorum; Ascension; 3 Petite 

Liturgies; Meditations sur le Mystere de la 

Sainte-Trinite; Des Canyons aux Etoiles; 7 

Haikai 

Yvonne Loriod, Pierre Laurent-Aimard, Katia & 

Marielle Labeque, Marie-Madeleine Petit, p; 

Olivier Messiaen, Marie-Claire Alain, org; Jeanne 

Loriod, Dominique Kim, Ondes Martenot; Maria 

Oran, Rachel Yakar, s; Huguette Fernandez, v; 

Guy Deplus, cl; Jacques Nielz, vc; ORTF Orchestra, 

Ensemble Ars Nova/ Marius Constant; Berlin 

Philharmonic, French National Orchestra/ Kent 

Nagano; RTF Choir & Chamber Orchestra/ Marcel 

Couraud; Strasbourg Instrumental & Percussion 

Group, Orchestre du Domaine Musical/ 

Pierre Boulez 

Warner 62162 [18CD] 19:32 

This set is called the Messiaen Edition; it came 

out in 1988 but has been unavailable for years. 

There is a 310-page booklet in English and 

French with texts and translations, and most of 

the notes are by the composer. One of the 

discs is an hour-long interview in French with 

Claude Samuel, translated in the booklet; 

there’s also a printed interview with Yvonne 

Loriod. Many of these recordings were supervised 

by Messiaen himself; they’ve all been 

issued previously, but only a few have been 

reviewed in these pages. Several major works 

were not included: Chronochromie, Eclairs sur 

l’Au-dela, La Transfiguration de Notre- 

Seigneur Jesus-Christ, Oiseaux Exotiques, Concert 

a Quatre, and the opera St Francis of Assisi. 

Yvonne Loriod plays the Petites Esquisses 

d’Oiseaux in a straightforward manner; some 

of the Preludes have more shape and phrasing 

to them, but the Quatre Etudes de Rythme are 

almost hammered, on an almost-in-tune 

instrument. Hakon Austbo has a lighter touch 

(Naxos 554090, M/J 2000), and his Etudes make 

a lot more sense to me (his piano is bassy and 

more distant-sounding, though). 

I fell in love with the Peter Serkin recording 

of Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus years ago, 

and rejoiced greatly when RCA finally reissued 

it (RCA 62316, M/A 2005); Serkin had an excellent 

blend of mystery, respect, delight, and forward 

movement—and enough personality to 



keep it interesting but not to overpower the 

writing. His ‘View of the Virgin’ and ‘View of 

the Spirit of Joy’ are two of my favorite things 

on record. Loriod’s account from 1975 sounds 

like it was recorded under a blanket and then 

passed through a few generations of carelessly 

stored tape; the engineering on the Serkin isn’t 

the best, but this is noticeably worse—his is 

echoey, hers is echoey, boomy, and sometimes 

rattly. Her ‘Exchange’, one long crescendo, is 

quite powerful, and ‘View of the Virgin’ is as 

attractive as Serkin’s. ‘View of the Son by the 

Son’ is wide-eyed, full of wonder, and ‘View of 

the Heights’ is brilliant and coherent. Her 

‘View of the Spirit of Joy’ is possibly more 

energetic than Serkin’s, but the boomy bass 

hurts it—a shame, because it is really exciting! 

A mid-cycle comment: I’ve always respected 

Messiaen for this piece: there’s so much unity 

yet so much variety; just before the bird songs 

get to be too much, there’s a familiar cadence 

or theme, or something to break up the texture. 

The first of the two discs of the Vingt 

Regards ends not with ‘Spirit of Joy’ (10 in the 

set) but with 11, ‘First Communion of the Virgin’, 

which brings you partway down off the 

mountain before you hear the noise of the next 

disc being loaded. ‘The All-Powerful Word’ is 

almost overpowering, but never brutal; the 

imitation of the carillon that begins ‘Noel’ 

makes you feel like you’re right up in the bell 

tower, and ‘The Kiss of the Infant Jesus’ is 

unbelievably tender. When I got to ‘View of the 

Awesome Unction’, it struck me how Loriod’s 

playing of each movement suits the titles perfectly. 

This is an astounding recording—it’s 

too bad the sound isn’t better. (Arved Ashby 

reached similar conclusions—N/D 1988.) 

Harawi, from 1945, is new to me: it’s the 

first of the “Tristan trilogy”, which takes 

human love, especially the story of Tristan and 

Yseult, as its subject. The other two parts are 

Turangalila and Cinq Rechants); the title is a 

Quechua word that means a type of love song 

ending with the death of the lovers. This cycle 

is nearly an hour long, full of strange poetry, 

occasional Quechua words and images, the 

expected bird songs and cyclic themes, onomatopoeia 

(how unusual to hear the voice 

accompany the piano on a “drum”), and a 

world of romantic and spiritual intensity. 

Rachel Yakar is accompanied by Yvonne Loriod; 

Yakar is clear and expressive, always sure 

of herself, never stretched beyond comfort. 

Her flexibility is most impressive and her 

musicality unquestionable. This recording has 

been deleted for a while and pricey. I only wish 

it had been recorded in a small recital hall 

instead of a studio—the acoustic is dry, though 

it affects the piano more than the voice. 

Marie-Claire Alain recorded La Nativité du 

Seigneur, Le Banquet Celeste and Apparition de 

l’Eglise Eternelle on the organ at the Hofkirche, 

Lucerne. I have listened to precious little of 

Messiaen’s organ music, and that was ages ago. 

La Nativité, nine meditations for the Christmas 

season, is pulling me in, though. My observations 

may be obvious to some, but hearing 

Messiaen when he’s able to combine the long 

tones a piano can’t produce with more intimacy 

than the orchestra can afford, while submitting 

the result to the organ’s religiosity—this is 

giving me a brand new window into his writing. 

Somehow, between the bird calls, Hindu and 

non-retrogradable rhythms, and all the things 

that would have turned into mere systems in 

the pen of someone lesser, Messiaen never let 

go of his spiritual humanity and humor— 

music history has only a few examples of composers 

who wrote this much unique music that 

was nearly always genius. Even fewer could 

give their pieces these titles and have the music 

describe them so completely. 

La Fauvette des Jardins (Garden Warbler) is 

a single-movement 35-minute piece for piano, 

a massive tone poem of a day on the Matheysine 

Plateau, in sight of the Grand Serre mountain. 

Bird songs, flora and fauna, sun and 

storm abound. Yvonne Loriod’s instrument is 

a little bassy again, but the sound is rich, much 

better than before. Loriod is the soloist in 

Reveil des Oiseaux, with Nagano conducting 

the French National Orchestra. The playing is 

stellar and the awakening process very convincing. 

Arved Ashby wrote that Turangalila-Symphonie 

“promises to become Messiaen’s most 

enduring work, by virtue of its crazy, 

Dionysian abandon and overwhelming 

orchestral display” (N/D 1992), and it seems 

performances have become more frequent, 

even in the Midwest: the Cincinnati Symphony 

premiere was in 2001, and they programmed it 

again earlier this year. (It has its detractors: 

Jack Daugherty, Oxford, Ohio’s Sol Hurok, 

memorably called it Turanga-Looney-Tunes.) 

And it is brilliant and bizarre, an absurd 

panoply of peacock orchestration, humor, sensuality, 

attention-grabbing themes, an occasional 

melody you can whistle, steamy strings, 

and more; even the space-age sound of the 

Ondes Martenot has aged well, at least as well 

as the theremin in Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto. 

(Allen Gimbel says, “flying saucers really 

don’t belong in such a timeless and deeply-felt 

vision”.) The Nagano recording here, with the 

Berlin Philharmonic, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, 

and Dominique Kim (Ondes Martenot), wasn’t 

made under Messiaen’s direct supervision— 

the Chung on DG was, and in the liner notes 

the composer declared it the definitive 

account. Also, Nagano uses the 1990 Revised 



Messiaen Edition. The sound is even more colorful 

and vivid, and Nagano cuts five minutes 

off Chung’s total time (‘Jardin du Sommeil 

d’Amour’ is two minutes faster and almost 

indelicate). As Mr Gimbel (J/A 2001) said, this 

is a very German interpretation of a very 

French text; he also described the DG sound of 

the Chung as pinched and emaciated—I 

wouldn’t go that far, but the Nagano is more 

luxurious. I prefer Nagano’s view of Turangalila 

from east of the Rhine. 

Catalogue d’Oiseaux: 163 minutes, 13 

pieces in honor of 13 French provinces, with 

the names of the provinces’ most typical birds 

for their titles. Yvonne Loriod is the pianist 

again; this was recorded in 1970 at Notre 

Dame of Liban, a very reverberant space that 

makes every splice apparent—in ‘Alpine 

Chough’ there are several only seconds apart, 

quite noticeable through headphones. There’s 

also occasional traffic noise. Messiaen never 

shies away from the violence in nature: ‘The 

Buzzard’ has a part where six carrion crows 

attack the bird for its prey. Perhaps because so 

much of her playing is so blunt already, Loriod 

does not put that across. Ashby noted in his 

review of the Austbo (Fidelio 8827, J/A 1989) 

that a common problem with performances of 

this is indifference to Messiaen’s dynamic 

markings, especially the range from p to mf; 

too much of this doesn’t dip below mf. A 

thought: the fewer the bird songs, the better 

the piece, generally; I’ve found in listening to 

this set that the more literal the notation and 

the greater the frequency, the sooner the 

pieces wear out their welcome. I’ve enjoyed 

Sorabji’s four-hour Opus Clavicembalisticum 

(in spite of the two half-hour, death-by-eighthnotes 

fugues), but I’m not sure I could make it 

through the Catalogue in one sitting. It’s a 

good thing Messiaen didn’t have a Twitter 

account. 

Boulez conducted the premiere of 

Couleurs de la Cité Celeste in 1964; here he 

leads the Groupe Instrumental a Percussion de 

Strasbourg and the Orchestre du Domaine 

Musical, with Loriod on piano. The brass don’t 

have all the skill of the Germans I just heard in 

Turangalila; sometimes they sound like a synthesizer. 

Mr Ashby reviewed the reissue (Sony 

68332, J/A 1996) and preferred Salonen’s reading 

(partly because of a bad mix and partly 

because of tape hiss). Maybe they’ve cleaned 

this one up, because I don’t hear tape hiss. The 

sound is bright and nearly too crystalline. 

Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, 

from the same session, is vastly different from 

Boulez’s Cleveland Orchestra recording 

(DG)—the latter is more in tune; here the balance 

between sections is better, but often the 

voicing inside a section is not. Ashby agreed 

that Cleveland’s winds and brass are more 

immaculate, but stated quite firmly that the 

Strasbourg is the most inspiring. 

L’Ascension is with the ORTF under Marius 

Constant. I is a rich brass chorale, where Jesus 

is praying, “Father, the hour is come. Glorify 

your Son, so that your Son may glorify you.” II 

is titled ‘Serene Alleluias of a Soul Desiring 

Heaven’ and contains harmonies unexpected 

from Messiaen: the solo winds circle freely 

around each other, with intervals and swirling 

orchestral effects I’ve never heard in his writing 

before. The playing here is bold but serene. 

Parts of III sound more like Ravel than Messiaen. 

It’s one of his earlier works, completed in 

1933, and there are ideas here I wish he hadn’t 

let go of as he matured. The orchestra has that 

classic mid-century French shine to it—this is 

from 1966. 

The Trois Petite Liturgies de la Presence 

Divine are aggressive concert pieces (written 

for the Concerts de la Pleaide), not meditative 

church pieces; Marcel Couraud conducts the 

ORTF Chamber Orchestra, the women of the 

ORTF Choir, Yvonne Loriod (piano) and 

Jeanne Loriod (Ondes Martenot). I would gladly 

trade the maracas for a more present Ondes 

Martenot, which I heard once, barely, in 33 

minutes. There are some of the same chords 

and melodies as in Turangalila. As Mr Ashby 

said in his review of the London Sinfonietta 

recording (Virgin, J/A 1992), “III, Psalmodie, is 

one of the weirdest things Messiaen has 

done...[it] begins as a sort of ecclesiastical, vulgate, 

proto-rap.” The words, by the composer, 

are mystical and strange, full of color and odd 

expressions, some from the Bible, some from 

himself. It is an impressive piece, one that provoked 

“accusations of vulgarity and sacrilege” 

(Ashby). The women are a little flat sometimes, 

and there is some distortion in the louder, 

higher sections. 

Messiaen recorded the Meditations sur le 

Mystere de la Sainte-Trinité at the Eglise de la 

Sainte-Trinité, Paris, in June, 1972. He took the 

B-A-C-H idea even further and constructed a 

complex musical alphabet so he could represent 

all 26 letters, and literally wrote out text as 

music, including words from the Mass and 

from Aquinas. You can hear repetitions of 

some leitmotifs, but the result is a synapsetwisting 

garble for most of I, which ends in 

roars of chords. II begins with a plainchant 

theme followed by chunks of notes that jolt 

between consonance and dissonance. Donald 

Metz said, “the first four sections are extremely 

demanding to attend to, but Meditations 5-8 

contain some haunting, intimate passages and 

portions that make them more approachable” 

(J/A 1992), and that is true—they are much 

more coherent. The sound is perfect, not 

muddy at all. 

Messiaen wrote Poemes pour Mi in 1936 for 



his first wife, Claire Delbos, who was a violinist 

and also a composer. They had just moved 

into a summer house at the foot of the French 

Alps, surrounded by mountains, lakes, and his 

beloved birds. The poems view young love and 

the occasional grotesqueness of life in the 

shadow of the cross. Maria Oran is the soprano, 

accompanied by Yvonne Loriod. Oran has 

a strong, healthy voice and terrific diction; she 

performs these comfortably if monodynamically. 

The sound is pretty dry, but the musicians 

are balanced appropriately; Loriod’s 

playing could be smoother. 

Chants de Terre et de Ciel followed a few 

years later, dealing more with the joys of 

fatherhood: Olivier and Claire begat Pascal. 

The writing in both sets is vintage Messiaen: 

no surprises, really, and thanks to the straightedged 

performance, no magic either. 

The Labeque sisters give us a low-level 

recording of Visions de l’Amen in a rather dry 

studio on pianos that sound like they haven’t 

seen climate control in several months. 

Dynamics (and touch), other than the opening 

crescendo, are not subtle in the least, but 

there’s more excitement and urgency than 

others have had. The out-of-tune state results 

in a gamelan-like sound sometimes, though, 

and you’d swear they used some percussion 

instruments at the beginning. Even in the 

hushed, Jardin-like ‘Amen of Desire’, the edges 

of the notes are steely. The final Amen of the 

Consummation is rigid. 

The strings of the ORTF, under Constant, 

sound digitized in Les Offrandes Oubliées and 

Hymne au Saint Sacrament, but the explosion 

after Offrande’s first part, ‘The Cross’, is nearly 

enough to startle those thoughts out of you. 

The sound is so tightly centered it is almost 

mono, and there are some disconcerting artifacts 

audible even in the loudest passages: it 

sounds like a news program was picked up on 

the tape! All that (and shallow acoustic) aside, 

this orchestra eviscerates you with their insane 

vigor; the slow part, ‘The Eucharist’, that follows 

the violence of ‘Sin’, is spooky yet peacegiving. 

This was Messiaen’s first piece performed 

by an orchestra, and the one that put 

him in the public eye. Heady stuff from a 22year-old! 

It’s hard to believe these works were 

recorded five years after L’Ascension by the 

same musicians. They’re both a little dry, but 

the engineering on the older recording is much 

better. 

Des Canyons aux Etoiles is Messiaen’s 

longest orchestral piece, about 92 minutes; it’s 

a depiction of Bryce Canyon in Utah, Zion 

Park, Zion itself, the stars, the Resurrection, 

and, of course, birds. Yvonne Loriod and 

Ensemble Ars Nova with Marius Constant 

recorded this in 1973, and the sonics are dated; 

it’s very clear, especially the brass and xylophone, 

but the piano is too closely miked, 

resulting in some distortion. The piece is 

haughtier, drier, pricklier than Turangalila— 

the swoops of the Ondes Martenot have been 

replaced with wind and sand machines; lush 

strings make a rare appearance in ‘The Resurrected 

and the Song of the Star Aldebaran’— 

this is more like The Desert of Love’s Sleep, 

with constellations clanging off one another 

overhead, ecstatic desolation, and majesty 

instead of laughter. The orchestra is solid, 

other than the horn player’s wobbly tone; in 

keeping with the running theme of this set, the 

playing steers clear of subtlety. Sept Haikai are 

well-played, with a bright, almost piercing 

sound. 

With only the Quartet for the End of Time 

and Cinq Rechants left to review, I hit Messiaen 

overload. After several hours of errands, I 

decided to listen to the renowned Tashi 

recording of the Quartet in its entirety before I 

got to any more of this set. I’m halfway 

through the ‘Abyss of the Birds’ as I type, and 

hearing non-French playing has given me 

some desperately needed refreshing. I’ve concluded 

that the French, especially Yvonne 

Loriod, are often not the best Messiaen interpreters. 

Perhaps my opinions are heterodox, 

but after listening to good portions of all these 

albums, I need subtlety, dynamic shadings (for 

all of Messiaen’s love for color, his approved 

interpretations are often monochromatic), and 

some rounded piano tone. Tashi is getting into 

my soul in a way nothing, nothing, on this set 

has. I come from a very intense strain (“strain” 

having more than one meaning) of Independent 

Fundamentalist Baptists: the pulpitpounding, 

shouting, aisle-running, fire-andbrimstone, 

King-James-Only kind. There’s a 

lot that I like: I think our interpretations of the 

major doctrines (what’s in the Apostles’ Creed) 

are accurate. But the extraneous stuff has 

become almost unbearable, the majoring on 

minors, the divisive posturing, the legalism. 

After listening to this set, I feel like I’ve just sat 

through a week-long revival or campmeeting, 

listening to preachers of the junkyard-dog 

stripe preaching many things I agree with, but 

in such a blunt and abrasive way that I’ve 

become exhausted. Hearing Tashi is like listening 

to a preacher who is a true shepherd of the 

flock, minister to me with grace, care, and 

affection. He’s saying a lot of the same truths, 

but there’s a universe of difference between 

the approaches. 

The Quartet from this set began with a 

pleasant tone, but the pounding and distortion 

came back. Marie-Madeleine Petit doesn’t 

sound as brusque as Loriod, but the loud parts 

are still harsh. Guy Deplus has a less pure tone 



than Tashi’s Stoltzman, and the long high 

notes at the beginning of ‘Abyss of the Birds’ 

are obnoxious, with the overtones threatening 

the integrity of the main note—it sounds like 

he put his clarinet through a flange gate and 

cranked up the treble. Still, this is worlds better 

than a lot of what I’ve heard in the last few 

days: there’s more tenderness and subtlety, 

and a genuine sense of meditation in ‘Praise to 

the Eternity of Jesus’. 

Cinq Rechants is for three each of sopranos, 

contraltos, tenors, and basses; Messiaen 

uses the voices to create some percussive and 

orchestral effects. The title is an homage to 

Claude le Jeune’s Printemps; the verses are 

called chants and the choruses rechants. The 

textural contrasts, unusual noises, slides, 

angular harmonies, and a language that’s half- 

French, half-invented, all make this cycle very 

interesting. The singers sound dated (1968, but 

better than a Columbia LP of Gesualdo from 

the same era I recently bought) but they have a 

lot of feeling and a good sense of what to do 

with the dynamics. I’m glad that I’m ending 

my time with this release with something new 

to me, and something I’ll return to. 

ESTEP 

MOMPOU: Musica Callada; Secreto 

Jenny Lin, p 

Steinway 30004—75 minutes 

I am a huge fan of Jenny Lin. My first introduction 

to her extraordinary talents was with her 

recording of the Shostakovich Preludes and 

Fugues Op.87. Lin plays very well the introspective 

miniatures of the four books titled 

Musica Callada. 

In the short but exceptional program notes 

by David Lewis he writes, “Musica Callada 

won critical acclaim following Mompou’s 

death, most notably from John Rockwell, who 

referred to Mompou as an “early minimalist.” 

Lewis summarizes Mompou’s “minimalism”, 

commenting that it is not the minimalism of 

Glass or Young, as it has no relation to 12-tone 

idiom of Webern in the case of Young or to 

non-Western traditions in the case of Glass. It 

is, however, influenced by Satie and reminiscent 

of Ravel and Debussy. 

This music is simple—simple in its transparency, 

nakedness, and unsettling purity. Its 

harmonic and rhetorical concepts are incredibly 

complex, however. Lin’s sensitivity leaves 

me haunted. The engineering and the piano 

are exceptional—bringing to life this very 

“silent music” is no easy task. 

Included is also ‘Secreto’ from Impresiones 

Intimas, a much earlier work. It is one of my 

favorites here. It is certainly more Spanish, and 

leaves me yearning for the music of the Spanish 

romantics. 

Mompou’s music is both serious and very 

moving, especially in the hands of Jenny Lin. 

All four books are wonderful visions of white 

and simplicity. And while some speak of 

peace, many are dark and disturbing, yet 

remain strikingly beautiful. 

JACOBSEN 

MOZART: Don Giovanni 

Nicola Ulivieri (Giovanni), Anna Samuil (Anna), 

Maria Luigia Borsi (Elvira), Maurizio Muraro 

(Leporello), Dmitri Korchak (Ottavio), Chen Reiss 

(Zerlina), Simon Orfila (Masetto), Marco Spotti 

(Commendatore); New Israeli Vocal Ensemble; 

Israel Philharmonic/ Zubin Mehta 

Helicon 9627 [3CD] 164 minutes 

CD Don Giovannis often offer an embarrassment 

of riches; this is a very crowded field. So 

this concert recording, from 2009 in Tel Aviv, is 

up against stiff competition. The Israel Philharmonic’s 

music director for life, Mr Mehta, 

is in charge. Mehta can be a fine opera conductor, 

especially in Verdi and Puccini, but 

perhaps in an effort to keep things from dragging, 

he favors brisk, sometimes over-accented 

tempos. He’s somewhat gentler with lyrical, 

more reflective moments, though they have an 

edgy quality to them. At least his singers seem 

to be comfortable. 

The Israel Philharmonic in recent years 

seems to have gone from a great orchestra to 

an uneven ensemble—sometimes fine playing, 

sometimes rather rough and ready. That’s the 

case here. There are some fine singers in the 

cast, and they all sound like they’re doing their 

darndest to perform with involvement. 

(Hebrew and Yiddish words pop up from time 

to time, including an “Oi vey” or two.). Nicola 

Ulivieri boasts an attractive basso cantante 

sound, but he doesn’t delve into the title role 

all that deeply. (Remember how Siepi made 

everything sound as natural as breathing?) 

Maurizio Muraro as Leporello shows more 

personality, with an attractive bass voice 

somewhat darker than Ulivieri’s. The other 

men sing well enough but aren’t especially 

dynamic. (Ottavio is a wimp, and Don Giovanni’s 

guest isn’t all that menacing.) There are no 

female standouts either. Samuil has no fire, no 

anger in Anna’s vengeance aria or anywhere 

else. She’s sometimes unremittingly lugubrious. 

Some strain can be heard. Ms Borsi doesn’t 

play Elvira as a comical shrew and is able to 

sound sympathetic. If only she did more with 

the words and had more variety of tone. Chen 

Reiss’s Zerlina is pleasant to hear but short on 

charm. 

An essay and synopsis but no libretto, but 

Don Giovanni is familiar enough to surmount 

these faults. 

MARK 



MOZART: Piano Concertos 20+27 

Mitsuko Uchida; Cleveland Orchestra 

Decca 15498—66 minutes 

It’s been a quarter century since Uchida was 

making her name with Mozart, both the complete 

sonatas and most of the concertos. At the 

time, compared with the older generation of 

Mozarteans, her playing was notable for its 

articulation and energy, though some found 

her reticent and inflexible. Now she sounds 

very much mainstream, and her playing is as 

good as ever. She still obviously values clarity 

of texture, and all the movements have a sense 

of forward movement, but the music is also 

admirably shaped and shaded. There is nothing 

mechanical about her playing, but some 

listeners may want stronger expression, particularly 

in the D-minor. If you remember our 

Overview (M/J 2008) and now see Mozart playing 

on the Perahia-Brendel continuum—that 

is to say, from subtle to straightforward— 

Uchida is in the middle, but closer to Perahia. 

She plays a modern piano, but with a light 

touch, gorgeous tone, and always in an appropriate 

expressive range for Mozart. 

Her handling of the Cleveland Orchestra is 

stylish, but there are moments, such as the 

very beginning of the D-minor, where the 

playing is slack. There may be benefits to conducting 

from the keyboard, but in balance I 

would prefer a separate conductor. You could 

simply get Uchida’s earlier recordings with Jeffrey 

Tate. She plays Beethoven’s cadenzas in 

the D-minor (none from Mozart survive) and 

Mozart’s in the B-flat. If you feel the concertos 

need more personality than Uchida offers, 

look to Brendel or Ashkenazy, but in its own 

way and in spite of orchestral problems, this is 

very satisfying. 

ALTHOUSE 

MOZART: Quartets 4, 17, 22 

Jerusalem Quartet 


I am truly spoiled by ARG this issue; I got to 

review a lot of Mozart—a lot of exceptional 

Mozart. This one is a necessity. The Jerusalem 

Quartet is simply a breath of fresh air and, 

indeed, they are an attractive bunch. Their 

interpretations of Haydn and Schubert have 

been widely praised and I suspect their Mozart 

will be as well. 

I would consider them Mozart traditionalists, 

as they are not trying to get too creative— 

a good thing. They balance sophisticated and 

classical form with tasteful vibrato. If you 

enjoy elegantly played Mozart, this is it. 

The program opens with No. 4 (K 157); its 

incantations of youth introduce these players 

well. II always surprises me, as it is hard to 

comprehend that a 17-year old child composed 

such perfect music. I am enthralled by 

this group. They play the Adagio as if not wanting 

to disturb it; they keep their distance and 

very respectfully narrate a dim vision. They 

simply do what they are told by Mozart, and 

the effect is brilliant. 

No. 17, The Hunt, is just as precise and elegant. 

Again, this ensemble’s talent is certainly 

evident in slow movements. The Adagio is 

pure, clear, and simple. Nothing else is needed. 

The heart-wrenching melody just is. The 

finale is a bit slow but very convincing. 

No. 22, the other B-flat, ends this performance 

as I am reminded of a tortured Mozart, 

literally dying at this point but still holding on 

to hope. 

These pieces are so popular that I often 

hear them played very unimaginatively and 

standardized. The Jerusalem Quartet does not 

do that, but they do not try to reinvent the 

wheel either. Rather, they reintroduce us to the 

profound simplicity and even plainness of 

Mozart’s genius. 

JACOBSEN 

MOZART: Quartets 22+23 

Klenke Quartet—Profil 4031—51 minutes 

I praised the Jerusalem Quartet as “Mozart traditionalists” 

who demonstrate that plainness 

and simplicity are important in performing 

Mozart. By plain I do not mean boring, and by 

simple I certainly do not mean calculated. But 

that is what I hear with Klenke Quartet—a boring 

and calculated performance. 

This is simply not good. Their phrasing is 

rigid and cold. Slow down! Breathe! I am 

almost at a panic attack with the Finale of 23. 

Their notion of dynamics is also odd—”fortes” 

suddenly appear, intrusively, while “pianos” 

serve as the default dynamic for when the 

phrase ends and they are not sure it has. Do 

not waste your time with this! 

JACOBSEN 

MOZART: Quartets 14+15 

Casal Quartet 

Telos 124 [2CD] 176 minutes 

This a beautifully packaged set. One disc has a 

performance of 14 and 15; the second has a 

repeat of 14 with what seems to be very detailed 

commentary sections before each movement. 

These are titled “ammanerung”, meaning 

“approach”, where Swiss musicologist and 

author, Urs Frauchiger unpacks and reflects 

on Mozart’s process while composing the masterly 

D-minor Quartet. I say, it “seems to be 

very detailed commentary”, because it is all in 



German—including the program notes and 

essay. 

What I can review confidently is the Casal 

Quartet. They give a nuanced performance, 

historically conscious and precise. Sometimes 

they lack drive. But overall, I hear emotion, 

lovely vibrato, and elegance. If you know German, 

I suspect this is worth exploring. 

JACOBSEN 

MOZART: Quartets 10+19; 

HAYDN: Quartet, op 54:1 

Amati Quartet—Divox 20401—61 minutes 

Spectacular. This is standard Amati playing, 

bursting with energy, yet chillingly precise and 

accurate. Amati has a strong international reputation. 

These three quartets are standards, 

and although No. 10 is done very well, the 

Haydn and the Mozart 19 are the stars of these 

performances. 

The Finale of the Haydn is breathtaking; 

the suddenness of the theme is communicated 

extraordinarily through Amati’s solid sense of 

time and rhythm. The Allegretto is sublime. It 

was one of the first pieces to capture my heart 

as a young boy in New Jersey listening to the 

classical station on summer nights. Will Zimmermann—first 

violin—leaves me feeling nostalgic 

with his magical melody shaping and 

vibrato. 

The Dissonance Quartet (19) is perfectly 

balanced. It is such an easy piece to play badly. 

We either hear a completely romanticized performance 

or a dead one, where performers are 

afraid of vibrato because they are playing 

“classical” music. Amati indulges in the quartet’s 

milky opening—beautiful legato—but 

somehow also sounds dry and distant—a wonderful 

effect. There is some truly tender playing, 

euphoric, but also anxious and even desperate. 

I am almost in tears. 

The programming of this disc is not random, 

but inspired. The essay, by Wolfgang 

Fuhrmann, outlines the history of “Haydn 

influencing Mozart and Mozart influencing 

Haydn”. Listening to the disc from beginning 

to end, I hear a similarity in language, a connection, 

a bond between the two masters. 

They are both among the most notable and 

revolutionary in the string quartet form. 

Amati’s Mozart and Haydn are always reliable. 

JACOBSEN 

MOZART: Sacred Arias 

Concentus Musicus/ Nikolaus Harnoncourt 

Warner 67538 [2CD] 126 minutes 

This very enjoyable survey of Mozart’s sacred 

arias is apparently one of two recent Teldec 

releases that repackage past performances of 

Mozart’s sacred music by Nikolaus Harnon- 

court and his trusty original-instruments 

band, Concentus Musicus Wien, in support of 

assorted soloists and choirs. The other release 

is considerably more substantial: a 13-CD set 

of Mozart’s complete sacred music from the 

same forces that includes everything heard 

here. The recordings are from 1982 to 1993. 

That will be reviewed in the next issue. 

You may recall that Harnoncourt founded 

CMW in 1953, just as musicologists were getting 

serious about researching ancient instruments 

as well as performance techniques and 

styles. CMW is THE pioneering original-instruments 

ensemble that pretty much got the period 

performance (PP) ball rolling, ushering in 

the explosive international PP craze of the next 

several decades. That, in turn, gave rise to the 

inevitable backlash from several prominent 

corners of the musical establishment. 

The critical barbs long directed at Harnoncourt 

include allegations of highly idiosyncratic 

and recklessly distorted approaches—both 

sonically and interpretively. I am neither clearly 

for nor against PP—though I consider it an 

important musical movement. Truly great 

music can easily withstand a wide range of 

sonic, stylistic, and interpretive treatments. 

And I consider Harnoncourt’s treatments 

(most of the time) to be as valid and rewarding 

as anyone else’s—if not more so. 

In support of that contention, I offer as 

“Exhibit 1” the consistent quality of the 

soloists. These include (among other worthies) 

sopranos Barbara Bonney, Charlotte Margiono, 

and Joan Rodgers; alto Jadwiga Rappe; 

tenors Josef Protschka and Deon van der Walt; 

plus basses Hakan Hagegard and Laszlo Polgar. 

“Exhibit 2” is the excellent choirs employed: 

the Vienna State Opera Chorus and the 

Arnold Schoenberg Choir—again, among others. 

These forces—ably supported by CMW— 

rarely fail to achieve engaging and spiritually 

uplifting performances of superior technical 

quality. 

The excerpts encompass not only solo 

arias, but purely choral movements and 

ensemble passages—for example, the ‘Lacrymosa’ 

and ‘Benedictus’ movements from the 

Requiem. Several selections—like the ‘Laudate 

Dominun’ aria from the Solemn Vespers— 

combine solo and choral elements. Arias from 

Mozart’s better-known later works—like the K 

427 Mass in C minor—alternate with lesserknown 

pieces from his early years at the 

Salzburg court. The selections are invariably 

well chosen: there’s hardly a track that isn’t 

worth hearing. 

The digital recording quality is a bit variable, 

but generally excellent. The trifold booklet 

contains only track listings and the associated 

artists—no notes or texts. And don’t let 



the album’s back-panel’s work listings confuse 

you: they’re given in different order than in the 

booklet. 

KOOB 

NIELSEN: Symphony 3; Helios; Silken Shoe 

on Golden Last; Lower Your Head, O Flower; 

Paraphrase on Nearer My God to Thee 

Eva Hess-Thayson, s; Jan Lund, t; Liverpool Philharmonic/ 

Douglas Bostock 


This was formerly Volume 2 of Classico’s series 

of Carl Nielsen symphonies conducted by 

Douglas Bostock. ARG did not review the original, 

though the recording of the symphony 

was favorably mentioned in our Nielsen 

Overview (May/June 2004). I liked what I heard 

of that series, but this is my first acquaintance 

with its Third Symphony, and my feelings are 

mixed. For one thing, it does not sound like a 

work whose nickname is Espansiva. It is generally 

a no-nonsense reading that is quick, 

direct, and exciting, with clean lines, vigorous 

rhythm, clearly defined counterpoint. Everything 

moves forward with no slight breath 

pauses before phrases. There are no doubts, 

no hesitation, and little reflection, nuance, or 

breadth of tone. 

Those characteristics exist in their purest 

form in I. The stuttering opening chords are 

fast and short like a machine gun or teletype 

machine. Tempos are fast and stay that way, 

save for a called-for slower speed at the second 

theme. Pacing is propulsive, high-spirited, and 

often rollicking, but it is also relentless and 

mechanical. And it doesn’t dance. 

The Andante Pastorale doesn’t sound 

rushed, but it’s not pastoral either. The opening 

dialog between the string line and the 

accompanying chords in the horns and bassoon 

is good. Woodwinds produce clear tone 

and clean lines, and the strings play their big 

chords with urgency; but Bostock’s tossing off 

the turn at the end of phrases sounds flippant. 

He need not ritard, but some shaping is 

required. When the brass join a string entrance 

later, they display muscle but could sound 

fuller. The vocal section should be darker and 

more mysterious. The tenor sounds too close, 

though the real problem may be that his voice 

is too operatic for the other-worldly sound 

called for. The more distant soprano is more 

winning. (As a supplement, this release 

includes the only recording of II with Nielsen’s 

option of clarinet and trombone standing in 

for soprano and tenor. While hardly objectionable, 

the instruments are no replacement for 

the voices as far as atmosphere is concerned.) 

Because of the Andante’s quickish tempo, 

the Allegretto un Poco for a moment sounds 

like a continuation, though it recovers quickly 

enough, if with a tempo that is slightly hurried. 

Bostock’s spirit and energy are admirable, but 

they come at the cost of deftness and lift. 

The Finale responds best to Bostock’s 

direct approach. In fact, he allows Nielsen’s 

broad melodies to expand a little, which serves 

the performance well and leaves a good impression. 

Helios maintains Bostock’s direct approach, 

but the conductor relaxes more while 

keeping a Sibelian sparseness of texture. It is 

nothing special, but it works if you’re of a mind 

for it. The short vocal pieces are straightforward 

and well sung. The most novel item is 

Paraphrase on Nearer my God to Thee, 

Nielsen’s short portrait of the sinking of the 

Titanic. The hymn is said to be the music 

played by a string quartet on the deck as the 

ship went down. Nielsen goes all out—more 

like blows up—when the ship explodes. I 

wouldn’t play this movement too loudly. Don’t 

say I didn’t warn you. 

The Liverpool Philharmonic plays well 

enough, with clean, smallish tone, neat woodwinds, 

polished horns, and sweet violins: the 

lack of breadth and weight I write off as a 

residue of Bostock’s design. Still, it does not 

produce the joy and exuberance of Danish 

orchestras, my favorite with Nielsen, or the 

polish and elan of the London ensembles. 

There are things to enjoy in this Third 

Symphony, particularly in the outer movements 

(assuming you respond to Bostock’s I), 

but I prefer more insight, breadth, and room 

for phrases to breathe. For a performance 

along the lines of Bostock’s (which I’m told is 

similar to the classics by Eric Tuxen and 

Thomas Jensen), the closest I know is Schonwandt, 

which I prefer. Schonwandt is slower 

than Bostock in I, as well as lighter and more 

relaxed, but he does produce a clean-cut, neoclassical 

interpretation. I also like Berglund, 

Bernstein, Ahronovitch—all with Danish 

orchestras—as well as Blomstedt’s second 

recording, with San Francisco. (Blomstedt’s 

earlier Nielsen traversal, with a Danish orchestra, 

is not as good as the San Francisco, but 

there is much to be said for it.) Consult the 

Nielsen Overview for more thoughts. Be 

advised that it finds Schonwandt “shadowy 

and unsettled”, while I think Overview favorite 

Chung is heavy-handed. 

The sound on this reissue is good but not 

great. Knud Ketting wrote the notes for the 

Classico release, and they were probably far 

better than the unsigned cursory writings supplied 

here (which include nothing about Paraphrase). 

HECHT 



NOVAK, PZ: Preludes & Fugues 

William Howard, p—Champs Hill 16—76 minutes 

Moravian Pavel Zemek Novak (b. 1957) studied 

in Brno with a pupil of Janacek’s, in London 

(briefly) with George Benjamin, and later in 

Paris with Gerard Grisey. He currently teaches 

at the Conservatory in Brno. 

These are by no means preludes and 

fugues in any traditional sense. In fact, there is 

very little explicit counterpoint in them at all. 

Instead, they open with brief “subjects”, sometimes 

harmonized or accompanied, that are 

imitated once at the fifth (the procedure is 

usually obscured, or what the subject actually 

is is hard to identify), and there is no development 

or even obvious repetition. 

The set is divided into four books, the first 

two based on the Old Testament, the last two 

on the New (the composer is a devout Roman 

Catholic). The genre is extremely telescoped— 

the pieces tend to be short and express their 

vastness without temporal length. Sometimes 

the explanations don’t match up precisely with 

what I hear. Fugue 6 (‘King David’) is said to 

consist of just seven notes, the subject being 

the first note, the second the answer, the next 

two the development, and the last three the 

recapitulation. Now, that’s minimalism! There 

is a short, slow series of chords first, followed 

by those single notes. It’s very striking, but 

how this is a ‘Fugue’ is lost on me. Some of the 

Preludes do illustrate their biblical topics 

memorably: 3, ‘The Flood’, and 5, ‘The Burning 

Bush’, are vivid. 

Book 2 indulges in bits of quotation and 

reference: Scarlatti is credited for being behind 

two of the pieces (those, and the Scarlatti 

pieces involved, are unidentified). 10 quotes 

from Mendelssohn’s Elijah and offers five variations 

with rhythmic allusions to the second 

movement of Beethoven’s kast piano sonata 

(allusions to the Hammerklavier pop up in 

Prelude and Fugue 12 and leak into the next 

Book). Book 3 (titled ‘The Word became flesh 

and dwelt among us’) opens with a subject 

that becomes the basis for a set of variations. 

18 sets ‘The Seven Last Words’ with those 

words written into the score. 

Book 4 (‘Landscapes of the Lamb’) substitutes 

‘Fugues and Postludes’ for ‘Preludes and 

Fugues’. The first 10 of these juxtapose aggressive 

fanfares with meditative echoes, forming 

what amounts to a series of double variations. 

24 strings together the whole set’s subjects in a 

continuous line, adding a new one as a final 

elliptical flourish. 

I am following composer David Matthews’s 

notes closely, since it is impossible to 

understand what is going on in this fascinating 

if highly irregular work without a score and 

substantial explanatory scholarship. That’s not 

to say that the piece is not arresting in and of 

itself. Mr Matthews has no doubt that this is 

“one of the finest piano works of our time”. It 

is certainly one of the most interesting, and I 

look forward to learning more about it as time 

goes on. Pianist Howard executes his formidable 

task with assured technique and glowing 

tone. Listeners with interest in contemporary 

piano music (not to mention pianists) should 

not miss this. 

GIMBEL 

NYMAN: Facing Goya 

Michael Nyman Band/ Michael Nyman 

MN 121 [2CD] 134 minutes 

Reissue of Warner 45342, reviewed by Charles 

Parsons (May/June 2003). The opera concerns 

an art dealer who looks for Goya’s skull, which 

had disappeared sometime before 1878; her 

intention is to reunite it with his body because 

he “is the man in [her] life”. Along the way 

(Acts 1 and 2), she time travels to a 19th Century 

craniometry lab and a 1930s European 

(probably German) art gallery; the people she 

encounters debate the worth of craniometry as 

a measure of character and potential as well as 

the ethical implications of eugenics. In Act 3 

she takes Goya’s skull to a 1980s cloning lab 

and, after some debate, sells his DNA in the 

hopes that the secret of his genius can be 

reproduced. In Act 4, Goya (who has appeared 

briefly in other scenes) confronts the art dealer 

and the businessman who hopes to profit from 

his DNA; after further debate, Goya and the art 

dealer have a final dialog and the latter, now 

depressed about her decision and disillusioned 

by her hero, smashes the skull. The 

opera ends as Goya gathers the pieces and 

begins tenderly to reassemble them. 

Needless to say, this is an opera driven 

more by ideas than by character and character 

development, and that has been one of the 

chief criticisms leveled at it. Nevertheless, the 

characters debating these issues do represent 

a number of viewpoints, and one can glean 

quite a bit about their (perhaps archetypal) 

natures from how these viewpoints are 

expressed, and, sometimes, from the music 

(passages in Act 2 mentioning Hitler, for 

instance, contain some of Nyman’s most dissonant 

music). The rest of the music resembles 

a kaleidoscope that shows musical images 

both from Nyman’s own musical past (a 

prominent theme from his Gattaca soundtrack 

for instance, appears when the biotech lab is 

introduced) and other composers (one critic 

recognizes a quote from Beethoven when 

Goya appears in the final act); tempos shift 

regularly and compellingly; the vocal lines 

tend toward very slow declamation, and (as Mr 



Parsons observed) they are difficult to understand, 

possibly because the balance between 

instruments and vocals is very near equal. Pace 

Parsons, however, the music is neither always 

tonal nor always merry, and has quite a bit of 

variety. Neither would I say the opera is “dramatically 

inert”. It’s definitely not, say, Tosca, 

but it’s far more operatic than, say, Adams’s 

Death of Klinghoffer (May/June 1993), which is 

more like an oratorio and about as dramatic as 

Handel’s Acis and Galatea. (By the way, Mr 

Parsons pronounced this opera a work that 

would restore one’s faith in contemporary 

opera. Chacun a son gout.) 

The ideas in Facing Goya are well worth 

considering and they are eminently part of 

today’s human condition. If they are presented 

in an unorthodox fashion, well, I’m more willing 

to think that theater is changing, less willing 

to invoke an older (and less relevant) dramaturgical 

standard to judge its supposed 

problems. 

HASKINS 

OCKEGHEM & COMPERE: Musiques au 

Temps d’Anne de France 

La Main Harmonique/ Frederic Betous 

Ligia 202217—64 minutes 

This is a delightful recording of some very 

pretty French polyphonic songs by two of the 

greatest masters active around the turn of the 

16th Century. The premise behind this release 

is that Anne de France may have employed 

these composers while she was Duchess of the 

Bourbon court of Beaujeu. The program consists 

mainly of virelais and chanson-motets by 

Johannes Ockeghem and Loysete Compere 

and Alexander Agricola, who may have been 

his students. One additional song by Johannes 

Ghiselin, ‘O florens rosa’, is played by instruments 

alone. 

It is impossible to distinguish between the 

quality of works and their performance here, 

because they are all so beautiful. Ockeghem’s 

‘Mort, Tu as Navré de Ton Dart/Miserere’ 

deserves special mention, though. Besides its 

sensitive performance, it is a work of great historic 

importance, having been composed on 

the death of Ockeghem’s own mentor, Gilles 

Binchois. The chanson-motet mentions Binchois 

by name over a quotation from the 

Requiem Mass in the tenor. Ockeghem also 

indulges in some clever references to Binchois’s 

rather dated style of Burgundian composition, 

with its use of under-third cadences, 

etc. Compere’s ‘Plaine d’Ennuy/Anima Mea’ 

also makes reference to outdated uses, but I 

am not clear on its purpose. 

I really like the instrumental interludes and 

introductions. These are not composed, of 

course, but improvised; they add tremendous- 

ly to the performance. The notes are in English, 

but not the texts. 

LOEWEN 

PEJACEVIC: Symphony; Phantasie Concertante 

Volker Banfield, p; Rhineland Orchestra/ Ari Rasilainen 


Dora Pejacevic was born in 1885 in Budapest 

but moved to Zagreb in Croatia, where her 

father, a member of a noble Croatian family, 

became governor. Her mother, a Hungarian 

countess and a fine pianist, gave Dora her first 

piano lessons, and she began composing at 

age 12. Later, her parents sent her to study in 

Dresden and Munich, where she became an 

accomplished pianist and violinist. She also 

studied composition, though to a great extent 

she was self-taught in that area. She was a person 

of great curiosity and initiative who made 

the rounds of intellectuals like Karl Kraus, 

Rainer Maria Rilke, and Maximilian Vanka. Her 

music was played fairly often, and she performed 

regularly on both her instruments. Her 

greatest period of creativity was during the 

Great War. She died in 1923 at the age of 38. 

Pejacevic’s romantic style puts strong 

emphasis on melody with an Eastern European 

or Russian tint. Her music is rich, colorful—quite 

ruddy in a way—as well as cinematic 

and emotional. Its vigor is remarkable, even 

in slow movements. Her structures are traditional 

but quite free because of the linear way 

she develops motifs with counterpoint, expansion, 

etc. Most of those motifs are based on a 

dropping interval and a short-long rhythm. 

The drop has the effect of a sigh or a swoon 

typical of the future Hollywood, and the 

rhythm works as a springboard. There is a 

touch of the improvisatory to her music that 

gives the impression that she derived a real joy 

from writing for the orchestra. She was a tonal 

composer whose harmonies were chromatic, 

modulated often, and sometimes employed a 

whole-tone scale. There may also be a folk element, 

but without knowing something about 

Croatian folk music, I cannot be certain. Many 

composers come to mind when listening: 

Richard Strauss and early Scriabin especially, 

with doses of Dvorak, Moussorgsky, Rimsky- 

Korsakoff, Tchaikovsky, and even Wagner and 

Mendelssohn. Mahler may belong on this list, 

but it is hard to point to an example. Because 

Pejacevic’s romanticism looks backward, not 

forward, I do not liken her to post-Mahlerians 

like Zemlinsky, Schreker, and Schoeck. For all 

these influences, her music has a distinctive 

voice, and if one wants to conjure a “Balkan 

sound”, hers may be it. She deserved better in 

terms of reputation, but like many early 20th 



Century romantics, she was plowed under by 

the nihilism and disgust generated by the 

Great War. 

The Symphony in F-sharp minor (1917) 

begins aggressively with a fanfare and a passage 

of downward dissonant chords. A stormy 

movement seems on the horizon, but what we 

get is a well-structured romantic ramble in the 

best sense of the term. Strauss comes quickly 

to mind, but Scriabin does not wait long, 

though the main motif, introduced in the 

horns, suggests Rimsky-Korsakoff. Its development 

dominates the movement. Several climaxes 

are Russian in flavor, but Strauss 

returns when the music exhibits more drama 

and conflict in the last sections. The ending 

resembles the overt nature of the opening but 

with less strife and more triumph. 

The gorgeous Andante Sostenuto opens 

with a modal English horn solo singing hauntingly 

over a softly trodding low brass passacaglia. 

This theme gains strength only to be 

succeeded by a more “agile and undulating” 

(the notes) melody that takes us from Moussorgsky 

to Tchaikovsky. After a clashing climax, 

a lone bass clarinet restates the opening 

theme. Pejacevic imaginatively combines the 

two melodies before the English horn closes 

the movement over soft chords. 

The scherzo opens like a village dance with 

occasional demonic coloring. The second section 

is slower, more mysterious, and spooky, 

producing images of fairies and goblins, with a 

touch of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s 

Dream and low horn calls adding a rustic 

atmosphere. 

The final Allegro Appassionato is stormy, 

vigorous, and lyrical at the beginning followed 

by a flowing second subject that sounds as if 

drawn from the main motif from I. Pejacevic 

spins out a variety of ideas before combining 

the main theme of this movement with the 

first theme from II, culminating triumphantly 

but with ominous overtones. 

The Phantasie Concertante (1919) is one of 

those cinematic pieces where the orchestra 

rhapsodizes, rising and falling, developing 

ideas in similar fashion to the first movement 

of the symphony, while the piano (sometimes 

furiously) fills in textures and goes on long virtuosic 

rides of its own. This is piano-andorchestra 

writing in the grandest of romantic 

traditions—a real showpiece. Think of a flamboyant 

white-tuxedo-clad heart-throb soloist 

(which is what this piece requires) playing with 

an orchestra that is quite busy in its own right. 

CPO has done a great service (as it so often 

does) in bringing us what I believe are the first 

recordings of this fine composer’s music. More 

are promised. I can imagine a lusher sound 

both from the orchestra and the engineers— 

particularly in bass reproduction—but the 

playing and sound we get will more than do. 

Rasilainen’s interpretation seems on the 

money, and pianist Volker Banfield produces a 

muscular tone with panache in the Phantasie. 

Koraljka Kos’s notes do a good job with the 

composer and her music. If you want to know 

more about Pejacevic, seek out a documentary 

called Countess Dora from 1993. 

HECHT 

PERGOLESI: Stabat Mater; Nel Chiuso 

Centro; Sinfonia to La Conversione die San 

Guglielmo; Questo e il Piano 

Anna Netrebko, s; Marianna Pizzolato, mz; St 

Cecilia Academy Orchestra/ Antonio Pappano 

DG 15444—72 minutes 

Pergolesi was only 26 when he died, but he left 

behind a considerable body of work, including 

his much-recorded, brief comic opera, La 

Serva Padrona, and his undisputed masterpiece, 

a setting of the Stabat Mater. Anna 

Netrebko, perhaps taking a cue from the musical 

explorations of Cecilia Bartoli, is stepping 

out of her usual repertory to participate in this 

“Tribute to Pergolesi”, joined by the young 

mezzo Marianna Pizzolato. They each sing a 

secular cantata, then join in the Stabat Mater. 

The orchestra too has its chance to shine in a 

very brief overture. The two cantatas make 

easy listening: vigorous, florid vocal lines, very 

well crafted and not extended enough to wear 

out their welcome but not particularly memorable 

either. The ladies are up to their 

demands, as they are to the Stabat Mater. This 

performance is, by modern standards, on the 

heavy, operatic side, and it seems even weightier 

because both soloists have dark voices, easy 

to hear but not strongly contrasted. I wish they 

were quicker on the draw, so to speak, with all 

the trills; but they have the tragic measure of 

the piece and they never trivialize it. Pappano 

is an enthusiastic partner for them. 

If I wanted this type of Stabat Mater, I’d 

sooner choose the even :lovelier and more 

agile Freni and Berganza on DG. The two rarities, 

Nel Chiuso Centro (based on the Orpheus 

and Eurydice story) and Questo e il Piano (the 

complaint of a jilted lover), take up about half 

an hour of the playing time, so Pergolesi seekers 

will have to decide if that’s enough justification 

to buy this. Fans of Netrebko will probably 

want it anyway. The sound is excellent, but 

no texts are supplied, though they can be 

found at the DG website. 

LUCANO 



PERSICHETTI: Band Divertimento; Masquerade; 

Pageant; Band Symphony; Psalm; 

Parable IX 

Illinois State University Wind Symphony/ 

Stephen Steele—Albany 1253—70 minutes 

I have never really been moved or excited by 

the music of Vincent Persichetti (1915-87), but 

there is no question that his dozen or so works 

for concert band constitute an important part 

of its literature. They give individual musicians 

standard, approachable things to do while 

challenging ensembles with modern harmonies 

and intricate rhythms. 

I am aware of three Persichetti band collections. 

The best one is by the London Symphony 

winds, a Naxos bargain. Also excellent is 

the one by Eugene Corporon’s fine wind 

ensembles at the University of North Texas 

and Cincinnati College-Conservatory 

(Sept/Oct 2006). Stephen Steele’s young Illinois 

State musicians might not quite be in that 

league, but they are very good. Intonation is 

fine most of the time, and solos are secure, 

expressive, and skillfully delivered. 

KILPATRICK 

PETROV: Creation of the World Suites 1+3; 

Master & Margarita; Farewell to... 

Maria Lyudko, s; St Petersburg Philharmonic, 

Chamber Orchestra, State Kapella Symphony/ 

Yuri Temirkanov, Edward Serov, Alexander 

Dmitriev, Alexander Tchernushenko 

Northern Flowers 9983—72 minutes 

Andrei Petrov (1930-2006) was born in 

Leningrad to a father who was a doctor and an 

artist mother. The family lived in Siberia during 

World War II. After they returned to 

Leningrad, the young Petrov attended the 

Rimsky-Korsakoff School of Music and the 

Leningrad Conservatory. His early pieces were 

mostly ballets and other programmatic works. 

In the 1960s he turned to scoring films and is 

probably best known in the West for those 

efforts, particularly The Blue Bird, which was 

produced through Soviet-American cooperation. 

Later he wrote more abstract instrumental 

works, including three symphonies. He 

served as the head of the St Petersburg Composers’ 

Union from 1964 and as president of 

the St Petersburg Philharmonic Society from 

1998. He won many prizes including the honor 

of a small newly discovered planet named for 

him in 1994. 

At first hearing, Petrov is a “kitchen sink” 

composer, often throwing everything but that 

proverbial item into a work. In fact, he resorts 

to that technique mostly in fast and loud passages 

(which are sometimes derivative, as 

well). His slower passages are often quite 

beautiful and would not be out of place with 

second- or third-drawer efforts from the post- 

Mahler romantics. Alas, they are always interrupted 

by that sinkful of explosive percussion, 

screaming brasses, wailing woodwinds, and 

maniacal strings. Some of his sink passages are 

clever and well crafted—most would work in a 

film score—but I cannot escape the notion 

that Petrov was just trying to be “with it”. The 

effect is inspiration broken up by the hackneyed. 

Master and Margarita (1985), based on the 

novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, is a fantasia that he 

called a “symphony in free form” and is one of 

several Petrov works based on artistic figures. 

It begins with a somber string bass solo that 

spreads darkly through the string section. 

There follows several passages of instruments 

calling (or screaming) to each other, interrupted 

twice by percussion. A furious string section 

releases an outpouring of trumpets and horns 

over a wave of thundering percussion. A contemplative 

Mahlerian passage that includes a 

beautiful oboe solo and bells is swept away by 

an orchestral tidal wave of chortling bassoons 

and clarinets, roaring horns, chugging strings, 

etc. Everything comes to a halt but for the 

organ, sounding at first like an old TV soap 

opera before evolving into something more 

sophisticated, sad and sentimental. The 

orchestra rises to a climax with grinding brass 

chords, and the middle and low strings spread 

out like a wave. After a childlike tune in the 

strings and harp, what sounds like an ondes 

martinet fades into the distance. 

Farewell to... (2005) begins like Ives’s 

Unanswered Question, with strings moving 

chordally, their top notes forming the melody. 

This leads to a flute and horn duet and a quiet 

interval of percussion and heavy string chords. 

The sink takes over with piano and high hat 

cymbals, glissando strings, and a string bass 

that takes us to a West Side Story-type gym, 

though one less spiffy than Bernstein’s. A 

hurdy-gurdy motif from the organ then turns 

into a string canon—not a bad development, 

literally. With the entry of the “ondes-martinot” 

I’m “watching” a 1950s space movie. The day 

is saved by soprano Maria Lyudko beautifully 

singing lines from a poem in Dr Zhivago. After 

a solo flute picks up her melody with sneers 

from a muted trombone, the opening material 

returns to a quiet ending. 

Creation of the World (1971) is Petrov’s 

most famous work of the three, but I find it the 

weakest. Creation may work as a ballet—it was 

produced internationally, with Mikhail 

Baryshnikov starring in some performances— 

but musically it is the kitchen sink. The first 

suite begins with ‘Angels’ Round Dance’, 

based on a little tune in the woodwinds, but 

that is kicked aside by a flatulent contrabas- 



soon, car horns, Bronx cheers, and whatnot. they do) is their elegance, grace, and the ability 

After charging brass triplets, the xylophone of conductor and orchestra to sustain line and 

maintains the tune with smirking simplicity intensity despite the lack of bite wit, irony, and 

before the onslaught resumes. Part II begins as brutality that we associate with Prokofieff. 

a string hymn, but soon a jazzy trombone solo The French National Orchestra is on the 

leads to a wild dance with riffs and wild per- top of its game with beautifully colored strings, 

cussion. The revelers shake off the craziness bright woodwinds, and strong brass. French 

with a hymn before another jazzy ride leads to orchestras are known for the soloistic tenden- 

a snide ending. The Third Suite begins with a cies of their players; and that, combined with 

weird semi-jazzy and very clever Ivesian “vari- Rostropovich’s slow tempos and the engineerations 

on a major scale” (my term). That culing, adds up to a lot of nice detail. At the risk of 

minates in a rousing hymn suitable to a barn oversimplification, you can call these perfor- 

raising. The next section plays on ‘Cool’ from mances a blend of Russian breadth with 

West Side Story (Petrov should have written French color. Erato’s big open soundstage with 

“Thanks, Lenny” in the score), while ‘The a lot of bass serves them well. 

Merry Chase’ combines Prokofieff’s Romeo 1. Elegant, slow, and serious are the watch- 

and Juliet with the humor of Poulenc and Milwords. The first movement seems reluctant to 

haud. ‘Ave, Eve’ is Broadway schmaltz. 

find its way, but eventually does. Either that, or 

This mix of styles frustrated me, but it may I adjusted. The dotted theme in I picks up sur- 

appeal to some listeners. Playing and sound prising majesty as it gains volume at this slow 

serve it well. The notes read like overwritten tempo. II is balletic, like a dancer gliding 

hagiography from the Soviet era. 

across the floor. IV comes in closest to a stan- 

HECHT dard tempo. In doing so, it points to what 

PLEYEL: Trios in C, E minor, A, F minor 

many will consider a weakness of the entire 

set—a lack of rhythmic energy that is some- 

Trio 1790—CPO 777 544—72 minutes 

what hidden by that remarkable ability of the 

There is a fair number of recent recordings of 

Ignatz Pleyel (1757-1831)—fitting, considering 

his high standing in his lifetime. A student of 

Haydn, he was hired in London to compete 

with Haydn in the 1790s. The resulting rivalry 

was good humored and affectionate, with each 

including some of the others works in his concerts. 

He wrote about 50 piano trios, most in the 

1790s. (This was before establishing his music 

publishing house and piano factory, which 

came after his return to France.) 

These trios are all well written and include 

several Scottish themes, since they were commissioned 

by George Thomson, the Scot who 

also commissioned trios from Beethoven, 

Kozeluch, Haydn, Hummel, and Weber. 

Trio 1790 is the foremost German organization 

of period instruments. They play very 

well, though with a rather thin tone. Good 

notes and a splendid recording. 

BAUMAN 

PROKOFIEFF: Symphonies, all 

French National Orchestra/ Mstislav Rostropovich—Warner 

69675 [4CD] 281 minutes 

orchestra to sustain the line at slow tempos. 

2. Rostropovich’s softening romantic 

approach works well in a piece that would 

seem to resist it. Apparently, there is so much 

steel already built in that searching for beauty 

of line and tone yields rewards, especially in 

the multifaceted II. The tempos are not that 

slow, and Rostropovich handles the motor 

rhythms so that things chug along. Annotator 

David Nice contends that under the “right conductor 

the eminently singable tunes buried in 

the wreckage of [I] should come across loud 

and clear”. Rostropovich proves him right. He 

is also very good in the slow music from II, 

which is clean and atmospheric. The same goes 

for the light-hearted variations that follow. The 

tough march ending gets its due, and the final 

chords are nicely open and balanced. I liked 

this reading of my least favorite Prokofieff symphony 

as much as I would like anyone’s, but it 

might not please people who insist on more 

harshness in the first movement. 

3. The Third Symphony is energetic, spiky, 

hotly atmospheric, lush, lyrical, and complex. 

Because it combines the composer’s aggressive 

and romantic sides so thoroughly, it presents 

problems to a one-sided approach like 

Rostropovich is known for slow, expansive Rostropovich’s. To an extent, he is able to 

tempos and a romantic, broad treatment even maintain the required structural balance, but 

of harsh or sharp-edged works. He lives up to this is still an odd interpretation. Sometimes it 

that reputation in this reissue of an Erato set seems to meander, and instrumental levels are 

from the 1980s. Tempos range from very slow unusual here and there. Still, there is plenty of 

to the slow side of normal. Textures are color and more fire than the rest of the set 

weighty and built up from a powerful bass. would suggest, particularly in III, where, rela- 

Attacks tend to be soft and broad. What makes tively speaking, Rostropovich unleashes a fury. 

these performances work (assuming you think The sound is a little less open, vibrant, and 



impressive than in the other symphonies, but 

it’s still quite good. 

4. The Fourth was a commission for the 

Boston Symphony’s 50th Anniversary, so it is 

surprising that Prokofieff essentially tossed the 

piece off by plugging in a lot of material from 

his ballet, The Prodigal Son. The result is not a 

bad work, but as the Prokofieff Overview wrote, 

it lacks the “hysterical tension of the previous 

symphonies [and it also is missing] drama and 

hardly seems symphonic much of the time”. 

Rostropovich’s performance is OK, but the 

Fourth’s balletic and often witty nature takes a 

hit from Rostropovich’s style and slow tempos. 

The opening is serenely beautiful, promising 

much; and indeed, I has some life and is the 

best performed of the movements. In II, the 

line moves nicely despite a tempo that is too 

slow for the content. The slower parts of III 

have a musing effect, so that is pleasing 

enough. The spiky Finale suffers most, save for 

the brash trombone outbursts. 

Prokofieff revised the Fourth in 1947, fattening 

it up, adding material, and increasing 

its length by half. (The opus numbers are 47 

for the original and 112 for the revision.) Judging 

from this performance, I assume that Rostropovich 

prefers the revision: it certainly takes 

to his approach better than the original. It is 

one of the best performances in the set, particularly 

in a second movement that is wonderfully 

warm and dreamy. The string tone is rich 

and colorful, I don’t mind the slow tempos at 

all, and the sound is especially good. 

5. The Fifth is not as slow as usual, but is 

otherwise true to type. It is a war symphony, 

and this is one of its darker, more brooding, 

and menacing (though not brutal) readings. 

The opening is typically slow, but things pick 

up at the second subject, and inner detail is 

revealing. Excellent orchestral balances lend a 

thoughtful aspect—more so than in some of 

the other readings here, where beauty and 

richness are so dominant. The growling bass is 

important and telling; and the very slow, percussive 

ending sounds like the artillery barrage 

that it is. II is not that slow, but there is still 

plenty of detail; the trio is stylish with excellent 

horn work, and there is some rare bite in the 

low muted trumpets. III is the core of the performance—a 

slow and dreamy funeral march 

that is steady, deadly, and in a way, Mahlerian. 

The dirge becomes very powerful toward the 

end, like a slow ‘Mars’ from Holst’s Planets. 

The Finale is more standard in tempo, and 

while the low passages in the second half are 

strong, the movement is a little anticlimactic 

after its powerful predecessor. 

6. This “beautiful” Sixth is definitely not for 

everyone. Tempos are very slow, with the 

accent on dark, contemplative lyricism and 

gravitas, but not mass. Like the Fifth but more 

so, the Sixth is built from the bottom up; and 

that is emphasized, with real breadth in the 

low strings and the bass trombone-tuba pairing, 

with weight applied to fill it out. II is so 

slow that III feels like an Olympic sprint in 

comparison. It is actually slightly slow, but it is 

nicely turned and supplies the required lightening 

up and release in its context better than 

several recordings. Many people will say that 

Rostropovich has this piece all wrong, but it 

works if you are of a mind for it. 

7. This is a large scale, grand reading that is 

rich, lyrical, and more serious than most. It is 

one of the best of the set and one of my favorite 

Sevenths, period. I is slow, but not terribly 

so, and the tempo reveals interesting inner 

lines in the strings. II opens powerfully, the 

midsection is colorful especially in the basses, 

the oboe solo is nicely dark, and the ending is 

muscular with a lot of bass drum. III opens 

with wonderful string tone that is maintained 

all the way through. IV is leisurely, yet powerful, 

and moves along well to the original quiet 

ending. 

The notes are of moderate length, but they 

tell us some interesting things about Prokofieff 

and these works. 

This set makes as good a case for an overtly 

romantic approach to Prokofieff as I’ve heard. 

I would limit recommendation to listeners 

who are seeking something along these lines, 

never cared for these works but might in this 

kind of approach, or are looking for something 

different to supplement to their Prokofieff collection. 

I am in Category 3. Anyone else should 

probably avoid them. 

I know of eight other sets and have heard 

parts of all but Martinon’s Vox. My favorites 

are Kitaenko (the most powerful; often slower 

than Rostropovich, but more probing, muscular, 

and brutal, with great playing from 

Gurzenich Orchestra); Gergiev (neutral and 

mainstream); Kosler (mainstream, sleek, 

sometimes too laid back, with a great Czech 

Philharmonic), and Weller (big, warm, too 

smoothed over for some, but excellent analog 

sound). 

Jarvi is undercharacterized, sometimes 

uncertain, with a good, not great, Scottish 

National Orchestra. Kuchar’s somewhat crude 

performances were inexpensive stopgaps 

when they came out in the 1990s, but are now 

dispensable. What I’ve heard of Ozawa is dead 

and clueless. 

The Overview did not recommend a particular 

set. Looking through the reviews, Mr 

Vroon loved Kitaenko and said it revised his 

thoughts on these pieces (Jan/Feb 2009, a long 

review worth consulting). He did not care for 

Ozawa. John McKelvey (Sept/Oct 1996) loved 



Weller, ranking it slightly ahead of Kosler, and 

did not care for Jarvi or Martinon. Mr Godell’s 

favorite was Weller, followed by Jarvi (but not 1 

and 5, which precludes buying as a set), noting 

the conductor’s ability to allow even the brutal 

passages to sing (Jan/Feb 1999). We never 

reviewed Gergiev. 

HECHT 

RACHMANINOFF: Corelli Variations 

with Elegie, op 3:1; Preludes, op 3:2; op 23:2,4,5,6; 

op 32:2,3,4,5,10,12 

Vassily Primakov, p 

Bridge 9348—77 minutes 

with Sonata 2; Vocalise; 6 Duets, op 11 

Antonio Pompa-Baldi, Emanuela Friscioni, p 


with BACH-BUSONI: Chaconne; RAVEL: Valses 

Nobles et Sentimentales; STRAVINSKY: Petrouchka 

movements 

Freddy Kempf, p—BIS 1810—64 minutes 

Rachmaninoff’s last major work for solo piano 

has been called by Vladimir Ashkenazy “perhaps 

his most perfect work”. It has been a staple 

of his repertoire all through his career. 

With three recordings (2 on LP only: EMI 1813 

and London 7236 or Decca 6996; CD: Decca 

417671 or 455234) along with a DVD discussion 

and complete performance (Ashkenazy: 

Master Musician by Christopher Nupen, Allegro 

9, Mar/Apr 2009), I admit that I learned 

this work through Ashkenazy’s performances 

and consider his readings without peer. It is 

also special to me because I’ve had the opportunity 

to hold the manuscript in my hands (at 

the Library of Congress) and observe the markings 

made for publication and even a correction 

or two glued and pasted in. 

Written in France in the summer of 1931, 

these Variations represent a significant change 

in compositional style from the Etudes- 

Tableaux, Op. 39, Rachmaninoff’s previous 

solo piano opus and his last composition written 

in Russia. There is an economy of means 

and less redundancy in his expression of emotion 

in all of his works written in the last dozen 

years of his life. The piano writing is clearer 

and cleaner than in the big works from the 

middle of his life. 

Fritz Kreisler recommended the original 

Corelli Violin Sonata (Op. 5:12) to Rachmaninoff, 

and it is not a stretch to imagine the two 

privately reading through it. Corelli used an 

old, well-known tune called La Folia as his 

theme and followed it by 23 variations. Rachmaninoff 

was well-acquainted with this old 

tune, as it figures prominently in Liszt’s Rhapsodie 

Espagnole a work he played often in 

recital. Rachmaninoff took Corelli’s setting of 

‘La Folia’ verbatim as his theme, following it 

with 20 variations and a coda. In between vari- 

ations 13 and 14, he inserts an unusual Intermezzo, 

based loosely on the theme, highly 

ornamented in a baroque manner, and interrupted 

by three cadenzas, the last of which 

leads into variation 14. It is so strikingly different 

that it serves as a break in the normal flow 

of variations. It also allows the work, so far 

solidly in D minor, to move far afield to D-flat 

major for a simple variation—a statement of 

the theme in a major key. This is followed by 

the most beautiful variation of the set, a delicate 

nocturne that shows us that while his 

compositional technique was evolving, Rachmaninoff 

was still a master of melody. 

It is often noted that this work is the precursor 

to the Rhapsody on a Theme of 

Paganini; the works share many similarities. 

The very famous (and beautiful) 18th variation 

from the Paganini work (his next opus) is also 

in the key of D-flat major. Both works follow 

their romantic D-flat variation with an immediate 

return to the home key, much quicker 

tempos and virtuosic writing in the remaining 

variations leading to the end. Unlike the fireworks 

that end the Paganini work, the Corelli 

coda returns to beauty, with an ambiguous 

alternation between D major and minor and a 

very quiet ending back in the minor key. 

Primakov’s all-Rachmaninoff program is 

built around an excellent performance of the 

Variations. His is the poet’s Rachmaninoff, 

each piece unhurried and lovingly crafted. I 

have enjoyed other Primakov discs, and miss 

some of the excitement that I found in his 

youthful concert recordings reviewed a couple 

of issues ago (Bridge 9322, May/June 2011). 

Here everything is carefully crafted, and I dare 

say slower than most other recordings (both 

the variations and preludes). Each is worth 

study for the excellent legato phrasing and 

voicing control Primakov is a master of. Since 

there are no breakneck speeds or “throw caution 

to the wind” moments, there is also a 

scarcity of exciting spots. Four of the preludes 

he selected here are ones that I also have performed, 

but with different tempos. Primakov 

can conjure up wonderful sounds, and the 

slower, melodious variations and preludes 

can’t be beat. 

Antonio Pompa-Baldi also offers an all- 

Rachmaninoff program. I’ll only speak of the 

Variations here and deal with Sonata 2 later. 

His is a fine, well-balanced performance with 

good attention to details, but not so much that 

it gets in the way of the flow of the music. Of 

the five releases covered in this and the next 

Rachmaninoff review, Pompa-Baldi is the 

most enjoyable. Much of this has to do with 

the other works, but the Variations are as solid 

and musical as I could hope for, and Centaur’s 

production values (recording and booklet 

qualities) are excellent. 



Freddy Kempf first came to my attention a 

decade ago via an ARG review of his Rachmaninoff 

Sonata 2 and Etudes-Tableaux, Op. 

39 (BIS 1042, Jan/Feb 2001). This great-sounding 

SACD recital opens with a fine performance 

of the Variations. If I am very picky, I 

would find a little fault with Variation 8 (too 

slow), Variation 13 (over-pedaled), the Intermezzo 

and Variation 17 (brittle, too loud 

melody with not enough legato). On the other 

hand it is, overall, the best performance of this 

group, the most exciting performance, and 

only the opening piece of four 20th Century 

masterpieces on this program. I have heard 

several performances of the great Bach-Busoni 

Chaconne in the past year, but none as engaging 

as this. I did find the back-to-back programming 

of two large works in the key of D 

minor a choice I would not have made. The 

following work, Ravel’s Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, 

is one of the more restrained of the 

French master’s large scale works. Its lack of 

overt virtuosity and Schubertian delicacy are 

well played by Kempf, who should have placed 

it second in the program. The spectacular 

Petrouchka is so suited to Kempf’s strengths 

that it alone would make this release worth 

getting. He doesn’t quite knock Pollini’s DG 

recording out of first place, but he’s solidly in 

second place for best recorded performance of 

this very difficult piece. 

HARRINGTON 

RACHMANINOFF: Piano Concertos 1+4; 

Paganini Rhapsody 

Simon Trpceski, Liverpool Philharmonic/ Vasily 

Petrenko—Avie 2191—77 minutes 

There is no magic or romance here. 

All the notes are present; all is played accurately. 

But the listener is left unmoved. There 

is no majesty; there is no swell of passion, no 

build-up of feeling. It is sterile and cold. It is 

English, even if the conductor is Russian. 

Further comment would be superfluous. 

VROON 

RACHMANINOFF: Piano Sonata 2 

with SCHUMANN: Carnaval; CHOPIN: Polonaise-Fantasy 

Anastasia Voltchok 

Genuin 11201 59 minutes 

with ABRAMYAN: 4 Preludes; BABAJANYAN: 

Capriccio; Improvisation; Folksong; Elegy; Poem 

Sona Shaboyan—Gallo 1321—55 minutes 

Following the completion of the Variations on 

a Theme of Corelli (see above review), Rachmaninoff 

began revising his Piano Sonata 2. “I 

look at my early works and see how much 

there is that is superfluous. Even in the sonata 

so many voices are moving simultaneously 

and it is too long. Chopin’s Sonata is 19 minutes 

long and says everything.” So Rachmaninoff 

set about applying his new leaner compositional 

techniques to the 1913 sonata. Any 

note or section not deemed essential was subject 

to revision or outright deletion. What 

works well in the Corelli Variations does not 

always fit a work composed in the heart of 

Rachmaninoff’s big, complex, virtuoso middle 

period. Consider the Piano Concerto 3, Opus 

32 Preludes, and Etudes-Tableaux and remember 

that the original sonata (Op. 36) came from 

the same time. The revision was not effective 

for Rachmaninoff the pianist, and after a few 

years it fell from his repertoire. 

The success of this work, now one of the 

most recorded piano sonatas written in the 

20th Century, has to be attributed to Vladimir 

Horowitz. He had learned the original version 

while still living in Russia, and he looked at the 

revised version and approached Rachmaninoff 

about combining it with the original. With the 

composer’s blessing, he set about his task, 

relying more on the original than the revision, 

but taking freely from both. The third version 

was completed only a couple of months before 

Rachmaninoff’s death, and it is not known 

whether or not he ever had the opportunity to 

review what Horowitz had done. It was certainly 

his performances over the years, always 

guaranteed to produce a standing ovation, that 

kept the work alive. As editions of both the 

original and revised version became readily 

available, so too were detailed essays on what 

Horowitz had done in his combined version. 

It is the revised version that we most often 

hear on recordings and in concert. While the 

original comes around about one in four 

times, the Horowitz or similar combinations 

that were popular in the last quarter of the 

20th Century seem to be going away. It should 

be noted that, while the revised version is significantly 

less difficult than the original, many 

passages are exactly the same, and a complete 

virtuoso technique is required to perform 

either version. The three recordings here are 

all of the 1931 revised version, and each is fully 

satisfying. I might quibble about a passage 

here and there, but the reader would be best 

served by selecting the disc where the other 

works are most to their liking. 

Antonio Pompa-Baldi’s (see earlier review) 

Sonata 2 earns very high marks for the number 

of inner voices he brings out. Considering that 

I have probably listened to 20 different recordings 

of this work in the past year, someone 

who brings something new to their performance 

is always appreciated. Sometimes the 

inner voice is given prominence to the detriment 

of the main voice, especially in the sec- 



ond movement. Pompa-Baldi is an Italian 

pianist who currently lives and teaches in 

Cleveland. His biography, discography, competition 

prizes, and concert schedule are quite 

impressive (www.pompa-baldi.com) and I 

imagine that he makes a fantastic teacher. His 

own transcription of the famous Vocalise is 

included and simply presents the voice and 

piano parts combined and exquisitely voiced. 

He is joined by his talented wife (also a professor 

of piano at the Cleveland Institute of 

Music) in Rachmaninoff’s piano duet. While 

these are not considered among his greatest 

works, they have been making more and more 

appearances on CDs and even in concert halls 

in the past decade. They are fun to learn and 

perform and are quite well received by audiences. 

They may lack compositional sophistication 

that calls for detailed analysis, but given 

as good a performance as they get here they 

are very enjoyable. Of the five discs covered in 

this and the previous Rachmaninoff review, 

Pompa-Baldi would be the first one I would 

purchase if I were not fortunate enough to 

have them all. 

Anastasia Voltchok combines a fine performance 

of the sonata with a very good Schumann 

Carnaval and Chopin Polonaise- 

Fantasy. Here I found the Schumann to be the 

best performance. All of the mercurial musings 

embodied in these miniature masterpieces are 

played to the hilt by Voltchok. Carnaval had its 

first concert performance played by Liszt and 

its first recording by Rachmaninoff. Here it is 

followed by a late Chopin masterpiece, which 

is also given a strong performance. The sonata, 

at just under 20 minutes, is the quickest of the 

three dealt with here. That might be deceptive 

if you just listened to the final big tune and 

coda, where she is more deliberate than the 

others with a big ritard into the final Presto. 

She gives us the most beautiful second movement, 

too. The long build-up to the first climax 

is perfectly paced. After the cadenza, as the big 

sustained sonority fades away, the final page 

begins out of the vanishing sound haze in what 

can only be described as a perfect manner. 

Sona Shaboyan is an exciting young 

Armenian pianist who places the sonata 

between two groups of shorter Armenian 

pieces by Abramyan and Babajanyan (which 

I’ve also seen spelled Babadjanian). The four 

Preludes by Abramyan are from a complete set 

of 24 and most definitely worth hearing. The 

Babajanyan are in more of a “Pops” idiom, 

such as Khachaturian’s famous ‘Sabre Dance’. 

There is a clear modal Russian oriental flavor 

to these enjoyable pieces. Rachmaninoff’s 

sonata is well voiced and has a great flow. 

Melodies and counter melodies are balanced, 

and her bravura is engaging. My only criticism 

is in the final pages, at the final Presto, 27 bars 

from the end. The headlong rush to the end 

begins with four two-bar phrases, and Shaboyan 

uses a lot of pedal and makes them muddy. 

A very small criticism for a wonderfully executed 

performance. I am quite impressed with the 

piano sound here as well as some good and 

well-translated booklet notes. I’ll look forward 

to more from both the label and the pianist. 

HARRINGTON 

RACHMANINOFF: Vespers 

Lotte Hovman, a; Poul Emborg, t; Copenhagen 

Oratorio Choir/ Torsten Mariegaard 


Here’s a very nice rendition of Rachmaninoff’s 

ever-popular Vespers, bringing the number of 

recordings I’ve covered for ARG to ten. It’s an 

apparent reissue under licence of a 2002 

recording that never came our way. I like to 

keep in touch with this glorious music; being a 

choral “basso profundo”, I invariably dig out 

my dog-eared score and sing along at least 

once as I listen to each new recording—in part 

to reassure myself that age hasn’t yet robbed 

me of all those low notes that form this work’s 

foundation. Besides, what better way to experience 

music than from the inside out? The 

only thing that beats listening to great choral 

music is singing it. 

I find little, if any real fault with this 

account. The Copenhagen Oratorio Choir is 

made up of two reputable chamber choirs— 

Pegasus and Terpsichore (I’m familiar with the 

latter)—both led by Mr Mariegaard, the conductor 

here. Their combined singing is smooth, 

sonorous, and technically assured. Their bass 

section, while lacking the seismic rumble of 

real Russian “oktavists”, anchors the music 

admirably. Interpretively, Mariegaard emphasizes 

the work’s more meditative qualities. 

Yet I miss the Slavic intensity that you get 

from choirs that specialize in music of the 

Orthodox tradition. While most of the performances 

I’ve reviewed are from non-Russian 

ensembles, the Brilliant label offers an 

idiomatically convincing, yet refined account 

from a fine Ukrainian choir under Yevhen 

Savchuk (J/A 2005); the same review compares 

that one to another top pick of mine: a particularly 

radiant, yet very different performance 

from the Dale Warland Singers. But my alltime 

favorite remains Paul Hillier’s shattering 

reading, with his Estonian Philharmonic 

Chamber choir, on Harmonia Mundi (S/O 

2005). 

Still, the performance at hand is most 

enjoyable, and its low price (under $10) makes 

it a good choice for the budget-conscious listener. 

Recording quality is very good; we get 

brief notes and bios, but no texts. 

KOOB 



RACHMANINOFF: Paganini Rhapsody; 

see SAINT-SAENS 

RAJTER: Orchestral Works 

Janacek Philharmonic/ David Porcelijn 


Ludovit Rajter (1906-2000) was well known as 

a conductor and teacher but much less so for 

his compositions. Though Slovakian by birth 

he spent much of his career in Hungary and 

only later in (what had become) Czechoslovakia. 

His music was rather old-fashioned when 

it first appeared in the early 1930s—very much 

in the manner of the Hungarians of the generation 

preceding his, notably Leo Weiner, 

Kodaly, and (his teacher) Dohnanyi. Though 

he continued to write into his 90s he retained 

his tonal, East-European conservative style. 

There are folk-style tunes aplenty (though with 

the rough edges rounded off and sans Bartokian 

asperities) and a few faint echoes of 

Janacek, but the five works here (one gathers 

they are representative of his orchestral output) 

are for the most part genial, melody-rich 

works that would have been easily digested by 

contemporaneous audiences. Think a somewhat 

tamed-down, more heavily scored Hary 

Janos with a little less personality and sass to 

get an idea of Rajter’s typical manner—or, if 

you know it, Leo Weiner’s Hungarian Folk 

Song Suite. 

Included are Divertimento from 1932, 

Symphonic Suite from 1933, Suite from the 

ballet Pozsonyi May Festival from 1938, Sinfonietta 

from 1993, and Impressionist Rhapsody 

from 1995. Most listeners will enjoy these 

unassuming, appealing, lively pieces with no 

problem. Movements tend to be unfussy and 

modestly proportioned. Just don’t expect anything 

cerebral or profound. Rajter has little 

interest in the extensive symphonic workingout 

of thematic ideas or dramatic conflict; he 

aims simply to please, charm, and edify without 

strain or struggle. Indeed much here would 

fit very comfortably onto a Proms concert— 

certainly the delightful eight dances excerpted 

from Pozsonyi May Festival. 

Performances and sonics are, as we’ve 

come to expect from CPO and its distinguished 

artists, excellent. 

LEHMAN 

REBAY: Clarinet & Guitar 

Luigi Magistrelli & Massimo Laura 


Milan Conservatory clarinet professor Luigi 

Magistrelli and La Scala guitarist Massimo 

Laura have done much to illuminate the little 

known repertoire for clarinet and guitar. Here, 

in a series of recordings from 2005 and 2006, 

they offer the entire clarinet and guitar portfolio 

of early 20th Century Viennese composer 

Ferdinand Rebay (1880-1953). Although Rebay 

studied with eminent teachers at the Vienna 

Conservatory, including pianist Joseph Hofmann 

and composer Robert Fuchs, he never 

achieved the fame of other students past and 

present; and while he wrote music at a time of 

modernist upheaval, he preferred the boundaries 

he knew as a youth. He served as a choral 

director and a piano teacher and produced 

strongly tuneful and folk-influenced pieces in 

a romantic and neo-classical idiom. His music 

for clarinet and guitar include three multimovement 

sonatas, a set of three small recital 

pieces, and a brief theme-and-variations on a 

melody by Chopin. 

As heirs to the Italian treble-dominated 

tradition, Magistrelli and Laura offer knowledgeable 

and heartfelt renditions, but the simple 

melodies and the transparent textures also 

leave them little room to hide. Most of the 

problems lie with Magistrelli, who cannot 

overcome his German set-up to complement 

his otherwise delightful phrasing. His sound 

lacks vibrancy and ring; he often has intonation 

problems; his tongue sometimes bounces 

off the reed; and he often presses too much, 

always preferring to be an extrovert when a 

more delicate and understated approach 

would work better. Laura understands this, but 

he defers to Magistrelli too much, and the 

result is often a pleasant guitar line far in the 

background and a dominating clarinet presence, 

even when the guitar has the melody. 

Nevertheless, Rebay comes across as a 

bonafide minor master, boasting all the craft 

of his better-known contemporaries and lacking 

only in name recognition. His melodic gifts 

and skillful handling of the melody-harmony 

framework between these two seemingly very 

different instruments make his library a wellspring 

for both serious concerts and light 

chamber recitals. 

HANUDEL 

REGER: Violin Concerto; Romances; Aria 

Kolja Lessing; Göttingen Symphony/ Christoph- 

Mathias Mueller—Telos 97—79 minutes 

In this performance of the concerto, we hear 

violinist Adolf Busch’s 1938 re-orchestration of 

its accompaniment. I understand Busch’s 

trepidation—Reger’s scores look like he got 

paid by the note. But his re-scoring doesn’t 

sound greatly different from Reger’s own. I 

suspect conductors and recording engineers 

on other recordings have kept a close eye on 

balances. Furthermore, in the heavier tutti 

passages, the soloist is often silent. 

For most listeners, a greater drawback will 

be the excessive length of the piece. Reger 



sometimes lacked a sense of scale. My favorite 

of his works, the Symphonic Prologue to a 

Tragedy, lasts 32 minutes. (It is a stupendous 

achievement—really a great one-movement 

symphony.) The piece originally ran 50 minutes, 

but apparently even Reger flinched at the 

prospect of an overture lasting nearly an hour. 

The concerto needed similar revision; it’s 

simply too long. The first movement alone is 

nearly half an hour, with much of the solo part 

given to what sounds like endless noodling of 

rhythmically monotonous pattern work. Things 

pick up in the finale. It has a peppy theme, with 

an elegantly contrasted second subject; but 

even here you soon get the picture of a composer 

who simply won’t weed the garden. 

The shorter works are more contemplative 

and quite beautiful in their understated eloquence. 

Kolja Lessing makes the most of the 

music. His excellent playing in the violin’s 

lower register is particularly attractive in the 

Romances and Aria, as they exploit that part of 

its range so movingly. 

O’CONNOR 

REICH: Electric Counterpoint; Vermont 

Counterpoint; 6 Marimbas 

Kuniko, perc—Linn 385 [SACD] 41 minutes 

Kuniko is an exciting and expressive percussionist 

who has performed a great variety of 

20th Century music. She has made idiomatic 

arrangements of two pieces from Reich’s 

“Counterpoint” series (Electric Counterpoint 

was originally scored for guitars; Vermont 

Counterpoint, for flutes) and produces a 

delightful multitracked recording of Six 

Marimbas. I cannot fault the ingenuity and 

care of the arrangements and am awed by her 

technique and musicality. Unfortunately, the 

percussion instruments she uses (including 

steel drums and marimbas) obligate her to 

transpose much of Electric Counterpoint up an 

octave, and I miss the solid foundation for the 

harmony that the lower notes supply in the 

original. On the other hand, the Vermont 

arrangement (scored for vibes) improves on 

the flute original in many ways, not least in 

rhythmic incisiveness. 

HASKINS 

RONTGEN: Violin Concertos 1+3; Ballad 

Liza Ferschtman; Rheinland-Pfalz Philharmonic/ 

David Porcelijn 


These are traditional works of high quality. In 

Concerto 1 (1902), the soloist has the first 

word—and most of the others. The accompaniment 

furnishes good support with some 

unusual darkly colored harmonic progressions. 

Like several Rontgen pieces, the finale 

uses a Dutch folk song as its basis. The general 

effect is like an updated Mendelssohn, charm 

included. 

Concerto 3 (1931) is more conservative, 

austere even. I’d describe the music as a controlled 

rhapsody. It’s thoughtful in mood, but 

the brief, lively finale wraps it up in style. 

The Ballad (1918), an autumnal piece, 

sounds like a symphonic poem with an elaborate 

violin part. Rontgen’s biographer Jurjen 

Vis theorizes that it may express his relief at 

the ending of World War I. (Though he lived 

mostly in Holland, Rontgen was always sentimental 

about his German homeland. In the 

1920s he used to visit the exiled Kaiser at 

Doorn.) The music makes skilful use of the 

harp in its accompaniment. The great English 

analyst Donald Francis Tovey once wrote that 

nobody should be foolish enough to use a harp 

in a violin concerto. Rontgen proves him 

wrong, but as he and Rontgen were good 

friends, Tovey no doubt made allowances. 

This likeable music stretches the soloist 

every bit as much as many far less graceful 

offerings, and with a far more entertaining 

effect. Soloist Ferschtman clears every hurdle 

with a strong, sweet tone, not only in the 

extremes of range, but while negotiating some 

drastic leaps of register. Porcelijn’s conducting 

displays sympathy in breadth and depth. 

Justin Davidson described violin concertos as 

“an unfair contest where the underdog always 

wins”. Here everybody wins. 

O’CONNOR 

ROSLAVETS: Piano Pieces; see SCRIABIN 

ROSSI: Cleopatra 

Dimitra Theodossiou (Cleopatra), Alessandro Liberatore 

(Marc Antony), Paolo Pecchioli (Caesar); 

Macerata Sferisterio Festival/ David Crescenzi 

Naxos 660291 

In March/April I expressed mild enjoyment of 

the DVD of Rossi’s opera. It’s a restrained work 

with more drama in the recitatives than in the 

arias. The music is innocent enough—no great 

outbursts of emotion, no “take home tunes”. 

It’s all very professional, finely crafted, pleasantly 

enjoyable, but hardly memorable. 

If one simply has to have a recording of 

Cleopatra go for the video. It’s attractive 

enough to distract the ear, but the park-andbark 

staging does not help. 

PARSONS 

ROSSINI: Arias 

Julia Lezhneva, s; Sinfonia Varsovia/ Marc 

Minkowski—Naive 5221—58 minutes 

Russian-born Julia Lezhneva is only 22 years 

old, yet she has chalked up an impressive 



number of credits, including with the Rossini 

festival in Pesaro and master classes given by 

the great Rossini interpreter, Teresa Berganza. 

I like her; she’s very promising and may well 

have a future in Rossini operas. 

There is a rich, dark quality to her lyric 

soprano that enables her to cope quite well 

with the Cenerentola rondo, a mezzo aria. But 

her voice can easily manage the uppermost 

reaches of the soprano aria without losing 

beauty of tone. Hers is indeed a lovely sound 

with no awkward glitches. Ms Lezhneva could 

use more variety of expression and vocal colors 

from time to time. Semiramide’s ‘Bel raggio’, 

for example, needs more sparkle. She 

sounds very comfortable and confident in 

these arias. 

Shame on Naive for not making this 

recording 15 to 20 minutes longer. Marc 

Minkowski, perhaps best known for his 

recordings of baroque repertory and classical 

and romantic French operas, is a very supportive 

colleague. The Sinfonia Varsovia 

(Minkowski is its music director) plays with 

sparkle and grace for the arias, but sparkle is 

only intermittently present in Minkowski’s 

sometimes deliberate pacing of the Cenerentola 

Overture. Bios, texts, and translations. 

MARK 

ROSSINI: Petite Messe Solennelle; Dal Tuo 

Stellato Soglio 

Katia Ricciarelli, Margarita Zimmermann, Jose 

Carreras, Samuel Ramey; Craig Sheppard, Paul 

Berkowitz, p; Richard Nunn, harmonium; 

Ambrosian Singers/ Claudio Scimone 


Thanks to this release, we now have first-rate 

performances of Rossini’s 80-minute oddball 

tailored to fit small, medium, and large -sized 

tastes. An intimate and jaunty approach was 

taken by Rolf Beck and his South German Chorus 

on a Berlin issue we liked very much 

(Jan/Feb 2001). On a more expansive scale, 

there’s Marcus Creed and the 37 singers of his 

RIAS Chamber Choir who whisked the work 

out of the Paris salon it was written for and 

into the concert hall as the band—a pair of 

19th Century Pleyels and an 1869 Debain harmonium—played 

on. And now, re-entering the 

arena, are Maestro Scimone and company 

who went before the microphones 28 years 

ago to accord Rossini’s original version of the 

Mass the most operatically-charged performance 

of all. 

No question that Scimone’s grand, molto 

drammatico approach takes us even further 

away from that salon. But the keyboard 

accompaniment combined with a tasteful 

sense of restraint keeps the work sounding 

enough like the liturgical curio Rossini intend- 

ed. Besides, it’s all brought off with so much 

flair that the finished product is impossible to 

resist. Ramey sounds like the voice of God, but 

a deity with enough spring in his vocal step to 

move smartly through the registers and blend 

nicely with his colleagues. Ricciarelli delivers 

an attractive ‘O salutaris hostia’, and croons 

gorgeously with the mezzo in a gently rippling 

‘Qui tollis’. Carreras was very much in “Old 

Carreras” form in 1983, delivering his ‘Domine 

Deus’ with such power and feeling he could 

continue into Verdi’s ‘Ingemisco’ without 

missing a step. 

I have no idea how many Ambrosians were 

on duty for Scimone, but the ensemble sounds 

larger than Creed’s. They are very good, 

though they don’t convey the spiritually rapt 

innigkeit the RIAS choir achieved in the 

‘Christe eleison’ when they turned Rossini into 

a direct descendant of Palestrina and Byrd. But 

their two big fugues—’Cum sancto spiritu’ and 

‘Et vitam venturi’—really jump for joy. 

Everything sounds terrific, thanks to astute 

work from the Erato engineers of yesteryear. 

Adding to the joy is a delightfully slushy performance 

of the choral prayer from Mose in 

Egitto, with Ruggero Raimondi, June Anderson, 

Sandra Browne, and Salvatore Fisichella 

doing the solo honors. This is where notes and 

a libretto (neither is supplied) would have 

helped the most. 

If I had to pick one reading of the PMS to 

live with, it would be Marcus Creed. The harmonium, 

which adds so much to the individuality 

of the piece, is more prominent there, 

plus I like the vivacity of his oratorio-scaled 

soloists. Nifty choral touches, such as an imaginative 

change of articulation in the middle of 

the ‘Et vitam’ counterpoint, help make it extra 

special (Harmonia Mundi 901724; July/Aug 

2001). But whether you choose small, medium, 

or large, do stay with the work in its original 

format, which is more distinctive and interesting 

than the overblown orchestrated version 

Rossini crafted a few years after. That way, the 

PMS won’t sound like anything else—as it definitely 

shouldn’t. 

GREENFIELD 

ROTA: Symphony 3; Divertimento Concertante; 

Concerto Soiree 

Barry Douglas, p; Davide Botto, db; Filarmonica 

900/ Gianandrea Noseda 


I liked Nino Rota’s first two symphonies a lot 

for their charm and feel of spring (Chandos 

10546, N/D 2009), but most of this program is 

disappointing. The Concerto Soiree, for piano 

and orchestra, reminds me of one of the magnificent 

visual jokes in Val Kilmer’s hilarious 

1984 movie Top Secret: German soldiers on 



jeeps and motorcycles are hurriedly leaving a 

military compound; on the right side of the 

screen, a soldier is flagging them to turn to 

your left—until the camera pulls back and 

instead of a battalion, you see the same seven 

or eight vehicles driving in a circle. When the 

Concerto starts, you think, “Oh boy, we’re 

going somewhere, somewhere worthwhile”, 

but there is repetition instead of development. 

The piece reminds me of a lesser version of 

Gavin Bryars’s Fiancailles (which I love), but 

sunnier, and with oboes; maybe I should like it 

on its own terms, but I expect better things of 

Rota. 

In I of the Divertimento Concertante, for 

double bass and orchestra, Rota tried to construct 

the melody from arpeggios that should 

have been relegated to the cadenza; II, ‘Marcia’, 

also over-uses them as thematic material. 

III and IV are more interesting, partly because 

of a nice climax in III and some fascinating 

chromatic turns in IV. But the double bass’s 

voice simply isn’t strong enough to carry concerto 

material; when I first played this in my 

car, it sounded like they recorded the soloist 

from backstage. 

Symphony No. 3 is much better; it was 

written nearly 20 years after the first two symphonies. 

It’s neoclassical, with a formally 

structured first movement; II is a fetching adagio—what 

struck me the most are the trills, 

which sound nearly baroque for a few measures, 

then turn into something mysterious. 

Rota’s writing is tonal but chromatic, and the 

symphonies have many interesting ideas and 

solid development. I hear little hints of 

Prokofieff in his writing, in the lightness of the 

music and the puckish orchestration; some of 

the harmonic progressions in IV are echoes of 

the last movement of Prokofieff’s Classical 

Symphony. If you liked Symphonies 1 and 2, 

you may like this one even better—there’s 

more variety and depth. The sound is excellent, 

crisp and rich; there are a few minor intonation 

problems, but overall the orchestra 

plays quite well. Notes in English, French, and 

Italian. 

ESTEP 

RUDERS: Piano Concerto 2; Bel Canto; Serenade 

on the Shores of the Cosmic Ocean 

Rune Tonsgaard Sorensen, v; Vassily Primakov, p; 

Mikko Luoma, acc; iO Qt; Norwegian Radio 

Orchestra/ Thomas Sondergard 


Volume 6 in Bridge’s Poul Ruders series. 

The Second Piano Concerto (2009-2010) 

opens with a sweet, gentle solo but almost 

immediately goes on to nastier business. The 

slow movement interrupts meandering diatonic 

introspection with hideous blasts of 

crassness. The wild finale has cartoon-like 

bombast in its outer sections and a brief spell 

of that gentle music at its center. “Lots of fun 

for everybody”, says the composer. 

Bel Canto (2004) is a six-minute solo violin 

piece written for that year’s Carl Nielsen Violin 

Competition. Essentially lyrical, as the title 

suggests, it comes across as a sort of dreamy 

cadenza to a nonexistent violin concerto. The 

effect is unconvincing. 

Serenade on the Shores of the Cosmic Ocean 

(2004), inspired by Carl Sagan, is a nine-movement 

suite for accordion and string quartet. 

The mostly brief pieces explore the moon, the 

sun, and the Milky Way with quotations from 

Darwin, Shakespeare, and Sagan himself and a 

nod to Joseph Conrad for good measure. 

Accordion and string quartet proves an interesting 

blend. The music spans a variety of textures 

and moods, from explosive (1) to expressive 

(5), quietly soulful (6) to grotesque (7). 

Ruders has a loyal following. His fans will want 

to investigate. 

GIMBEL 

RUTTER: Gloria; Magnificat; Te Deum 

Elizabeth Cragg, s; Tom Winpenny, org; Ensemble 

DeChorum, St Alban’s Cathedral Choir/ Andrew 

Lucas 


The Gloria is given a deft performance that’s a 

bit too small and careful to rival Rutter’s own. 

But the delightful Magnificat is as good as any. 

Cleobury (EMI) did it well but this is better; 

lighter, brighter, and more sumptuously 

recorded. The ‘Esurientes’, which might be the 

loveliest Rutter interlude of all, is sung gorgeously 

by soprano Elizabeth Cragg. (Cleobury 

used a choirboy, with predictably pale results.) 

Here the work is heard in the composer’s 

scaled-down version for choir, organ, and 

chamber orchestra. If the jacket hadn’t mentioned 

it, I wouldn’t have noticed. (Or cared, 

for that matter.) The 8-minute Te Deum also 

goes well. Here’s hoping these folks get a crack 

at Rutter’s Requiem with the same engineering 

crew in tow. English and Latin texts are supplied. 

For the Magnificat, exit Cleobury and 

enter Lucas. 

GREENFIELD 

SAINT-SAENS: Piano Concerto 2; 

RACHMANINOFF: Paganini Rhapsody; 

LISZT: Hungarian Fantasy 

Elisso Bolkvadze, Tbilisi Symphony/ Jansug 

Kakhidze 

Cascavelle 3151—66 minutes 

These recordings have been around for nearly 

20 years. They first appeared on Infinity Classics, 

a super-budget label created by Sony to 



compete with Pilz, LaserLight, et al. Though 

the list price was set at $4.98, they sold in 

many stores for as little as $2.99. Cascavelle’s 

reissue is at full price. 

Is it worth it? Ms Bolkvadze is a competent 

pianist, but these are rather dull run-throughs. 

In the Saint-Saens II lacks any playfulness, 

while III is earthbound. The abysmal Tbilisi 

orchestra is at its worst in the Liszt—it plods 

lifelessly until the final pages, where Ms Bolkvadze 

and Maestro Kakhidze go horribly out of 

sync. And there’s nothing very rhapsodic in the 

Rachmaninoff, where some glaring orchestral 

bloopers give the performance an amateurhour 

feel. Perhaps the substandard playing of 

the Tbilisi ensemble explains why the balances 

are so ridiculous in the Saint-Saens and the 

Rachmaninoff. The orchestra sounds like it’s at 

the other end of the hall, while the piano is in 

your lap. 

I’m a firm believer in the theory that 

exceptional performances can be found in 

unlikely corners, but these are exceptionally 

bad. 

KOLDYS 

SARASATE: Fantasy on Magic Flute; on 

Faust; Navarra; Muineiras; Barcarolle Venitienne; 

Introduction et Caprice-Jota 

Tianwa Yang, v; Navarra Symphony/ Ernest Martinez 

Izquierdo 


In my review of the second volume of this set 

(M/A 2008), I described Tianwa Yang’s playing 

as “perfect”, a word I reserve for only the rarest 

of circumstances and the rarest of violinists. I 

have to use it again for this recording. In addition 

to perfection, this third volume is full of 

surprise and delight; surprise because aside 

from ‘Navarra’ all the music is new to me, and 

delight because I love it all. 

The orchestra is as present as the soloist on 

this recording, and Izquierdo brings out all the 

delightful details of wind writing in the orchestrations, 

particularly in the Mozart Fantasy 

and the Faust Fantasy. Yang plays both solo 

violin parts in ‘Navarra’, but she does each 

using a different Vuillaume violin. One is her 

Vuillaume, and the other is the Vuillaume that 

Sarasate played. I don’t even want to think 

about how Sean Lewis, the remarkable engineer, 

was able to make this work. Then again, 

he wasn’t working with an ordinary virtuoso or 

an ordinary orchestra. 

This is the third volume of eight. I’m 

already looking forward to Volume 4, which I 

hope Yang records with the same orchestra 

and engineer. 

FINE 

SCARLATTI: Sonatas 

Alexandre Tharaud, p 


Tharaud has a supple touch. He allows the 

sound of the piano to bloom and breath, especially 

in the slower sonatas, where his messa di 

voce would make Caccini proud. The fast 

sonatas reveal a dissonance between Tharaud 

and the instrument. The ceiling of the piano’s 

sound and threshold Tharaud (or perhaps 

Scarlatti) is pushing toward exist on parallel 

lines, most of the time. In K 141, the tension 

between the pianist and the piano becomes a 

source of inspiration and energy. In that 

sonata, Tharaud and the piano meet halfway. 

This is an honest recording that does not 

whitewash or ignore the peculiar challenges of 

performing Scarlatti on the modern piano. 

KATZ 

SCARLATTI: Sonatas 

Alberto Mesirca, g—Paladino 3—80 minutes 

Jan Sommer, Per Dybro, g 


Two new releases devoted to Scarlatti transcriptions, 

one particularly wonderful. A little 

more than a year ago, I reviewed a performance 

by Luigi Attademo on Brilliant (M/J 

2010) and remarked that entire discs devoted 

to Scarlatti on guitar were rather rare. Ask and 

ye shall receive. The next issue I got another by 

Steven Marchionda (J/A 2010), with a completely 

different program and a completely different 

approach. Now here are two more, again 

with transcriptions mostly by the players, and 

only two duplications (K 109 and K 466). 

Mesirca’s performance is the best of the 

four. Indeed, this the best Scarlatti I’ve ever 

heard on solo guitar. It even rivals the magnificent 

Assad brothers’ recording on Nonesuch— 

and they had the advantage of two guitars. 

This is sparkling playing. Passage work is 

tossed off effortlessly, no matter how rapid; 

ornamentation is graceful and elegant, perfectly 

and stylishly realized. He has a wonderful 

range of dynamics and color and a flawless 

tone. He has obviously listened to Kirkpatrick’s 

advice that one should not let the tonal restrictions 

of Scarlatti’s harpsichord restrict the 

range of expression on an instrument with a 

wider palate. He can express melancholy and 

mystery when the music requires it, but he is 

best in passages of sheer joy and exuberance— 

and that, for me, is what Scarlatti does best. 

I might have had a more positive response 

to the Sommer and Dybro recording if this 

weren’t up for a side-to-side review. Their performance 

is certainly enjoyable—they also 

have a lovely tone and a nice dynamic range. 



Ensemble is good, and they play with ease 

except in the most demanding passages, where 

they can’t match Mesirca’s virtuosity. Their 

approach to ornamentation is old-fashioned— 

the sort of thing Segovia might have used. It’s 

more 19th Century than baroque, so if that 

annoys you, you’d best avoid this release. 

Notes are scant, and there is a short bio of 

Sommer, though no mention of his partner. 

Still, they also have a nice sense of joy here, 

and there are few duplications between the 

two recordings, so if you love Scarlatti on the 

guitar, you won’t regret getting both. But you 

certainly should seek out Mesirca’s outstanding 

record. 

KEATON 

SCHARWENKA: Piano Concerto 4; 

Mataswintha Overture; Andante Religioso; 

Polish National Dances (3) 

François Xavier Poizat, Poznan Philharmonic/ 

Lukasz Borowicz 


“Energy, harmonic interest, strong rhythm, 

many beautiful melodies, and much Polish 

national character—all that and much more is 

to be found in the music of Franz Xaver Scharwenka”, 

writes HV Hamilton in the pages of 

Grove’s (Fifth Edition). Reviewing Seta 

Tanyel’s Collins CD of Scharwenka’s First 

Piano Concerto (July/Aug 1992), Donald 

Manildi reminds us that this sort of effusive, 

heart-on-sleeve keyboard writing is “an exhilarating 

celebration of what the piano can really 

sound like when a skilled virtuoso-composer 

produces a brilliant vehicle aimed at nothing 

more (or less) than the pure enjoyment of 

soloist and audience”—a sentiment I was 

pleased to echo on reviewing Ms Tanyel’s 

splendid follow-up of 2 and 3 five years later 

(May/June 1997). 

Why then is his music played so seldom in 

concert these days? The only piece you’re likely 

to recognize from recital programs is the 

‘Polish National Dance’, Op. 3:1, one of the 

three offered here. Like Rachmaninoff’s Prelude 

in C-sharp minor and Paderewski’s Minuet 

in G this one piece came to be not only 

Scharwenka’s “calling card” but also his curse, 

the one piece audiences clamored to hear. 

Certainly Scharwenka took great pride in his 

Polish heritage; and even when he strays far 

from home, as in the tarantella that caps the 

Fourth Concerto, his music is always highly 

emotional, deeply felt, and by any standard 

fully equal to anything by his far better known 

compatriots, Chopin and Paderewski. 

In the Fourth Concerto Scharwenka compels 

attention right away with a massive 

orchestral tutti ending with a drum roll— 

reversing the order set by Brahms in his D- 

minor Concerto—that soon develops into a 

melody vaguely redolent of the Dvorak concerto 

written some 30 years before. There’s a 

broadly nostalgic episode with rippling keyboard 

configurations that will no doubt 

remind you of Liszt before the opening movement—by 

far the longest of the four—closes 

out in suitably dramatic style. 

The Intermezzo, Allegretto molto tranquillo, 

starts out in the manner of a courtly minuet, 

with an unmistakable Gallic quality that 

suggests Saint-Saens; but it turns quite stormy 

midway in, with echoes of the very opening 

theme (something of a “motto” apparently) 

flailing about with abandon. Somber Wagnerian 

trombones introduce the dark Lento, 

which allows both soloist and audience time 

for respite and reflection before the grumbling 

bassoons lead into the finale, where the stark 

“motto” is miraculously transformed into a 

mercurial tarantella that offers the soloist little 

chance to catch his breath, alternating with a 

hearty, galumphing secondary theme before 

everyone rushes to the final bar, once again 

spewing clear Lisztian cascades right and left. 

How such a fine piece could remain almost 

unknown to modern-day audiences I find difficult 

to understand. 

And I might add it’s also difficult to understand 

why Seta Tanyel never completed her 

Scharwenka concerto survey after the great 

success of the first two entries. Perhaps that 

decision was made for her by Hyperion—who 

later reissued 2 and 3 in their “Romantic Piano 

Concerto” series (Nov/Dec 2003): they already 

had a perfectly good performance by Stephen 

Hough in their catalog (Jan/Feb 1996). The two 

recordings—not just the performances—could 

scarcely be more different. Grenoble-born 

pianist François Xaver Poizat may not be a 

Pole, but he plays this music as you might 

expect Paderewski or maybe even Scharwenka 

himself to play it. Certainly the “veritable 

orgies of virtuosity” the composer found in the 

final tarantella pose no difficulty for Poizat, 

and yet at such a reckless pace one can only 

marvel that the strings don’t break under the 

strain. Hough, without suppressing the boisterous 

quality of the music in the least, gives 

you just enough space between the notes to 

bring out the inherent humor of the dance. An 

even clearer distinction may be found whenever 

Scharwenka waxes lyrical, as you can hear in 

the second subject of the opening movement: 

Poizat positively swoons over it, while his 

glacial account of the Lento—9:22 next to 7:24 

for Hough—turns every melody into a disjointed 

series of notes. From a sonic standpoint, 

the auditorium of Adam Mickiewicz University 

where this recording was made seems fairly 

diffuse; certainly Lawrence Foster and his 

Birmingham players register with far greater 



effect and detail on Hyperion, while the massive 

sound of Hough’s instrument far surpasses 

anything put forth by Poizat. (Neither company 

identifies the manufacturer, but I’m willing 

to bet Hough is playing a Steinway and 

Poizat is not.) 

Apparently the Polish engineers moved the 

mike a lot closer to Poizat when he was playing 

the three dances; I programmed them to come 

after the ‘Andante Religioso’ and had to jump 

up and turn down the sound. More to the 

point, why didn’t Naxos have Poizat offer more 

of them? (There are 16 in all.) Everyone who 

attends solo recitals with any regularity knows 

No. 1 (in E-flat minor), a heady mazurka; No. 8 

in B-flat minor is charming and coquettish, 

and No. 15 in B-flat closes out the program in a 

veritable explosion of octave passagework that 

like the finale of the concerto would seem to 

me as a non-pianist well-nigh impossible, yet 

for Poizat is clearly mere child’s play. 

Scharwenka’s ‘Andante Religioso’ would 

have made a splendid encore or “lollipop” for 

Beecham, had he but known of it. It’s the composer’s 

own arrangement of the slow movement 

from his Cello Sonata for strings divisi, 

harp, and organ and may well remind you of 

the famous ‘Air on the G String’ from Bach’s 

Third Suite. This warmly expressive episode is 

played beautifully here by the Poznan strings; 

yet once again they are to some extent stymied 

by the diffuse engineering and you can hardly 

even feel, let alone hear the organ—unlike the 

Sterling with Christopher Fifield and the Gävle 

Symphony that accompanies the only extant 

recording of Scharwenka’s C-minor Symphony 

(Sept/Oct 2004). 

If you made it all way through our exhaustive 

Overview of overtures, it should come as 

no surprise that for me the real find here is the 

one to Mataswintha, Scharwenka’s only opera, 

perhaps dating from the late 1890s when the 

composer opened up a branch of his highly 

esteemed Berlin school of music in New York 

City. But despite great critical praise when it 

played at the Met, it soon faded into oblivion. 

It opens amid evocative horn calls and builds 

to a grand chorale in the brass before ebbing 

once again very much in the manner of Lohengrin. 

I’m happy to finally set aside my ancient 

aircheck with the Detroit Symphony under 

Karl Krueger, as this marvelous account by the 

Poznan players is all anyone could ask for. 

HALLER 

SCHMITT: Piano Quintet; A Tour d’Anches 

Berlin Soloists Ensemble 


Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) avoided labels of 

all sorts. His early music, like this piano quintet, 

reminds me of a Gallic Richard Strauss: the 

three movements in the 58-minute work bristle 

with thematic material and dense, sinewy 

polyphonic textures. A Tour d’Anches (1939- 

43)—for piano, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon—is 

more spare, less chromatic, and very witty. It’s 

hard to imagine two pieces from the same 

composer that differ as much as these. 

The performances and sound engineering 

are first-rate, and Naxos’s price makes the disc 

a justifiable frivolous purchase for people 

looking slightly off the beaten path for early 

20th Century French music. 

HASKINS 

SCHMITT: La Tragedie de Salomé; Psalm 

47; Le Palais Hanté 

Sao Paulo Symphony & Choir/ Yan Pascal Tortelier—Chandos 

5090 [SACD] 68 minutes 

Yan Pascal Tortelier and the Sao Paulo 

Symphony (he’s now their Principal Conductor) 

are, it must be said, coming to the table 

rather late with their pairing of Florent Schmitt’s 

Tragedie de Salome and the blockbuster 

Psalm 47 previously coupled by Thierry Fischer 

for Hyperion (Mar/Apr 2008), Marek 

Janowski on Warner (Jan/Feb 2007; Sept/Oct 

1990) and before them Jean Martinon for 

EMI—the gold standard for anyone wanting to 

have both works on one CD. Nor has Salomé 

exactly gone begging, with separate recordings 

by Paul Paray (Mercury; Mar/Apr 1995, p 229), 

Antonio de Almeida (ReDiscovery; was RCA) 

and more recently Sascha Goetzel (Onyx; 

July/Aug 2010) and Yannick Nezet-Seguin 

(May/June 2011). 

What does this Salomé have that the others 

don’t? Well, more singers for one thing. In the 

atmospheric central episode, ‘Les Enchantements 

sur la Mer’ Schmitt calls for a haunting 

siren call from the abyss, and many recordings 

offer a distant soprano voice—among them 

Fischer, Martinon, Janowski, and De Almeida. 

Yet it would appear the composer encouraged 

multiple voices, and so here we have a cohort 

of two sopranos and six mezzos whose wonderfully 

evocative melisma suggests that the 

Aurora Borealis (or some Eastern counterpart) 

has somehow taken human form. (Paray, 

Nezet-Seguin, and Goetzel substitute an oboe, 

also sanctioned by the composer, though considerably 

less effective.) In such serene 

imagery Tortelier is clearly in his element, and 

the concluding ‘Danse des Eclairs’ and ‘Danse 

de l’Effroi’ at his torrential pace could have 

been mightily effective were it not for the 

immensely resonant Sao Paulo hall that swallows 

up all manner of critical detail, including 

(I’m sorry to say) the forceful low brass that 

you can hear far better on most other recordings. 

Tortelier really presses his men until 

things threaten to get out of hand, and in the 



final pages they pretty much do. If it’s Salomé 

you’re after, oboe or not, it’s the Paray I return 

to most often, while for many listeners Fischer’s 

sumptuous sound may trump his languorous 

tempos. 

But if Salomé is all you know, the massive 

spectacle that is Psaume 47 will surely come as 

a revelation. Mr Hansen’s awestruck description 

(in his review of the Hyperion) is just as 

over the top as the music: “blazing brass fanfares, 

thundering organ, pounding drums, cascading 

strings, and exuberant chorus”—I wish 

you could hear all that in this recording. But 

even more than Salomé, Psaume 47 is rendered 

as a thrilling, yet thoroughly homogeneous 

wash of sound, with wind detail all but 

indistinguishable and the choir totally incomprehensible 

even with libretto in hand. You 

hear trumpets to the left of you, trumpets to 

the right of you, but what the other players 

might be doing is anyone’s guess—at least 

played over a normal CD player. Maybe SACD 

sorts everything out, but why make the non- 

SACD owner pay for a poor miking job? 

I switched to the Hyperion and heard so 

much more; indeed even at more measured 

tempos Thierry Fischer makes this the thrilling 

experience it’s supposed to be. Even the 

Janowski (at considerably faster tempos) that 

dates back to 1989 and suffered from horribly 

phlegmatic sound on Erato sounds better than 

this in Warner’s radically superior remastering 

that Mr French praised to the skies—and on 

buying the remake after reading his review I 

must enthusiastically concur. Yet for me all 

pale next to Jean Martinon’s driving and 

immensely exciting EMI (49748) that goes all 

the way back to 1973 and boasts some truly 

heroic organ playing from Gaston Litaize. I’ll 

grant you Martinon’s solo violinist in the 

almost sinfully rich central section cannot 

match Fischer’s lustrous soloist, who might 

even rival the fair Scheherazade; still, he seems 

rather more seductive than Tortelier’s man. In 

the ensuing vocal solo both Fischer’s Jennifer 

Walker and Martinon’s Andrea Guiot are more 

fresh-voiced and buoyant than the matronly 

Susan Bullock heard here. (It’s odd that neither 

the Chandos nor the Warner translation 

bears any relation whatever to the French 

words proclaiming our Lord’s great love for 

Jacob. The others get it right.) If you’re fortunate 

enough to have the Martinon in your collection, 

hang onto it. 

Filling out the program is something of a 

rarity, the evocative essay Le Palais Hanté (The 

Haunted Palace) after Edgar Allen Poe, setting 

a poem that the tortured Roderick sings to the 

strains of a guitar in Poe’s masterpiece, The 

Fall of the House of Usher. In his never-completed 

opera on the subject Debussy included 

the poem, and you may have the EMI under 

Georges Prêtre that combined the Schmitt and 

Debussy essays with André Caplet’s Masque de 

la Mort Rouge (Masque of the Red Death) 

(Jan/Feb 1994). Much of it is gloomy and pensive, 

as you would expect from Poe, beginning 

with an almost Tristanesque sound and a soliloquy 

from the bass clarinet that clearly 

presages Salomé; sudden outbursts alternate 

with a broadly lyrical passage that lulls the 

King and his court into complacency, before 

“evil things, in robes of sorrow” storm the 

palace in force, “a hideous throng (that) rush 

out forever and laugh—but smile no more”. 

While sonics could be more pellucid, the dark, 

dank colors perfectly suit this music, and 

Tortelier at far more gripping tempos creates a 

frisson of excitement, a tingling along your 

spine that Prêtre with his relentless treatment 

and crude ensemble cannot begin to match. 

You may come to the feast for Salomé or 

Psaume 47; but Tortelier’s marvelously atmospheric 

Palais Hanté is the real main course of 

this repast. 

HALLER 

SCHNITTKE: Concerto for Chorus; 

Requiem; 2 Organ Pieces 

Daniel Munkholm Bruun, org; Hymnia Chamber 

Choir/ Flemming Windekilde 

Scandinavian 220591 [2CD] 84 minutes 

The Choir Concerto is Schnittke’s true choral 

masterwork—a set of four Lamentations 

inspired by the writing of Gregory of Narek, a 

10th Century Armenian poet. Some of the 

time, the composer is busy creating great, 

imposing walls of sound in the manner of 

Rachmaninoff and other composers in the 

grand tradition of the Eastern church. Elsewhere, 

he’s fashioning grating dissonances 

from which participants break off, leaving 

stiller, smaller voices in their wake. It is, in 

short, an echt Russian work requiring the full 

Slavonic treatment—which, frankly, it doesn’t 

get from this small (25 singers), capable, distantly 

recorded Danish choir. 

For the real thing, head for Valery Polyansky 

and the Russian State Symphonic Cappella 

(Chandos 9332, July/Aug 1995) who continue 

to trump the field. A more recent one comes 

from New York’s Choir of St Ignatius Loyola 

(MSR 1251, Sept/Oct 2009) who do some terrific 

things with the music and are caught in rich, 

reverberant sound that dwarfs the engineering 

accorded these earnest but overmatched 

Danes. 

More enticing is the 36-minute Requiem 

scored for choir, soloists, a pair of trumpets, 

electric guitar and bass, celeste, organ, piano, 

and percussion. Again there’s a better performance 

to be had; a real hair-raiser from the 



Swedish Radio Choir under Tonu Kaljuste on 

Caprice 2515 (July/Aug 1996). But this one has 

its moments too, with eerie, sometimes menacing 

sounds emanating from a murky sound 

stage that actually adds to the atmosphere of 

the performance. If this ‘Dies Irae’ doesn’t 

make you jump, dial 911. The two bits for 

organ are pretty much along for the ride. (I 

guess even the King of Instruments gets stuck 

with some busywork now and again.) 

Brief, perfunctory notes are included, but 

texts and translations are not. What we get, 

then, is one-stop shopping for two worthy 

contemporary pieces. While neither performance 

is a first choice, some might appreciate 

the convenience. 

GREENFIELD 

SCHNITTKE: Sketches 

Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra/ Andrei Chistiakov 


Listening to the music from the 1985 ballet 

Sketches (Esquisses) is like watching Terrence 

Malick’s film The Tree of Life, a kaleidoscope of 

sounds (images) but mercifully minus the portentous, 

inflated moralizing. In other words, 

Schnittke knows enough not to take himself 

seriously. 

The liner notes describe the music best. It’s 

based on characters from Gogol, “common 

and petty, trashy, filthy, with everything that 

has been crumpled and bruised and thrown 

into the street”. It involves “the abundant use 

of the most widely known dance types and the 

introduction of grotesque variants of the intonations 

of Russian urban folk music. The 

orchestra is handled with inexhaustible imagination. 

The usual instruments are supplemented 

with two electric guitars (solo and 

bass), a flexatone, and a prepared piano.” 

The essentially tonal music couldn’t help 

but (1) make my feet tap and (2) make me 

laugh out loud at the incredible display of 

imaginative sounds—electric organ (or was it 

guitar or flexatone?), percussion (tuned or otherwise), 

little blips, squeaks, honks, piano glissandos, 

etc., as the music swirls with waltzes, 

marches, comical shifts of tempo, hilarious 

rubatos, quotes from Beethoven, Mozart, and 

Tchaikovsky, and on and on. Sometimes it 

reminded me of Shostakovich’s airy suites, 

sometimes of the entrance to the Shrovetide 

Fair parade in Petrouchka. 

Sketches is an entertainment; each of the 

22 movements is played with consummate 

styles (plural) as Chistiakov and his superb 

orchestra give marvelous flow and form to 

each section, no matter how short. Recorded 

in Moscow in 1996, the engineering is ripe and 

balanced, even with the electric instruments. 

Yes, my mind began to wander after about 40 

minutes, but so what! Here’s the perfect budget-priced 

album for the person who thinks he 

knows it all, thinks he has everything, or is in 

need of a good laugh. I’d love to see what Mark 

Morris would do with this ballet! 

FRENCH 

SCHOENBERG: Quartet 3; Scherzo in F; 

Presto in C; Chamber Symphony 

Prazak Quartet; Jaromir Klepac, p 

Praga 255 278 [SACD] 65 minutes 

It always strikes me to hear the voice of the 

immortal master (Schoenberg) composing 

such brilliance in the idioms that he was so 

intent on destroying. This is certainly the Viennese 

Schoenberg. Both the Scherzo and Presto 

are fine examples of the German tradition that 

he so loved—a German spirit that he could not 

stand to be without, a German idiom that he 

was so passionately trying to transform. Yet, as 

Schoenberg left the musical language and 

structure he inherited, I hear, especially in the 

Third Quartet, a reluctance to lose a part of 

himself—a culture, a tradition, a community, a 

sense of belonging. 

The Scherzo is a masterly example of counterpoint 

and tonal sophistication. The Presto is 

an obvious homage to Beethoven, playful and 

bursting with joy and brilliance. The Chamber 

Symphony Op.9, arranged by Webern in 1923 

for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano 

(played here by string quartet and piano) is 

another youthful work that is more reflective 

of a romantic tradition. While the richness of a 

Brahms symphony seems to set the landscape, 

the obsessive counterpoint and piercingly 

rhythmic gestures assault (beautifully) and 

interrupt the romantic “idea”, if you will; yet, 

the synthesis of this internalized argument 

creates a harmonic wholeness and unity. 

The Third Quartet is the piece that points 

out most clearly Schoenberg’s struggle to 

understand the two worlds that he composed 

in and his refusal to accept how incredibly 

similar they were. 

The Prazak Quartet is lustrous and highly 

distinguished in these performances. I review 

the Fred Sherry Quartet below, and both 

ensembles give ground-breaking performances 

of this piece. I am more taken by Fred 

Sherry Quartet in the Intermezzo, while the 

Prazak projects a melancholy in first movement 

that I think is missing with Fred Sherry 

Quartet. Regardless, both performances are 

spectacular. Naxos is certainly more of a bargain, 

but the Scherzo and Presto are also a 

must. 

JACOBSEN 



SCHOENBERG: Quartets 3+4; Phantasy 

Fred Sherry Quartet; Rolf Schulte, v; Christopher 

Oldfather, p 


Naxos has been recording Schoenberg for 

quite some time with Robert Craft. While I 

enjoy the reasonable pricing and their commitment 

to making classical music more 

accessible, they are hit or miss, especially with 

Schoenberg. Here we have one of their latest, 

and it is a hit! 

Before I listen, I think of the difficulty of 

this music and the level of musicianship that is 

required just to get through it. To then hear the 

Fred Sherry Quartet take this music to a level 

that is clearly beyond notes is a joy. Everything 

about 3 is perfect. The articulation in the Intermezzo 

is some of the most driven, clear, and 

crisp I have ever heard. The Rondo is a transcendent 

moment that I think many musicians 

dream of only achieving once. These musicians 

certainly do. Their playing is filled with 

life, determination, and uncompromising 

drive. They know what they want, and I fear, as 

I listen, that the unapologetic character of 

Schoenberg will get the best of them, whether 

technically or rhetorically—yet it never happens. 

They own this music. 

Cellist Fred Sherry is remarkable, but the 

entire group is a stunning example of what 

musicians can do with this music. The opening 

of 4 leaves me shaken. Also on this disc is the 

Phantasy for Violin and Piano Accompaniment. 

I am not sure why. The playing is nice 

enough, but I am not moved by it in the slightest. 

The engineering is superb. 

JACOBSEN 

SCHOENBERG: Transfigured Night; 

see BRAHMS; 

Variations; see TCHAIKOVSKY 

SCHOENDORFF: La Dolce Vista Mass; 

Usquequo Domine Mass; Magnificat Sexti 

Toni; Veni Sancte Spiritus; Te Decet Hymnus; 

DE MONTE: La Dolce Vista; Usquequo 

Domine; Magnificat Quarti Toni 

Cinquecento Renaissance Vokal 


Although Philipp Schoendorff (1565-c. 1617) 

was only a child when he left his native Liege 

in the 1570s, he was following a generationslong 

tradition among his countrymen. We 

often read about the great Netherlandish exodus 

of musicians who headed to Italy in this 

era to seek their fame and fortune, but the 

imperial court in Vienna was also a common 

destination. For some 30 years Schoendorff 

served three successive emperors as a singer, 

trumpeter, and composer. While in Vienna, 

Schoendorff studied with senior musicians at 

court who also hailed from Liege and its environs. 

This accounts for Schoendorff’s complete 

grasp of the Netherlandish polyphonic 

style that we hear on this recording. The program 

includes two of Schoendorff’s early parody 

Masses, a five-voice Magnificat, and settings 

based on chant of ‘Veni Sancte Spiritus’ 

and ‘Te Decet Hymnus’. 

The programmatic connection between 

Schoendorff and Philippe de Monte on this 

release illustrates a crucial relationship 

between these composers and their music. As 

the youngest composer at court, Schoendorff 

appears to have been eager to honor the imperial 

chapel master by parodying his compositions 

in his two masses. De Monte’s madrigal 

‘La Dolce Vista’ from 1569 is the model for one, 

and his motet ‘Usquequo Domine’ from 1587 

is the source for the other. 

Cinquecento Renaissance Vokal performs 

De Monte’s polyphonic models and Schoendorff’s 

parody masses in sequence in order to 

give us the best view of the connection between 

the works. The parody is most obvious 

at the beginning of the mass movements. Otherwise, 

the masses are quite independent of 

their models. 

The singing here is absolutely gorgeous. 

This group demonstrates their grasp of the 

Netherlandish polyphonic style in their facility 

with this dense material. Like master weavers, 

they handle the delicate interplay between 

contrapuntal parts and dovetailing with perfect 

ease. The shifts that occur between 

polyphony and homophony are also handled 

quite organically—that is, they show in their 

pleasing phrases how one texture grows naturally 

out of the other. Notes and texts are in 

English. 

LOEWEN 

SCHUBERT: Piano Sonatas, D 537+664; 

Wanderer Fantasy 

Eldar Nebolsin 


It takes a few moments for the ear to adjust to 

the in-your-face, brittle, and strident sonics 

supplied by the Naxos engineers. Once acclimated, 

these are pleasant, straightforward 

Schubert performances. Nebolsin certainly has 

the technique and musicality not to be thwarted 

by any of the composer’s daunting challenges. 

The Allegretto quasi andantino from D 537 

is particularly felicitous, and the final Allegro 

vivace has sparkling articulation. The same 

can be said for D 664, but the aggressive sound 

does tend to get in the way. 

The famous Wanderer Fantasy, long a 

favorite of pianists, is played with vigor and 

stunning control, especially in the more taxing 



passages. Nebolsin is able to move ahead 

without slowing down for the real challenges, 

especially in the concluding fugal Allegro. But 

despite some fine playing, this is really not that 

competitive given the superior sound of many 

other performances. 

BECKER 

SCHUBERT: Symphonies, all 

Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields/ Marriner 


The heading here understates the case. This is 

not only all of Schubert’s symphonies, it’s all 

plus. Thanks to Brian Newbould, we get not 

only the canonical 8 (1-6, 8 and 9), but Symphony 

7, Symphony 10, and a pair of substantial 

symphonic fragments. This means that you 

are going to wind up buying two more discs 

than usual for a Schubert symphony set, but 

Newton has issued this set at a very modest 

price ($29 or so), so why think twice? You can 

probably get Karajan’s set of Schubert symphonies 

for about $19, Böhm’s for about the 

same price, Barenboim for about $30, Abbado 

about $23, and Harnoncourt’s for $19 used 

and $32 new. 

I wanted to write this review in a way that 

put Marriner in perspective in performance 

style with detailed comparisons, but realized 

that this wasn’t necessary. This could be summarized 

in a useful way. 

The Academy, although founded without 

record label support in 1959, has functioned as 

the de facto house ensemble for a series of 

record labels since the early 1960s. Under Marriner, 

a violinist from the London Symphony 

who studied conducting with Pierre Monteux, 

it developed a kind of generalized style: 

streamlined, really well played, superficially 

exciting, emotionally cool. It also gathered 

very skilled players who could record almost 

anything in one or two takes, which meant that 

the recording process was very efficient. And 

so the Academy with its streamlined style 

prospered. 

Schubert is a composer whose works 

encompass almost Rossini-like lightness and 

motor rhythms and deep feeling expressed in 

strange harmonies and song-like melodic 

lines. 

Marriner is fine with the extroverted side of 

Schubert, and his orchestra is really quite 

good. He blows Böhm (who is mostly dull and 

pedantic) and Barenboim (who goes back and 

forth among slack, too aggressive, and too portentous) 

out of the water. He doesn’t match 

the sheer joy of the early symphonies or the 

power of the late ones under Karajan or the 

odd, but compelling rhetoric of the Harnoncourt 

performances (not to mention the charm 

of individual performances by the likes of 

Beecham and Walter); but as a mainstream, 

plain-vanilla set of Schubert symphonies, this 

is more than acceptable. 

The two extra symphonies don’t add much 

to the picture. The notes, oddly enough, ignore 

them. Both have lovely melodies and striking 

harmonies. Most haunting to me is the last 

movement of 10, which seems to come from 

the haunted world of late Schubert, but all too 

often the music just doesn’t sound like Schubert. 

It sounds like some odd mixture of 

Beethoven and Weber, the next channel over 

from real Schubert. Newbould has Schubert’s 

orchestral language down nicely, but the 

music itself sounds not-quite-cooked. 

Symphony 8 is no longer unfinished here. 

There’s a scherzo that’s nothing special and a 

finale drawn from the Rosamunde music. 

The fragments are more of the same: some 

striking ideas, some good orchestration—not 

quite there, though one of them is practically a 

symphony in its own right. 

My sense of the fragments is that I understand 

why they weren’t finished. Newbould 

speaks Schubert’s language, but that doesn’t 

mean that what he has found is necessarily 

worth saying. 

If you can have only one set of the Schubert 

symphonies, go for Karajan, or perhaps 

Abbado. This set is a good backup for the extra 

materials and decent, but unremarkable performances 

of the standard works. 

CHAKWIN 

SCHUBERT: Symphony 9 

Budapest Festival Orchestra/ Ivan Fischer 

Channel 31111 [SACD] 69:47 

Flemish Philharmonic/ Philippe Herreweghe 

Pentatone 5186372 [SACD] 57:49 

The timing reflects the fill on the Channel disc: 

five German Dances. The Ninth takes Ivan Fischer 

about 55 minutes. 

Mr Fischer has entered the ranks of “period 

performance practice” lately. Here he has 

fussed over natural horns, narrow-bore trombones, 

and small C clarinets—and, naturally, 

there is no vibrato and no legato. The playing 

is stark and raw and detached. There is no 

warmth, polish, or expression. The violins 

squeak where they should sing. The recording 

is cold and dry. 

Mr Herreweghe always had one foot in the 

PPP world, so it is no surprise that he also 

encourages detached playing with little 

warmth or expression. But he has a big advantage 

in the hall—Queen Elisabeth Hall in 

Antwerp. It puts a nice halo of space around 

the instruments, and the lack of vibrato here is 

much less distressing than with Mr Fischer. In 

fact, it sounds to me as if the orchestra plays its 



usual instruments and sometimes falls back on 

normal playing habits, too—including some 

vibrato and expression. The interpretation can 

still be stark and plosive, though—and Herreweghe 

is nothing if not eccentric. 

Both take so many repeats in the Scherzo 

that you end up screaming. Will they ever get 

to that lovely trio? We’re talking three or four 

minutes longer than ALL the traditional 

recordings. Fischer’s I is fast; Herreweghe’s 

Andante (II) is fast. 

Neither will please anyone who likes the 

rich Viennese interpretations of people like 

Böhm and Walter and Furtwangler. In fact, I 

can’t figure out whom they will please. I would 

never have grown to love this music if this 

were the way I had heard it. 

SCHUMANN: Album For the Young 

Alessandra Ammara, p 

Arts 47756 [SACD] 74 minutes 

VROON 

Consisting of 43 short pieces for children, this 

might seem a strange choice for her second 

Schumann album. While other recordings 

exist, some quite good, these gentle, uncomplicated 

essays require advocacy, sensitivity, 

and determination not to make of them more 

than they are. Of course, what pianist can forget 

early learning days wrestling with ‘Wild 

Horseman’ or ‘Happy Farmer’? 

As with her other new Schumann disc 

(below), this one gives us a first-rate view of 

these simple, but not simplistic pieces. The 

sound is mellow and cozy, Roberto Prosseda’s 

notes superior to much of what passes these 

days. Score another for Ammara: I cannot 

think of a recording I would recommend 

before this one. 

BECKER 

SCHUMANN: Carnaval; Davidsbundlertanze 

Alessandra Ammara, p 

Arts 47755 [SACD] 69 minutes 

A plush, warm, and cozy sound from the engineers. 

It falls gratefully on the ear, but does 

require a substantial volume boost to make its 

full effect. As with Ammara’s recording of 

Chopin’s Ballads, her Schumann playing is 

really something special—something to make 

one sit up and take notice. Dynamic contrasts 

abound, and she often makes use of subito 

piano (suddenly soft). Since she has the rare 

ability to let the piano speak at very low volumes, 

few would be troubled by her refined, 

but certainly not understated performance. 

With always clear and undistorted playing, 

total avoidance of artifice, and plentiful color, 

the full nature of Carnaval blooms most beautifully. 

With spare use of pedal, the left hand 

sounds in bold relief. Nothing is ever blurred, 

and Schumann’s character studies sound ever 

fresh. Individual sections, such as ‘Reconnaissance’ 

and ‘Pantalon et Colombine’, are amazing 

feats of technical control; and Ammara’s 

judicious use of rubato could serve as a model 

of how to do it without affectation. This Carnaval 

will make you smile, admire, and wonder 

that something new to say about an old 

brew is still possible. 

Davidsbundlertanze, once rarely performed, 

has been making its presence felt 

more often in the past several decades. To 

Ammara, the finale of Carnaval ‘Marche des 

Davidsbundler’ has a direct relationship to 

these dances and seems almost a lead in to the 

work. Her approach is similar though more 

reflective, and her playing endlessly fascinating 

as this once dormant major composition 

takes on a new life. 

While her gentle caressing of the individual 

dances sets out in new directions, there is no 

lack of tension or forward momentum. This is 

the Schumann of multiple personalities and 

emotions laid bare for us to explore and discover 

for ourselves. No matter how many performances 

you already might have of these 

works, the special treasures you will find here 

are of unique value. The notes are perceptive, 

and the sound beyond reproach. Dare I ask for 

more Schumann? 

BECKER 

SCHUMANN: Dichterliebe; Liederkreis, op 

24; 

SCHUMANN,C: 3 Songs 

Maximilian Schmitt, t; Gerold Huber, p 


Maximilian Schmitt is a young German tenor 

with a few recordings to his credit (Haydn Creation 

under Jacobs and the St Matthew Passion 

with Chailly), but this is his first solo recital. 

This program is tied together by the poetry— 

all pieces have a text by Heine. Schmitt has an 

especially lovely voice, well controlled and 

even from top to bottom. He sings the songs 

beautifully, well in tune, and with fine diction. 

The problem for me is that he rarely goes 

beyond the goal of beautiful singing to color 

his sound and bring more of the emotional 

message home. There is too little sense of 

regret at love lost, too little acknowledgement 

that so much of Heine is ironic. The poet leads 

you in one direction, then devastates you with 

some kind of twist. Here’s an example (condensed) 

from Dichterliebe: 

When I look into your eyes, 

All my cares disappear. 



But when you say: “I love you”, 

Then I must cry bitterly. 

Ironic twists like this need to be reflected 

by the singer, and my sense is that Schmitt 

hasn’t lived with this music long enough. 

Nonetheless, this is such a lovely voice that I’m 

sure we’ll hear from him more in the future, 

and I look forward to his development. The 

accompaniments by Gerold Huber are detailed 

and supply a lot of the commentary I missed in 

the singer. Bilingual notes, but in view of the 

importance of Heine’s texts it is unfortunate 

the poems are not translated. Should you look 

for this recording, it carries the title Trämend 

Wandle ich bei Tag. 

ALTHOUSE 

SCHUMANN: Manfred 

Martin Schwab (Manfred), Sigrid Plundrich 

(Astarte), Michelle Breedt (Nemesis), Johannes 

Chum (Chamois Hunter), Florian Boesch (Abbot), 

Vienna Singverein, Tonkunstler Orchestra/ Bruno 

Weil 

Preiser 90788 [SACD] 69 minutes 

When it comes to romanticism, we love its 

paintings and music, but except for scholars, 

most of its literature is truly a closed book. An 

instance would be Lord Byron. It’s hard nowadays 

to imagine even bookworms slogging 

through his more ambitious poetic concoctions, 

or that they were once best-sellers. His 

Manfred, though little read now, inspired a 

slew of composers from Tchaikovsky to 

Friedrich Nietzsche and, of course, Robert 

Schumann. This record has his complete incidental 

music to Byron’s dramatic poem. 

Schumann’s overture has always been 

considered one of his masterpieces, but much 

of the rest of the music is also on a high plane, 

including ‘The Exorcism of the Spirits’ and 

‘Ahriman’s Hymn’. Schumann used his most 

colorful orchestra, including the piccolo, English 

horn, tuba, and harp with impressive and 

expressive results. (The myth that Schumann 

couldn’t orchestrate deserved a stake through 

its heart 150 years ago.) The cowbells in the 

Alpine Cowherd’s solo, however, are studio 

additions, and not for the better—they distinctly 

sound like brake-drums. 

The orchestral playing is sensitive to Schumann’s 

style, with good tone quality. Weil conducts 

with fine phrasing and sensitive dynamic 

shading. The solo singers are competent. Martin 

Schwab narrates with sincere feeling and 

clear diction. The spoken text, which only 

takes about 15 minutes, is an adaptation of 

Byron by the German writer Christian Lackner. 

For what it’s worth, my German isn’t that 

great, but I was still able to follow the action 

from the notes and performance. An English 

text is supposedly available from 

www.tonkuenstler.at/manfred, but, as often 

happens on websites, you have to clear away a 

jungle of PR kudzu. I found it easier simply to 

bring up Byron’s original on Google. 

O’CONNOR 

SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto; Introduction 

& Allegro Appassionato; 

LISZT: Piano Concerto 2 

Etsuko Hirose; Orchestre de Pau Pays de Bearn/ 

Faycal Karoui 

Mirare 135—68 minutes 

Pau is a French commune on the northern 

edge of the Pyrenees. It is the capital of the 

Bearn region and only 50 Km from the Spanish 

border. In addition, they have a particularly 

fine orchestra—not a big one in the string 

department, but impressive in all other ways. 

Their French conductor, Faycal Karoui, has 

been with them since 2002 and has largely 

been credited for the orchestra’s excellence. 

Japanese pianist Etsuko Hirose won First 

Prize at the Martha Argerich Competition in 

1999, which launched her solo career. Armed 

with this information it only remains to play 

the recording and be transfixed, as I was, by 

performances that enter into an enchanted 

land, reserved for a very few. 

Liszt’s Piano Concerto 2 is not always the 

easiest concerto to bring off. The form, sometimes 

referred to as “The adventures of a 

melody”, requires the utmost in phrasing ability, 

control of rubato, and delicacy of tonal 

palette. While it treads close to bombast, in the 

right hands it never crosses into that realm. 

Hirose knows just what to do and when to do 

it. Her performance, aided by Karoui’s control 

of his glorious sounding ensemble, sends this 

right to the top, alongside Richter—but with 

superior sound. All of the poetry, the composer’s 

extraordinary creative genius, and the 

life-giving force of the music is realized to a 

degree rarely experienced. 

Schumann’s concerto is, in the eyes of 

many, the quintessential romantic piano concerto. 

Over the years it has been fortunate, as 

many artists have revealed its secrets. Hirose is 

among those who have been able to accomplish 

this, and the Pau orchestra has given her 

ideal accompaniment—from the sweet, supple 

clarinet solos to the expressive and true intonation 

of the strings. The gentle qualities of the 

music have been revealed by Leon Fleisher, 

Stephen Kovacevich, Wilhelm Kempff, Dinu 

Lipatti, and Radu Lupu, to name several that 

come to mind first. 

As an added incentive, Hirose includes 

Schumann’s Introduction and Allegro Appassionato 

in a performance of near incomparable 

loveliness. Special kudos to the first clarinet 

and French horn in their exquisite open- 



ing solos, and to the balance of the entire 

orchestra when the Allegro takes flight. Add to 

the many excellences a recording of great 

transparency and some fascinating notes, and 

you have a not-to-be-missed entry for any discriminating 

music lover. 

BECKER 

SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto; Introduction 

& Allegro Appassionato; Introduction & 

Allegro; 

SCHUMANN, C: Concerto Movement 

Oleg Marshev, South Jutland Symphony/ 

Vladimir Ziva 

Danacord 688—74 minutes 

Oleg Marshev’s curt handling of the concerto’s 

opening pages signals his no-nonsense 

approach. The smallish orchestra and slightly 

dry acoustics add to the businesslike air. In II 

Marshev’s phrasing is a bit awkward in spots, 

while III proceeds with unsmiling efficiency. 

The pianist shows more warmth in the other 

two Schumann works, and if you’re looking for 

all three pieces on one record I’d rate this a 

notch above Jando (Naxos; J/A 2005). Of 

course Serkin and Ormandy excelled in this 

music, but no CD couples all three works (a 

British Sony did, but it’s long deleted). 

What none of the competitors offer is the 

concerto movement from Clara Wieck Schumann 

(in F minor, not to be confused with her 

Concerto in A minor). The composer only 

completed 175 bars; the rest was realized by 

Jozef de Beenhouwer. Stylistically it’s extremely 

similar to Chopin’s concerto in the same 

key, only not so memorable. Beenhouwer goes 

through the motions, but this unoriginal imitation 

of Chopin is no match for the real thing. 

The performers turn in an earnest reading, and 

like the rest of the program it’s captured in 

unassuming, natural sonics. 

SCHUMANN: Piano Quartet; 

THALBERG: Trio in A 

Atlantis Trio & Ensemble 

Musica Omnia 211—58 minutes 

KOLDYS 

Richard Hickox made recordings with Collegium 

Musicum 90, a period group, where 

you’d hardly guess the group wasn’t the Academy 

of St Martin in the Fields (modern instruments). 

This Schumann recording, though, is 

very period-sounding, and, fine though the 

playing is, your decision will probably rest on 

your response to the sound. The nasal string 

sound with sparing vibrato is very prominent, 

but even more striking are the pianos. The 

Schumann uses an 1835 Conrad Graf, made in 

Vienna, while the Thalberg has a London-built 

Erard from around 1868. The Graf in particular 

has a thin, clunky sound and doesn’t produce 

a good legato. 

The members the Trio are violinist Jaap 

Schröder, cellist Enid Sutherland, and fortepianist 

Penelope Crawford; they are joined in the 

Schumann by violist Daniel Foster. Their playing 

is excellent—sensitive, but propelled with a 

good measure of expressiveness. If you are 

partial to the sound of period instruments, this 

would be a fine acquisition because the playing 

is first rate. If you’re not wholly sold on the 

sound, though, you’ll not be able to drive it out 

of your mind. 

A word should be said about the Thalberg. 

His name always shows up in discussions of 

piano virtuosos—particularly his rivalry with 

Liszt—but his compositions have been largely 

ignored. This trio, though, is quite a fine piece, 

far from a virtuoso showcase. The ideas are 

interesting, and his harmonic language is 

sophisticated and full of surprises. 

A fine recording, then, but you have to 

want period sound. 

ALTHOUSE 

SCHUMANN: Piano Sonata 1; Fantasy in C 

Jin Ju 

MDG 947 1681 [SACD] 68 minutes 

This Shanghai-born pianist takes much pride 

in having performed in Vatican City before 

Pope Benedict XVI and an audience of thousands 

in 2009. She was also the recipient of the 

third prize in the 2002 International Tchaikovsky 

Piano Competition in Moscow. At present 

she is on the faculty of Beijing Central 

Conservatory and is a professor at the International 

Piano Academy of Imola, Italy. 

As a Schumann interpreter she makes a 

notable impression on this record with a sane 

and beautifully proportioned Fantasy in C. 

Since the competition in this work is so 

intense, it would be foolish to claim any special 

superiority for her interpretation. Suffice it 

to say that anyone wanting this work, or this 

particular coupling, would not go wrong. It is 

splendidly recorded as well. 

In the sonata her handling of rubato moves 

to the fore. The subsidiary theme of the first 

movement is gently coaxed with the most 

expressive of means, and her Allegro vivace is 

well controlled, yet capricious and strong. The 

brief ‘Aria’ is effectively held back until the 

‘Scherzo e Intermezzo’ takes off with energy 

and strong accents. She effectively ties all the 

strands together in the finale. 

I would definitely applaud this recital had I 

heard it in performance. Would I rise for a 

standing ovation? Probably not. 

BECKER 



SCHUMANN: Requiem; Der Konigssohn; 

Nachtlied 

Sibylla Rubens, Ingeborg Danz, Christoph Pregardien, 

Adolph Seidel, Yorck Felix Speer; Saarbrücken 

Radio/ Georg Grün 

Hänssler 93270—72:20 

It’s not easy to find recordings of Schumann’s 

Requiem, and it’s rather nice music, if rather 

austere. EMI issued a recording led by Bernhard 

Klee and made in Dusseldorf, where 

Schumann led his choirs (Nov/Dec 2004). If 

you have that, the new one is not better. It’s a 

little slower and heavier, and I think I prefer 

that; the Dies Irae is less frantic here, more 

gloomy—and I think I prefer that, too. But 

there is little difference between the two. If the 

EMI is still available somewhere, you may prefer 

it because of the coupling of the Mass led 

by Sawallisch. (The Mass is Opus 147, the 

Requiem Opus 148. They are a pair.) 

Whether you buy this will depend largely 

on whether you want Der Königssohn, a ballad 

for soloists, chorus, and orchestra that lasts 

about 25 minutes and seems rare on records. 

Schumann wrote four of these ballads; this is 

the first. The choral music sounds very German, 

especially the parts for men alone. You 

may be reminded of Pilgrimage of the Rose or 

Paradise and the Peri, though neither of those 

is a “ballad” (and they are much longer). I find 

myself in the mood for music like this now and 

then, but not often. It’s not main course stuff; 

it’s side dishes. 

The other side dish—the obvious one, the 

Nachtlied—gets rather dramatic for a night 

song. It’s ten minutes, and the choir sings 

almost the whole time but there are only three 

short stanzas. Slow tempos are only part of the 

explanation. 

The package says on the outside, “Booklet 

in German and English”. Be not deceived; the 

texts are not given in English, but only in the 

original languages (Latin and German). 

VROON 

SCHUMANN: Trios 

Peter Laul, p; Ilya Gringolts, v; Dmitri Kouzov, vc 

Onyx 4072—84 minutes 

Earlier this year (Jan/Feb) I reviewed the fantastic 

Benvenue Fortepiano Trio playing two of 

the trios. They are still the best I have heard. 

This performance is a mixed bag. Sometimes 

the playing is stunningly beautiful and together—the 

second movement of the F major, for 

example. Other times it is careless, like the 

opening of the D minor. It sounds as if they are 

not sure that they have started playing. 

I am disappointed with Ilya Gringolts’s 

performance. He is especially quiet and laid 

back, the wrong attitude to have with this 

music. Peter Laul has the correct intensity, but 

neither Gringolts nor Kouzov seem to respond 

in a timely manner. There are sections where 

Laul is just banging away and the balance is all 

over the place. In the final movement of the D 

minor they finally get into it. How could they 

not? They are playing perhaps the highest 

quality music the 19th Century produced. I 

simply expect more from such international 

players. 

The G minor is far too relaxed and lazy. But 

in the second movement of the D minor their 

playing is brilliant. These performances are 

very inconsistent. 

Overall, I am not terribly impressed. The 

playing is good, but only because these are 

highly skilled and sophisticated players, not 

because their hearts are in it. These pieces 

need more desperation, yearning—insanity, 

even. They require full-body playing—something 

they are capable of but do rarely. The 

Finale of D minor is a perfect example of the 

tremendous talent they have. I wish I could 

hear that type of driving vitality in all the trios. 

JACOBSEN 

SCHUMANN: Violin Sonatas; 

SCHUMANN,C: Romances 

Bruno Monteiro; Joao Paulo Santos, p 


These performances are interesting. Bruno 

Monteiro plays with many mannerisms of an 

era long past. He uses frequent portamentos 

and sparse vibrato, as you would expect to 

hear from contemporaries of the Schumanns. 

Also, this duo’s tempos are ideal; they never let 

the music’s energy wind down, and they use 

effective rubato. Monteiro has a perfect sense 

of how the music must flow, and that is what I 

nearly always complain about in recordings of 

these sonatas. 

The Three Romances by Clara Schumann 

are, if not quite up to the level of her husband’s, 

very good music that violinists might 

consider adding to their recitals. 

Listening to this would be like going back 

in time to hear a performance by a mid-19th 

century virtuoso if it weren’t for a certain fly in 

the ointment—Monteiro’s technique. His intonation 

is often flawed, and his attacks and 

bowing are extremely coarse. There are even 

passages where he cannot play all the notes, 

and this is hardly virtuoso music. The impression 

I have of Monteiro is of a violinist who 

lacks the technique needed to realize his artistic 

vision, and that is tragic. Joao Paulo Santos 

is a vigorous yet considerate partner. Mediocre 

sound. 

MAGIL 



SCHUMANN: Liederkreis, op 39; 

see LOEWE; Symphony 3; see GAL 

SCHUTTER: Mass; Bap Nos; 

HENKING: Ich Bin ein Schwebendes Luftblatt; 

JANACEK: Otce Nas 

Michael Feyfar, t; Susanne Doll, org; Vera Schneider, 

hp; Cappella Nova/ Rafael Immoos 


A week ago, Janacek’s Otce Nas—his setting of 

the Lord’s Prayer—was unknown to me. Now 

we’re old friends, because here’s the second 

recording of that 16-minute mini-oratorio to 

have crossed my path. Once again it’s performed 

nicely, this time by a chamber choir 

from Basel, Switzerland. It differs in two ways 

from the other account, which you can find in 

the Pater Noster anthology reviewed in Collections. 

First, it’s performed in Czech, and the 

other is in German. Second, this one is more 

lyrical, especially in the gentle crooning of the 

solo tenor. (By comparison, the other fellow’s 

“Dein Reich” hits you like a ton of liturgical 

bricks.) 

Both performances are worthy, and Janacek 

is a must-hear. So perhaps your decision 

will be influenced by what’s on the surrounding 

programs. On the other, it’s different settings 

of the Lord’s Prayer crafted by Cherubini, 

Liszt, Nicolai, et al. Here it’s contemporary 

Swiss fare sung with proprietary affection by 

the 20 voices of the Cappella. 

Meinrad Schutter (1910-2006) was a 

Zurich-based composer whose serviceable 

Mass and ‘Bap Nos’ (Our Father) could be of 

interest if you’re in the market for something 

sacred and new. Christian Henking’s ‘I Am a 

Floating Reed’ for harp and 16 voice parts is 

more aggressively dissonant, with undulating 

tone clusters and sharp intakes of breath 

depicting a soul’s journey through the netherworld 

between life and death. It’s interesting 

without leaving you transfixed to the point of 

craving repeated encounters. Four prayerful 

minutes of Gregorian chant also are included, 

along with full notes, bios, and translations. 

There are your options. Whichever program 

you pick, go find Janacek. 

GREENFIELD 

few outbursts of imitative choral writing for 

choruses of priests and the “Multitude”, as the 

Scriptural drama requires. They amount to 

short German motets, as Daniel Melamed 

writes in his notes. The rest of Schütz’s St 

Matthew Passion draws our attention intensely 

to the drama through the bare vocal line and, 

hence, the singer’s talent for declamatory 

recitative. 

Julian Podger, as the Evangelist, bears the 

weight of the task heroically, though Jacob 

Bloch Jespersen as Christ and Tomas Medici as 

Peter contribute substantially to the dramatic 

range of the piece. 

It is quite a remarkable experience—exciting, 

really—and so much more taxing for a listener, 

to concentrate intensely on the changing 

drama of a theatrical piece through small 

nuances in the unaccompanied singing voice. 

And how much more satisfying as a result are 

the choral passages that begin, intercede, and 

especially close the drama. It is an exhilarating 

performance, to say the least. Texts and notes 

are in English. 

LOEWEN 

SCRIABIN: Sonata-Fantasia 2; 2 Poems, op 

32; 5 Preludes, op 74; 3 Etudes, op 65; 

ROSLAVETS: Sonata 2; 2 Poems; 5 Preludes; 

3 Etudes 

Anya Alexeyev, p 

Marquis 81415—73 minutes 

Under the title Parallels, this compares the 

piano music of Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) 

and Nicolai Roslavets (1881-1944). What 

becomes quite apparent after listening is that 

Roslavets’s compositions build on the harmonic 

and textural innovations we generally 

attribute to Scriabin. The “mystic” chord of 

Scriabin was a chromatically altered dominant 

chord arranged in fourths while the “synthetic” 

chord of Roslavets was a hexachord of 

dominant-13th origins. Very complex rhythms 

and quick shifts of dynamics and texture can 

be found all through this music. Both composers 

use as many as three or four staves to 

notate their music. The difficulty of just sorting 

everything out and choreographing how two 

hands will divide all the material is significant. 

High marks go to Alexeyev for her creative 

selection of identical sets of pieces, presenting 

SCHUTZ: St Matthew Passion 

Scriabin followed immediately by the corre- 

Ars Nova Copenhagen/ Paul Hillier 

sponding Roslavets piece. The format makes 

Roslavets sound like the modern composer 

Da Capo 8226094—55 minutes 

and Scriabin the older master. 

Schütz’s decision to set the Passion according I suppose it is a sign of the times when we 

to St Matthew for solo voices alone, without are directed to a website for the complete liner 

instrumental accompaniment, runs contrary notes. There I found a very good essay by Anna 

to the prevailing baroque aesthetic (and his Ferrenc on the relationship between the music 

own tendency), which favored concertante of these composers. I’m sure it reduces the 

arrangements for a variety of instruments— production costs by eliminating the booklet 

basso continuo at the very least. There are a and printing what can reasonably fit on CD 



packaging, which here is a paper folder that 

opens up. My eyesight is not what it once was, 

and I have a love-hate relationship with most 

CD booklets. As here, they can contain a well 

written essay or even be a treasure trove of 

information. In almost all cases, they are in 

print small enough to make me suffer for my 

information. Since I really don’t like reading 

anything beyond a paragraph or two online, 

printing out Ferrenc’s essay does eliminate the 

problem of small print. 

While all of the Scriabin is readily available 

on numerous recordings, the Roslavets pieces 

are not so plentiful. All of the Roslavets pieces 

on this program are also available on Marc- 

Andre Hamelin’s highly regarded disc (Hyperion 

66926, Jan/Feb 1998), along with many others. 

If this appeals to you, and you want more, 

I would most definitely recommend Hamelin. 

You should start here, though, since this music 

is not everyone’s cup of tea and this is a fine 

sample of both composers, performed with all 

the skill and insight you could imagine. For 

you, this also might be just the right quantity 

of music an old professor of mine once 

referred to as Russian Impressionism. I have 

plenty and will always want more, but none of 

it is as well ordered for comparative purposes. 

Alexeyev’s pianism is world-class, and the 

superb sound qualities make this disc an easy 

recommendation. 

HARRINGTON 

SHAPIRA: Concierto Latino 

Ittai Shapira, v; London Serenata/ Krzysztof 

Chorzelski 

Champs Hill 20—26 minutes 

Mr Shapira is a fine concert violinist who, as 

the liner notes report, premiered Shulamit 

Ran’s violin concerto and also appeared before 

55 million people in Jerry Lewis’s annual 

telethon to support muscular dystrophy 

research and treatment. His concerto follows 

on the heels of a violent gang assault he suffered; 

in its aftermath, musical thoughts 

occurred to him and, in the process of writing 

them down, allowed him to retrieve actual 

memories of the event and aided in his overall 

recovery. 

For the most part, the work offers Shapira a 

vehicle for his exciting virtuosity with very little 

compelling musical content; the composition 

is rhapsodic—honestly, much too rhapsodic— 

and the orchestration, while competent, rarely 

goes beyond simple two- and three-part textures. 

Imagine Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole 

hazily recalled by a great soloist while a pianist 

plunks out an ad hoc accompaniment, and 

you have a good idea of what this piece sounds 

like. 

HASKINS 

SHOSTAKOVICH: Piano Concertos; Piano 

Quintet 

Martin Helmchen, p; Pieter Schoeman, Vesselin 

Gellev, v; Alexander Zemtsov, va; Kristina Blaumane, 

vc; London Philharmonic/ Vladimir 

Jurowski 

LPO 53—76 minutes 

These are crisp, tight, snappy, razor-sharp 

accounts of these lovely works. The recorded 

sound is first rate—about the best you can get 

from a standard CD. Is anything about this 

production better than the same program with 

Yefim Bronfman on the piano and the Los 

Angeles Philharmonic under Esa Pekka Salonen 

(Mar/Apr 2000)? Not really. Should you 

pass up this release and hold out for Bronfman-Salonen? 

Probably not. These performances 

are highly satisfying. 

HANSEN 

SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartets 4, 11, 14 

Hagen Quartet 


This is a rerelease of the Hagen Quartet playing 

these three very different quartets. They 

appeared originally on DG. The Hagen paints a 

very different picture of Shostakovich than the 

Emerson or Borodin. They paint a more introspective, 

dark, and plain narrative, particularly 

in the Fourth. I lean towards the more economical 

sound of Hagen in the Fourth, 

because it more accurately reflects the subject 

matter. The finale should be slow. This group 

is known for taking risks, and they defend 

them brilliantly. Their playing of 14 is worth 

noting. There is genius in these performances. 

JACOBSEN 

SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphonies (all) 

Galina Vishnevskaya, s; Mark Reshetin, Nicola 

Ghiuselev, b; Washington Choral Arts, London 

Voices; National Symphony, London Symphony, 

Academic Symphony of Moscow/ Mstislav Rostropovich 

Warner 64177 [12CD] 11:44 

Rostropovich needs little introduction here; he 

was a Titan of a musician, a close friend of 

Shostakovich, and a respected conductor, cellist, 

and sometimes pianist. He studied at the 

Moscow Conservatory under Shostakovich 

and Prokofieff, and both composers wrote 

major works for him. We reviewed most of 

these releases from 1989 to 1996 (Teldec 

released this same collection in a 1998 box 

set). 

1: NSO, Teldec 90849, N/D 1994 (Cook) 

2+3: LSO, London Voices, Teldec 90853, J/F 

1995 (Hansen) 

4: NSO, Teldec 76261, J/F 1993 (Vroon) 



B NSO, Teldec 94557, M/J 1996 (Hansen) 

6: LSO, Teldec, no review 

7: NSO, Erato 45414, S/O 1990 (Ginsburg) 

8: NSO, Teldec 74719, J/F 1993 (Cook) 

9: NSO, Teldec 90849, N/D 1994 (Cook) 

10: LSO, Teldec 74529, N/D 1992 (Bauman) 

11: NSO, Teldec 76262, J/F 1994 (Cook) 

12: LSO, Teldec, no review 

13: NSO, Ghiuselev, Men of the CASW, Erato 

75529, N/D 1989 (Ginsburg) 

14: ASOM, Vishnevskaya, Reshetin, Melodiya 

241, M/J 1992 (Ginsburg) 

15: LSO, Teldec 74560, N/D 1992 (Bauman) 

Paul Cook was not too impressed with 

Symphony 1, noting an unsteady percussionist, 

a snare drum that sounds like a paper 

plate, and flat engineering. I hear a vivacious, 

youthful first movement, and good, spacious 

sound. II dashes ahead wondrously, and the 

clarinetist’s tone is nice and woody; there’s not 

much mystery in the slow theme (there is 

some in III, though), but neither does it dawdle. 

There’s a perfect sense of expectation in 

the slow part that begins IV, especially when it 

quiets down. 

2 and 3 are well represented. Lawrence 

Hansen’s perceptive review asked how Rostropovich, 

who greeted the fall of the Soviet 

Union with great joy, could stomach these 

works in praise of Lenin and the Revolution. 

But when you read the texts of 2, at least, you 

may see what Mr Hansen saw: “Shostakovich 

inadvertently stumbled on one of the greatest 

and cruellest ironies of human nature...: when 

the oppressed gain control, they become even 

more reactionary, brutal oppressors.” He then 

asks, “Did Rostropovich have this in mind as 

he conducted this music?” The first several 

lines could be about any form of political and 

economic oppression. Shostakovich starts 2 

almost without form and void, and what 

comes out of it is not light, but what sounds 

like a chamber-like, dissonant rewriting of the 

humor in 1; that grows more turbulent, 

becoming a mob’s thousand voices, a muddle 

that is halted and unified by Lenin’s timpani. 

As Mr Hansen says, 3 is an intense, driving 

account, much better than the Gergiev I also 

reviewed for this issue. 

On 4’s release, our Editor called it the best 

you could buy; at that point, the Ormandy was 

only available on vinyl, and the sound wasn’t 

comparable to this. I still go back to Neeme 

Jarvi’s Chandos recording as my favorite; here, 

I is stiffer, didactic in a brutal way, the Apollo 

to Jarvi’s Dionysius. Mr Vroon noted that the 

NSO was consistently better than the LSO, but 

even so was still amazed at this. There is a 

haughty sweep to this—it doesn’t get as downand-dirty 

as Jarvi, but I am very happy to have 

this interpretation. The fugue is very precise, 

and comes to a very disturbing, violent end. 

The sonics are clear, but not spacious enough 

for my taste. 

Mr Hansen on 5: “Rostropovich tends 

toward a lean, lithe, wiry, brisk, driving 

5th...[not engaging] in exaggeration or [milking] 

the work for profundity by letting the 

gloomy, slow passages outstay their welcome.” 

That said, I is slower than I’ve heard it in a 

while, but it’s still quite effective. Call me a 

heretic, but I’ve gotten burnt out on the Fifth; 

though I would just as soon get it over with 

quickly, I can’t help but be drawn in by Slava’s 

pacing. II is by far the heaviest I’ve ever heard; 

usually it’s a light, mocking break in the mood, 

but here it’s a “model parody of brainless, 

plodding, forced, phony Social-Realist festiveness”; 

the tempo pull-backs before the hunting 

horn measures are weighty indeed. I can 

also hear long brass notes in the background 

that I’ve never noticed in any other recording. 

Rostropovich takes the ironic, not the triumphant, 

approach in IV, and “lays bare the 

hollow, brain-dead, soulless core of Soviet festivity—just 

what the composer ordered”. 

6 (and 12) has been weighed and found 

wanting, whereas 2 and 3 are often left completely 

unweighed—mere symphoniganda. 6 is 

lopsided, but I do like it; I remember playing it 

for Todd Gorman, our flute reviewer, back in 

graduate school, and after listening intently to 

all of I, he didn’t even want to listen to II and 

III, he was so affected. Rostropovich nails 6: 

this is really good! He lets I speak for itself, giving 

it the proper pacing and balance; all the 

soloists are very involved. II and III are clean, 

brilliant, and hilarious—I think they’re some of 

the most genuinely happy music Shostakovich 

wrote; it’s as if he said, “You think the last 

movement of 5 was triumphant? No! I’m going 

to put joy and triumph at the end of this lumpy 

symphony where you’ll have to search for it.” 

James Ginsburg wrote of 7 that the NSO 

did not supply the virtuoso playing the score 

demands (this is the same orchestra that the 

Editor praised three years later) and that Rostropovich 

didn’t have the interpretive imagination 

or technical conducting skill of a Bernstein 

or Haitink. Just now, I got into my library, 

turned on my laptop, and started listening to 

this while I organized ARG back issues and 

other references. I forgot I was listening to 

Shostakovich—the symphony sounded like a 

tone poem of a summer’s day. I’ve never heard 

the opening of I played so pleasantly; even the 

march sounds lovely—and that is most 

emphatically not what should be happening 

here. And the snare drum, oh, the travestied 

snare drum—it is dreadfully out of sync for the 

first few repetitions of the march. II and III 

have all the personality of a big toe. 



Paul Cook liked 8 except some missing 

venom in the Allegretto. About a third of the 

way in, I looks a little lost for a few minutes, 

but the mid-movement climax is excellent. 

Some of II sounds stilted—I’ve noticed over 

the course of listening to this set that Rostropovich’s 

conducting of the march-like sections 

has that result; it’s not mincing, but it 

sounds like it’s being very particular—the 

same soldiers, but on parade in Red Square 

instead of shoveling bodies into the Babi Yar 

ravine. In III there is more “non troppo” than 

“Allegro”. Mr Cook said, “Rostropovich gets all 

the drama, all the sorrow”, but things are a little 

too tidy to get my complete approval. The 

ending of V is dramatically fulfilling, but 

there’s still not enough tension in the rest of 

the movement. The sound on this one is 

resplendent, though! 

Cook thought Rostropovich sounded comfortable 

with the “jubilant pacing” of 9; I find it 

slow—I’ve never liked these down-tempo performances 

of I (it’s marked Allegro, not Allegretto). 

There is a glaring missed note in the 

violins about 40 seconds in, and the tempo is 

as unpredictable as a squirrel dodging an 

oncoming car. The end sounds like several of 

the string players nearly lost their grip on their 

bows. II has some sour notes in it; III is decent, 

but it’s as if the orchestra is standing on the 

sidelines, watching the excitement happen 

elsewhere. I would take the Petrenko (Naxos 

572167, M/A 2010) any day, or the Levi (Telarc 

80215, J/A 1990), which was my introduction 

to Shostakovich. 

My first thought as 10 began was, “It’s very 

creepy, but the volume is so quiet!” Then I 

opened Carl Bauman’s review and read, 

“...[this] is cut at a very low level that requires a 

major boost in volume to achieve good projection.” 

The Overview puts Ormandy and 

Kitaenko (SACD) at the top of the list; their first 

movements are longer than this, which is 25:37 

(Maxim Shostakovich is three minutes shorter)—Rostropovich 

has excellent control over 

the orchestra’s dynamics, but the playing just 

takes too long. Something odd happens with 

the engineering in II: the strings sound like a 

fan was put in front of the microphone, the 

snare drum almost drowns out the orchestra at 

its first entrance, and the brass are distant. At 

the first big tutti, the balance is entirely off. III 

again drags its feet—expansiveness is fine, but 

mere slowness is not. Bauman said that the 

winds have intonation problems, and I noticed 

them most in the beginning of IV. I do like the 

rest of the movement for its vitality, but the 

ensemble nearly falls apart in a few places. I 

love Paavo Jarvi’s Telarc recording (M/J 2009) 

more than anything I’ve heard before or since, 

and I can’t let a review of the Tenth go by with- 

out mentioning the composer’s own two-outof-tune-pianos 

recording with Moisei Vainberg 

on Russian Revelation; it’s deleted, but 

available used, and the audio is on 

YouTube.com (search for Shostakovich Weinberg 

10). It’s a blistering performance, and I 

find myself more thrilled by it than by most 

orchestral recordings. 

Mr Cook’s review of 11 was mixed; he 

thought that key moments of orchestral balance 

are weak, but said the dramatic material 

sounded very good, especially in the rousing 

conclusion. Slava’s tempo again is slow; he 

takes nearly three minutes longer than the 

excellent Petrenko (Naxos 572082, J/A 2009), 

but it works here. The transition into II has the 

wretched urgency it needs, and there’s some 

excellent dynamic detail, but the wind blowing 

over the massacred bodies at the end isn’t subtle 

enough. IV is so insistent that it’s almost 

impetuous; Rostropovich’s leading has that 

particularity I mentioned before, but it suits 

the proceedings here. The English horn solo in 

the quiet section, over the string pizzicatos, is 

very note-to-note for much of it, almost bringing 

the movement to a complete demise. The 

ending would make up for it but for one anticlimactic 

thing: the bells aren’t nearly loud 

enough. Rostropovich redid this with the LSO, 

and our Editor found it much better, with glorious 

playing and sound (Nov/Dec 2002). 

12 is more a string of four symphonic 

sketches than a symphony, I’ll admit, and use 

of the melodies barely crosses the line from 

repetition to development. It’s not unenjoyable, 

however, and is still more inspired than 

some of Shostakovich’s film music, which it 

often resembles. I love the grand feeling of the 

5/4 theme in I, but the other theme gets 

pounded into the ground—I think I’ve finally 

escaped it in II, but it keeps poking its head out 

from behind the scenery. By the time III bursts 

out singing it at the top of its lungs, I’m ready 

to impale my speakers. I have to say, the 

orchestra plays this (on the same disc as 6) 

quite well—the acoustics are perfectly suited 

to it, there’s a good sheen to the strings, the 

brass are balanced, and the players sound 

involved. 

It’s odd that Rostropovich’s 13 wasn’t 

mentioned in the Overview; Mr Ginsburg 

viewed it as a solid performance, but “somewhat 

underplayed and presented in a slightly 

distant acoustic”. He preferred Haitink’s sonically 

stunning recording, crushing waves of 

sound, and Marius Rintzler’s more intensely 

dark-toned bass. And Ghiuselev is brighter 

than several Russian basses I’ve heard, though 

I would word it as not singing from the back of 

the throat. Sure, the playing could be deeper 

and blacker, but it’s a very good recording, 



and, as the Overview says about the Sinaisky, 

“some may prefer it for its slight detachment, 

since this can be hard music to take”. It’s been 

several years since I’ve listened to 13, and I will 

probably unearth my Masur next time. 

14 will be reason enough for many to buy 

this set: it’s been deleted (though not impossible 

to find) for a while; it’s a concert recording 

with the same singers who sang the premiere 

under Barshai only a few years before. The 

strings at the opening sound hoarse from 

mourning, and Reshetin has the perfect sound, 

just dark enough to give it the Russian feel 

without sounding too regional. He doesn’t 

strain at the high notes, and has enough vocal 

control to phrase them exquisitely. The double 

basses are gritty but not rough, full of menace. 

Vishnevskaya is clear and accurat, and almost 

unbearably frightening. The sound is close-up 

but not harsh. 

Mr Bauman’s opinion of 15 was that it is 

clean, rather dry, and under-rehearsed, though 

there are many pleasing individual touches. 

The ensemble has some mishaps, and there 

are imbalances that should have been fixed, 

but what drives me the craziest is the string 

playing—it’s not completely detached 

between notes, but neither is it smooth. I’ve 

heard a lot of that over these hours of listening, 

and it’s a very annoying mannerism. After the 

whip snaps, about a minute and a half before 

the end of I, the brass’s entrance sounds like 

they barely woke up in the nick of time. The 

Overview remarks that this performance can 

be distended sometimes, and I have the feeling 

II was in the author’s mind when he wrote 

that, but I still find it effective and devastating. 

III wobbles but doesn’t fall down, and the cartoonish 

brass sighs are hilarious; and, finally, 

there’s some smooth string playing! Oh, the 

opening of IV is gloomy, and there’s a tenderness 

in between the tragedy and the tonguein-cheek 

parts. Rostropovich lets the symphony 

speak for itself, which is a necessity. I was 

nearly in tears at the echoes of Symphony 4. 

This set is a bargain at $40, worth it for 14 

especially. The booklet has seven pages of 

notes on the symphonies, and only two paragraphs 

on Rostropovich. There are transliterated 

Russian and translated English texts. 

ESTEP 

SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphonies 3+10 

Mariinsky/ Valery Gergiev 

Mariinsky 511 [SACD] 80 minutes 

I reviewed Vasily Petrenko’s recording of 

Shostakovich’s Symphonies 1 and 3 last issue 

(Naxos 572396) and was impressed with the 

Third, noting the lovely introduction and the 

abstract writing later on that foreshadows 

what he would do in the Fourth. This Gergiev 

recording is perfunctory—not bad, just that 

the orchestra rarely sounds committed to the 

piece. The flute at the end of I sounds exhausted! 

This piece does take some elbow grease to 

make it attractive, and the players simply don’t 

have it in I and II. The chorus is robust in III, 

but some of the orchestra’s rhythms sound 

shaky. 

This No. 10 doesn’t quite match what 

Paavo Jarvi and the Cincinnatians gave us 

(Telarc 80702, M/J 2009). Here the opening 

doesn’t have Jarvi’s portent, and the climax in 

the middle of I is anemic rather than febrile. 

Gergiev’s II is only 17 seconds longer than 

Jarvi’s, but it makes a vast difference; the rests 

between the opening chords in the Jarvi are as 

threatening as the chords themselves, the 

phrasing is much more subtle, the energy 

markedly higher, and the fire all-consuming. 

Even the Telarc engineering is better, resulting 

in a richer sound than in this SACD. III and the 

opening of IV are restful instead of mourning—not 

the right mood for this. The low end 

of the sound is lacking, and the important timpani 

part at the end is muffled. Jarvi’s performance 

beats this into a cocked hat. Notes in 

Russian, English, and German; texts in Russian 

and English. 

ESTEP 

SHOSTAKOVICH: Trios; Blok Songs 

Susan Gritton, s; Florestan Trio 


The one-movement Trio No 1 is a work of distinctly 

varying moods written in Shostakovich’s 

student years. It’s mostly of interest 

for a taste of his mature voice. 

From the alpha, we go zooming ahead to, 

nearly, the omega—the Blok Romances written 

in 1967. Fortunately, Hyperion includes 

transliterated texts with English translations, 

so we can follow what’s going on in this spare, 

gloomy, gray music. Shostakovich was often 

depressed in his final years, and it shows here. 

All three of the instruments are deployed only 

in the last song; the first three songs are for 

each instrument alone with the voice; the 

fourth has cello and piano, the fifth violin and 

piano, and the sixth violin and cello. Miss Gritton 

sings expressively, without stridency, and 

brings plenty of punch to the sometimes 

oblique texts. I like her approach a bit more 

than Gun-Brit Barkmin in the Zurich Trio 

recording (Mar/Apr 2007). 

The program ends with “The” Shostakovich 

Piano Trio, No. 2, written during WW II. 

The Florestan Trio gives a solid performance, 

but I wasn’t fully drawn into it. I kept thinking 

about the Borodin Trio’s dark, brooding, 

intense account (Chandos) and the old, gritty 

Serebryakov-Vaiman-Rostropovich account 



(Sept/Oct 1993). Both of those performances 

squeeze more pungency and awkward humor 

out of the ethnic themes that also figure 

prominently in the later Quartet No. 8. The 

players here acquit themselves well, but they 

are a bit short on bite and sardonic vigor in the 

finale. 

HANSEN 

SIBELIUS: Lemminkainen Legends; Finlandia; 

Luonnotar; The Bard; En Saga; 

Pohjola’s Daughter; Dryad; Spring Song; 

Tapiola; Oceanides, Night Ride & Sunrise 

Mare Jogeva, s; Moscow Philharmonic/ Vassily 

Sinaisky 


The idea of a collection of these popular tone 

poems played by a Russian orchestra and conductor 

is fascinating. Before 1917, Sibelius’s 

Finland was a duchy governed by Russia, and I 

recall reading that the Finn’s music was popular 

in the Soviet Union as well as today’s Russia. 

The Moscow Philharmonic has been 

sounding good recently, and I’ve liked what 

I’ve heard from conductor Sinaisky. 

Until now. Conductor and orchestra both 

sound unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and wrongheaded 

about this music. They turn a deaf ear 

to its subtleties and mysteries and lay on a 

hand that is heavy and often clumsy as if trying 

to “Russify” it. The effort doesn’t work. John 

Barbirolli could romanticize this music and get 

away with it (and did he ever). So could Lorin 

Maazel in those fine old LPs with the Vienna 

Philharmonic. Herbert von Karajan had some 

interesting things to say in his own romantic 

way, and there is much to enjoy in Leonard 

Bernstein’s emoting. All employed a vision and 

discipline not evident here. 

My notes are full of terms like “honky 

oboes”, “flutes not crystalline enough”, “kind 

of sour”, string tone “steely”, “not very subtle”, 

and “unatmospheric”. Another problem is the 

brass. Good Sibelius brass sound is neat, bracing, 

and slightly bright. There are suitable variants, 

but that old Russian tone with its heavy 

slow vibrato is not one of them. The Moscow 

brass has lost a lot of that character in recent 

years, but enough was present in 1991 when 

these recordings were made to prove annoying—and 

unSibelian. 

The best performance is Dryad, probably 

because of its quasi-Russian character. Soprano 

Mare Jogeva saves Luonnotar. She’s not 

idiomatic, but her bright sound works, and the 

orchestra responded. Unfortunately, too much 

is like Night Ride and Sunrise, a stunning work 

when done right, but here just kind of clumpy. 

In fact, I never made it to sunrise. 

HECHT 

SIBELIUS: Symphony 2; Karelia Suite 

New Zealand Symphony/ Pietari Inkinen 


This is a thoroughly good performance of 

Sibelius 2 and Karelia. In tempos and interpretive 

gestures it is flawless. The orchestra is 

excellent. Not a note, a turn of phrase, or any 

detail of execution is out of place. It is cold but 

not excessively so, a thin current of warmth 

emerging occasionally. The Naxos sound is 

clear, cool, and full of detail. It is well balanced, 

not grossly distorted or too fiercely 

straight. If you go for it you’ll be pleased, not 

the least in view of the moderate price. 

But the best is the enemy of the merely 

good. Unfortunately for Naxos, Sir John Barbirolli, 

with not a drop of Finnish blood in his 

veins, tackled this work head on, loved it to 

death, and mesmerized the Royal Philharmonic 

on one occasion (for Testament)—and the 

Halle on another (for EMI, in a low cost 5CD 

integral edition)—into giving wild, colorful 

and passionate recorded performances so persuasive 

that it is unlikely that they will ever be 

equaled. He accomplishes this in a framework 

that is more flexible and varied than Inkinen’s, 

though not grossly distorted. Moreover, if you 

go for the EMI integral edition you’ll have 

recordings of the other six that are almost as 

great as No. 2. 

MCKELVEY 

SIBELIUS: Quartet; see SMETANA 

SIERRA, A: Chamber & Piano Pieces 

Vassily Primakov, p; Daedalus Quartet; International 

Contemporary Ensemble/ Jayce Ogren 


The many entries in ARG’s cumulative index 

for “Sierra” refer to Roberto Sierra. Now comes 

Arlene Sierra, American-born (in 1970) but 

German raised and currently based in Wales, 

to join the (Sierra) club. 

Six recent compositions (2001-08) present 

a conspectus of her compositional personality. 

Cicada Shell, Colmena, and Ballistae are for 

largish chamber ensembles; Surrounded 

Ground is for clarinet, piano, and string quartet; 

Two Neruda Odes are settings for soprano, 

cello, and piano (texts not included); and Birds 

and Insects, Book I is for solo piano. Together 

they make an impression of brilliance, ambition, 

technical assurance, and dedication to an 

unyielding modernism. The language is fully 

chromatic, gestures are rapid-fire and sharply 

etched, rhythms spring-loaded and biting, 

instrumental combinations prickly and twittery, 

with precise articulations and prismatic 

colors that glint and refract like sunlight splin- 



tering off a glacier. Moods range from fiercely 

martial and aggressive to ironic, minatory, 

darkly burlesque, or hieratic and remote. Slow 

sections are sometimes spare, with notes 

pared down to hieroglyphic significance or 

spun-out into intricate tendrils of sputtering, 

florid wandering. Faster music tends to pile up 

motives into ostinato-driven clockwork, as in 

the first half of Cicada Shell, a sort of atonal, 

complexified retro-fit of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire 

du Soldat—indeed, not far sometimes from the 

atonal complexifications of Stravinsky’s own 

late music. 

I admired and often took pleasure in this 

music, but though rewarding, it also demands 

a lot from the listener and too much of it at 

once can be wearisome. Better not to try taking 

in too much of it at a sitting. It has 

mechanical torque but little polite conversation, 

lots of striking incidental detail but 

oblique formal logic, daunting intelligence but 

much less sensibility, plenty of fire but very little 

warmth. It is distinctly (and, one gathers 

from the booklet’s explication of the titles of 

Sierra’s pieces, intentionally) untouched by 

humane compassion. Instead the composer is 

inspired by (indeed fixated on) military hardware 

and tactics, insect societies, and abstract 

processes. 

Performances are superb and sonics 

demonstration-quality: bright, vivid, detailed, 

immediate, and powerful, with exceptionally 

wide dynamics (pristine high piano and flute, 

tectonic low bass drum). 

LEHMAN 

SIERRA: Saxophone Concerto; Caribbean 

Rhapsody 

James Carter, sax; Regina Carter, Patricia Tomasini, 

Chala Yancy, v; Ron Lawrence, va; Akua Dixon, 

vc; Kenny Davis, db; Sinfonia Varsovia/ Giancarlo 

Guerrero 


Collaboration in music is centuries old, but 

billing can be a knotty question. In opera, the 

composer often superseded the librettist in 

status, but in musical theater, the team concept 

was more accepted. In the realm of the 

concerto, a master instrumentalist could 

inspire and influence its writing; but in the 

end, the composer’s name went on the title 

page. In this media-driven era, some solo 

artists offer more pictures, biographies, and 

promotional materials than information about 

the composers and their works. 

In this album, Detroit-born jazz saxophonist 

James Carter is front and center, and the 

also famous Roberto Sierra seems relegated to 

second place. Sierra does have room to talk 

about how he wrote both his Saxophone Concerto 

(2002) and his saxophone, solo violin, 

and string quintet work Caribbean Rhapsody 

(2010) for Carter, often leaving room for 

improvisation; but the layout is mostly about 

Carter and his collaborators. Credit is justly 

given: the renowned jazz violinist Regina 

Carter (cousin to James), the Akua Dixon 

String Quintet, the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra 

of Poland, and Nashville Symphony music 

director Giancarlo Guerrero all play integral 

roles. Curiously, though, Sierra and his creations 

appear to be on the same level. 

Nevertheless, as much as James Carter 

shapes the music with his breathtaking artistry 

and technique, the composer’s voice rises to 

the top. In the concerto Sierra creates a stunning 

Gershwinesque soundscape, full of 

motive-driven themes, sumptuous orchestral 

color, dreamy post-romantic harmonies, and 

infectious rhythmic episodes. Carter brings all 

his jazz experience to the table, yet he knows 

when to melt into a classically sculpted passage, 

and he knows where to push the envelope. 

Indeed, and perhaps appropriately, several 

passages go well beyond what the symphonic 

jazz composers of the 1920s and 1930s 

could have ever imagined, calling to mind 

bebop, cool jazz, Latin jazz, and fusion. 

The Caribbean Rhapsody is a double chamber 

concerto, a dialog between saxophone and 

violin, played by James and Regina, with the 

backdrop of the string quintet. The first half is 

a gorgeous post-romantic bolero, somewhat 

reminiscent of Satie, but the second half turns 

into a salsa contest. The most dramatic 

moment occurs when the quintet drops out for 

a jaw-dropping showdown between James and 

Regina, that, even if still notated on the page, 

sizzles and pops with the air of spontaneity. 

When the excitement dies down to an attention-grabbing 

pianissimo, the quintet enters 

with a catchy bossa nova that brings the conflict 

to a happy toe-tapping end. 

James follows the concerto and the rhapsody 

each with an unaccompanied solo improvised 

with themes from the preceding work. 

The concerto postlude is for tenor saxophone, 

and the rhapsody postlude is for soprano saxophone. 

As brilliant and enjoyable as they are, 

any one of Sierra’s thrilling codas would have 

been a more logical send-off for the audience. 

Moreover, the Sinfonia Varsovia and the Akua 

Dixon Quintet are amazing supporting casts, 

thoroughly professional in their work, and they 

deserve as much acclaim as the composer and 

the soloists. 

HANUDEL 

Roberto Sierra teams up with jazz saxophonist 

James Carter in this fusion extravaganza. 

Carter is referred to by Sierra as “the Paganini 

of the saxophone”, and aficionados of that 



instrument will surely not want to miss this. 

Other listeners might not want to be in too 

much of a hurry. 

The concerto is for saxophones; the plural 

refers to soprano and tenor saxophones, one 

player (Carter). The promising first movement 

turns Milhaud up a notch, filled with elegant 

ideas and fearsome virtuosity. The pretty slow 

movement is a somewhat cheesy chaconne 

with the soloist contributing some bluesy 

wrong notes. The finale begins as an energetic 

rondo, but quickly degenerates into what the 

audience was really waiting for, a classical 

music-busting rock ‘n roll blues that sounds as 

if Lawrence Welk hijacked the podium with 

Jerry Lee Lewis in tow. It sounds ridiculous, 

and naturally had to be repeated at its premiere. 

As with most of these efforts, the total 

package will please mostly presenters and 

classical music-hating pops audiences. Therefore, 

it was a stupendous success. 

The solo parts seem mostly improvised in 

Caribbean Rhapsody (no date, but the notes 

say it’s “new”). It sounds like everyone’s having 

a ball. 

As with most nonclassical releases, the performer 

gets the headline, at least on the hyperbole-laden 

review copy. 

GIMBEL 

SMALL: Lullaby of War; Renoir’s Feast; 3 

Etudes in Sound 

Soheil Nasseri, p; Martin Rayner, narr 


Haskell Small (b. 1948) is equally accomplished 

as both a pianist and composer (he 

counts among his teachers Leon Fleisher and 

Vincent Persichetti). The sound of his music is 

resolutely eclectic, though in the main he uses 

a slightly dissonant idiom (the building blocks 

are often extended triads), straightforward— 

even conservative—rhythms, and traditional 

ideas about form and musical development. 

The newest piece on this release, Lullaby of 

War (2007), was written for its performer here, 

the young American Soheil Nasseri. Six poems 

critical of war (beautifully read by Martin 

Rayner) alternate with musical utterances for 

the solo piano. Pianist and reader remain 

apart—probably the best way to approach 

these poems with their extreme subtleties of 

language. (Naxos doesn’t print the texts, but 

they are available online.) 

Renoir’s Feast (2005), commissioned by the 

Philips Collection, is a suite of miniatures 

designed as a kind of response to Renoir’s 

Luncheon of The Boating Party; it is somewhat 

lighter in tone, also virtuosic for the piano 

soloist, and does not overstay its welcome. 

The final work—Three Etudes in Sound 

(1993)—engages me more than the others: the 

musical materials are more coherent, more 

tightly controlled, and the three-movement 

work also makes more sense as a whole than 

the other two. Mr Nasseri, who has the skill 

and insight to do almost any music he wishes, 

is a passionate advocate for these works and is 

to be commended for devoting so much of his 

career to new music. (In all, he’s commissioned 

9 pieces and premiered 24.) 

HASKINS 

SMETANA: Quartets; 

SIBELIUS: Quartet 

Dante Quartet 


The Dante Quartet is a British Ensemble that 

was formed about 15 years ago and recently 

has won several top awards. From their names 

I gather that they are of Polish, French, and 

British backgrounds. The playing time on this 

recording is certainly attractive, and they play 

well enough that I can well understand why 

someone might buy this. The playing on half a 

dozen Czech recordings is better but not 

enough to compensate for the fact that most 

have just the two Smetana quartets on them. 

In the case of Sibelius’s (last, main) quartet, 

this reading is one of the best available. 

Good sound and notes. 

BAUMAN 

SOMERS: Stereophony; Piano Concerto 2; 

Those Silent, Awe-Filled Spaces 

Robert Silverman, p; Toronto Symphony/ Jukka- 

Pekka Saraste, Victor Feldbrill; Esprit Orchestra/ 

Alex Pauk—Centrediscs 15911—71 minutes 

I have heard quite a bit of music by Canadian 

composer Harry Somers (1925-99) in recent 

years (Nov/Dec 2009, May/June 2010). This 

album offers orchestral works in concert readings. 

Jukka-Pekka Saraste leads the Toronto 

Symphony in a 1997 account of Stereophony 

(1963), where musicians were placed in specific 

spots around the hall. Given its antiphonal, 

clarion-call brass opening, one might wonder 

if Somers was recalling Gabrieli—or Britten’s 

‘Fanfare for St Edmundsbury’. Somers is not 

concerned with ensemble togetherness; he 

wants things to be unsynchronized. And so, 

when woodwinds, strings, and percussion join 

the fray—when they are each playing their 

own materials at their own tempos—the 14minute 

piece seems like controlled chaos. 

From time to time, tuttis give way to allow 

soloists and small groups to be heard. The 

ending shimmers and fades out. 

Along the same abstract, multilayered, 

modernist, often strident vein is the 12-minute 

Those Silent, Awe-Filled Spaces (1978), heard in 

a 2004 reading with Alex Pauk conducting the 

Esprit Orchestra. 



The big piece is Piano Concerto 2 (1956), 

and it is really big—a three-movement, 48minute 

behemoth. In I, though the musical 

language is mostly atonal, there are a few tonal 

elements that help to ease the listening experience 

from time to time. There are big, chaotic 

passages and quiet, intimate ones (with 

coughs and rumbling trucks to remind us that 

this is a concert in Toronto’s Massey Hall). A 

spectacular II has big, sweeping melodies and 

impressive sonorities. I don’t know if there are 

three movements or four, because four are listed 

on the program and indexed on the disc, 

but only three are mentioned and discussed in 

the notes. No matter. The music wages tonalvs-atonal 

battles until its bombastic ending. 

Robert Silverman is the excellent pianist; Victor 

Feldbrill conducted the Toronto Symphony 

in this 1978 recording. 

KILPATRICK 

SOR: Guitar Fantasias 

Stefano Palamidessi 


Sor composed 14 Fantasias for solo guitar. 

That term is not well defined; composers since 

the Renaissance have used it to indicate a work 

with a free form, almost as if it were improvised. 

Sor’s are more or less consistent. Each is 

a multi-movement composition, usually two 

or three, beginning with a slow and meditative 

opening movement (8 of the 14 open with an 

Andante largo), followed often by a set of variations. 

Even those are usually moderately 

slow—only one has a marking faster than allegretto. 

You won’t find fireworks here. These works 

are contemplative, not showy. You will find 

many passages of intense beauty, and more 

contrapuntal work and harmonic audacity 

than is usually the case with this composer. I 

am happy to have all the works in a set, in 

excellent performances, though hearing it as a 

set was a bit of a trial. One would never perform 

three hours plus of such restrained music 

without contrasting material. 

Sor, unlike his Golden Age contemporaries 

such as Giuliani and Aguado, did compose for 

more than the guitar—two operas, seven ballet 

scores, three symphonies, some piano music, 

some choral music. He studied widely, and 

some of that broader background is evident 

here. 

What is also evident is Sor’s cosmopolitan 

career. He fled his native Spain when his 

Napoleonic sympathies made his life there 

uncomfortable, and relocated in Paris. He 

married a ballet dancer and followed her 

career to, among other places, St Petersburg in 

Russia. He was friends with many of the great 

musicians of his day, and many of these works 

are dedicated to some of these luminaries— 

two to guitarist Aguado, one to Regondi, and 

others to pianists Kalkbrenner and Pleyel, and 

violinist Francesco Vaccari. Sor’s final work for 

guitar, the Fantasia Elegiaca, was written in 

memory of pianist Charlotte Beslay, a friend of 

Chopin and Rossini. 

The fantasias are augmented with a singlemovement 

work, La Calme, Caprice, along 

with a serenade and a concert piece, both 

multi-movement works in the style of the fantasias. 

Sor evidently found this formal arrangement 

attractive. His major works for two guitars 

also follow this pattern. 

Stefano Palamidessi has an active European 

career, though there is no mention in his 

biography of his performing outside Europe 

except for trips to Israel. He seems to be something 

of a Sor specialist, not only as a performer 

but as a teacher and scholar. One of his 

books is dedicated to a detailed analysis of 

Sor’s studies. His excellent notes (in an sometimes 

awkward translation) are informative 

and useful. His performances are excellent— 

tasteful, elegant, expressive. He has a lovely 

tone and a thorough technical command. 

Again, these works are no celebration of virtuosity, 

but of a different, perhaps higher, plane 

of expression, and he has the good taste not to 

attempt to insert fireworks where there is no 

need for it. 

KEATON 

SPOHR: Der Alchymist 

Bernd Weikl (Vasquez), Moran Abouloff (Inez), 

Jorg Durmuller (Alonzo), Jan Zinkler (Ramiro), 

Susanna Putters (Paola); Braunschweig Theater/ 

Christian Frolich 

Oehms 923 [3CD] 132 minutes 

Ramiro, who is still loved by his former lover 

Paola, loves Inez, the daughter of the alchemist 

Vasquez. But Inez loves Alonzo. A vengeful 

Paola warns Alonzo of Ramiro’s interest in 

Inez, who rejects Ramiro’s wooing. And so 

begins a complex plot that results in Vasquez, 

through Ramiro’s plotting, being brought 

before the Inquisition. Eventually all ends well. 

Inez and Alonzo are together, Vasquez is freed 

from prison by Alonzo, who wounds the dastardly 

Ramiro in a duel, and Paola gets herself 

to a nunnery. 

It’s an absurd unashamedly melodramatic 

work based on a Washington Irving novel, but 

at least in Spohr’s 1830 opera credulity isn’t 

strained in the manner of Weber’s Euryanthe 

or Schumann’s Genoveva. In an interview in 

this set’s booklet, Maestro Frolich speaks of 

Der Alchymist as if it’s a great example of German 

operatic romanticism. If that’s the case, a 

stronger performance is needed to prove it. 

Spohr composed some attractive symphonies, 



concertos, and chamber music; but this mixture 

of set pieces, spoken dialog, melodrama, 

and recitative (Wagner’s early Das Liebesverbot 

also has all of these elements) struck me as 

tedious listening. If only Weber had been its 

composer. Librettist Carl Pfeiffer’s lines are 

often dull as dishwater, and Spohr’s music is 

sometimes pleasant but never memorable. 

Veteran Bernd Weikl, in his upper 60s 

when this 2009 recording was made, lacks his 

former vocal luster, but he speaks and sings 

with great authority—the only singer in the 

cast who’s fully into his role. A pity Vasquez 

isn’t a huge singing part. The ladies are all 

right in their not very demanding roles, but Ms 

Abouloff could use more vocal weight, and Ms 

Putters as Paolina seems to be struggling to 

make her character (a kinder, gentler combination 

of Weber’s Eglantine and Wagner’s 

Ortrud) come alive. I think she too needs more 

vocal weight. Durmuller isn’t an especially villainous 

bad guy; he has a weak lower range. 

Frolich may believe Der Alchymist is an 

unjustly neglected great opera, but a stronger 

performance is needed to convince me. Libretto 

in German only. 

MARK 

STOCKHAUSEN: Piano Works 

Elisabeth Klein 


Here is a well-filled disc of Stockhausen piano 

music, strongly performed and recorded. The 

latest work, Tierkreis from 1975-77, is a series 

of 12 melodies for the zodiac. By far the most 

listenable offering on the program, it has a delicate 

melancholy and attenuated lyricism; it’s 

a specimen of what the notes call the composer’s 

“new friendliness”. Another way of saying 

this is that the earlier avant-garde pieces 

are unfriendly. Klavierstuck IX consists of a 

chord repeated 139 times, then 83 more followed 

by a rapid series of grace notes. V, from 

1954, is a foreboding piece full of trills, with 

moments of hesitant tonality. Several works 

are specimens of the music of chance that was 

so fashionable half a century ago. XI consists of 

19 different groups, the order chosen at the 

performance, so each account is different. Elisabeth 

Klein, a master of contemporary European 

music, plays with icy authority in brilliant 

sound. 

SULLIVAN 

STORACE: Harpsichord Pieces 

Naoko Akutagawa 


Akutagawa is a secure and poised player. I 

appreciate her stylish ornamentation in the 

Corrente and her finely-honed sense of Fres- 

cobaldian timing in the Toccata in F. She presents 

a strong case for Storace’s less widelyperformed 

works like the Toccata, the passamezzo 

pieces, and Partite Sopra Il Cinque 

Passi. She has chosen to alter certain accidentals 

that in the original score are much more 

dissonant. This is a matter of personal taste 

and discretion. 

KATZ 

STRAUSS,J: The Goddess of Reason 

Veronika Groiss, Isabella Ma-Zach, s; Manfred 

Equiluz, Kirlianit Cortes, Franz Fodinger, Wolfgang 

Veith, t; Andreas Mittermeier, Nicolas 

Legoux, b; Slovak Sinfonietta/ Christian Pollack 


This is a very strange Johann Strauss II 

operetta, and the last one he wrote. Die Göttin 

der Vernunft was not composed altogether 

willingly. Strauss may have gone into a contract 

with his librettists, Willner and Buchbinder, 

but once confronted with the plot and 

the lyrics, he sought eagerly to be released 

from his contract. 

The final operetta from the Waltz King is 

chock-a-block with marches and a few waltzes. 

The story takes place in a French town near 

the German border, at the time of the French 

Revolution. Although there is some business 

with mistaken identity involving a countess, 

the plot has little involvement with the Reign 

of Terror then taking place in Paris. It more 

resembles a French operetta of the late 1890s, 

with a military garrison close to a girls’ school 

and the typical entanglements that follow. 

There’s a lot of military music, from the Act 

I ‘Kommt her!’ to the finale tribute to the hussars; 

and one gets the requisite march strains 

rather often. There are entrance songs for various 

captains, a trio for three Jacobins with a 

march coda, and finales that end with marches. 

Not that these finales are terribly memorable. 

The waltzes pop up, of course, and some of 

them are most attractive. In the second act— 

by far the strongest of the three—there’s a duet 

for Captain Robert and the countess that 

begins with a violin solo that sounds like humming 

bees around a rose bush and ends fairly 

passionately with a waltz strain. The next 

number was intended as the real take-home 

waltz: a tribute by an ageing landowner to his 

‘Wild Time of Youth’. It’s nice, but hardly in 

the same league as the triumphant waltzes 

from Die Fledermaus, Eine Nacht in Venedig, 

or Gypsy Baron. But just to make sure you 

don’t forget it, it turns up as an entr’acte 

before the final act. 

A female duet in the second act is appealing, 

as is another march, sung by the countess, 

swearing allegiance to the army. A further duet 



for Jacquelin, a caricaturist, and Ernestine, a 

former grisette, has a wistful elegance. And it is 

very well sung by Isabella Ma-Zach and Wolfgang 

Veith. 

Die Göttin der Vernunft played the Theater 

an der Wien a mere 36 times and was promptly 

forgotten. But a decade later the music was 

extracted and put together with a new libretto, 

called Reiche Mädchen (Rich Girls), which 

played at the Raimundtheater. This was a 

much greater success, thanks probably to the 

great Alexander Girardi in a leading part. 

It is obvious that Strauss had little interest 

in the libretto, which, fortunately or unfortunately, 

depending on your mood, is not 

included here. I didn’t have a copy to follow 

the lyrics or the dialog. Naxos does supply a 

synopsis. What’s odd is that at least one of the 

librettists, Willner, became much more 

accomplished later on, supplying many librettos 

for Franz Lehar and many other composers. 

Among the hits he wrote were The 

Count of Luxembourg and Das Dreimäderlhaus. 

Strauss of course regained his stature 

with the next operetta, Wiener Blut, adapted 

from his music and still played everywhere. 

We can thank the Johann Strauss Edition 

of his works for this endeavor, which was 

reconstructed and then recorded in Slovakia 

with the participation of the Johann Strauss 

Society of Great Britain. Peter Kemp, from that 

society, wrote the fine notes. The orchestra, 

under Christian Pollack (who also arranged the 

reconstruction of the original score), gives a 

real shimmer to the music; and the soloists are 

excellent. 

As a filler, the dance arrangements from 

this operetta are included, as recorded previously 

on the Marco Polo label. 

TRAUBNER 

STRAUSS: Piano Quartet; Cello Sonata; 

Capriccio Sextet 

Michal Kanka, vc; Miguel Borges Coelho, p; 

Prazak Quartet 

Praga 250275 [SACD] 75 minutes 

I never got past my initial impression that the 

piano quartet is simply too aggressive here. It’s 

not especially fast, though there are slower 

performances; but the attacks are almost 

angry, and the blasts of violin tone sound 

almost frantic and certainly irritating (and I 

think not perfectly on pitch). 

This music is not particularly popular. It’s 

from Strauss’s Brahmsian period, and he tried 

to suppress it. Recordings come and go, and I 

like a few that I think are gone. But in the last 

five years or so we reviewed two that are better 

than this one. The Leipzig Quartet on MDG 

6431355 (May/June 2006) is probably still 

available, and we liked the beautiful old world 

sound and playing. I liked the Alvarez Quartet 

recording even better—it’s also old world but 

even gentler and sweeter. But that was coupled 

in a two-disc set with Wilhelm Petersen’s 

Piano Quintet (Hera 2121, March/April 2007). 

It also had five small pieces for piano quartet 

by Strauss that you probably can’t get anywhere 

else—and two of them are really nice. 

Michal Kanka is an excellent cellist, but 

often he seems too “busy” to let us enjoy the 

rich tone of the instrument. He is always rushing 

on to the next phrase (though the slow 

movement is quite lovely). Again, this is not a 

great work, but it can be more appealing than 

it is here. (The old Audiofon recording by 

William De Rosa even sounds better—Jan/Feb 

1997.) 

And the Capriccio sextet introduction 

(about ten minutes) turns up on lots of recordings, 

so you don’t need this for that. 

VROON 

STRAUSS: Der Rosenkavalier 

Teresa Zylis-Gara (Octavian), Montserrat Caballé 

(Marschallin), Edith Mathis (Sophie), Otto Edelmann 

(Ochs), John Modenos (Faninal); Glyndebourne 

1965/ John Pritchard 

Glyndebourne 10 [3CD] 188 minutes 

This performance of Strauss’s most popular 

opera was recorded from the stage of the Glyndebourne 

Theater on May 30, 1965 before an 

enthusiastic audience. Because that theater is 

relatively small, this performance uses the 

composer’s reduced orchestral score, which 

undoubtedly made things easier for the excellent 

cast. But the London Philharmonic, 

despite its reduced size, plays the music beautifully 

under John Pritchard’s knowing direction, 

making this one of the better recordings 

of staged performances of this opera. It has an 

intimate quality that’s often lacking when the 

original score is used. 

As for the cast, Montserrat Caballé, in 

superb vocal fettle, turns out to be a very good 

Marschallin. Her pure, gorgeous voice, with its 

many shadings, allows her to exploit the tonal 

beauty of the music without scanting the 

words in a way that few Marschallins can 

achieve. Her high pianissimos, almost a trademark 

of her singing, are remarkably effective in 

the final scene of Act 1, where she uses it to 

distance herself from Octavian, her erstwhile 

lover, without losing her dignity. Teresa Zylis- 

Gara, here Octavian (later in her career, she 

also sang the Marschallin), also has a smooth 

and attractive voice, and she acts the teen-age 

lover with passionate vigor. 

Edith Mathis, then still in her 20s, had a 

beautiful soprano of considerable range; in 

1965 she sang both Sophie and Cherubino at 

Glyndebourne. Her Sophie breaks no new 



ground; indeed it’s a bit too bland, perhaps 

owing to her position on stage. Still, she performs 

it well. Otto Edelmann’s sings Ochs with 

a pronounced Viennese accent. Since the performance 

is in German, this may have confused 

his British audiences; apart from that, 

it’s a standard interpretation, well sung. The 

rest of the cast is quite competent, though I 

wonder at the provenance of John Andrew, the 

Italian Singer; he’s no Pavarotti. 

Glyndebourne’s presentation is, as always, 

lavish. The book package includes the complete 

libretto in German and English plus a 

synopsis of the plot in three languages (including 

French) as well as photographs of the staging. 

The sound is the best I’ve heard in any 

Glyndebourne release. This set is worth 

acquiring for several reasons but especially for 

Caballé’s Marschallin. 

MOSES 

STRAUSS: songs 

Ständchen; Leises Lied; Wiegenliedchen; Rote 

Rosen; De Erwachte Rose; Malven; Schlagende 

Herzen; Muttertanderlei; Das Bachlein; Amor; 

Madchenblumen, op 22; 5 Songs, op 48; Ophelia 

Songs 

Gillian Keith, s; Simon Lepper, p 

Champ Hill 18—60 minutes 

Soprano Gillian Keith, who took a degree in 

piano performance from McGill University, 

here proves herself to be a superb interpreter 

of Richard Strauss’s lieder. This is one of the 

best Strauss recital albums since Soile 

Isokoski’s memorable traversal of the orchestral 

songs for Ondine (Sept/Oct 2002). She has 

power a-plenty, but even more impressive are 

her perfectly gossamer pianissimos. 

It is a pity that the engineers have placed 

pianist Simon Lepper unnaturally far in the 

background, as it spoils what might have been 

an unqualified success. No matter—it is at 

least a qualified success of the best sort. 

BOYER 

STRAUSS: songs 

Diana Damrau, s; Munich Philharmonic/ Christian 

Thielemann 


The German soprano Diana Damrau has in the 

last several years become one of the most versatile 

and busiest lyric sopranos at the Met. 

She has sung leading roles in operas by Rossini 

(The Barber of Seville and Le Comte D’Ory), 

Richard Strauss (Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne 

auf Naxos, and The Egyptian Helen), Mozart 

(The Magic Flute), and Verdi (Rigoletto). On the 

evidence of this all-Strauss program, she is 

also a good lieder singer. She has an attractive, 

secure, and agile voice and a thorough under- 

standing of her repertory. It’s not a large voice, 

but it’s pure and even and it has the required 

vocal range; and her diction, in opera and 

lieder, is very good, if not quite in the 

Schwarzkopf class. Her lieder interpretations, 

while not breaking new ground, are fresh and 

straightforward, and not encrusted with artificial 

mannerisms. 

This program of 22 lieder includes many of 

Strauss’s most popular songs, such as ‘Morgen’, 

‘Allerseelen’, ‘Das Rosenband’, ‘Traum 

durch die Dämmerung’, and ‘Zueignung’. Yet 

there are also several that are unfamiliar like 

‘Lied der Frauen’, a seven-minute song that 

tells of a woman’s worries about her absent 

husband (a miner or a soldier) and her exultation 

and joy when he comes back to her. The 

words, by Brentano, seem trite; and that may 

account for Strauss’s lack of inspiration in the 

musical setting. But many of these songs are 

among the composer’s best. 

The orchestral accompaniments are the 

composer’s own, in some cases done long after 

the piano version had been published. Thielemann 

is a very careful accompanist, and the 

excellent Munich Philharmonic sounds wonderfully 

transparent. It never covers the singer. 

Ten of these songs were recorded by 

Schwarzkopf with the Four Last Songs, with 

George Szell on EMI. That has long been one 

of my favorite recordings of this repertory. 

Damrau is not as accomplished a singer now 

as Schwarzkopf was then in terms of interpretive 

depth, richness of sound, and tonal beauty; 

but the better orchestral sound of this 

release almost evens things up. Texts and 

translations are included in the booklet. 

MOSES 

STRAVINSKY: Rite of Spring; 

BARTOK: Sonata for 2 Pianos & Percussion 

Duo d’Accord; Eardrum Percussion Duo 


Pianists Lucia Huang and Sebastian Euler are 

Duo d’Accord, and this is their fourth superb 

disc to come my way for review. Impeccable 

musicianship, precise ensemble, and inquisitive 

exploration of unusual repertoire are all 

phrases that describe this young piano duo. 

Their Messiaen Visions de l’Amen (Oehms 704, 

May/June 2008) made my best of the year list, 

and I have a strong feeling about this disc 

repeating that honor this year. This is one of 

the most brilliant ensemble performances I 

have ever heard, and Genuin’s recorded sound 

is truly demonstration quality. I have Ohm 

Walsh 5 speakers with Rotel amplification and 

will keep this disc at hand to show off my system. 

If I have one minor caveat, it is that there 

is so much presence in the percussion instruments 

that they dominate sometimes when I 



think the pianos should be more front and 

center. A different reviewer may very well be 

glad that this is the first recording of the Bartok 

where the percussion finally has its rightful 

place in the sonic spectrum. I have been fortunate 

to see three concert performances of this 

masterpiece of 20th Century chamber music, 

and have several recordings (including the 

excellent Martha Argerich & Stephen Kovacevich 

reviewed elsewhere in this issue). Duo 

d’Accord and the Eardrum Percussion Duo 

(Johannes Fischer and Domenico Melchiorre) 

are without question at the top of my list. 

While I expect excellent ensemble, I am grateful 

for the infectious excitement these four 

conjure up and the sophistication of their 

quiet interplay. 

While the Bartok is reason enough to get 

this, the Stravinsky is a world premiere recording 

of this ensemble’s version for two pianos 

and percussion. It has all of the spectacular 

performance and sonic qualities of the Bartok, 

plus we have to give credit to the ensemble for 

a new version of an established masterpiece 

that should make its way into the standard 

repertory. It is of course a perfect pairing with 

the Bartok. There are few if any works of comparable 

quality for the same ensemble. 

Stravinsky himself made an arrangement for 

two pianists at one or two pianos (a number of 

compromises must be made if only one piano 

is used). It is here that this group began. Then 

they added the percussion parts from the 

orchestral score and expanded the piano writing. 

As the booklet notes tell us, there was a 

long rehearsal process where various ideas 

were tried and evaluated. The percussion parts 

were expanded to not only support the pianos, 

but to take the lead and get the main musical 

line sometimes. The virtuosity of the mallet 

instruments will make your jaw drop. The end 

result works so well that I am astounded. 

HARRINGTON 

STRAVINSKY: Violin Pieces 

Isabelle van Keulen, v; Olli Mustonen, p 


When it comes to Stravinsky, we are not only 

used to an endless list of masterpieces, but of 

large works like The Rite of Spring and the 

Symphony of Psalms. This is an exceptional 

collection of the complete works for violin and 

piano. These pieces, some no more than 3 

minutes long, have the same sophistication, 

brilliance, merit, and inspiration as some of 

Stravinsky’s larger works. Most are arrangements 

that came from a long friendship with 

violinist Samuel Duskin. 

The high points of this collection are the 

Divertimento and the glorious and elegant 

Duo Concertant. 

Mustonen and Keulen give a spectacular 

performance, filled with nuance, color, and 

intensity. Their passion is intoxicating. Many 

of these were arranged for specific performances 

and are meant to have an improvisational 

flare. In the same spirit, Olli Mustonen 

made an arrangement of the ‘Tango’, originally 

written by Stravinsky for piano. 

JACOBSEN 

STRAVINSKY: Duo Concertant; 2-Piano 

Sonata; Requiem Canticles; Abraham & 

Isaac; Elegie; Blue Bird 

Jennifer Frautschi, v; Jeremy Denk, p; Philharmonia 

Orchestra; 20th Century Ensemble/ Robert 

Craft 


All of these performances are satisfying. The 

performance of the Sonata for Two Pianos is 

very good. The Requiem Canticles are also 

done well, but I am not thrilled with the choir. 

I expect a more rigid approach with little to no 

vibrato. The Duo Concertant is OK, but I prefer 

Keulen (above). Abraham and Isaac comes to 

life with baritone David Wilson-Johnson. He 

has a warm and expansive sound. The high 

point of this collection is without a doubt the 

Elegie for solo viola. Richard O’Neill gives a 

stunning performance of one of Stravinsky’s 

most memorable works. 

JACOBSEN 

STURLA: Passio Di Venerdi Santo 

Laura Delfino, s; Marina Frandi, a; Emanuela 

Esposito, cantus firmus; Il Concento Ecclesiastico/ 

Luca Franco Ferrari 


Little is known about Carlo Sturla, active in 

Genoa in the first part of the 18th Century. 

This piece is a St John Passion without the full 

Passion story, as the music manuscript ends at 

the point where the soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ 

clothing. The piece is rather interesting, with 

secular styles (including dramatic opera writing) 

incorporated into a sacred piece to comply 

with the Church’s music restrictions for 

Lent. The interpretation is not satisfying: the 

choral passages (female voices) are often too 

fast and in a sports-cheering style; the cantus 

firmus is echoey and sung with a nasal timbre 

that does not match the choral sound. Rather 

than providing refreshing contrasts, these differences 

break the piece into unconnected 

sections. 

Director Luca Franco Ferrari founded Il 

Concento Ecclesiastico in 1995, and he prepared 

the performing edition of the Sturla Passion 

for this 2006 recording. The ensemble 

specializes in the re-discovery and perfor- 



mance of unknown baroque repertoire. Notes, 

texts, translations. First recording. 

C MOORE 

SUK: Fantasy; 

RESPIGHI: Autumn Poem; 

CHAUSSON: Poeme; 

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: The Lark Ascending 

Julia Fischer, v; Monte Carlo Philharmonic/ 

Yakov Kreizberg 


The Fantasy in D minor by Josef Suk is a grand 

and impressive piece written on a huge canvas, 

and has a powerful orchestration. It calls 

for a very good violinist; and Fischer has 

power, precision, and the ability to make every 

note on the violin sing out in full voice. The 

recording is made in such a way that the largeness 

of the orchestration does not detract from 

the largeness of the violin playing. 

The Respighi, another big piece for violin 

and orchestra, also has a great deal of orchestral 

color, and it includes a wonderful section 

of extended violin harmonics. 

Fischer’s take on the well-known Chausson 

Poeme is rather conventional, and after 

hearing Ulf Schneider’s reading (J/A 2010) on 

Ars Musici, which draws its inspiration from 

the Turgenev story ‘The Song of Triumphant 

Love’ (the story that inspired Chausson to 

write the piece), the conventional Ysayeinspired, 

somewhat hazy approach to the 

piece no longer works for me, no matter how 

beautifully every note is played. 

Fischer seems most at home in The Lark 

Ascending, which she plays delicately and 

effectively. I far prefer the way Fischer plays 

this music to the way she plays Schubert (J/F 

2010). 

FINE 

SUPPE: Dalmatia Mass 

Daniel Schreiber, Henning Jensen, t; Philip 

Niederberger, b; Jens Wollenschlager, org; Lords 

of the Chords/ Jens Wollenschlager 


Franz von Suppe (1819-1895) was born in Split, 

Dalmatia (now in Croatia). The original version 

of this Mass for three male soloists and 

men’s choir was a product of his youth. Later 

in life he revised it thoroughly before submitting 

it for publication in 1876. Though not festooned 

with dazzling counterpoint or ravishing 

melodies, it is an attractive, mellow, wellcrafted 

traversal of the liturgy that gives a firstrate 

men’s choir many opportunities to shine. 

And shine these fellows do, whether crooning 

their way elegantly through the Kyrie and 

other introspective interludes, or becoming 

cheerleaders for God when Suppe turns them 

loose in the Gloria. 

His ‘Gloria in excelsis’, by the way, establishes 

the key of B-flat major the same way the 

opening of Monteverdi’s Vespers puts you in D. 

(Hope you find the tonic healthful!) Like the 

choir, the three solo voices are light, bright, 

and agile, which is precisely what you want in 

such a work. The Carus engineering is flattering 

to one and all. 

I have to admit, though, that the music had 

me chuckling more than once. Why? Because 

the organ can sound a bit like a calliope; and 

with all the close harmonies being sold to the 

max by the men, I began picturing them down 

on one knee, pitching woo to the Lord wearing 

candy-striped jackets and straw hats! (Adoramus 

te, my Coney Island baby.) Please don’t 

get me wrong: this is a serious piece full of 

prayerful intentions. Suppe wasn’t fooling 

around. But I know what I heard, and I’m still 

giggling as I type this. Anyway, informative 

notes in a full-service booklet clinch the deal 

on a handsome release. And who says a proper 

liturgy can’t elicit a smile or two as it unfolds? 

GREENFIELD 

TAFFANEL: Wind Quintets; see DANZI 

TANAKA: Piano Pieces 

Signe Bakke—2L 74—51 minutes 

“Crystalline”, the title of this enticing program 

of Karen Tanaka’s piano music, is also the 

name of the works that open and close the 

program. The first, from 1988, is influenced by 

Messiaen; the second, a more personal statement 

from 1995, reflects Tanaka’s Japanese 

heritage. Both are seductive pieces in a nontonal 

impressionist idiom. The more recent 

works, with titles like Water Dance I-III, are 

more tonal, some might say mushily so. Others, 

like Techno Etudes I-III, are aggressive 

molto perpetuo bursts of energy. Still others 

are charming children’s pieces. 

Though Tanaka reflects the promiscuously 

eclectic era we live in, she does explore these 

varied idioms with imagination and an ear for 

beautiful piano sound. Signe Bakke, long a 

Tanaka champion, plays with a stunning color 

and vividness—qualities matched by the 

recorded sound. 

SULLIVAN 

TANEYEV: Quartets 2 + 3 

Carpe Diem Quartet—Naxos 572421—74 minutes 

This is important music to know. Taneyev is 

certainly known as one of the great composition 

teachers, teaching Rachmaninoff and 

Scriabin among others. But his music is not 

often performed. He is a master of Russian 



chamber music, and this music is improbably 

brilliant. The A minor Quartet (3) in particular, 

is one of the best pieces in Russian music. I 

must get my hands on Carpe Diem’s performance 

of the other quartets. 

Carpe Diem is currently the quartet in residence 

at Ohio Wesleyan University. They are 

exceptional and deserve praise for an 

admirable and electrifying go at Taneyev. They 

have flawless technique and appropriate feeling. 

I know getting too “political” in this country 

is frowned on, especially when talking 

about education, the last hope we have in this 

increasingly uncultured and ugly country. But, 

all I can think of as I listen to Carpe Diem is, 

how can we support these valuable ensembles 

that are housed at our universities? Our education 

system has never supported the arts to the 

degree that it should. There is culture, brilliance, 

humanity and inspiring music-making 

in this country—so let us support and defend 

it! 

JACOBSEN 

TANSMAN: Clarinet Concerto; Concertino; 

6 Movements 

Laurent Decker, ob; Jean-Marc Fessard, cl; Silesian 

Chamber Orchestra/ Miroslaw Blaszczyk 


Conscious eclecticism did not fully emerge 

until the mid-20th Century, but musicians who 

crossed geographical borders rarely resisted 

the confluence of where they came from and 

where they were going. One of history’s most 

striking examples is Alexandre Tansman 

(1897-1986), a Polish-born Jewish virtuoso 

pianist and composer whose polytonal thinking 

proved too radical for a country that had 

not yet heard Debussy. In 1919, after completing 

law studies at the University of Warsaw, he 

moved to Paris, where he was encouraged by 

Ravel and Stravinsky and admired by Les Six. 

In a modernist answer to Chopin, whom he 

adored, the young Pole fused the mazurka and 

the polonaise with French neo-classicism— 

and in his spare time he wrote jazz under a 

pseudonym. He also performed often, including 

with Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston 

Symphony. During World War II, as the Nazis 

set up a government in France, he fled with his 

family to Los Angeles, where he became 

friends with Schoenberg and wrote six film 

scores, one of which was nominated for an 

Academy Award. 

After the war, Tansman returned to Paris, 

only to find that the city had moved on without 

him. While many European capitals sizzled 

with the sounds of the avant-garde, the aging 

composer remained true to his philosophy, 

quietly creating works that, if no longer shock- 

ing, were still profoundly individual in their 

materials and expression. 

Here, French soloist and Brussels Royal 

Conservatory clarinet professor Jean-Marc 

Fessard and Orchestre National de France 

oboist Laurent Decker team up with the Silesian 

Chamber Orchestra of Poland and their 

conductor for a concert of Tansman’s orchestral 

music from the postwar period. 

The Clarinet Concerto (1957) is recorded 

here for the first time. Tansman wrote it for the 

famous French clarinetist Louis Cahuzac, who 

premiered it two years afterward at the age of 

79, one year before he died in a motorcycle 

accident. Inside the standard form and length 

(three movements, 18 minutes) are elements 

of Bach, Stravinsky, and folk music, all balanced 

in a colorful orchestral soup. 

The next two pieces look backward and 

forward even further. The Concertino for oboe, 

clarinet, and strings (1952) and the Six Movements 

for Strings (1963) have transparent writing 

and a wealth of contrapuntal devices that 

invite comparison to the baroque orchestral 

suite. Even so, each work is shot through with 

pungent Gallic dissonance, brooding Slavic 

passages, jazz references, and romantic cyclicism. 

The performances are enthusiastic and 

sincere, but not always on the same level. Fessard 

has an excellent soloist personality, competing 

well against Tansman’s large orchestra, 

and he has the requisite amount of fingers and 

expressive awareness. But despite his French 

training, he has poor control over his sound 

and legato, especially in the high register; and 

he never achieves the tight articulation, keen 

intonation, or special resonance that the best 

players have. Decker, by contrast, boasts a 

beautifully clear timbre and the first-rate 

phrasing and technique to go with it. He holds 

his own with Fessard and his big tone, even if 

he cannot pull him into his own sculpted 

soundscape. The Silesian Chamber Orchestra 

plays with professionalism, authority, and 

superb musicianship, proving once again that 

Eastern European ensembles are just as skilled 

as their more famous Western counterparts. 

HANUDEL 

TCHAIKOVSKY: Francesca da Rimini; Serenade 

for Strings; Marche Slave 

USSR Orchestra/ Gennady Rozhdestvensky 


Lawrence Hansen found Rozhdestvensky’s 

Francesca da Rimini the selling point of the 

original Erato release (Nov/Dec 1992), writing 

“it takes a while for the coals to heat up, but 

once they do, things are plenty exciting”. I 

must concur; and while I have no problem 

with his overall timing of 25:41—my favorite, 



Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic, is 

24:36—I must part company with Mr Hansen 

over his painfully slow treatment of the yearning 

central episode where Francesca and Paolo 

recount to Dante their ill-starred love affair. At 

that Rozhdestvensky manages to convey a perceptibly 

smoother overall arc than Mikhail 

Pletnev (with Symphony 5; see review below); 

but for real smoldering passion neither can top 

Lenny and the richly blended New York 

strings. The reprise of Tchaikovsky’s eternal 

hell-fire here strikes me as downright desultory, 

while Rozhdestvensky trivializes the massive 

final cataclysmic chords by barreling 

through them way too fast. 

Mr Hansen thought the Marche Slave 

“slow”; yet I’d say it actually sets out at quite a 

jaunty clip. He builds up a sizable head of 

steam, and you may find it somewhat lightweight 

next to Reiner, for example. But once 

the commanding drum beats set up the quickstep 

conclusion, Rozhdestvensky really goes 

into overdrive, with the big brass standing tall 

in the Tsarist anthem amid great swaths on the 

gong. So I liked it better than Francesca. 

And I steeled myself (pun intended) on 

reading Mr Hansen’s account of “thin, rather 

pallid string tone” in the Serenade; yet I found 

little reason to complain save for the opening 

movement. It is far too weighty and heavy of 

heart for my taste, lumpish and drenched with 

despair, with the Russian strings laboriously 

sawing away. Matters improve with the lilting 

Waltz—one would expect no less from 

Rozhdestvensky, the consummate master of 

the ballet—and in the wistful Elegy sentimentality 

is clearly called for, and he draws some 

wonderfully expressive phrasing from his players, 

most notably the solo turn by the concertmaster 

around five minutes in. The finale is 

based on a perky Russian dance, and you can 

really hear the balalaikas, while the widespread 

discourse of high and low strings only 

adds to the general gaiety. But with the reprise 

of the opening movement he once again 

adopts a leaden tread, fortunately soon set 

aside as the sprightly dance rhythms return. 

While Warner has served the curious 

record buyer poorly by offering no notes whatsoever, 

this is an interesting and affordable 

cross-section of Tchaikovsky’s music, though 

you may find more satisfying accounts. 

HALLER 

TCHAIKOVSKY: Manfred; Overture in C 

minor 

Russian Orchestra/ Gennady Rozhdestvensky; 

Moscow Symphony/ Sergei Skripka 

Alto 1139—69 minutes 

First, an update. The Melodiya Svetlanov performance 

of Tchaikovsky’s overture to Ostro- 

vsky’s drama The Storm taped in concert in 

1990 that I heralded as “just out” in Part II of 

my Overview (Mar/Apr 2011)—labeled “Forgotten 

Pages”—turns out to be not The Storm 

but rather the same Overture in C minor heard 

here. His earlier studio recording was issued 

by the Svetlanov Foundation coupled with the 

Winter Dreams Symphony, and you may be 

fortunate enough to own the Melodiya LPs by 

Evgeny Akulov and Alexander Lazarev, the latter 

also released via ABC (67033). The confusion 

is understandable, as Tchaikovsky re-used 

both the opening pages and the ensuing lyrical 

melody (a Russian folk song, ‘The Young Maiden’) 

from The Storm written a few years earlier. 

But the assertive passage that follows is entirely 

different from its jittery counterpart in The 

Storm; and more important, the latter piece is 

easily recognizable for its inclusion of a 

melody we now know well from the introduction 

to the Adagio cantabile of Winter Dreams. 

As to the performance by Sergei Skripka 

and the Moscow Symphony offered here, I’d 

have to put it on a par with Svetlanov, and if 

you’re looking to add a real rarity to your 

Tchaikovsky shelf this will do very nicely. 

But I certainly don’t mean to downplay the 

main course. Gennady Rozhdestvensky 

recorded Tchaikovsky’s Manfred in the Large 

Studio of Moscow Radio in 1989, yet the box 

says “First issue in West”, and I don’t ever 

recall encountering it. As you might expect, 

both Rozhdestvensky’s conception of the score 

and the recorded sound are not unlike the 

Svetlanov—unfortunately that also goes for the 

raw Russian brass (not to mention the often 

wobbly horns). But Rozhdestvensky clearly has 

great affection for this grand sprawling narrative 

and draws the listener in right from the 

start, aided by the warm and deeply resonant 

soundstage that still offers a welcome wealth 

of woodwind detail. He has the Moscow players 

pouring their very heart and soul into 

Tchaikovsky’s inspired melodies, most notably 

the haunting strain that tells of Manfred’s tormented 

yearning for the fair Astarte. That 

builds to an impassioned climax. He imparts 

an unforced and limpid flow to the centerpiece 

of the symphony, the pastoral Andante, where 

even the bucolic Alpine atmosphere cannot 

relieve Manfred’s despair. If the water sprites 

of the Scherzo seem a bit earthbound for all 

the nattering of the wind players, the 

Mendelssohnian imagery is nicely conveyed 

just the same. But with the stentorian trombones 

that launch Manfred’s bacchanalian 

revels in the cave of Arimanes, all subtlety is 

cast aside: Rozhdestvensky slams into it with a 

manic ferocity, an almost hysterical onslaught 

with great thwacks on the tambourine and 

gong, and really all I could do was crank up the 



volume loud enough to wake the dead and just 

go with it—a thrilling, over-the-top spectacle 

filled out in the closing pages by an absolutely 

room-shaking organ! 

If you prefer your orgies on the genteel 

side, this is not for you; but even if you buy it 

for the rare Tchaikovsky overture—as I did—I 

have a feeling you’ll be playing Manfred a lot. 

HALLER 

TCHAIKOVSKY: The Sleeping Beauty 

Royal Philharmonic/ Barry Wordsworth 

RPO 30 [2CD] 1:53 

Three strikes and out for the RPO’s Tchaikovsky 

ballet cycle, I’m afraid. David Maninov’s Nutcracker 

was bland and colorless and added 

nothing to the catalog (Nov/Dec 2010); and 

Nicolae Moldoveanu’s Swan Lake reflected a 

considerable improvement in the playing of the 

RPO while benefitting from considerably more 

involvement from the podium; yet at the same 

time he omitted a couple of dances that Previn 

(EMI) easily found room for (Jan/Feb 2011). But 

Moldoveanu’s Swan Lake is a model of completeness 

next to this ill-begotten sham that 

guts the hell out of the Act III divertissement. 

You may already wonder what’s going on 

here when you compare the timings of 61:51 

and 51:36 to Previn, who breaks Act II across 

two discs (horrors!) but crams on nearly every 

note at 77:50 and 78:35. (Even missing a few 

dances you get more of the ballet from Ansermet 

than you do here.) 

The Prologue manages to come out of it 

unscathed; but the Maids of Honor and Pages 

unfortunately don’t make it into the Act I ‘Pas 

d’action’ (tracks 17-19). Really? You couldn’t 

find room for two more minutes of music on a 

61:51 CD? And as if that weren’t bad enough, 

Act II is shorn of the ‘Dances of the Courtiers’ 

(four in all) along with the bumptious ‘Farandole’. 

But that’s nothing next to the skeletal 

remains of Act III, where the only characters 

that remain out of Perrault’s vast storybook are 

Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat, both apparently 

well into their ninth life—forget Cinderella 

and Prince Charming, forget Red Riding 

Hood and the Wolf, forget Hop o’ My 

Thumb and the Blue Bird. I guess their invitations 

got lost in the mail. And—get this! get 

this!—the entire ‘Finale and Apotheosis’ is 

gone—deleted—every note—and in its place 

we have the ‘Polacca’ that should have ushered 

the procession of fairy-tale characters onstage. 

You heard me: the glorious strains of ‘Vive 

Henri Quatre’ that I’m sure everyone who 

loves this ballet looks forward to hearing from 

full brass and cymbals at the close is simply 

thrown under the coach. Whose lame-brained 

idea was this? 

Whatever the case, this unforgivably bowdlerized 

Sleeping Beauty is worse than merely a 

needless waste of time and money; this is an 

absolute travesty. 

HALLER 

TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony 5; Francesca da 

Rimini 

Russian National Orchestra/ Mikhail Pletnev 

PentaTone 5186 385 [SACD] 72 minutes 

This is not the same Tchaikovsky Fifth Mikhail 

Pletnev set down with the Russian National 

Orchestra for DG several years ago, first 

released as part of a boxed set (Jan/Feb 1997) 

and later reissued coupled with Hamlet (453 

449). I haven’t heard that one; but taking Mr 

Ashby’s words at face value, I have to believe 

this new recording is the polar opposite of that 

one. He characterized Pletnev’s whole cycle as 

“non-committed”, the brass “positively genteel”, 

in fact “nothing whatsoever of tradition, 

audible Russianness, interpretive conviction, 

or affection for the music”, though he did single 

out 5 as the best of a none too emotional 

lot. 

Say what you will about some of Pletnev’s 

tempo choices here, “non-committed” he definitely 

is not—nor is there anything the least bit 

“genteel” about the low brass in the great climax 

nine minutes into the opening movement 

and once again at the close—to say nothing of 

the breathtaking culmination of stark power in 

the finale where the entire orchestra slams on 

the brakes, right before what annotator Franz 

Steiger unbelievably calls a “blaring...noisy 

and downright garish conclusion”. (On the 

contrary, I rather suspect most readers would 

join me in finding Tchaikovsky’s ringing final 

statement of the pervasive “Fate” motto a masterpiece 

of man’s triumph over an unfeeling 

Destiny.) 

Tempos in the opening pages seem reasonable—if 

with some perceptible nips and 

tucks—and Pletnev is afforded soulful playing 

from the low woodwinds, who respond with 

great conviction even though he really draws 

out the musical line. On reaching the main 

body of the movement he saunters along in 

endearingly jaunty fashion, building to a 

thrilling climax unfortunately largely set in 

aspic by the resonant Moscow studio—I certainly 

hope it isn’t nearly so congested played 

as an SACD. But any lingering doubts of Pletnev’s 

“Russianness” were dispelled by his 

swooning, heart-on-sleeve treatment of the 

secondary strain, while the development 

heaves about mightily—whether genuine 

affection or pure showmanship, who can say? 

The Andante cantabile seems all but stagnant 

at Pletnev’s measured tread; that may 

explain the horn player’s sorely prosaic ren- 



dering, merely putting one foot before the 

other as best he can and still maintain some 

grasp of the musical line. When the strings 

take up the theme, you can clearly hear the 

yearning Tchaikovsky wrote into this music— 

not apparent from the horn solo. I get what 

Pletnev is after, but surely you still need some 

semblance of forward motion? The slo-mo 

clarinet at 6:12 is painful to endure, while the 

positively fierce onslaught that follows is simply 

over the top. What a pleasure to lean back 

and relax once again for the Waltz, in turn contrasting 

with the fleet trio that the Russian 

players pull off beautifully. 

There’s a noble dignity to the motto theme 

as it sets up the Russian dance central to the 

finale. It begins in suitably spirited fashion, so 

you can imagine my amazement when at 4:00 

Pletnev all of a sudden sped up so fast I 

thought my CD player had malfunctioned, 

thereafter barreling through it lickety-split as if 

some one in the control booth had called 

down to him that another orchestra needed to 

use the studio. Had he adopted this same 

tempo right at the outset, I might have merely 

mentioned it in passing—he’s not that far off 

from Mravinsky after all—but to suddenly 

switch gears like this is very odd. (Did he do 

this on his earlier recording?) So that’s where 

he lost me, and even his jubilant stride at the 

close could not make amends—nor for that 

matter his willful caricature of Francesca da 

Rimini with wildly overwrought scenes of hellfire 

and damnation set on either side of a laborious 

and finally maudlin eulogy to the unfortunate 

lovers. Avoid this. 

HALLER 

TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony 6 

Gürzenich Orchestra/ Dmitri Kitaenko 

Oehms 666 [SACD] 51 minutes 

with SCHOENBERG: Variations for Orchestra 

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/ Daniel Barenboim—Decca 

15607—69 minutes 

Barenboim and his ensemble of young players 

absolutely nail the Pathetique—this is one of 

the finest recordings I’ve heard in a while, and 

certainly the single BEST Tchaikovsky performance 

I’ve ever heard from this conductor. 

His earlier account with the Chicago Symphony 

(July/Aug 1999), while actually a cut above 

most of his other CSO recordings, was pretty 

effective but had moments where the dramatic 

line went slack. Not so here—perhaps inspired 

by the West-Eastern Divan’s mission, Barenboim 

is all fiery vigor and dramatic tension. 

Oh, you haven’t heard about the West- 

Eastern Divan ensemble? It’s a youth orchestra 

formed by Barenboim and Palestinian-American 

scholar Edward Said in 1999. Its players 

are drawn from the ranks of young Israeli, 

Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Syrian, even 

Iranian and Palestinian musicians. The group 

actually has its summer academy in Seville, 

Spain, where it prepares the programs before 

going on tour. With money coming from the 

government of Andalucia, some of the personnel 

are now young Spanish classical musicians. 

In interviews, Barenboim has insisted 

that he doesn’t expect his project to bring 

peace to the Middle East, but perhaps it can 

help musicians see each other in a different 

light. 

I’m normally not a fan of projects to 

improve “awareness” or make a gesture, and I 

doubt the W-ED will have much effect on 

world politics. What I will say is that the 

orchestra plays spectacularly well under 

Barenboim—their DVD performance of the 

Beethoven 9th is one of my three favorite 

recordings of the work nowadays. 

Why does this ensemble play so spectacularly 

well? I think two reasons: first, the musicians 

are young—the music is still new to 

them. It’s “wow, we’re playing Tchaikovsky 

under Daniel Barenboim!!!” rather than “oh 

no, not the Pathetique AGAIN!!!” Second, they 

get plenty of rehearsal time, far more than the 

average American or European professional 

orchestra. 

Barenboim paces the long, long introduction 

to the first movement beautifully, blasting 

off into a furious allegro that builds to a crushing 

climax before dying away in exhaustion. 

This is how the movement is supposed to go, 

even if he sometimes hammers home the bigger 

rhetorical gesture in the allegro a little too 

laboriously (hey, he’s still Barenboim). He 

gives II the right nostalgic lilt and pounds out 

III with plenty of brassy elan and braggadocio 

before collapsing into the Mahlerian depths of 

IV. Kitaenko does dig deeper into the finale— 

he also takes about 2 minutes longer—but 

Barenboim gives it decent weight. 

I have a couple dozen Pathetiques on my 

CD shelves. Even so, I’ll reach for this one 

again. 

The Schoenberg Variations are not a 

favorite piece of mine, but Barenboim and the 

orchestra play them with alternating verve, 

delicacy, and nuance. They may seem at first 

glance an odd choice to accompany the 

Tchaikovsky, but as the album notes point out, 

Wilhelm Furtwangler, Barenboim’s conducting 

idol, led the piece’s first performance in 

1928. Besides, we really don’t need another 

1812 Overture or Romeo and Juliet tacked on 

as filler. 

I can’t really give Decca all the credit for 

the spacious, open, richly detailed sound, 

since from my reading of the back page of the 



booklet, it looks like Unitel and the Barenboim-Said 

Foundation deserve the credit for 

preserving this performance (it may come out 

on DVD). The sound, recorded at the Salzburg 

Festival in August 2007, is spectacular. 

Oehms gives Kitaenko nice, sumptuous, 

full, glowing SACD sound, and the Gürzenich 

Orchestra of Cologne plays with polish and 

energy if not quite with the end-of-the-world 

intensity of Barenboim’s young ensemble. As I 

noted above, the Russian conductor takes the 

finale to deeper depths and draws out the final 

pages as a long, slow, fade out from life. 

There’s certainly nothing wrong in the first 

three movements, nor anything exceptionally 

original or compelling about the interpretation—the 

approach of an experienced Russian 

maestro. II is a bit less lyrical and light-footed 

than Barenboim’s, and the march hasn’t the 

vigor and swagger Barenboim and his young 

players draw from it. But if you want a solid, 

sturdy, expressive Pathetique that doesn’t 

chew up the scenery and has excellent sonics, 

this’ll do, even if 51 minutes of music is a bit 

short measure. I won’t trade in Karajan (EMI), 

Munch (RCA), Bernstein (DG), Furtwangler 

(EMI), Ormandy (Sony)—or Barenboim for 

this. 

HANSEN 

TCHAIKOVSKY: Trio; 

KISSINE: Zerkalo 

Khatia Buniatishvilli, p; Gidon Kremer, v; Gierdre 

Dirbanauskatie, vc—ECM 15572—72 minutes 

According to the essay, this program marks the 

beginning and the end (for now) of Russian 

chamber music. The engineering and recording 

quality are superb. 

The Tchaikovsky and the Kissine share 

philosophical and rhetorical connections. 

What I find most inspiring is that the pieces 

come together through a profound sense of 

Russian community. Kissine draws inspiration 

from the words of Shostakovich about the 

Tchaikovsky and the poetry of Anna Akhmatova 

to conceptualize a truly reflective piece of 

music. And despite the obvious difference in 

harmonic language, both pieces share an 

urgency that can be both disturbing and poetic. 

Zerkalo is a very complex work. The title 

means “the mirror”, and the piece is composed 

in mirror form, shadowing a very formal 

sonata form. Included with the disc are extraordinary 

program notes. The amount of time 

and dedication that EMI puts into these productions 

is simply remarkable. With Zerkalo’s 

complexity comes tremendous difficulty. 

These players are stunning performers that do 

not seem to be remotely affected by the 

demanding challenges. 

Despite Tchaikovsky’s reluctance to write a 

trio, and his view that the three instruments 

just did not work together, he produced one of 

my favorite piano trios. These players also play 

it the best I have heard. It is blazing with vigor 

and tortured with nostalgia. This is a worldclass 

production that I am sure will be 

acclaimed. 

JACOBSEN 

TELLEFSEN: Violin Sonatas 1+2; 

MIKULI: Duo in A; 

FILTSCH: Variations 

Voytek Proniewicz, v; Alexander Jakobidze-Gitman, 

p—Naxos 572560—65 minutes 

This is called Music for Violin and Piano by 

Pupils of Chopin, but the Norwegian composer 

Thomas Dyke Ackland Tellefsen (1823-74) 

deserves recognition far beyond his association 

with Chopin, who was his piano teacher 

and longtime friend. Tellefsen’s two violin 

sonatas from 1856 and 1867 are wonderful and 

inventive pieces. The liner notes describe 

these sonatas as something between 

Beethoven and Grieg—an observation I can 

second. Though Tellefsen was a great champion 

of Chopin, I hear no resemblance to 

Chopin in either sonata. 

Karol Mikuli (1819-97) studied piano with 

Chopin in Paris in the 1840s, and he toured 

Europe performing Chopin’s music. He was 

another of Chopin’s close friends and also 

worked as a copyist, which lends an air of 

authenticity to the editions he published of 

Chopin’s music. His ‘Grand Duo’ doesn’t 

sound much like Chopin, but it does take 

inspiration from just about everything else 

from the 19th Century. The writing is careful 

and extremely clever. 

Carl Filtsch’s set of variations, written 

before he was 14, does sound a lot like Chopin. 

Filtsch (1830-45) came to Paris as a child star 

at the age of 11, and Chopin, who normally 

didn’t teach children, gave him three lessons a 

week and treated him like a son. 

Proniewicz is a Polish violinist, and Jakobidze-Gitman 

is from Russia. They play all of 

this music beautifully, particularly the two 

Tellefsen sonatas, which are real gems. 

FINE 

THALBERG: Trio; see SCHUMANN 

TOCH: The Chinese Flute; Egon & Emilie; 5 

Pieces; Quartet 

Multar Ensemble—CPO 777092—65 minutes 

Ernst Toch, who came from a non-musical 

family, began composing by secretly buying 

and copying Mozart string quartets in grade 

school. A brilliant autodidact who represented 

no “school”, he always said his teachers were 



Mozart and Bach. He eventually became one 

of Europe’s laeding composers, for a while in a 

league with Hindemith and Stravinsky. That 

was before the Nazis. Like Kurt Weill and Billy 

Wilder, he picked up ominous political signs 

very early and managed to get out of Germany, 

arriving in Los Angeles via Paris and New York. 

He wrote for Hollywood while continuing his 

career as a chamber composer, later branching 

out into large-scale symphonies (the latter 

recorded by CPO in this excellent series). 

This rewarding album reveals Toch’s great 

range of style and sensibility from various periods 

in his colorful career. The earliest piece, 

The Chinese Flute, is a setting of Chinese lyrics 

for soprano and chamber orchestra that 

exploits “oriental” effects popular in the 20s. 

Somehow avoiding cliche, it is intoxicating in 

its rarefied atmosphere and varied colors and 

effects. The harmonies range from basic diatonicism 

to elaborate polytonality. Maria Karb 

sings the challenging vocal part with haunting 

expressiveness. A student of Elisabeth 

Schwarzkopf, she has a floating, pure sound. 

No Family Drama from 1928, is one of a 

kind, a depiction of a wife haranguing her 

weary husband as well as a scathing satire of 

self-regarding opera divas. Britta Stroher sings 

the demanding soprano coloratura part with 

virtuosity and self-lacerating wit. The wind 

ensemble growls, mocks, and whines in a 

manner both sinister and pungent. 

In sharp contrast, the Five Pieces for Wind 

Instruments, from 1959, are direct and virtuosic, 

sometimes lyrical, sometimes acerbic. 

There are moments of startling simplicity and 

songfulness. (It is not surprising Toch wrote 

for Hollywood.) Variety is the only constant. 

The final work, a quartet, is also for winds. 

Written the last year of Toch’s life, it is pastoral 

and reflective. 

This is attractive, unpredictable music, 

splendidly performed and recorded, and I’ll 

wager you’ve never heard any of it before. 

SULLIVAN 

TORROBA: 3 Nocturnos; Castillos de 

Espana 

Mikko Ikaheimo, Rody van Gemert, g; Aholansaari 

Sinfonietta/ Jyri Nissila 

Pilfink 68—57 minutes 

Moreno Torroba has written several works for 

guitar and orchestra, though none is part of 

the standard repertory. That’s a shame, because 

the ones I’ve been able to hear are all 

worthy, expressive pieces. Back in the LP days, 

the Romeros performed Concierto Iberico for 

four guitars and orchestra. 

The opening pieces here, Tres Nocturnos, 

for two guitars and orchestra, are also worthy. 

Moreno Torroba is best known in Spain as a 

composer of zarzuelas, the Spanish musical 

comedy, and his lush, romantic orchestration 

and beautiful melodic gifts are clearly evident 

here. The work is in three movements, each 

with a descriptive title: ‘Hoguerras’ (Bonfires), 

‘Sombras’ (Shadows), and ‘Brujas’ (Witches). 

Despite the titles, the music is mostly quite 

sunny. 

Ikaheimo and Van Gemert perform together 

as the Helsinki Guitar Duo (see Collections 

in this issue). Their playing is idiomatic, 

though ensemble is sometimes not perfect. 

The concerto was composed in 1969, but not 

performed until after 2000. I don’t see any 

more recordings coming soon, and this is certainly 

serviceable. And the Aholansaari Sinfonietta 

under Nissila sounds lush beyond its 

chamber proportions. 

Ikaheimo performs the Castillos de Espana, 

all 14 movements. These are some of the composer’s 

most popular works, and it’s interesting 

to compare a recent recording of the same 

music by Ana Vidovic on Naxos (N/D 2007). I 

much prefer Vidovic’s performance, which is 

more energetic, vivacious, and inventive. Still, 

Ikaheimo’s approach has its merits. He tends 

to be quieter, emphasizing the lyric and contemplative 

where he finds it. His rubato is a 

touch overdone for my tastes, but he doesn’t 

pull the music apart as badly as many do. If 

you really love the music and don’t have a 

fixed notion exactly how it should be played, 

you may enjoy both. 

But get the disc for the concerto. 

KEATON 

URSPRUCH: 5 Pieces; Cavatina & 

Arabesque, 5 Fantasy Pieces 

Ana-Marija Markovina, p 

Genuin 11205 [2CD] 92 minutes 

Anton Urspruch (1850-1907) was a protege of 

Joachim Raff. He taught at the Koch Conservatory 

in Frankfurt, then at the newer Raff Conservatory. 

His compositions include a symphony, 

some choral works, and at least two 

operas, The Tempest and The Most Impossible 

of All. The liner notes are not enlightening, but 

going by opus numbers, the earlier Five Fantasy 

Pieces show the influence of Schumann, 

quoting his Symphonies 3 and 4 and referring 

to his Fantasy in C. Sometimes the reminiscences 

are so uncomfortably close to their 

models as to recall Pauline Kael’s crack about 

an homage being plagiarism that wasn’t 

actionable. 

The later Cavatina and Morceaux derive 

from Liszt, after he’d outgrown his glass chandelier 

period. In general, Urspruch’s piano 

writing is clean and direct, even in some thick 

chordal agglomerations. 

Markovina’s playing is crisp and accurately 



voiced, with expressive power and sympathetic 

interpretations. Some of the Fantasy Pieces 

are episodic, but her grasp of their overall 

design helps weld them into a whole. The 

recording has good sound and resonance. This 

is Volume 1 of Urpruch’s piano output. 

O’CONNOR 

VAAGE: Gardens of Hokkaido; Cyclops; 

Chaconne 

Einar Rottingen, p; Gro Sandvik, fl; Turid Kniejski, 

hp; Bergen Philharmonic/ Ingar Bergby, Eivind 

Aadland, Ole Kristian Ruud 

Aurora 5072—65 minutes 

Norwegian composer Knut Vaage (b 1961) 

attended the Grieg Academy in Bergen and has 

lived and worked in that city ever since. Here 

the Bergen Philharmonic plays three of his 

works, each with a different conductor, the 

recording sessions spanning ten years. 

Hokkaidos Hagar (Gardens of Hokkaido), 

recorded in 2005 under Ingar Bergby, is a 27minute 

sound study full of dissonance and 

unusual effects. Pianist Einar Rottingen is 

sometimes soloist, sometimes merely part of 

the action. Much of the work has an ethereal, 

spooky atmosphere. 

In a 2000 reading of Chaconne, Ole Kristian 

Ruud conducts soloists Gro Sandvik (flute) and 

Turid Kniejski (harp). We are told that “if we 

open our ears, we will undoubtedly hear a 

series of variations”, but Vaage has done a 

marvelous job of disguising them. What is the 

basic material that will be varied? The opening 

passages are so murky, with flutist Sandvik 

playing bass flute and harpist Kniejski playing 

very low notes—that we have no idea where 

that material ends and variations begin. 

Eivind Aadland conducts a 2009 reading of 

Kyklop (Cyclops), a 17-minute work where 

musicians make distorted sounds, where textures 

thicken and thin and intensity comes 

and goes in big waves, and where the persistent 

sound is dissonant yet not ugly. I felt as if I 

were looking at a beautiful scene through a 

damaged lens. 

KILPATRICK 

just treads water, a step or two down from 

Shostakovich’s more limp efforts. (The label 

uses the “Weinberg” spelling.) 

ESTEP 

VAN EYCK: Engels Liedt 

Gerald Stempfel, rec 

Carpe Diem 16284—64 minutes 

I think this release will be of interest primarily 

to recorder specialists, and perhaps especially 

ones who enjoy the instruments themselves as 

opposed to music for the recorder. Mr 

Stempfel makes recorders, and this release was 

born when Jonas Niederstadt, a producer he 

was working with on another program, suggested 

that he make a solo recording using the 

instruments he had made to “bring forth all 

facets of the sound of the flute as you imagine 

it!” 

A different recorder is used for almost 

every piece on this program, and it is indeed a 

study in sound. But it’s not the sort of thing 

you put on in the background for not-veryattentive 

listening; try that, and you’ll probably 

find it annoying. The playing and sound are 

both excellent, but this is a special treat for 

people who love and are interested in 

recorders rather than for the average listener. 

CRAWFORD 

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Lark Ascending; 

see SUK 

VICTORIA: Requiem; Lamentations; 

Responsories 

Tallis Scholars/ Peter Phillips 

Gimell 304 [3CD] 177 minutes 

In a continuing tradition of repackaging, this 

collection contains the three early Victoria 

recordings by The Tallis Scholars (Requiem, 

Sept/Oct 1988; Lamentations, July/Aug 2010; 

and Tenebrae, May/June 1991). While Phillips 

seems to have not been interested in recording 

Victoria’s masses and motets, his interpretation 

of the Requiem has become something of 

a classic; and the recordings of the excerpts 

from the Holy Week services (the Lamenta- 

VAINBERG: Symphony 3; Golden Key Suite 4 tions of Jeremiah and the Tenebrae respon- 

Gothenburg Symphony/ Thord Svedlund 

sories) were important additions to Victoria’s 

discography. As Mr Gatens noted in his review 

Chandos 5089 [SACD] 50 minutes 

of the Lamentations, there is a consistency and 

I liked Vainberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 2 a quality to any performance by The Tallis 

lot (Alto 1037, N/D 2009) and the Symphony Scholars, though there are passages where the 

No. 1 and Cello Concerto (Northern Flowers interpretations can “seem understated and 

9973, J/A 2010), but these pieces aren’t nearly even placid”. He expressed a preference for the 

as good. Much of the symphony could have recording of these works by The Sixteen 

been written by anyone of middling talent; it (July/Aug 2005). My favorite for both the 

has little to say, but it makes sure you hear it. Lamentations and Tenebrae responsories is La 

It’s marred by some shoddy brass playing Colombina (Nov/Dec 2005), which places Vic- 

about four minutes in—and this music is not toria’s works for Holy Week in their proper 

terribly difficult. The uninspired ballet music liturgical context, including parts that would 



have been sung in chant (though without the 

various recited lessons). And I prefer the performance 

of the Requiem by the Westminster 

Cathedral Choir (Sept/Oct 1988) to this more 

sedate interpretation by Phillips. 

BREWER 

VISEE: Theorbo & Lute Pieces 

Manuel Stropoli, rec; Masssimo Marchese, theorbo; 

Cristiano Contadin, gamba 

Brilliant 94154—55:22 

Robert de Visée was among the foremost 

lutenists of France at the turn of the 18th Century, 

and his compositions for both lute or theorbo 

and guitar have appeared on a number of 

recordings; I reviewed a very good selection of 

his theorbo pieces (Mar/Apr 2006). This 

recording goes beyond Visée the performer to 

Visée the marketer, since it includes selections 

from a 1716 publication of his lute and theorbo 

compositions arranged as chamber suites for a 

solo instrument and continuo. While a few 

movements are played by Contadin as viola da 

gamba solos with continuo, most of this is 

played by Manuel Stropoli on recorders and 

baroque flute. He is a very good recorder player, 

though I find the soprano recorder he uses 

for one suite rather strident; not as good are 

the two suites he plays on baroque flute. 

The single most important performance 

decision on this recording was to have Marchese 

play the continuo on theorbo; as Visée 

noted in his introduction “I believe that the 

[theorbo’s] gut strings’s sound is more suitable 

to transverse flute than the [harpsichord’s] 

brass strings.” Not only does the theorbo supply 

a suitable accompaniment, but Marchese 

is a deeply sensitive and proficient performer, 

and his realizations of the continuo are models 

that should be emulated by other performers 

of this repertoire. 

While I would like to hear these works 

played by a flutist with the abilities of Barthold 

Kuijken, this is still a good recording of very 

interesting works that demonstrate how 

deeply the theorbo and its repertoire came to 

influence the musical styles of the French 

baroque. 

BREWER 

VIVALDI: Concertos for Violin, Recorder, 

Psaltery; 

FACCO: Violin Concertos 

Manuel Zogby, v; Daniel Armas, psaltery; Miguel 

Lawrence; rec; Mexican Baroque Orchestra/ 

Miguel Lawrence 

Divine Art 25091—61 minutes 

Both Giacomo Facco (1676-1753) and Antonio 

Vivaldi (1678-1741) were violinists and composers 

based in Venice. Facco’s music had 

been lost in a fire in the Madrid Royal Palace, 

but a copy of the 12 concertos in his Opus 1 

Pensieri Adriarmonici, published in Amsterdam 

in 1716 and 1718 and likely taken to Mexico 

in 1723, was discovered in a library in Mexico 

City in 1961. The Mexican Baroque Orchestra 

was formed in 2009 by director and 

recorder player Miguel Lawrence in order to 

play this music. 

Although playing on modern instruments, 

the ensemble uses the same forces that were 

likely used in Mexico in the 17th and 18th Centuries 

as well as baroque style and articulation. 

Starting in the 17th Century, basso continuo in 

Mexico was played on instruments that today 

we are most likely to know from mariachi 

bands, specifically the guitar-shaped vihuela 

and guittaron. The two instruments are always 

played together, and the large guittaron 

(played in the same position as a guitar but 

with a body wider than a cello) offers the bass 

notes. The resulting basso continuo group— 

including cello—works very well with these 

compositions and doesn’t sound “out of 

place” at all. The guitar timbre is most evident 

in the slower movements, and the ensemble 

blends and balances very well, playing with a 

nice style and spirit. 

The violins sound rather thin sometimes, 

both in the solo and ensemble concertos. As 

for the other solo instruments in the Vivaldi 

concertos, it is interesting to hear psaltery 

used for the mandolin concerto (R 425). 

Although it does match the thin string sound 

here, I don’t like its metallic timbre (I tend to 

feel the same way about the mandolin), but it 

is a valid approach that certainly pays homage 

to the composer’s fondness for writing concertos 

for unusual instruments. Like their use of 

vihuela and guittaron, the Mexican Baroque 

Orchestra’s inclusion of psaltery is not 

anachronistic, since that instrument has been 

in Mexico for centuries. 

The finest playing here is in the two concertos 

for sopranino recorder (R 443 and R 

445). Miguel Lawrence plays with a most natural 

birdlike quality that is very attractive and 

musical. Often these pieces, with their 

extremely high tessitura, are piercing and onedimensional 

as the player concentrates on hitting 

the notes and staying in tune. Here the 

color is varied and rich, and the virtuoso playing 

delightful to hear. 

C MOORE 

VIVALDI: Sacred Music 

Vocal and Instrumental Ensemble of Lausanne, 

English Bach Festival, Gulbenkian Choir & 

Orchestra/ Michel Corboz 

Warner 67621 [4CD] 284 minutes 

What a great bargain! This set of recordings 

from Erato in the mid-70s, first released on LP 



and later CD, has not been available for quite 

some time. For people who like older Vivaldi 

recordings and who are not particularly interested 

in having every scrap of sacred choral 

music that Vivaldi ever wrote, this is just right, 

and it’s available for around $23. You can’t 

beat that. 

Both Glorias (R 588 and 589) are in this set, 

as well as a Kyrie (R 587) and Credo (R 591). 

Two popular Marian works are included: the 

Magnificat (R 610) and the Stabat Mater (R 

621). The remainder are psalms and motets, 

some of the latter for solo voice: two different 

Dixit Dominus (R 594 and 595), Nisi Dominus 

(R 608), O qui Caeli (R 631), Beatus Vir (R 597), 

Lauda Jerusalem (R 609) Nulla in Mundo Pax 

Sincera (R 630), Canta in Prato (R 623), and In 

Furore (R 626). 

These renditions are old-fashioned in 

terms of current thought on Vivaldi performance 

practices. They’re quite full and lush, 

tending to be slower than some but not ponderous 

(though the familiar Gloria, which is 

first on the program, sounds quite up to date 

with its fast clip). I quite like them, but then 

I’m tolerant of a fairly wide range of practices: 

I think the music will bear it. 

Don’t expect SACD sound. Though the 

sound isn’t bad, neither is it state-of-the-art, 

and the singing sounds ever so slightly muffled. 

There are no notes, either. A small booklet 

lists the works and their sections by track and 

indicates which soloists perform in what 

works. This is probably not a drawback to the 

serious collector who simply wants to round 

out his collection with these (by now) historic 

recordings, but it makes the set less than desirable 

for introducing someone to Vivaldi’s 

sacred music. I imagine that, although it is less 

than an ideal solution, a Web search will fairly 

readily turn up texts and translations for any of 

these pieces. 

CRAWFORD 

WAGNER: Die Meistersinger 

Theo Adam (Sachs), Pilar Lorengar (Eva), James 

King (Walther), Benno Kusche (Beckmesser), 

Loren Driscoll (David), Ezio Flagello (Pogner); 

Metropolitan Opera/ Thomas Schippers 


The second installment in Sony’s Met Opera 

series takes us into Mozart and the German 

repertory and also begins to sound faint alarm 

bells. Given the extraordinary wealth of material 

available in the Met’s broadcast archive, 

why should the early releases in this series flirt 

with the mediocre? This is not a bad Meistersinger—a 

routine night at the Met can still 

reach a pretty high standard—but surely there 

were better performances of the opera available. 

Theo Adam was not really an important 

member of the company. He sang only 17 performances 

in four seasons, raised to prominence 

by the chronic shortage of heroic baritones. 

This 1972 Sachs finds him in typical 

form: slightly dry and gravelly and fairly 

monotonous in timbre, but always dignified 

and eloquent. He had the bearing for Sachs (as 

he did for Wotan), he was persuasive on stage, 

he knew his way around the great monologs, 

but you still wish the timbre had more intrinsic 

beauty. Kusche, whose only Met role was 

Beckmesser (he sang it all of seven times), 

once had a rich, handsome voice—listen to 

him on Kempe’s estimable 1956 EMI recording—but 

by 1972 the top was gone (along with 

a few of Beckmesser’s high notes) and the rest 

had really dried up. His verbal skills remained 

intact, however, and he’s lively and alert at 

every moment, his words always uttered with 

great relish. The third singer who needs indulgence 

is tenor Loren Driscoll, singing his last 

role at the Met. The voice is substantial but 

peculiar in timbre—husky and clotted much of 

the time, without the graceful lightness one 

wants to hear in David. 

The rest of the performers are very appealing, 

down to the fluent Kothner of Donald Graham. 

Flagello is a sonorous Pogner, and Clifford 

Harvuot a mellow, resonant Watchman. 

Among the masters, almost unnoticeable in 

the tiny role of Schwarz, is James Morris, no 

less. I remember this run of performances fairly 

well, and I thought that Lorengar was not 

entirely suited to Eva. She was always a lovely, 

vibrant performer, but the role keeps her 

below the best part of her voice. The broadcast 

microphones help her out quite a bit. She has 

presence most of the time, and when she can 

ascend to her upper range, as in ‘O Sachs, 

mein Freund’ and the top line of the Quintet, 

she’s absolutely gorgeous. She’s also touching 

and believable, especially in her scenes with 

Sachs and Walther in Act 2—you really care 

about this Elsa. King is a heroic, ringing 

Walther. He’s not subtle, but his stamina is 

impressive, and he sings with undiminished 

vigor and gleaming tone from start to finish. 

Schippers seems really happy in the 

busiest parts of the score, particularly the conclusions 

to Acts 1 and 2. He always keeps the 

performance moving along, and the many cuts 

the Met was taking in the 70s make it seem to 

go even swifter. Among the missing material 

are a big chunk of David’s Act 1 recitation, 

about half the “Jerum” scene and Beckmesser’s 

serenade from Act 2, the second half 

of the workshop scene for Sachs and Walther, 

and part of Sachs’s ‘Verachtet mir’. 



The sound is of acceptable broadcast quality, 

a little congested and strident but listenable, 

even if below 1972 standards. Sometimes 

Adam and Lorengar seem to wander off mike, 

the last thing either of them needs. The booklet 

has a synopsis and track list but no notes or 

libretto. Adam was Karajan’s Sachs in his 1970 

EMI Meistersinger, but Lorengar and King did 

not record their roles in the studio, so their 

admirers will be especially happy to have this. 

LUCANO 

WAGNER: Die Walküre 

Jon Vickers (Siegmund), Leonie Rysanek 

(Sieglinde), Karl Ridderbusch (Hunding), Thomas 

Stewart (Wotan), Birgit Nilsson (Brünnhilde), 

Christa Ludwig (Fricka); Metropolitan Opera/ 

Berislav Klobucar 


In the mid-1960s, after extended negotiations, 

Herbert von Karajan was persuaded to supervise 

and conduct a production of Wagner’s 

four Ring operas at the Metropolitan in New 

York. Beginning in 1966 with several performances 

of Das Rheingold, the series was to 

continue in 1967 with Die Walkure, while 

Siegfried and Götterdämmerung would follow 

in the next two seasons. Das Rheingold and Die 

Walkure were completed as envisioned, but 

then serious problems between Karajan and 

the Met arose, which resulted in the termination 

of the series in 1968. The two remaining 

operas were thus never performed. 

This was one of the final offerings in the 

Met series, and it was not conducted by Karajan 

but by a substitute. It has been suggested 

that Karajan was present at the performance, 

but that is not known with certainty. The Met’s 

skimpy notes in this set are a listing of casts, 

tracks, and timings. 

Berislav Klobucar was a Croatian musician, 

born in Zagreb in 1924. He was active in eastern 

Europe as a conductor, mostly of opera, for 

much of his life, but how he ended up at the 

Met is not easily ascertained. He leads a basically 

slow performance, at 327 minutes nearly 

half an hour slower than Karl Böhm, who at 

300 minutes defines the faster end of the 

acceptable spectrum. Does Klobucar merely 

follow Karajan’s course? He’s at least 10 minutes 

too slow, but there’s a lot to like with 

Klobucar. His contribution is generally positive. 

The singing cast is a mixed group of generally 

well-regarded vocalists. The star of the 

show is of course Nilsson, whose robust and 

brilliant soprano voice can handle everything 

Wagner throws at her. Moreover she has a 

comprehension of the contours and structural 

constructs that eludes less accomplished 

singers. Christa Ludwig, as Fricka, is also very 

impressive dramatically and musically. Leonie 

Rysanek is the Sieglinde by which others are 

judged, and she is in top form here. She was 

also Böhm’s Sieglinde. 

Jon Vickers is satisfactory as Siegmund, 

though not quite in top form, while Thomas 

Stewart is a very fine Wotan overall. Karl Ridderbusch 

is also a top-notch Hunding. The 

Valkyries are all right, though not much more 

than that. They are clearly less impressive than 

the ones Böhm had at Bayreuth. Despite the 

fact that Böhm finishes the whole show nearly 

half an hour quicker than Klobucar, he is 

noticeably slower in the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, 

a good example of his modus operandi, where 

he quickly gets through the narratives while 

markedly slowing for the great dramatic 

scenes. 

The 1969 sound is, though monaural, clear, 

open, and undistorted. It’s a good recording of 

a good Met performance. 

The best performance I’ve ever heard of 

the final scene of Walküre is sung by Nilsson 

and Hans Hotter in a 2CD EMI set (9703), 

accompanied by the Philharmonia splendidly 

conducted by Leopold Ludwig, and it leaves 

Furtwängler, Böhm, Karajan, Solti, Haitink and 

everyone else in its dust. It was part of a scheduled 

complete EMI Ring that for some reason 

never saw the light of day. 

MCKELVEY 

WAGNER: Wesendonck Songs; see MAHLER 

WARSHAUER: Symphony 1; Tekeeyah 

Haim Avitsur, shofar, trb; Moravian Philharmonic/ 

Petr Vronsky 


I admit to expecting something soothing, New- 

Agey, and maybe sad before listening to South 

Carolina-based composer Meira Warshauer’s 

four-movement, 27-minute Living, Breathing 

Earth (Symphony 1, 2006). So I was surprised 

by the agitation and seeming anger in I (‘Call 

of the Cicadas’). Warshauer was inspired by 

the cicadas’ mating calls—”20-30 second 

waves of overlapping sound energizing the 

Carolina and Georgia summer”. The soothing 

music I was expecting comes in II (‘Tahuayo 

River at Night’), inspired by the peacefulness 

of the Peruvian rain forest. III (‘Wings in 

Flight’) is about butterflies, birds, and the play 

of light on water. The finale portrays the ‘Living, 

Breathing Earth’ with a five-beat rhythm 

of slow, steady sonorities underlying gentle 

surface action. All in all, it is a lovely pieces of 

music. Ms Warshauer has mastered the art of 

depicting nature in sound. 

Tekeeyah (2008) is scored for shofar, trombone, 

and orchestra. “In the Jewish tradition”, 

she writes, “the shofar, the horn of a ram or 



other kosher animal, is sounded to wake up 

the soul. The raw animal sound reaches inside, 

rousing us from our slumber of complacency 

and breaking walls of separation. In this concerto, 

the shofar calls to all of humanity.” Various 

kinds of shofar calls, all with specific function 

and symbolism in Jewish holidays, are 

heard in this three-section, 25-minute work. 

Part I (‘A Call’) is ethereal, with sustained shofar 

and string sounds, and with wind sounds 

apparently made by orchestra members. II 

(‘Breaking Walls’) has guttural blasts by trombone 

and shofar, along with discordant 

orchestral sounds, leading to an early climax 

followed by a long period of peace. III (‘Dance 

of Truth’) ends the work with energetic, rhythmic 

passages interspersed with shofar calls. 

The disc includes computer-accessible 

supplemental materials. There are sound clips 

(including a 10-minute interview with composer 

Warshauer and shofar-trombone soloist 

Avitsur), videos of Warshauer discussing her 

pieces and Avitsur playing shofar, and biographies 

of both. And you can gaze at and turn 

the pages of tiny reproductions of the scores. 

WEBERN: Quartet; see BRAHMS 

KILPATRICK 

WHITELEY:Intrada; In Memoriam Duruflé: 

Scherzo; Toccata di Dissonanze; Aubade; 

Trilogy on Stanzas of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; 

Scherzetto & Fugue on Francis Jackson; 5 Sisters 

Windows; Passacaglia 

John Scott Whiteley, org 


Whiteley, organist at York Cathedral from 1975 

to 2010, is remembered here, aside from his 

other numerous recordings, for his fine performance 

of Jongen’s complete organ works (Priory 

731, M/A 2005). 

The instrument is a 4-105 Walker (1904), 

Harrison & Harrison (1917), Walker (1960), 

Coffin rebuild (1993). The selections were written 

from 1998 to 2010. Recorded in 2010, this 

seems to be a farewell collection of pieces 

Whiteley wrote in his last decade as Organist at 

York Cathedral. The liner notes by Whiteley 

are far too extensive and detailed to interest 

the casual listener. They look like pages in a 

biography he may be planning, as they supply 

what inspired each piece, the registration he 

used, and an analysis of the principal works. 

For example, we are told that Variation III in 

the Passacaglia is linked to the 6th variation of 

the Passacaglia of Rheinberger’s 8th Sonata, or 

that in the Variation XIV, the light that dances 

in XXVI is foreshadowed by an allegresse of 

exquisite delicacy. 

Intrada lacks the elegance of Elgarian 

pomp, substituting instead an in-your-face 

blast from the high pressure reeds. The tribute 

to Duruflé’s Scherzo lacks any resemblance to 

that piece but still has a charming lightness. 

Whiteley’s Toccata uses melodies from Frescobaldi, 

and has far less dissonance than the 

title suggests. Aubade is another lighter composition, 

but not one of great substance. One 

might well improvise something more atmospheric 

than this. 

Five Sisters Windows will be familiar to 

anyone who has visited York Cathedral. Positioned 

in the north transept, the five huge windows 

were originally completed in 1260. They 

were done in grisaille with foliage motifs, a 

technique popular in medieval times, especially 

with the Cistercians. The outside light is filtered 

through the grey-green color. Much 

more recently (1925) the windows came to 

represent the women killed in WW I. Now it is 

both world wars. They are each 57 feet tall. 

They seem appropriately described musically 

with creative registrations. ‘Glints’, the first 

movement, is scored for the 15th, Tierce, Mixtures, 

and Cymbal to describe the small flashes 

of light that appear and fade. The opening 

pitches will test the limits of your hearing: they 

are stratospheric. The other four pieces are 

‘Tracery’, ‘Dichronic Variations’, ‘Grisaille’, 

and ‘Lancets’, likewise pictured. 

The program closes with Passacaglia (2009) 

with its 28 variations. Each variation is 

changed in registration, style, and volume. It’s 

a bit drawn out but an interesting showpiece 

for the instrument. 

METZ 

WILLEY: Quartets 3, 7, 8 

Esterhazy Quartet 


Born in 1939 in Massachusetts, James Willey 

studied at Eastman with Bernard Rogers and 

Howard Hanson and later with Gunther 

Schuller. The sharply conflicting idioms of his 

teachers are reflected in his string quartets, 

which merge contemporary-sounding astringency 

and string effects with distorted references 

to hymns, folk tunes, country fiddling, 

and other bits of musical “Americana”. I found 

the resulting mishmash in Quartets 1, 2, and 6 

on CRI 816 (Nov/Dec 1999) filled with too 

many crude stylistic inconsistencies to engender 

the coherence and integrity required for 

enjoyable music. 

These three quartets also exhibit the deleterious 

effects of Willey’s attention-deficit-disorder 

approach. Every once in a while an interesting 

idea emerges—for example the apparent 

fugue subject at 4:20 in his 16-minute, single-movement 

Third Quartet from 1981. But 

the actual fugue is aborted, as the distracted 

musical narrative is quickly diverted onto 



another path. Quartets 7 and 8 are more 

recent—from the past decade or so—and show 

at least in some movements considerable 

improvement in clear, deliberate formal logic 

and stylistic constancy. An example is the 

finale of Quartet 7, a dandy fleet-footed dancefantasy 

on irregular rhythmic patterns; it’s 

catchy and exciting—as well as unified—for all 

of its five minutes. Other movements tend to 

get derailed onto eccentric byways that puzzle 

the listener, as when Willey’s more-or-less 

modern idiom veers off into John Adamsy renditions 

of colonial-era hymns in his Eighth 

Quartet. 

If post-modern jumbles with a strong 

American flavor are your cup of tea, you may 

like Willey’s perambulations. As far as I’m concerned, 

Ives did more than enough of this sort 

of thing nearly a century ago. The Esterhazy 

Quartet plays with evident passion and devotion, 

though it sometimes sounds a bit ragged. 

Albany’s sonics are very good. 

LEHMAN 

WOLF: Mörike Lieder 

Susan Dunn, s; Thomas Potter, bar; John Wustman, 

p 

MSR 1337 [2CD] 148 minutes 

This set contains the 53 lieder composed in 

1888 by Wolf to the poems of Eduard Mörike. 

The singers are Susan Dunn, once a Met 

soprano with what seemed to be a glorious 

future in opera, and Thomas Potter, an American 

baritone with more than 25 years of experience 

in opera as a Verdi baritone. Dunn’s 

once pure and powerful spinto soprano sang 

Leonore (Il Trovatore) and Lina (Stiffelio) to 

critical acclaim at the Met for several seasons, 

but then she vanished from the New York 

opera scene. She is now the head of vocal and 

opera programs at Duke University. Neither 

Dunn nor Potter seems to have much experience 

in the lieder repertory. 

In fact, Potter’s career, as related in the 

notes, began at the San Francisco Opera Center 

and includes many years of singing at the 

Stadttheater (Municipal Opera House) in St 

Gallen, Switzerland. He also sang in opera 

houses in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and 

Brazil. He is currently the Voice and Choral 

Arts Coordinator at the University of Central 

Florida in Orlando, where he teaches and 

directs the opera program. John Wustman is 

the excellent accompanist, well known to collectors 

of lieder recordings. 

From the evidence here, neither Dunn nor 

Potter are particularly good lieder singers. 

Dunn can’t seem to control her big voice; she 

overwhelms the music—not to mention the 

texts—by repeatedly attacking them as if they 

were Verdi arias. Her diction is poor much of 

the time, and the quality of her voice has deteriorated. 

It is often wobbly and edgy when she 

puts pressure on it, as she does too often in 

this recital. For example, in ‘Er ist’s’, notes that 

must be sustained become wobbly and the 

song ends in a dramatic, operatic climax. Generally, 

light sopranos like Schwarzkopf or 

Seefried do much better in this repertory. It 

needs refinement and smoothness more than 

dramatic power. ‘Schlafendes Jesuskind’, as 

Dunn sings and interprets it, becomes another 

example of her inability to sustain notes. It’s a 

sweet religious song that ends softly; but by 

that time it has lost its charm, at least for this 

listener. Charm and humor are also missing 

from her rendition of ‘Nixe Binsefuss’, which, 

in addition, suffers from poor diction. 

Potter’s voice sounds rough or raspy much 

of the time; it lacks tonal purity and isn’t in any 

way alluring. His diction is somewhat better 

than Dunn’s and he generates a bit of excitement 

in ‘Der Feuerreiter’, one of Wolf’s best 

and most exciting songs. But that’s not enough 

for me to recommend this rather unfortunate 

release, which also comes without text or 

translation. For a recital of Wolf’s songs, that’s 

an almost unforgivable omission. 

MOSES 

WOLPE: Piano Pieces 

David Holzman 


Volume 6 in Bridge’s Stefan Wolpe series has 

10 piano works dating from 1926 to 1959 

(Wolpe’s dates are 1902-72). The program 

opens with what should probably be considered 

the main event, Four Studies on Basic 

Rows (1935-36), a rather clinical-sounding title 

for these striking, ambitious etudes. As with 

Debussy’s, these concentrate on fundamental 

musical elements. There are a couple built 

around single intervals (one in tritones, one in 

melodically filled-in thirds), one for expanding 

and contracting intervals (the ‘Presto furioso’), 

and the last of them a stupendous Passacaglia, 

which runs through all intervals one at a time 

as its theme. It’s a tour de force, compositionally 

and pianistically. We are reminded of 

Elliott Carter’s crucial contact with Wolpe 

early on in his career, and it’s not hard to hear 

the effect this music had on the younger composer. 

Pianist Holzman confronts the studies 

boldly, though not very cleanly. 

Most of the remaining entries are more 

modest in nature. Three Pieces for Youngsters 

(1950) are reminiscent of Schoenberg’s briefer 

efforts. Song, Speech, Hymn, Strophe, Tenderest 

Motion (1939) is a moody little birthday present 

for his wife Irma (Schoenberg). The first of 

the Two Pieces (1941) could almost be 

Debussy, while the second is a wild hora. A 



muddy Toccata in Three Parts (1941) is loosely 

modeled on Bach, with a cluttered serial fugue 

as finale following a despairing central Adagio. 

Two sets of Studies for Piano (1946-48) are 

very brief exercises on the techniques Wolpe 

was developing linking him with the Abstract 

Expressionist painters of the day. The early 

Two Dances (1926) are an Expressionist blues 

and tango from the Jazz Age decidedly not 

reminiscent of Stravinsky. Palestinian Notebook 

(1939) contains four modal studies ending 

with another hora, and Two Vocalises 

(1959) close with a cakewalk belonging to 

another time and place. 

This is a fascinating collection of little 

known music by a worthy if challenging composer 

stubbornly remaining on the fringes of 

the repertoire. Mr Holzman gets credit for 

bravery. This is very difficult music, but he is 

not the most accomplished of pianists technically, 

and listeners must mentally edit out 

more than is generally acceptable these days. 

He supplies detailed and engaging notes. 

GIMBEL 

attitude. This work, though a fine one, is a bit 

farther out than I think Piston ever went. It has 

Wyner’s curious blend of frenetic activity, 

humor, and dark lyricism and is played with a 

sense of drama by Milovanovic, who plays keyboard 

from now on. 

In Dances of Atonement for violin and 

piano, the first part is based on a Kol Nidrei 

chant (not the one we cellists know so well) 

followed by a kind of answering movement. It 

is a work from 1976 played with style by 

Pogorelov and Milovanovic. Finally, we meet 

the clarinetist from Ibis in Cadenza! a fourmovement 

suite of 1969 of varied and strongly 

portrayed moods, played with sensitivity by 

Norsworthy with Milovanovic on the harpsichord. 

This is an attractive program of music 

by one of our finest composers. 

D MOORE 

ZAIMONT: Quartet; Zones; Astral; Serenade 

Harlem Qt; Awadagin Pratt, p 


WYNER: Commedia; De Nova; Partita; 

Dances of Atonement; Cadenza! 

Richard Stoltzman, Michael Norsworthy, cl; 

Dmitri Pogorelov, v; Rafael Popper-Keiser, vc; 

These four chamber pieces by Judith Lang Zaimont 

all involve the Harlem Quartet and its 

members, with guest pianist Awadagin Pratt 

on board for the two piano trios. The release is 

titled “Eternal Evolution”. 

Yehudi Wyner, p; Biljana Milovanovic, p, hpsi; The two-movement String Quartet (2007) 

Ibis Camerata 

has the subtitle The Figure, which refers to a 


rather sullen falling half step motive and to a 

couple of slightly more elaborate ancillary fig- 

Yehudi Wyner (b 1929) is one of our most 

imaginative composers. If you are not sure 

how to take his music, read his liner notes. 

They introduce you to a world of humor and 

seriousness intermingled in an unusual but 

very human way. This is a man of much wisdom, 

and his music does as much searching 

and discovering as any I have heard. The combination 

of his writing and his music here is 

worth exploring. 

ures all transformed and put in various contexts 

in the course of these very freely composed 

movements. Ms Zaimont’s language is 

firmly neo-tonal, its modest ambiguity culminating 

in clear triads at the work’s close. After 

the first movement’s expository introduction, 

the music takes on the character of a scherzo, 

then drifts into a sort of fantasy recitative. The 

final movement begins with intense drive, 

then goes through episodes of mystery, inter- 

Commedia is a 16-minute adventure for ruption, and bits of lyricism until the some- 

clarinet and piano written in 2002 for clarwhat cosmic culmination. It is serious but 

inetist Richard Stoltzman, who performs it comes across as a bit scattered. It is very well 

here with the composer at the piano. It is an played by this fine group. 

eventful work, not all funny by any means, but Zones (1994) is Ms Zaimont’s Second Piano 

with numerous virtuoso passages played with Trio. In three large movements, all about the 

masterly style by both artists. De Nova, for weather (‘Cold’, ‘Warm’, and ‘Temperate’), the 

cello and chamber group, is an 8-minute piece work begins with a passionate opening move- 

from 1970 combining a number of different ment. II begins as an extremely expressive, 

moods with a virtuoso cello part played with broadly romantic slow movement and turns 

polish by Popper-Keiser and members of the into a seemingly separate, amiably dancing 

Ibis Camerata conducted by the composer. movement in itself. The finale begins actively 

Now we return in time to 1952 and a piano but is interrupted by a pensive passage that 

solo Partita written while Wyner was studying seems to get lost. The piece ends festively. A 

with Walter Piston. The composer tells us an large, ambitious (perhaps overambitious) 

amusing and meaningful tale, as is his wont, of work, the music is built in blocks, and makes 

how Piston never had a word of criticism for up in enthusiasm what it may lack in concision 

this piece, though when Wyner went back to or cohesion. I don’t dismiss the possibility of a 

studying with Hindemith, there was a different more feminist understanding of Ms Zaimont’s 



compositional strategies. Mr Pratt does a creditable 

job with the big piano part. 

Astral (2004, 2009) is an expressive but 

again thoroughly sectional (in fact, 11-part) 

solo piece for either solo clarinet or solo viola 

(here. The clarinet version may be heard on 

Albany 785 played by John Anderson, M/A 

2006). It is extremely well played here by Juan- 

Miguel Hernandez. I could have done without 

the humming at the end (and I could do without 

the extracurricular stompings in the other 

pieces as well). 

Serenade (2006) is a short but lovely piece 

for piano trio, a lyrical little song without 

words that lasts five minutes. Because of its 

modest length, I find it the most effective work 

here, but it has a rather abrupt ending. It 

seems to me that from a traditional perspective 

Ms Zaimont does not handle large forms 

particularly well, though her take on tonality is 

musical and welcome. Notes may be found by 

placing the disc in your computer. 

GIMBEL 

ZEBELJAN: Horses of St Mark; Rukoveti; 

Minstrel’s Dance; Seliste; Escenas Picaras 

Aile Asszonyi, s; Zebeljan Ensemble; Janacek Philharmonic/ 

David Porcelijn 


Isidora Zebeljan, born in Belgrade in 1967, 

grew up in the countryside between Serbia, 

Romania, and Hungary—the same area where 

Bartok and Ligeti were born. She attended the 

Belgrade Music Academy and has been a composition 

professor there since 2002. Her opera 

Zora D won international attention in 2003 

and earned her more commissions. This 

album presents works spanning her 20s and 

30s, from 1987 (Seliste) to 2005 (Minstrel’s 

Dance). 

Seliste (Deserted Village) is a seven-minute 

elegy for chamber orchestra that evokes the 

melancholy image of a place where people no 

longer live. For a while, quiet, folk-like 

melodies are heard over gentle, muted string 

textures. The pace becomes agitated, as if dark 

secrets are resurfacing, but the work returns to 

an atmosphere of hushed mystery by the end. 

While the harmonic language is quite tonal 

in Seliste, it is strongly dissonant in the 21minute, 

three-movement symphony Escenas 

Picaras (Picaresque Scenes, 1992). Here Zebeljan 

attempts to portray the life of a picaro, the 

fictional rogue (think Till Eulenspiegel) that 

inspired 16th-Century Spanish writers. In I 

(‘The Circus...and Other Tales’), the action is 

frenetic, while a languid torpor permeates II 

(‘The Blues, Etc’). III (‘Funeral March and Final 

Development’) rehashes earlier material and 

ends with a dissonant bang. 

Rukoveti (2000) is a 15-minute setting of 

five songs, the texts selected and adapted by 

the composer from a collection of old Serbian 

poetry. One cannot help thinking of the horrors 

of the 1990s wars in Yugoslavia while 

reading and listening as a young woman turns 

from loving to bitter. Soprano Aile Asszonyi is 

the very expressive singer with a voice that 

ranges from gentle to powerful. The harmonic 

language is tonal sometimes but more often 

strongly dissonant. 

The most recent works are for chamber 

orchestra but seem to have little else in common. 

The 9-minute Horses of St Mark (2004) is 

chaotic, atonal, and often reminds me of parts 

of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The three-movement, 

15-minute Minstrel’s Dance (2005) is 

more Bartokian, with tonal though dissonant 

harmonies, folk-like melodies, and complex 

meters. But it is not really Bartokian—it is 

more complex, spontaneous, multifaceted, 

polystylistic. Endlessly fascinating. 

Remarkable program, excellent readings. 

Minstrel’s Dance is played by the 20-person 

Zebeljan Ensemble, apparently formed for this 

recording. 

KILPATRICK 

ZORN: The Satyr’s Play; Visions of Dionysius 

Cyro Baptista, Kenny Wollesen, perc; Peter Evans, 

tpt; David Taylor, trb; Marcus Rojas, tu 

Tzadik 7390—37 minutes 

The Satyr’s Play, 26 minutes of eight short 

“odes” for percussion, is either random noises, 

free solos, or a steady beat for a little bit. The 

booklet includes “magickal texts” and incantations 

meant to be read along with the play; I 

suppose Wiccans or pagans would get into 

this, if I may presume to speak for them. ‘Cerberus’, 

for the three brass instruments, sounds 

like a transcription of a 1970s-era piece for 

tape; it’s impressive what the instruments can 

do, and I wonder if there’s some electronic 

manipulation. The sound is excellent, especially 

in The Satyr’s Play. 

I don’t have much use for this kind of 

thing, but it is very tautly written avant-garde 

music. And someone had the brilliant idea to 

include a cellophane inner sleeve for the disc 

so you don’t scratch it when you take it out; 

industry, please start doing this. Notes are in 

English. 

ESTEP 

The cultural role of football in preparing 

American youth for a lifetime of violence 

and morally degrading competitiveness 

should not be overlooked. 

—Dennis Rohatyn 



ZUMSTEEG: The Island of the Spirits 

Falko Hönisch (Prospero), Christiane Karg 

(Miranda), Benjamin Hulett (Fernando), Andrea 

Lauren Brown (Ariel); Hofkapelle Stuttgart & 

Choir/ Frieder Bernius 

Carus 83.229 [3CD] 139 minutes 

Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg (1760-1802) was a 

German composer, conductor, and cellist who 

spent most of his professional life at the Ducal 

Court in Stuttgart. He composed mainly 

operas, incidental music, and cantatas for festive 

occasions in the family of the Duke of 

Württemberg. As the Ducal Kapellmeister, he 

produced many of Mozart’s neglected operas, 

as well as Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutte, and 

The Magic Flute. His greatest success as an 

opera composer was Die Geisterinsel, an adaptation 

of Shakespeare’s Tempest. 

This opera was first performed in Stuttgart 

in 1798; it became so popular that it was kept 

in the repertory there for more than 20 years. It 

uses a completely different libretto from Frank 

Martin’s opera that’s also based on the Shakespeare 

play, also reviewed in this issue of ARG. 

This is its first recording. 

Unlike Martin’s music, Zumsteeg’s is quite 

conventional for its time; Haydn or Mozart 

could have composed it—and it would have 

been better if they had. It’s diatonic and mostly 

in major keys. It’s a sequence of arias and 

recitatives, interrupted by spoken dialog 

[Collections are in the usual order: orchestral, 

chamber ensembles, brass ensembles, 

bassoon, cello & double bass, clarinet, 

flute, guitar, harp, harpsichord, miscellaneous, 

oboe, organ, piano, saxophone, 

trumpet & brass solos, viola, violin, wind 

ensembles, early, choral, vocal.] 

Israel Philharmonic Orchestra 

70th Anniversary 

BARTOK: Concerto for Orchestra; BEE- 

THOVEN: Fidelio Overture; Piano Concerto 

5; Symphony 4; Violin Concerto; BEN-HAIM: 

Israeli Capriccio; BERLIOZ: Harold in Italy; 

BERNSTEIN: Chichester Psalms; BLOCH: 

Schelomo; BRAHMS: Piano Concerto 1; 

DVORAK: Symphony 7; GRIEG: Piano Concerto; 

HINDEMITH: Symphonic Metamorphosis; 

MAHLER: Symphony 4; MASSENET: 

4 Pieces from Le Cid; MENDELSSOHN: Calm 

Sea & Prosperous Voyage; Hebrides Overture; 

Symphony 4; MOZART: Marriage of Figaro 

Overture; Piano Concerto 27; Sinfonia Concertante; 

Symphony 41; RIMSKY-KOR- 

SAKOFF: Capriccio Espagnol; SAINT- 

Collections 

(which has been omitted in this recording, as 

have several arias and some recitatives). The 

result is a more or less conventional love story 

of Miranda and Fernando; Prospero’s exile is 

hardly mentioned, and his magic is incidental 

to the story. The libretto is by one Friedrich 

William Cotter; much of it is in rhythmic verse. 

Unfortunately, only the German text is included 

in the booklet; but a detailed synopsis of the 

plot, translated into English and French, has 

also been supplied. 

This cast is not as powerful as the Swiss 

cast in Martin’s opera. As Prospero, Falko 

Hönisch’s baritone lacks power and his voice 

is not smooth enough or alluring; perhaps this 

is at least partly owing to the recording venue, 

a High School of Music in Stuttgart. As the 

lovers, Christiane King and Benjamin Hulett 

sing their arias quite well, their voices fresh 

and attractive. So does Andrea Lauren Brown, 

as Ariel, though her performance is not the 

least bit ghostly. Fabio, Fernando’s squire, 

makes a brief appearance here, his role well 

sung by mezzo soprano Sophie Harmsen. But 

several of the leading characters in Shakespeare’s 

play have been omitted in this opera, 

including Alonzo, Antonio (Prospero’s wicked 

brother), and Gonzalo (his friend). So what 

remains ? A fairly conventional love story set 

on an island, with music that’s generic and not 

in any way original. Alas, poor Shakespeare! 

MOSES 

SAENS: Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso; 

SCHUBERT: Symphonies 5+9; SCHUMANN: 

Symphonies 3+4; SMETANA: Bartered Bride 

Overture; Moldau; STRAVINSKY: Firebird 

Suite; TCHAIKOVSKY: Nutcracker Suite; 

Violin Concerto; VERDI: Traviata Prelude; 

VIVALDI: 4 Seasons; WEBER: Oberon Overture 

Shlomo Mintz, Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, 

Itzhak Perlman, v; Daniel Benyamini, va; Janos 

Starker, vc; Julius Katchen, Arthur Rubinstein, 

Radu Lupu, Pnina Salzman, Daniel Barenboim, p; 

choruses/ Paul Kletzki, Josef Krips, Georg Solti, 

Jean Martinon, Istvan Kertesz, Zubin Mehta, 

Rafael Kubelik, Leonard Bernstein, Daniel Barenboim, 

Carlo Maria Giulini, Lorin Maazel, Kurt 

Masur 

Helicon 9614 [12CD] 15:15 

Bronislaw Huberman, a Polish-born Jew and 

violinist, persuaded about 75 musicians to 

immigrate to Palestine, forming the Palestine 

Orchestra in 1936; Toscanini conducted the 

first concert in Tel-Aviv on December 26th, a 

program that included music by Wagner (this 

was two years before Kristallnacht). The 



orchestra also toured Egypt in 1940-43, played 

for Allied forces in World War II, had its name 

changed to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra 

in 1948 and played ‘Hatikvah’ at the Declaration 

of Independence ceremony that year, 

toured the United States in 1950, moved into 

the new Mann Auditorium in 1957, played 

Mahler 1 and ‘Hatikvah’ in Berlin in 1971 (a 

mere 500 meters from the Reichstag), performed 

in Poland in 1987, named Bernstein 

their Conductor Laureate in 1988, and played 

to a gas mask-wearing audience during the 

First Gulf War. Its first recordings were made 

under Paul Kletzki in 1954; this set contains 

music from only the labels represented in 

Israel by Helicon: Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, 

and EMI—so no Sony, Teldec, or 

RCA. I’m not sure why this is made available 

this long after the anniversary (2006). 

Several of the Decca recordings had never 

been issued on CD: the Massenet, Dvorak, Bartok, 

Schubert 9, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Berlioz, and 

Bloch (the Schubert has recently been issued— 

more on that later). Archival concert recordings 

of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27, the 

Ben-Haim, the Beethoven Violin Concerto, 

and Schumann symphonies are appearing for 

the first time. The booklet has a three-page 

introduction, a page about each decade, and 

several color pages of newpaper articles and 

memorabilia in English and Hebrew. Brian 

Buerkle will review another Israel Philharmonic 

box set, entirely conducted by Zubin Mehta. 

Kletzki conducted Mendelssohn’s Calm 

Sea and Prosperous Voyage in 1954. It’s mono, 

of course, and balances aren’t perfect, but it’s 

not bad to listen to. The opening is elegant! 

There’s a rare serenity to the playing, and the 

strings phrase their lines ever so delicately. 

The fast part is full of excitement and sunshine. 

Krips conducts a passable Mozart Symphony 

41—some of it lively, but some of it 

pedestrian, especially the Minuet. IV sparkles 

in spite of a few shaky rhythms. Solti’s Schubert 

5 is stately—there’s no out-of-this-world 

creativity, just good music-making. Its Minuet 

has a fetching, carefree lilt to the melody, while 

the accompaniment gives it a danceable firmness. 

IV is on the fast side, but under control 

the whole time; I find the quicker tempo 

charming. The pieces from Le Cid come from a 

Martinon Decca recording that also had Les 

Patineurs by Meyerbeer, arranged by Lambert. 

The sound is gorgeous; maybe it’s nostalgia, 

but recordings of “light” music from the late 

1950s and early 1960s always sound so genuine—there’s 

no irony. Let’s hope the rest of 

that album will be released sometime. Istvan 

Kertesz gives us a Bartered Bride Overture 

that’s a shade fast for the acoustics, but the 

orchestra sounds ecstatic. 

Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7, with Mehta, is 

lugubrious in I, and any Bohemian sparkle has 

been replaced with a Teutonic grayness in III: 

the hemiolas sound like Brahms, not Dvorak. 

IV has some real yearning to it, and crackling 

percussion work—before long, I found myself 

waving my paws along with the timpani part. 

At important structural moments, Mehta pulls 

the tempo back almost imperceptibly; it’s 

enough to heighten the drama viscerally, perking 

your interest while not showing all the 

cards. There’s an unfortunate moment at the 

beginning of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, 

when the high strings come in just before the 

accelerando, where it sounds like one of the 

engineers did a panicked dive onto the volume 

knob. Why isn’t there a little crescendo in the 

accelerando? That should be like the initial 

drop of a roller coaster. The Dvorak and Bartok 

were recorded in 1972 and 1976 by Decca, but 

the sound is stuffy, and the brass and low 

winds are distant, especially in II of the Bartok—the 

laughing muted trumpet part sounds 

like the engineers put them in the back of the 

hall. The playing is decent. 

Kubelik gives the introduction of Beethoven’s 

Symphony No. 4 the perfect amount 

of space between the chords; the development 

is thrilling, and the orchestra is at the top of 

their game. The DG engineers did a superb job 

on the sound, too (this was recorded in Munich): 

everything is balanced nicely and perfectly 

reverberant. II pedals around on the 

back roads, lost for a bit, but that’s more 

Beethoven’s fault. The slower section of III is 

restful instead of anticipatory; I would prefer 

anticipatory since there’s just been a slow 

movement, but it doesn’t drag. IV is cheerful 

and crisp. 

Mendelssohn’s Fourth, with Bernstein, is a 

concert performance from the Mann Auditorium 

in 1978, and it is rich, lush, but not saccharine. 

This group does well with melodies that 

are bouncy or carefree, giving them lots of 

vitality. 

Mehta’s Nutcracker starts out bland and 

gets worse: the horns in the ‘March’ muscle 

their way in front of the trumpets, and when 

the trumpets finally get free of them, you’d 

think they numbed their tongues with popsicles 

before playing. The ‘Arab Dance’ has a 

sobriety and sadness to it that I’ve never heard 

before, but the ‘Chinese Dance’ (where, oh 

where, did Tchaikovsky get the idea to end it 

with that limp chord?) is jittery and poorly balanced. 

‘Dance of the Reed Flutes’ sounds like 

it’s from a different orchestra entirely—everything 

they did wrong before is suddenly right; 

the clarinetist uses some intelligent rubato in 

‘Waltz of the Flowers’, and the strings shimmer. 



Mehta’s Schubert 9 is another story: I is 

thick with rhetoric and emotional intelligence, 

and the surging crescendos are perfectly executed. 

The Scherzo is played at a slightly 

relaxed tempo and has some Beethovenian fire 

to it, which I don’t think of when I think of 

Schubert, but it’s convincing. Roger Hecht 

gave a detailed review of this recording in the 

last issue, noting that the trombones seemed 

to have wandered off, perhaps having a beer 

across the street. 

Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 is a 1979 recording 

with Mehta and Barbara Hendricks. This 

has never been Mahler’s most interesting symphony 

to me: its themes don’t have the same 

mystery and philosophical depth as some of 

the other symphonies, and it doesn’t have the 

same dramatic arc; even the orchestration isn’t 

as creative. Mehta gets a portentous sound at 

the opening of II, but Freund Hein’s Totentanz 

sounds more like a seaside holiday. III is quite 

restful. Hendricks sounds pleasant and childlike, 

but has trouble staying in tune, and the 

orchestra is suddenly shrill in the loud interludes. 

Bernstein delivers a clean, energetic reading 

of his Chichester Psalms with soloists from 

the Vienna Boys’ Choir. I flashes and thrills; 

the soloist in II is stiff, but the outburst of 

Psalm 2 is frightening, but still under control. 

(I accompanied rehearsals of this earlier this 

year, and was amazed at the simple accompaniment 

to the boy soprano’s part—few composers 

have had the courage to be that understated.) 

The sound is a little muffled and fuzzy 

for Deutsche Grammophon. 

After a well-played Oberon Overture, 

Mehta and Mintz bring us Saint-Saens’s Introduction 

and Rondo Capriccioso, with a searching 

Introduction and a rather toothless Rondo. 

The horns in Capriccio Espagnol are just 

enough out of tune to make you flinch, but the 

rest of it is mostly good except for a few shaggy 

rhythms. 

In the Schubert review I referred to earlier, 

Mr Hecht noted the Old World sound of the 

strings, and that’s what the Firebird makes me 

think of—they have a charming cushiony quality. 

Bernstein conducts, and if the interpretation 

is any indication, he’s having the time of 

his life, wallowing in the elongated phrases, 

the classy horn solos (except the Finale), and 

the steamy oboe part in ‘The Princess’s 

Round’, before startling the living daylights out 

of every one with the ‘Infernal Dance’ (this is a 

concert performance from 1984). Lenny also 

conducts the Hindemith, another concert 

recording, this time from 1989; it is rollicking 

and detailed: he has balanced all the different 

instruments popping in and out of the texture 

with their various lines, and gets an amazing, 

resplendent sound out of the band, even the 

horns. 

Katchen is the soloist and Kertesz the maestro 

in a 1962 Decca release of the Grieg Concerto. 

It’s aggressive in tempo but tempered in 

dynamics in I. Katchen’s touch is a little heavy 

in II; still, everyone plays it like a masterpiece 

instead of a warhorse, which is refreshing. 

Rubinstein’s performance of the Brahms Concerto 

No. 2 was his last recording with any 

orchestra, and the only one he made with the 

Israel Philharmonic; he was 89. The lackluster 

playing, wrong notes, and diminished expression 

are apparent; but I suppose I’ll be lucky if 

I can even sneeze when I’m 89. The orchestra 

plays exceptionally well here, with intensity 

and tenderness. 

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was conducted by 

Mehta in 1982 at the Huberman Festival in the 

Mann Auditorium; Isaac Stern is the soloist for 

Spring, Pinchas Zukerman for Summer, Shlomo 

Mintz for Autumn, and Itzhak Perlman for 

Winter. Stern plays carefully; the tempos are 

slower than normal. II is stunning, and it 

sounds like the strings have their mutes on— 

the quiet is eerie. There’s a hilarious grunt 

from someone, probably Zukerman, during a 

rest in III of Summer; he’s a little shrieky in the 

fast passages. II of Autumn is gorgeous, and 

the lute stop on the harpsichord is unusually 

mellow. Perlman shines in his part. 

Lawrence Hansen reviewed Mozart’s Sinfonia 

Concertante (with Perlman, Zukerman, 

and Mehta, S/O 2006), noting that none of the 

performers except Zukerman had a real affinity 

for Mozart. “But”, he said, “the open-mindedness 

that comes with advancing age has 

made me somewhat less critical than I was 

when this first came out. The solo work from 

both players is brilliant, even if the overall feel 

of the performance is somewhat heavy-handed.” 

I’m inclined to agree, and I’ll add that the 

horns seem to have been recorded from inside 

the bathroom. 

Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, with Perlman, 

is from the EMI “Live in Russia” release 

with Zubin Mehta. It was taped in front of an 

audience that felt the need to assert its presence 

regularly. I’ve always found Perlman’s 

tone to be just a little on the wiry side—not 

enough to annoy me at any given moment, but 

enough for the cumulative effect to keep me 

from listening to him. Taking his vibrato into 

consideration as well, there are many other 

violinists I’d rather listen to first. This performance 

is dogged with shoddy ensemble and 

some unsteadiness from Perlman in I. II is 

pleasant. In III’s opening cadenza, he makes 

me think that if he had tried some of these 

parts this way in the practice room, he would 

have realized they don’t sound that good. 



Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is with Zukerman 

and Mehta in 1989. The introduction is moderately 

paced, creating a somber effect, but Zukerman’s 

intonation and control are all over the 

place in the work. 

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 has Daniel 

Barenboim playing and conducting—it’s a 

broadcast from 1972, and sounds like it is 

monaural. The piano has a few soured notes, 

but Barenboim’s playing is clean, and his 

touch firm. Radu Lupu and Mehta recorded 

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 at Kingsway 

Hall in London for Decca in 1979. Lupu’s interpretation 

is not particularly revelatory—a solid 

performance, just rather vanilla. Much of III 

especially sounds placid. The march in I, 

though, which is the orchestra’s responsibility, 

has a punchiness to it that I’ve not heard 

before. The sound has a little fuzz around the 

edges, too. 

Daniel Benyamini, the IPO’s principal for 

30 years, is the violist for Harold in Italy, a 

piece I’ve only known heretofore as the punch 

line to “What’s the world’s longest viola joke?” 

The acoustic is claustrophobic and bassy for 

Decca from 1975. Benyamini’s legato playing 

is quite impressive: the connections between 

the notes are smoother than usual. It sounds 

like a grittier tone would work better for this 

piece, though—Benyamini’s sweet tone doesn’t 

match the orchestra’s thunder and lightning 

(this is one of their best-sounding pieces 

from this entire set). And I know this isn’t really 

a concerto, but sometimes he does get 

buried. 

This is the first time Bloch’s Schelomo, 

from 1968 with Janos Starker and Mehta, has 

been released on CD. The orchestra, as in the 

Berlioz, is stunning; Starker is good, but often 

not audible enough to be completely captivating. 

Paul Ben-Haim’s (Israeli) Capriccio for 

Piano and Orchestra is the real reason I chose 

this set to review; his works are rarely seen in 

the wild, and I love his Mediterranean harmonies 

and scoring that, though dreamy, are 

not without their turbulence. This 12-minute 

piece didn’t disappoint me. The sound is 

archival quality, but the playing (Pnina Salzman 

and Giulini) is serious and elegant, with a 

certain restlessness. Oh, for some good label to 

take up Ben-Haim’s cause. 

Kurt Masur was the conductor for Schumann’s 

Symphonies 3 and 4; they’re from 

2003, but the sound is more like 1953, and 

something kept bumping the microphone 

stand. They are decent performances: 3:IV is 

particularly charming. The Moldau was 

recorded under Kertesz in 1962 for Decca. It is 

lush and moving, though the Achilles’ horns 

are in their usual weak state. And, wow, the 

marchlike theme is faster than I’ve ever 

heard—almost raucous. This was remastered 

as part of Decca’s “Originals” line of reissues in 

2007, with the original album cover at a tilt on 

the front. That sounds clearer than this, which 

was probably taken from the older Decca reissue 

without the 24-bit remastering. The newer 

Decca release, called Bohemian Rhapsody, has 

music from The Bartered Bride, a few of Dvorak’s 

Slavonic Dances, and his Symphonic 

Variations. 

ESTEP 

Barenboim in Chicago 

GERSHWIN: Cuban Overture; BERNSTEIN: 

Symphonic Dances; RAVEL: Daphnis & 

Chloe Suite 2; WAGNER: Tristan & Isolde 

Chicago Symphony/ Daniel Barenboim 


This release is a mixture of old and new 

recordings from Warner, Teldec, and Erato 

from the later years of Daniel Barenboim’s 

tenure with the Chicago Symphony. I wish I 

could be more excited about it, but it gets off 

to a very slow start. Barenboim’s reading of 

Gershwin’s rambunctious Cuban Overture is 

immediately plagued by a lackadaisical tempo 

that never catches fire. The orchestra also lacks 

the energy level I remember from their 1993 

recording with James Levine (DG 431625: 

Nov/Dec 1993) and doesn’t even come close to 

the 1974 recording of Lorin Maazel and the 

Cleveland Orchestra (London 460612). The 

sound of this recording is very close, but also 

seems slightly engineered. Every once in a 

while, a phrase you’d expect to hear loudly 

from one instrument is suddenly missing from 

the texture while another one pierces through. 

It’s either being adjusted in the booth or there 

are too many microphones. 

The approach to Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic 

Dances is supercharged and fares 

slightly better than the Gershwin. Barenboim 

is sentimental in the tender moments of 

‘Somewhere’ and ‘Finale’ and he ratchets up 

the energy for the dance music of the ‘Mambo’ 

and ‘Cool’. One strange cut occurs at the end 

of track 9 between the ‘Fugue’ and ‘Rumble’ 

that steals away about 30 seconds of Bernstein’s 

timeless score. If I hadn’t already 

played and heard this music a hundred times, 

it wouldn’t sound wrong—but it is. And no 

matter the fine playing of the Chicago Symphony, 

it’s still no match for Bernstein’s own 

recordings (LAPO—DG 4777101: Mar/Apr 

2008, NYPO—Sony 63085: Mar/Apr 1998) or 

Michael Tilson Thomas’s incredible 1996 

recording with the London Symphony (DG 

439926: Mar/Apr 1997). 

After all this jazz-influenced American 

music, it seems odd to include readings of Ravel’s 

Daphnis et Chloe and Wagner’s Tristan 



und Isolde—and there doesn’t seem to be any 

remastering of the old recordings to match 

sound to the current ones. American Record 

Guide found Barenboim to be a master with 

Ravel’s music—just not in this case with the 

Chicago Symphony. But this reading is somewhat 

cold and distant, with not a lot of French 

atmosphere (Erato 45766: Jan/Feb 1993). The 

Wagner gets a better treatment with its burnished 

brass, plaintive winds, and beautiful— 

but rather thin-sounding—strings. Barenboim 

is an experienced Wagnerian, and the Chicago 

Symphony has a rich recorded history in this 

music. This recording sounds as good now as it 

did when we first reviewed it (Teldec 99595: 

May/June 1996). 

BUERKLE 

Concerto Cologne 

DALL’ABACO: 4 Concertos a quattro; 5 Concertos 

a piu instrumenti; LOCATELLI: 5 

Concerti Grossi; CANNABICH: Symphony in 

E-flat; STAMITZ, C: Cello Concerto 4; FILS: 

Symphony in G minor; STAMITZ, J: Symphony 

in G; FRANZL: Symphony 5; VAN- 

HAL: Symphonies in D minor, G minor, C, A 

minor, E minor; KOZELUCH: Symphonies in 

C, A, D, B-flat; EBERL: Symphonies in C, E- 

Flat, D minor 

Werner Matzke, vc; Concerto Cologne 

Warner 69889 [6CD] 7:23 

Hofmusik Compositor, which carried with 

them considerable status and responsibility. 

He left 11 symphonies, and two of these four 

seem new to records. All are good examples of 

Mozartean style writing. 

Anton Eberl (1765-1807) studied with 

Mozart, and several of his works were misattributed 

to Mozart. The second and third 

symphonies here are mature works. Conservative 

music lovers at the time of its premiere 

preferred the second to Beethoven’s Eroica. 

These are powerful pieces that are also superbly 

played. 

The set is well played and recorded. Performances 

that duplicate earlier ones are generally 

the best available. Good notes. 

BAUMAN 

Remembering JFK 

BERNSTEIN: Fanfare for the Inauguration 

of JFK; West Side Story Symphonic Dances; 

LIEBERSON: Remembering JFK; GERSH- 

WIN: Concerto in F; Rhapsody in Blue; LA 

MONTAINE: From Sea to Shining Sea; 

THOMPSON: Testament of Freedom 

Richard Dreyfuss, narr; Tzimon Barto, Earl Wild, 

p; Georgetown University Glee Club; National 

Symphony/ Christoph Eschenbach, Howard 

Mitchell 

Ondine 1190 [2CD] 126 minutes 

These six discs were originally recorded 

The Eschenbach-Barto disc is 78 minutes and 

is from January of this year—a concert com- 

between 1994 and 2001. The Dall’Abaco and memorating the 50th anniversary of John F 

Locatelli are simply boring pieces in the Kennedy’s inauguration. The other disc is 49 

baroque style, which I don’t like. The other minutes of excerpts from Mutual Broadcast- 

four discs are very well played and recorded ing’s radio coverage of the inaugural eve gala 

and are interesting. I hope this is at a reduced Frank Sinatra organized the night before; it 

price so that it will appeal to collectors. 

began with the National Symphony’s concert 

The third disc is titled Mannheim: The in Constitution Hall. 

Golden Age and includes a cross-section of the Bernstein’s Fanfare for brass and percus- 

Mannheim School. In addition to familiar sion is only 40 seconds long and sounds fine. 

works by the Stamitzes, Cannabich, and Fils, Peter Lieberson’s 16-minute piece, subtitled 

we have the first recording I am aware of of An American Elegy, is a poor man’s Lincoln 

Ignatz Franzl (1736-1811). The Anton Fils Portrait. Without Richard Dreyfuss’s image on 

(1733-60) Symphony is also new to records, as the big screen, this is the first time I realized 

is Carl Stamitz’s Cello Concerto 4. All of these what a truly ugly, nasal voice he has, as he nar- 

works are outstanding examples of Mannheim rates selections from three of Kennedy’s 

craftsmanship. Even Mozart admired Franzl’s speeches (including his inaugural). He makes 

compositions and learned from him. 

the texts all sound the same, though I suspect 

Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739-1813) was not even Richard Burton or Anthony Hopkins 

another Czech composer who was roughly could make them sound like anything other 

Haydn’s contemporary and whose sym- than moralistic platitudes. I had to struggle to 

phonies from the 1760s and 1770s are remark- pay attention to the unchallenging and tradiably 

like Haydn’s. All are familiar from other tional-sounding Americana underneath, espe- 

recordings but none are as fine as these. 

cially with Eschenbach’s bland, generic con- 

Leopold Kozeluch (1747-1818) was one of ducting. Also, the work has a curiously sudden 

16 children of a Czech shoemaker. Fortunately non-ending, as if the tape suddenly stopped. 

a cousin who was a Prague chapel master saw Christoph Eschenbach apparently hasn’t 

to it that he got a good musical training that an ounce of swing in his body. In Bernstein’s 

enabled him to move to Vienna and establish Symphonic Dances rhythms are sluggish and 

himself as a leading musician. He eventually heavy. Even the fugue is cool; he never 

became Imperial Kammer Capellmeister and unleashes the orchestra, even in climaxes. The 



engineers make the muffled violins distant and 

the orchestra small with a slightly canned 

ambience. Is it the engineers or the conductor 

(or both) who make the orchestra sound like 

four individual choirs rather than an ensemble? 

Here the NSO seems like a second-rate 

regional orchestra recorded in a poor hall. 

It is more of the same in Gershwin’s concerto, 

where I asked myself, “Is Eschenbach a 

control freak?” It seems that the rhythmic sluggishness 

is the result of a conductor who follows 

the score with mathematical exactitude 

but misses the style. As for faux-profound 

Barto, he plays like someone who’s been confined 

to the Balkans all his life (he’s an American, 

born in Florida!). His conception of this 

work is from another planet; phrases are 

drawn out with so much incredibly slow rubato 

that it reminds me of Henry Charles Smith’s 

story of Otto Klemperer telling the Philadelphia 

Orchestra to play Beethoven’s Eroica 

Symphony g i o-coooooooooooooooo— 

sooooooo. The 38:06 timing says it all. 

The monaural orchestra sound on the 1961 

broadcast is as bad as it comes, but at least 

Mitchell brings life to John La Montaine’s 

overture, commissioned for the inauguration. 

Based on the music to the line “from sea to 

shining sea” from ‘America the Beautiful’, the 

music is from the Creston-Piston school harmonically, 

more motific than melodic, with 

lots of short phrases for woodwinds, plus a 

touch of Coplandesque Americana. The 

Thompson is only the first movement of The 

Testament of Freedom, three minutes of one 

line of text repeated ad nauseum, set to boring, 

simple-minded homophonic music. The 

Georgetown University Glee Club (all men) 

articulate every syllable clearly. The Howard 

University Men’s Chorus was supposed to join 

them, but the ferocious snow storm that paralyzed 

the city prevented them from getting to 

the hall. Indeed, the NSO’s assistant concertmaster 

and principal trumpet got there only by 

walking five miles in the storm from Virginia. 

Earl Wild (who also walked in the snow) 

takes almost as many “squeeze box”-type liberties 

with Rhapsody in Blue here as Barto does 

in the concerto, but at least he has plenty of 

forward motion and rhythmic wit. Mitchell is 

having a grand time as well, giving a big audible 

grunt as he winds up the orchestra leading 

into the coda. The opening clarinet lick is so 

wild and entertaining it must have made Sinatra 

laugh out loud with pleasure. 

Ah, and then there’s 21 minutes of portentous 

radio commentary from your host, Tony 

Marvin (whose name is missing from the liner 

notes). “We [is he the pope?] must say there 

has been a slight delay [like two hours] in the 

start of the concert owing to the very 

inclement weather that Washington has been 

the recipient of during the day.” Or, “The 

National Symphony under the distinguished 

baton of Howard Mitchell is accepting the 

plaudits of the audience here in Constitution 

Hall at the termination of La Montaine’s From 

Sea to Shining Sea.” Wouldn’t our editor, Don 

Vroon, like to take his editing ax to that guy! 

In brief, this is a sad tribute to JFK and a 

sad initial recording for Eschenbach in his first 

year as music director of the NSO. 

FRENCH 

To the Point 

HIGDON: To the Point; RUDIN: Canto di 

Ritorno; SCHULLER: Chamber Concerto; 

CASCARINO: Blades of Grass; REISE: The 

River Within 

Diane Monroe, Maria Bachmann, v; Dorothy 

Freeman, Eng hn; Orchestra 2001/ James Freeman, 

Gunther Schuller 

Innova 745—74 minutes 

Five American orchestral pieces, all but one 

quite recent, are beautifully played and very 

well recorded on this program meant to show 

off the talents of James Freeman and his 

Orchestra 2001. It begins with a modest ditty 

for string orchestra by Jennifer Higdon (born 

1962), one of our most popular present-day 

composers (see our cumulative index for 

reviews). This is a pleasant, folk-tuney 4minute 

scherzo on a rudimentary and muchrepeated 

hopping figure; it first appeared as a 

movement of her string quartet, Impressions, 

recorded on Naxos 559298 (May/June 2007). 

The string orchestra arrangement adds some 

welcome heft to this light-weight item. 

Andrew Rudin (born 1939) first became 

known for his electronic music but has long 

since turned, or returned, to writing more-orless 

traditional music. His Canto di Ritorno is a 

22-minute violin concerto in one movement. 

The predominant mood is lyrical, established 

in the work’s opening by a wistful melody that 

engages the listener right away. But that is cut 

off by vehement, herky-jerky eruptions that 

break out after a few minutes—an unpleasing 

and unpersuasive episode, added seemingly 

only for contrast. Lyricism re-emerges, with 

intensified emotion, in the long central section, 

a passacaglia of compelling majesty, followed 

eventually by a lengthy, songful valediction 

that returns gradually to the music and 

the mood of the work’s opening. I like and 

admire Canto di Ritorno for its poignant 

melos, sensuous delicacy, humane thoughtfulness, 

and deep feeling—all the more powerful 

for being understated. It would be improved if 

the composer excised the distracting (if fairly 

short) sections of spastic racket. Rudin’s intention 

here is clearly to write a music of noble, 



consoling sadness; why tarnish that, even 

briefly, with unnecessary disruption? 

Gunther Schuller (born 1925) is, as everyone 

knows, one of the grand old men of modern 

American music—composer, French horn 

virtuoso, conductor, musicologist, educator, 

impressario, jazz musician, popularizer of ragtime, 

even publisher of music scores and 

recordings. Does anybody know more than a 

portion of his huge and widely varied productions? 

The downside of so much enterprise 

and stylistic range is that Schuller’s own compositional 

voice is rather diffuse: any particular 

work of his sounds like whatever “self” he happened 

to be inhabiting when he wrote it. One 

is likely to hear unusual and inventive timbral 

combinations and a confident hand shaping 

the musical discourse, but the individual personality 

behind all that may be somewhat 

obscure. Such is the case in his 14-minute 

Concerto Da Camera from 2001, a first slowand-moody 

then energetic-and-volatile concatenation 

of twinklings, twitterings, cooings, 

shimmerings, slithers, sighings, bloops, 

bumps, skirlings, twirls, twisters, and flibberflusters. 

It has far too much verve, impatience, 

and good humor to sound anything like typical 

post-Webernian “contemporary” pointillism, 

and I found it easy to listen to. But don’t ask 

me what I heard after it’s over. 

Blades of Grass by Romeo Cascarino (1922- 

2002) was written in 1945. It’s a 9-minute essay 

in American pastoral for English horn, harp, 

and strings—calm, elegiac, outdoorsy, Coplandesque—sure 

to appeal to anyone with a drop 

of romantic in his soul. Readers interested in 

learning more about this little-known Philadelphia 

composer might want to read my 

review of his collected orchestral works 

(including Blades of Grass; Naxos 559266, 

Jan/Feb 2007). 

Orchestra 2001’s program is impressively 

completed by The River Within, another violin 

concerto (with the superb Maria Bachmann as 

soloist)—a full-scale (26-minute) assault on 

the genre by Jay Reise (born 1950). Cast in the 

traditional fast-slow-fast, three-movement 

pattern, this is a more-or-less traditional, 

tonally-anchored work that presents no difficulty 

for anyone happy with, say, the concertos 

of Walton, Prokofieff, Bartok, or Martin. It 

doesn’t match their indelible melodies—but 

then, what does? Still it’s lively, well-made, and 

packed with interesting ideas and bravura display. 

Outer allegros are full of incident and 

activity, with some brilliant figurations that 

call to mind, though don’t actually mimic, folk 

dances. The gorgeously-scored central Adagietto 

Inquieto is animated by a complex spirit— 

compassionate unease, perhaps, or calm restlessness—that 

held me rapt with its mysterious, 

dreamlike beauty. 

I intend to look for more by Reise. There 

are discs of his chamber music on Albany and 

on Centaur, a program that includes piano 

pieces played by Marc-Andre Hamelin on 

Albany 665 (Mar/Apr 2005), and several 

orchestral works including a cello concerto on 

CRI. 

LEHMAN 

Ostravska Band on Tour 

Francesconi, Bakla, Zalbuska, Satoh, Cage, 

Kotik, B Lang 

led by Petr Kotik; Joseph Kubera, p; Hana Kotkova, 

v; Gregory Purnhagen & Thomas Buckner, bar 

Mutable 17544 [2CD] 122 minutes 

The Czech composer, conductor, and flutist 

Petr Kotik formed the Ostravska Band in 2005 

as the resident chamber orchestra for the festival 

Ostrava Days. The 24 musicians are all 

young, committed to new music, and vibrant 

performers. This release gives a taste of a variety 

of new music, mostly by established and 

emerging European composers. 

The two outstanding works on the release 

are Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra 

(1958) and Somei Satoh’s Passion (2009) in a 

reduced scoring. Comparing the Cage performance 

with the one by David Tudor and 

Ensemble Modern on Mode (May/June 1998), 

I’m more engaged by the leaner, more intimate 

reading by Kubera and the Ostravska 

players. Cage’s notation for the orchestral 

parts, while fairly specific, still admits several 

possibilities for interpretation; and the musicians 

(or Kotik) often select some novel and 

interesting ones. The piano solo, a legendary 

anthology of outlandish graphic notation, 

offers considerably more freedom; Kubera 

seems to select excerpts that allow his part to 

appear more as an equal to the other instrumental 

parts. (By contrast, when Tudor played 

the Concert, his presence tended to eclipse 

everything going on around him.) 

Satoh’s Passion is an extremely restrained 

setting for two voices, male chorus, and a very 

transparent instrumental accompaniment. He 

sets the text (in English) in such a way that 

each word (and often each syllable) is sustained 

for long periods, but the words are 

always perfectly understandable. The setting 

enhances the ritualism of the passion in general 

and also underscores its profound sadness. 

Satoh’s setting is very selective: for instance, 

the first ten minutes of the work (30 minutes 

total) is devoted to the scene in the Garden of 

Gethsemane. This pacing, too, tends to 

emphasize the timelessness of the story. 

The other works offer an engaging crosssection 

of trends in 20th Century composition, 

some familiar, some not. Kotik’s own In Four 

Parts (3, 6 & 11 for John Cage) (2009), scored 



for percussion alone, begins with one of the 

great cliches of 20th Century music: a slowly 

repeated single note that accelerates to a roll 

and then slowly decelerates. The gesture 

appears in overlapping statements for many 

different instruments and from there explores 

a wider variety of textures and ideas whose 

succession is unpredictable. (Like Cage, Kotik 

makes use of chance techniques.) Luca 

Francesconi’s Riti Neurali (1991), scored for a 

solo violin and seven other instruments (the 

instrumentation matches the one Schubert 

used in his Octet), is a tour de force of nervous 

bundles of energy that gradually increase in 

tension and finally dissipate. 

Petr Bakla’s Serenade explores what the 

liner notes describe as “situations where ‘notquite-yet-music’ 

becomes ‘music’”—he deliberately 

employs ideas that approach banality 

and gradually transforms them into expressive 

ones. The idea is provocative and the musical 

results not nearly as conceptual as one might 

imagine. 

Paulina Zalubska’s Dispersion (2007) is a 

lovely essay in timbre informed by her extensive 

work in electronic composition. Bernhard 

Lang’s Monadologie IV (2008), also scored for 

percussion, comes from a series of works 

where the material is “built on ‘grains’ of musical 

footage...[often] ‘sampled’ from historic 

scores”. The source materials in this work 

seem to be popular music, and they are then 

transformed practically out of all recognition. 

The concert performances sound first-rate 

to me, and the sound sparkles. 

HASKINS 

Simply Strings 

BARTOK: Divertimento; JANACEK: Suite; 

SIBELIUS: Impromptu; BRITTEN: Simple 

Symphony 

Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra/ Ruben Gazarian 

Bayer 100 371 [SACD] 67 minutes 

Ruben Gazarian was born and educated first in 

Soviet Armenia and later in Leipzig. He has 

built an outstanding reputation for himself on 

the European continent. He has been principal 

conductor of the Westphalian Chamber 

Orchestra Heilbronn since 2002. 

These works are all light-textured ones for 

strings. All are well known, with the possible 

exception of the early (1894) one by Sibelius— 

a minor work lasting just under seven minutes. 

All are very well played. The recording is outstanding. 

Decent notes. 

BAUMAN 

American String Project 

MENDELSSOHN: Quartet 4; BEETHOVEN: 

Quartet 8; VERDI: Quartet; HAYDN: Quartet, 

op 64:4; BRAHMS: String Quintet 2; 

PROKOFIEFF: Quartet 2; SCHUMANN: 

Quartet 3; FALLA: 7 Spanish Folk Songs 

MSR 1386 [2CD] 141 minutes 

These are all wonderful pieces by some of the 

world’s greatest composers, but the sound is 

too bloated to do them justice. The works are 

all arranged by Barry Lieberman. The performers 

include nine violins, three violas, two cellos, 

and one double bass. Perhaps you will like 

the effect more than I do. In fairness I must say 

that the performances are well played and 

recorded, but I won’t listen to them again. 

The instrumentalists are drawn from the 

Seattle, Vancouver, Milwaukee, Minnesota, 

and San Francisco Orchestras as well as from 

the Indiana University and De Paul University 

faculties. The group was organized ten years 

ago. 

The brief notes deal mainly with the idea of 

transcribing music for a different ensemble 

than what the composer wanted. 

BAUMAN 

Lightly Classical 

Guild 5172—79:34 

As you might imagine, I have no taste for this 

kind of thing. BUT...I had a mother. Yes, my 

mother delighted in Mantovani, Melachrino, 

and even Kostelanetz and David Rose, when 

they didn’t get shockingly jazzy. All but Mantovani 

are here. 

All the music here is the real thing, by classical 

composers, but (mostly) in “popularized” 

arrangements. I consider that a tribute to the 

unbeatable melodies of the great composers. 

The “mostly” is because we have here William 

Walton conducting the Philharmonia in one of 

his own pieces—unadulterated. 

George Melachrino gives us ‘The Last 

Spring’ by Grieg—one of my mother’s 

favorites. I can’t hear that he has done anything 

to it. It’s even in stereo (9 of the 23 tracks 

here are). Music of Kabalevsky, Khachaturian, 

and Luigini also seems untouched as played 

here. David Rose has arranged 12 minutes of 

Stravinsky’s Firebird; it can be a bit sleazy 

(Firebird as stripper?). I wonder how much he 

paid Stravinsky for the chance to do it. That 

may be the oldest recording here (1942). Most 

of this is from the 1950s—and that’s when I 

heard most of it and decided I preferred the 

real thing. 

The field is full of pseudonyms. Who was 

Pierre Challet, who recorded prolifically for 

Mercury in the late 50s? Who was Philip 

Green? The arranger “Ralph Sterling” was bet- 



ter known as “David Carroll”, but was that also 

a pseudonym? I like his arrangement of 

Mendelssohn’s ‘On Wings of Song’. If you 

always thought it needed an orchestra, here it 

is (minus the singer, too—no singers here, but 

songs for orchestra). 

Be warned that some arrangements are a 

bit “trashy”; you have to accept them as part of 

the period charm. I recommend this as the 

best example of a major genre of the 1940s and 

50s, when the “general public” still responded 

to the beauty of wonderful melodies written by 

real composers. 

VROON 

Latin-American Quartet 

CAMPA: 3 Miniatures; CARRASCO: Quartet 

in E minor; DE ELIAS: Quartet 2; LOBATO: 

Quartet in G 

Sono Luminus 92130—80 minutes 

The inspired Cuarteto LatinoAmericano brings 

to life the work of Mexican composers of the 

mid-20th Century. As the essay notes, most of 

these works are not products of the Mexican 

Nationalist movement of the early 20th Century. 

These are romantic works that use a great 

deal of chromaticism and, like the earlier 

works of Ponce, include Mexican folk music in 

the otherwise European tradition of composition. 

The De Elias begins with a large first movement 

that is incredibly nostalgic. He moves 

through what seems to be endless keys, as if he 

is trying to find an appropriate place for the 

never-ending melody that lingers softly. It 

sounds to me like an ode to a Mexican landscape 

or childhood town. II is the most chromatic 

of all, a bit agonizing to listen to. III is a 

joyous dance, filled with drama and youth. IV 

returns to the nostalgic vision of I and ends 

blazing with hope. 

The Carrasco is a excellent. The first movement 

begins with a passionate line that 

emerges from warm texture in the cello. It kind 

of sounds like the melody of the bolero, 

‘Besame Mucho’, oozing with sexuality and 

romanticism. Carrasco marks it “cumm granus 

salis”, (with a pinch of salt) as if telling the 

players to not take the music too seriously. 

Cuarteto LatinoAmericano takes his advice— 

they never fall into sentimentalism or senseless 

dramatic playing. The last movement of 

the work is the most folk-like of all with a wonderful 

vision of a Mexican plaza on a warm day 

in Spring, with flowers blossoming and people 

dancing. Delightful! 

Outside of the ‘Rondo’ movement, I am 

not as taken by the Lobato. It is nice enough, 

but it sometimes seems to wander. But the 

‘Rondo’ is spot on, perhaps because he works 

with a very tuneful melody. His use of chro- 

maticism is significantly less sophisticated 

than Carrasco and De Elias. 

There are also three miniatures by Campa: 

‘Minuet’, ‘Gavotte’, ‘Theme Varie’. These were 

written much earlier (1889) and are the oldest 

known works for string quartet in Mexico. 

They are simple and charming dances—very 

tender and innocent. 

This is a phenomenal production of music 

that I am thrilled to start to know. The sound 

of Cuarteto LatinoAmericano is a sound of 

experience and tremendous maturity; they are 

not distracted by a thing, and this music is second 

nature to them. This is wonderful place to 

start expanding your collection of Latin American 

classical music. 

JACOBSEN 

Back to Melody 

Kilar, Malecki, Czarnecki 

Opium Quartet 

Accord 163—57 minutes 

The OPiUM quartet is a group of young string 

players; all four graduated from the Chopin 

Academy—one in 2003, three in 2005. This 

debut recording collects four works composed 

between 1986 and 2007, all influenced to some 

degree by the so-called “return to melody” or 

“new romanticism” that commanded the 

attention of several Polish composers in the 

mid-1970s. (Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful 

Songs and Penderecki’s first violin concerto are 

probably the most familiar examples.) 

The earliest work, Wojciech Kilar’s Orawa 

(1986), begins with minimalist patterns that 

articulate closely related harmonic changes, 

then gradually gain momentum to evoke a 

dance by a highlander band. (Shepherds in 

Orawa, a region on the Polish-Slovak border, 

perform such dances after their workday.) 

Maciej Malecki’s Polish Suite, written for 

OPiUM, borrows from four previous works and 

is unabashedly tuneful, even nostalgic. Slawomir 

Czarnecki’s second string quartet 

(1997)—the strongest work here—was written 

during an intense period of documenting folk 

music from the area of Spis; the music, while 

in a concert music idiom, retains vestiges of 

melody and even the playing style of the folk 

bands in the region. Malecki’s daughter Magdalena 

(the violist for the OPiUM quartet) 

shines as a soloist in the concluding Andante 

and Allegro, written by her father expressly for 

her graduation recital; the quartet is joined 

here by violist Wojciech Walczak and bassist 

Radoslaw Nur. While the composition occasionally 

indulges in more dissonance than the 

others, it is also thoroughly influenced by folk 

idioms. The performances are superb, and the 

engineering is spectacular. 

HASKINS 



Polish Quartets 

MENDELSON: Quartet 1; PADLEWSKI: 

Quartet 2; LAKS: Quartet 5 

Silesian Quartet 

EDA 34—65 minutes 

EDA continues its series devoted to “lost” or 

neglected music by victims of the Nazis with 

string quartets by three little-known Polish 

Jewish composers. Included are the 1925 First 

Quartet of Joachim Mendelson (1897-1943), 

the 1942 Second Quartet of Roman Padlewski 

(1915-44), and the 1963 Fifth Quartet of Simon 

(or Szymon) Laks (1901-83). Both Mendelson 

and Padlewski were killed by the Nazis— 

Padlewski as part of the heroic resistance in 

the Warsaw Ghetto. Only Laks survived the war 

and continued to compose until the 1960s, 

before devoting himself to literary endeavors. 

All three quartets are mainly neoclassic in 

manner and often linear in texture, with much 

use of fugal and other contrapuntal techniques. 

But instead of sounding French or German, 

the inflections here are Slavic, recalling 

to some extent the quartets of their composers’ 

much-better-known Polish contemporaries, 

Grazyna Bacewicz and Alexandre Tansman. 

Mendelson’s quartet is in three fairly compact 

movements with spirited outer movements 

and a central Largo. There are light 

touches of Ravelian impressionism, and the 

overall mood is optimistic. Padlewski’s quartet, 

drawing on baroque models, is laid out in 

two large movements: a toccata and a largescale 

introduction and fugue. This is a serious, 

rather austere work of considerable dignity but 

not much surface allure. 

Of greater interest is Laks’s four-movement 

Quartet 5, more chromatic and searching 

in its language, more varied and imaginative in 

texture, and more unpredictable and multifarious 

in its emotions both light and dark. It’s 

also the most expressive of personal feeling of 

the three here, notably in II’s sad (and quite 

tonal) chorale resonant with memorial significance 

at once private and universal. Music, as 

Eduard Hanslick pointed out, is a language 

that we understand without being able to 

translate. 

The Silesian Quartet plays this music with 

sensitivity and technical assurance, and EDA’s 

sonics are clear and natural. (But don’t be confused 

by the scrambled sequence of numbers 

on the booklet’s track listings!) I enjoyed the 

whole program but will return mostly for Laks. 

Interested collectors will want to know that 

several more works by Laks have been recorded, 

most of them also on EDA. 

LEHMAN 

Tertis Viola Ensemble 

Telemann, Weinzierl, Bowen, Bartok, Piazzolla, 

Norton Oehms 788—50 minutes 

The Tertis Viola Ensemble is named for Lionel 

Tertis, the British violist who commissioned 

his compatriots to write difficult (and excellent) 

solo music for the viola, and is therefore 

responsible for elevating the viola from its pre- 

20th Century status as a mostly inner-voice 

instrument with limited literature to a dignified 

solo instrument. A viola ensemble like this 

one, made of members of the viola section of 

the Munich Philharmonic, is something that 

would make Tertis proud. Listening to it makes 

me (even more) proud to be a violist. 

Much of the music here has been transcribed 

from music for multiple violins, but 

the well-known Fantasy Quartet for Four Violas 

by York Bowen (1884-1961) and the lesserknown 

(and gorgeous) Nachtstück for Four 

Violas by Max von Weinzierl (1841-1898) are 

original. 

The Weinzierl was first published in 1910 

as a work for four violas or three violins and 

cello, and was published again in 1988. 

Weinzierl was mainly a composer of vocal 

music, and the Nachtstück seems to be his 

only published instrumental composition. The 

score has a dedication to Dr Wenzel Sedlitzky, 

a Salzburg druggist who served as the president 

of the Mozarteum 1888-89. 

The two Telemann concertos are direct 

one-fifth-lower transcriptions of two of his 

four concertos for four violins (perhaps the 

other two, which are not well known, will 

appear on a future recording). The lower pitch, 

which evokes the sound of a viol consort, 

allows for a bit more space between the major 

second intervals that begin the C-major Concerto, 

and the striking differences between the 

violas’ registers give the piece a great deal of 

depth. 

The space between dissonant intervals 

brings extra resonance to the the nine Bartok 

violin duos that are on this recording. The 

duos were transcribed by Bartok’s son Peter. 

They are, of course, played by only two violists 

at a time, though the richness of the sound 

gives the impression of a much larger ensemble. 

The Piazzolla ‘Four for Tango’ is originally 

for string quartet, and this ensemble does its 

best to maintain the voicing; but, in spite of 

the excellent playing, I still prefer the piece in 

its original form. In Christopher Norton’s 

‘Steering Wheel Blues’, the precise way three 

German violists (and one from Honduras who 

studied in Freiburg) meet the imprecise but 

codified American idiom of Blues makes me 

smile. It brings to mind Die Symphoniker’s 



recording of Meredith Wilson’s ‘Zayr Veyr 

Pbells’. 

FINE 

Brassage 

HANDEL: Arrival of the Queen of Sheba; 

CRAUSAZ: Brass Quintet Suite 1; STEPHEN- 

SON: Quintet; ARUNIUNIAN: Armenian 

Scenes; STURZNEGGER: Fanfare for GBQ; 4 

Fanfares; L’Encyclopedie de l’Opera; ROB- 

LEE: Early Days; LAVALLEE: La Rose Nuptiale 

Geneva Brass Quintet 

Gallo 1302—55 minutes 

I like this group’s light articulations and easy 

way of playing; they don’t hammer us the way 

so many brass ensembles do. But the trumpets 

and trombone sound more direct and prominent 

than horn and tuba, which seem distant 

and tubby. This is a built-in problem for brass 

quintets, given bell directions and timbres, but 

it must be solved if a recording is to be pleasant. 

The program offers a slew of new works, 

including an exciting little brass quintet by Etienne 

Crausaz. A fine and fairly lengthy (4:45) 

‘Fanfare for GBQ’ is contributed by the group’s 

horn player, Christopher Sturznegger. South 

African composer Allan Stephenson’s threemovement 

quintet is winsome. Richard Roblee’s 

‘Early Days’ is an excerpt—first mellow, 

then rollicking—from American Images. 

The all-Swiss members of Geneva Brass 

Quintet are trumpeters Samuel Gaille and 

Lionel Walter, horn player Sturznegger, trombonist 

David Rey, and tuba player Eric Rey. 

KILPATRICK 

Thomas Carroll, cello 

BRAHMS: Sonata 2; BEETHOVEN: Sonata 3; 

SCHUBERT: Arpeggione Sonata 

with Llyr Williams, p 

Orchid 16—80 minutes 

This is a particularly poetic interpretation of 

these three cello masterpieces. The players 

create between them sensitively phrased and 

beautifully timed performances that hold the 

attention, seemingly without effort. The tone 

of the cellist is vocal in its orientation, and the 

recording is balanced as the musicians intended 

it, both instruments heard easily, yet with 

full emotional force. A tour de force. 

My only cavil is the articulation of all the 

downbeats in the first theme of the Beethoven 

scherzo, which may have been what he intended 

but doesn’t convince this old-fashioned cellist. 

The liner notes are written by the cellist 

and describe Vienna from the point of view of 

the composers in a touching manner, introducing 

us to each man through aspects of his 

life experience. I have seldom read such perceptive 

and moving descriptions. And that 

goes for the disc as a whole. Get it! 

D MOORE 

Casals Encores 

Alban Gerhardt; Cecile Licad, p 


These 19 numbers were chosen by the cellist 

as homage to Pablo Casals. All of them were 

recorded by that master, and five are credited 

to him as arranger. Gerhardt doesn’t play them 

exactly as Casals recorded them, since some 

are over the 4:30 length allowed on a 78 rpm 

side. Also his style, though lovely in tone and 

temperament, is not reminiscent in any direct 

way of Casals. 

We have everything here from Boccherini 

through Chopin, Saint-Saens, and Wagner to 

Falla and Granados with excursions by David 

Popper and Fritz Kreisler, ending with the folk 

song ‘Song of the Birds’. Of course my response 

will be to revisit my extensive Casals 

collection, but I don’t think a comparison is in 

order at this point. If you like the idea of this 

collection, Gerhardt is a tasteful player beautifully 

aided and abetted by Licad. Some of their 

tempos are on the slow side, notably in The 

Swan and in Chopin’s Prelude 15, Raindrop, 

but that’s a matter of taste, not ability. It is an 

attractive experience overall. 

D MOORE 

Autumn 

WIKLANDER: Fantasia; SWEENEY: Autumn 

Music; BRUCH: Kol Nidrei; RHEINBERGER: 

Overture, op 150:6; BACH: 3 Chorale Preludes; 

SALTER: Vitis Flexuosa; LLOYD WEB- 

BER: Benedictus; GENZMER: Cello & Organ 

Sonata Rebecca Hewes; Julian Collings, org 


Music for organ and cello is not a common 

thing in the recording studio, though it happens 

often in the real world. The blend is a 

natural, as this program demonstrates. The 

Svyati Duo has discovered a number of fine 

compositions otherwise unknown, and a surprising 

number of them are included here. The 

program opens with a notably friendly and 

outgoing Fantasia by Kurt Wiklander (b 1950), 

a 1987 piece that sounds like something written 

during WW I, romantic but conscious of 

the down side of life. Eric Sweeney (b 1948) 

writes in a similar idiom, but his Autumn 

Music is a much more easygoing piece based 

on repeated rhythmic figures that bring us out 

to the woods, fields, and lakes of Ireland. 

Then come three transcriptions, first Max 

Bruch’s famous Kol Nidrei, then a piece by 



Joseph Rheinberger (1839-1901) culled by the 

players from his six pieces for violin and organ, 

and finally three of Bach’s organ chorale preludes 

colorfully scored by Helmut Barnefeld. 

This is all effectively handled by both players 

and arrangers. 

The most modern music comes last. Vita 

Flexuosa was composed for the duo by Timothy 

Salter (b 1942). It is nearly eight minutes of 

excitement and drama, contrasting with lyrical 

statements in a beautiful way. Another dramatic 

piece is Harald Genzmer’s three-movement 

sonata, a highly effective work with a fine 

mood and contrasts enough to excite anyone. 

Altogether a very listenable program, played 

with conviction and beauty of tone. 

This is the second disc I have heard by this 

duo. The first was called Svyati Duo and contained 

a similar kind of program including 

three more transcriptions of Rheinberger’s 

violin pieces, Op. 150, Marcel Dupre’s sonata 

and In Croce, a major work by Sofia Gubaidulina, 

among other fine pieces. If the present program 

interests you, you might look up Regent 

337 as well (May/June 2010, p 174). 

D MOORE 

Debut 

SCHUMANN: 5 Pieces in Folk Style; 

FRANCK: Cello Sonata; RUZICKA: Recitativo; 

SAINT-SAENS: Introduction & Rondo 

Capriccioso 

Valentin Radutiu; Per Rundberg, p 


A young cellist of 25, Radutiu was a student of 

David Geringas and Claudio Bohorquez in 

Berlin and shows the sense of musical phrasing 

one would expect from working with such 

fine cellists. Both Radutiu and Rundberg show 

this love of broadly expansive emotional and 

landscaped gestures, particularly in the gorgeous 

Franck sonata, originally for violin but 

transcribed for cello with Franck’s permission. 

There are moments when I miss some melodic 

clarity in the piano part in the emotional Allegro 

(II), yet the overall result is positive. Thank 

goodness Radutiu chooses to leave the lastmovement 

second climax at its original higher 

pitch, instead of transposing it down an octave 

as many cellists do. He plays it with flair, too. 

Peter Ruzicka’s Recitativo is a curious piece 

written in 2009, based on material from his 

opera Celan. It tends to disappear sometimes 

into the distant heights, to be brought back to 

earth by the piano—or not, as the case may be. 

It lasts 11 minutes and is a premiere recording. 

The program closes with a transcription by 

the cellist of the Saint-Saens piece, originally 

for violin and orchestra. As a listener who 

tends to prefer a composer’s original idea, I 

wondered what a cellist could possibly do to 

make this light-hearted virtuoso piece work. 

Surprise! He sold me. He had been disguising 

his virtuoso chops, but here he puts them to 

work to great effect, covering all the showy violin 

passages with aplomb and accuracy, many 

of them in the violin register, no less, and playing 

so well in tune and with such sensitivity to 

the composer’s beauty of phrasing that I really 

was amazed and moved by his virtuosity and 

musical ability. And also by the piece itself, 

always a favorite, but played and arranged 

here with notable sensitivity to the beauty of 

the original. Thank you, Valentin! 

D MOORE 

Jewish Songs 

RAVEL:Chanson Hebraique; BLOCH: Jewish 

Life; Nigun; Meditation Hebraique; ZYGEL: 

Nigun; Psalmodie; Chemah; TRAD: Kol 

Nidre; Question; Psalm; Conversation; 

Prayer; Chanson; Kaddish; Incertitude; 

Danse; Hassidic Chant; Elegy 

Sonia Wieder-Atherton, vc; Daria Hovora, p 


Wieder-Atherton has a curious concept of life 

that she incorporates into her programming in 

various ways. This one combines fairly recent 

recordings of Bloch and Ravel with what she 

calls 14 Stories based on traditional Jewish 

sources, some arranged by composer Jean- 

Francois Zygel and all recorded back in 1989. 

Each of these has a page of explanation in 

French and another in English, with a separate 

page for each one’s title, printed on thick 

paper in a booklet adding up to 70-odd pages. 

This was impossible to remove until I ripped 

up the case, so watch out! I don’t keep my CDs 

in jewel boxes, so it was no loss, but you may 

not be ready for my kind of mess yet. 

The explanations of the 14 stories are pretty 

incomprehensible, so let’s listen to the 

music. It begins with a pleasant setting of the 

Kol Nidrei for two cellos, both played by Sonia. 

It is followed by cello-piano renditions of a 

number of Jewish-sounding tunes set in a 

thoughtful but colorful manner, some by 

Sonia, some by Zygel. Two of the 14 pieces are 

for solo cello. It adds up to quite a collection 

lasting over 50 minutes. If you’re looking for 

settings of Jewish folk or liturgical music for 

cello and piano, you might find something 

nice here. The pieces are not particularly complex 

musically, but some parts are not easy for 

the cello, though you wouldn’t know it from 

listening to Sonia. 

The program ends with Ravel and Bloch, 

including all of Bloch’s Jewish settings, I think. 

This is a program of some depth emotionally, 

played to the hilt. 

D MOORE 



Solo Clarinet 

Colors 

Berio, Denisov, Jolivet, Reimann, Goehr, 

Hosokawa, Lehmann, Lourie, Nieder, 

Pousseur, Widmann 

Eduard Brunner—Naxos 572470—71 minutes 

BARTOK: For Children, selections; MERLIN: 

Suite del Recuerdo; OURKOUZOUNOV: 4 

Legends; PIAZZOLLA: History of the Tango; 

RAVEL: Piece en Forme de Habanera; VILLA- 

Swiss-born clarinetist and former Bavarian 

Radio Symphony principal Eduard Brunner 

continues his steady pace of recording with 

LOBOS: Bachianas Brasileiras 5 

Bas Duo 

Sabudo 1001—58 minutes (H&B; CD Baby) 

European contributions to the late 20th Century 

unaccompanied solo clarinet repertoire, 

some of them not well known in the United 

States. The program includes the Luciano 

Berio Lied (1983); the Edison Denisov Sonata 

(1972); the Andre Jolivet Asceses (1967); the 

Aribert Reimann Solo (1994); the Alexander 

Goehr Paraphrase on a Dramatic Madrigal by 

Monteverdi (1969); the recently completed 

Toshio Hosokawa EDI (2009), written specifically 

for Brunner and still unpublished; the 

Hans Ulrich Lehmann Mosaik (1964); the 

Arthur Lourie Mime (1956); the Fabio Nieder 

Terracotta (1995); the Henri Pousseur Madrigal 

I (1958); and the Jorg Widmann Fantasie 

(1993), written when the composer-clarinetist 

was only 20 years old. The liner notes are generous 

with information on each piece and 

publisher information. 

All of the music belongs to the abstract language 

that developed after World War II—disjunct 

themes, atonal harmonic content, 

There is so much excellent flute and guitar 

playing that any new recording must be truly 

extraordinary to measure up to the likes of 

Paula Robison and Eliot Fisk, Bonita Boyd and 

Nicholas Goluses, and Eugenia Moliner and 

Denis Azabagic. If Elyse Knobloch and Peter 

Press are not ready to stand in their company, 

they’re only off by a hair. 

Press’s playing is more natural than his 

partner’s, though her playing is the more 

expressive. Knobloch’s playing sometimes has 

a nervous quality, and sometimes her sound is 

rounded to the point of becoming a little 

tubby. She seems very attentive to playing for a 

close pickup. The flute sound seems to have 

more resonance than the guitar, though they 

are balanced. Press manages to produce a 

melting, sustained quality in the Ravel and 

Villa-Lobos that I enjoyed hearing. The music 

is tonal, direct, and enlivened by occasional 

sound effects. 

extended techniques, and Expressionist mannerisms. 

With the exception of the Berio, most 

GORMAN 

of it runs together in a floating intangible 

cloud, and one piece could easily be mistaken 

for another. Nevertheless, Brunner is prepared, 

and he offers good renditions. He exe- 

East Meets West 

FERROUD: 3 Pieces; HOSOKAWA: Lied; 

LOEB: Scenes from the Japanese Countryside; 

OFFERMANS: Honami; TAKEMITSU: 

cutes the glissandos, flutter-tonguing, and Air; YUN: Garak 

multiphonics very well; he employs the expan- Leonard Garrison, fl, picc; Kay Zavislak, p 

sive dynamic range essential to each work’s 


otherworldly atmosphere; and he has sufficient 

fingers and articulation to navigate the This program presents works by three of the 

seemingly endless thorny passages. 

most famous Asian composers and Asian- 

Esoteric proclamations, though, need more influenced compositions from the United 

than just decent readings. Brunner’s tone, States, Holland, and France. These pieces are 

tongue, legato, and voicing could all use more for solo flute, solo piccolo, and flute and piano. 

refinement, and his interpretations demand Yun’s Garak (1963) is by far the most virtu- 

more than following the composer’s directives. osic, and handled with aplomb. Time is altered 

His reed always sounds too soft, giving off a in this sound world, too: the work seems much 

grainy and spread timbre; his tongue could be longer than a mere ten minutes. The Offer- 

cleaner and more disciplined; his legato could mans takes its name from the Japanese word 

be creamier and have more line to it; and his used to describe waves created by wind in a 

frequent crossing of registers is often marred rice field. Offermans creates breathy effects 

by unnecessary pinching and throat manipula- that imitate the Japanese flute, shakuhachi, 

tion. Despite his volume capacity, his color and a central section of the piece beautifully 

spectrum is small, and while he respects the explores tone colors with numerous harmon- 

particular soundscape of each piece, he makes ics and alternate fingerings. It is mesmerizing, 

little effort to climb inside and offer something and the whistle tone that ends the piece takes 

personal. The end product may be satisfactory phenomenal control. 

for his students, his peers, and the avant-garde It is very demanding both to write and to 

community, but what about everyone else? play music for an unaccompanied wind instru- 

HANUDEL ment. David Loeb has written 18:30 of short 

pieces for solo piccolo. Garrison has both the 



feel for atmosphere and command of solo 

playing. 

The piccolo playing is assured. The sweet 

tone Garrison produces and his control of 

dynamics at the softer end on both flute and 

piccolo make this very satisfying. Both the 

sound of the piano and the playing are crisp. 

Readers who like this recording will also 

want the complete Hosokawa disc on Naxos by 

Icelandic flutist Kolbeinn Bjarnason 

(May/June). 

GORMAN 

Loeki Stardust Collection 

Newton 8802044 [4CD] 231:45 

The Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet has a 

considerable following. They first played 

together in 1978 and first recorded in 1984; 18 

additional records have followed. Most of the 

potential buyers for this collection already 

have one or more of these. Here is the chance 

to get four programs together. This content 

was originally released on Decca, 1987-94. 

Baroque Recorder Music (1987) was their 

second recording. It includes arrangements of 

Bach, Scheidt, Locke, Sweelinck, Purcell, and a 

Boismortier sonata. Italian Recorder Music 

(1989, released in 1991) offers adaptations 

from Renaissance vocal works by Merula, Conforti, 

Trabaci, Frescobaldi, and Palestrina. 

Concerti di Flauti (1992-94) was a collaboration 

with The Academy of Ancient Music and 

presents concertos by Marcello, Heinichen, 

Schickhardt, Telemann, and Vivaldi (the in due 

cori of R 585). Last, Extra Time (1989-90) pulls 

together an array of classical and pops pieces 

from JC Bach to Henry Mancini and Charlie 

Parker. It takes six pages to list everything. 

The notes offer no specific background 

about the music, but three pages of stories by 

one of the members about how the ensemble 

began and descriptions of the programs chosen. 

It is worth observing that the recorder is 

far less flexible in pitch than many other 

instruments. The notes tell us that “[we] quickly 

learned that when a recorder ensemble is 

anything but perfect in terms of tuning, the 

result is not just unsatisfactory but disastrous”. 

It is in this context, then, that the present 

music can be appreciated: virtuoso playing, 

tuning, and ensemble. If you’ve never heard of 

the Loeki Stardust Quartet before, consider 

this collection a great place to start. 

GORMAN 

Cantilena 

ALAIN: 3 Movements; BACH: Sonata in A; 

BONIGHTON: Cantilena; DUPRE: Prelude; 

HILLER: Andante Religioso; KIRALY: 3 

Miniatures; LACHNER: Elegy; MARTIN: 

Sonata da Chiesa; WEAVER: Rhapsody 

Marianiello-Reas Duo 

MSR 1358—79 minutes 

It is rare to hear a program of music for flute 

and organ. This is the second release by these 

players; their first, Dialogues (MSR 1069, not 

reviewed) is an American program that came 

out in 2003. The most likely place for music for 

flute and organ to be heard is in a church; that 

necessarily constrains the length and character 

of these selections. 

The Rhapsody by NY-based organist John 

Weaver is a 9-minute piece that makes the 

strongest impression. At the same time, as a 

concert piece, it may very well lack exposure 

because it won’t fit into a church service, as 

much of the rest will. By its title, Frank Martin’s 

Sonata da Chiesa (1938, originally written 

for viola da gamba) straddles both the sacred 

and secular worlds, and the Bach fits either 

well. Australian composer Rosalie Bonighton’s 

Cantilena is pleasant music based on conventional 

platitudes of our time. Hans Hiller 

(1873-1938) had me thinking of Humperdinck, 

and while the Alain and Dupre might have you 

thinking organ, they were originally written for 

piano. 

The Alain is one of the two works I have 

performed. Jean-Pierre Rampal recorded it 

with the composer’s sister, Marie-Claire, but 

his tone is uncovered and unpretty, affecting 

the first movement in particular. This sounds 

better. Marianello and Reas take the final moto 

perpetuo more slowly than Alain and Rampal, 

who really whip through it. There is enough 

energy for anyone except real speed demons, 

and a slower tempo allows all of the notes to 

be heard clearly. The opening movement of 

the Bach is likewise sedate, but to different 

effect; most listeners would probably not identify 

the tempo indication as ‘Vivace’ based on 

this rendition. The Lachner is also too sluggish; 

this was his last piece, and it sounds like he 

was half-dead when he wrote it. By their modernism, 

the Kiraly Miniatures stand apart from 

everything else, and in a positive way. 

Linda Marianiello plays well enough without 

exciting or offending me. The spectrum of 

interest is as follows: the Bach is just notes and 

drudgery; the Dupre sounds luscious sometimes, 

and the Martin has much that works. 

The writing in most of these pieces is fairly 

sedate and unchallenging, but there is a high C 

in the Hiller, an optional high C in the Lachner 

(not played), and I believe a high C-sharp in 

the Weaver. Organist Keith Reas has primarily 



the job of not overwhelming the flute and 

remaining patient. He gets a few big moments 

in the Weaver and the Lachner, sensitive registration 

opportunities in the Dupre and Kiraly, 

and his partnership is excellent. The sound 

presents their playing clearly, with just a little 

resonance. 

GORMAN 

Loro 

CORDERO: 2 Afro-Antillean Pieces; COREA: 

6 Children’s Songs; GISMONTI: 8 Pieces; 

ROTA: 5 Easy Pieces; SATIE: 2 Pieces; STRA- 

VINSKY: 3 Easy Pieces 

Duo Musica 


This recording gets right everything the Bas 

Duo (see above) was just short of, despite their 

accomplished playing. The playing is relaxed; 

it sizzles and soars. The flute and guitar sound 

entirely natural together, whereas they sounded 

slightly unnatural on Colors. Bent Larsen 

and Jan Sommer are accomplished Danish 

musicians who play a program that is easy to 

listen to. 

One small note: there is a cardboard slipcase 

that I had to tear off in order to get to the 

disc, hopelessly destroying a picture of boats 

in a harbor, the works and their timings on the 

back. The front and back covers of the CD are 

the same. The music inside is well worth this 

sacrifice. 

GORMAN 

Robert Willoughby, flute 

PIERNE: Sonata da Camera; Canzonetta; 

REGER: Serenade in G; Suite in A minor; 

ROUSSEL: Trio 

Marilyn McDonald, v; Kathryn Plummer, John 

Tartaglia, va; Catharina Meints, vc; Wilbur Price, p 

Boston 1054—71 minutes 

Recordings made in 1982 (Reger) and 1985 

(Pierne and Roussel) for Gasparo are remastered 

here. The sound levels and balance vary. 

The Reger Serenade for flute, violin, and viola 

is recorded in a resonant, boxy environment 

with the flute nestled in the sound of the 

strings. They are more forward, but not in a 

bad way. The Suite finds the flute rather lost, 

placed behind a lovely piano. This is an example 

of Reger’s gebrauchsmusik; the Serenade 

for trio is one of his last compositions. That 

piece grew on me, whereas the Suite did not. 

The Roussel has—from all three players— 

fire and personality sometimes lacking in the 

Reger. With the Pierné we are immediately 

seized by the musical narrative and presented 

with a natural balance among the players. 

Catharina Meints has the driest pizzicato I’ve 

ever heard, but when bowing she makes an 

excellent chamber music partner. The record- 

ing ends with a delicious bonbon, the Pierné 

Canzonetta. 

Robert Willoughby is one of the foremost 

flute players of a generation that has largely 

left us. He taught for many years at Oberlin 

and later at Peabody; he now teaches at Longy. 

Not mentioned in the notes is that in 1996 he 

won the National Flute Association’s Lifetime 

Achievement Award. He plays very well here, 

but I imagine he would sound even better on 

the instruments commonly available to professionals 

today. This re-release adds to his legacy 

of accomplished students who teach at universities 

and play in orchestras nationwide. 

GORMAN 

The Infinite Fabric of Dreams 

MERTZ: Hungarian Fantasy; Elegy; HAUG: 

Prelude, Tiento, Toccata; CASTELNUOVO- 

TEDESCO: Sonata; BRITTEN: Nocturnal 

Colin Davin, g 

Davin 0—63 minutes (800-BUYMYCD) 

I had my doubts about this one—apparently 

self-produced, with no company or number 

and no information about the music or the 

performer. But I determined it is distributed by 

several major outlets—and the program is a 

really serious one. 

My doubts were misplaced. Mr Davin is 

the real thing, a player with a virtuoso’s technique, 

a deeply expressive musicanship, and a 

probing imagination. The opening Mertz 

pieces are some of the finest interpretations 

I’ve heard. Mertz tends to overwrite—he will 

often lurch from climax to climax, as if he 

wants the listener to be perpetually in a state 

of excitement. That makes his music hard to 

interpret convincingly, especially in the Elegie; 

but Davin has the measure of this music, and 

his performances are convincing and moving. 

Hans Haug is a Swiss composer, whose 

association with Segovia led to several work for 

guitar. His work has never been especially 

popular among guitarists, probably owing to 

Segovia’s lukewarm advocacy. But his music is 

pleasant and interesting, free from Hispanic 

cliches (possibly why Segovia never truly 

warmed to him). It somewhat resembles 

Alexander Tansman in style. Davin’s performance 

is warm and lyric, just what the music 

needs. 

Now we come to two of the greatest compositions 

for guitar from the 20th Century. 

Davin’s performance of the Castelnuovo- 

Tedesco Sonata: Homage to Boccherini is the 

finest I’ve ever heard. It’s as expressive and 

more technically sure than Segovia’s. His second 

movement is so achingly beautiful that I 

had tears when I heard it, and his final movement 

manages to maintain a solid wall of 

sound without breaking. 



To follow this with the Britten Nocturnal is 

an incredibly bold choice for a debut recording, 

but Davin is up to the challenge. His performance 

won’t displace Bream’s, but it is a 

thoughtful, perceptive interpretation, filled 

with details often missed; and the buildup to 

the final passacaglia, and its final surrender to 

the tonal world of Dowland’s song, ‘Come 

Heavy Sleep, Come Sweet Death’ is almost 

overwhelming. 

Some information about Mr Davin can be 

found on some reviews of his recording on various 

internet sites. He is from Cleveland, and 

his teachers include Jason Vieaux, Bill 

Kanengiser, and Sharon Isbin. The choice to 

avoid musical or biographical notes was his 

own (he wants the music to speak for itself), as 

was the clear, close, un-reverberant recorded 

sound. I am not enamored of either choice, 

but I do admire both his talent and his sense of 

integrity. 

This is no vanity production. Davin has 

considerable talent and maturity, so seek this 

one out. 

KEATON 

Admir Doci 

RODRIGO: 3 Canciones Espanolas; Aranjuez, 

ma Pensee; TURINA: Sevillana; BOC- 

CHERINI: Introduction & Fandango; 

ASSAD: Valsa de Outono; GNATALLI: Sonata 

with Cello; REGONDI: Introduction & 

Caprice; DERUNGS: Elegie; WETTSTEIN: 

Skizzen; SENFL: 4 Lieder 

Admir Doci; Leila Pfister, mz; Martin Derungs, 

hpsi; Mattia Zappa, vc; Matthias Weilenmann, rec 


Albanian guitarist Admir Doci plays solos, 

songs, and chamber music, so there is a nice 

variety. I enjoy performances like this, and 

wish there were more of them. Doci is a fine 

player, based in Switzerland, and his partners 

are also fine. 

He opens with four songs by Rodrigo and 

mezzo Leila Pfister. She has a rich, dark sound 

that’s ideal for this music, though she never 

overpowers the guitar. ‘Aranjuez, ma Pensee’ 

is arranged from the concerto by Rodrigo. The 

text is by Victoria Kahmi, the composer’s wife. 

It’s undeniably beautiful, but I can’t help feeling 

that hearing the music out of context is disappointing. 

The Boccherini is a Bream arrangement of 

the last movement of his most popular quintet. 

It’s effective, if a bit anachronistic, and it’s 

played with real joy. Martin Derungs is both 

harpsichordist here and a composer, and his 

Elegie for guitar solo, is haunting and mysterious. 

This is the third performance I’ve heard of 

Radames Gnattali’s sonata for guitar and cello. 

I reviewed an all-Gnattali disc (J/F 2011) by 

Marc Regnier and cellist Natalia Khoma on 

Dorian. That remains my favorite performance, 

but this is almost as fine (as is the performance 

of Goluses and Tayor on viola—see 

Night Strings below). Gnattali is Brazil’s most 

important composer after Villa-Lobos, and it’s 

good to hear more of his music. The sonata is 

one of his finest works. The first and third 

movements use unusual groupings of beats 

(such as 9/8 as 2+2+2+3), and II is deeply 

expressive. I liken the work to what Prokofieff 

might have written if he’d been born in Brazil. 

Doci is as strong as a soloist as he is in 

chamber music. The Turina, Assad, Regondi, 

Derungs. and Wettstein are all excellent performances, 

and he’s mastered the varied 

idioms convincingly. The closing set is quite 

unusual—four Lieder by Ludwig Senfl, a Franco-Flemish 

composer of the Renaissance, 

Heinrich Isaac’s pupil, best known for his secular 

German songs and for his sacred music. 

He is a master of his age, and the melodies are 

ably played on recorder by Matthias Weilenmann. 

It’s a surprising and delightful end to an 

inventive and enjoyable program. 

KEATON 

Night Strings 

DOBBINS: Night Suite; FALLA: Spanish 

Folksong Suite; ADLER: Into the Radiant 

Boundaries of Night; GNATALLI: Sonata; 

KIMBER: Hispanic Fantasy 

Nicholas Goluses, g; George Taylor, va 


When I was in college, my major professor had 

a duo with the viola prof, and I fell in love with 

the combination. Viola is the best match for 

guitar among the bowed strings. Violin is too 

penetrating, cello too big and rich, and don’t 

even think about double bass. The viola is the 

Goldilocks instrument; timbre and register are 

all just right. 

There is, however, almost no original 

repertory for the combination, so one has to 

rely on transcription or living composers, and 

that’s what Goluses and Taylor, both professors 

of their instruments at the Eastman 

School of Music, have done here. The results 

are delightful. Both players are masters, and 

both play with a delightful subtlety and 

finesse. They are comfortable and communicative 

playing together, spontaneous and 

responsive—just what fine chamber music 

should be. 

Bill Dobbins is professor of jazz studies at 

Eastman, and has crafted an ingenious suite of 

three classic jazz tunes for the duo: Wayne 

Shorter’s ‘Night Dreamer’, Thelonius Monk’s 

‘Round Midnight’, and Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘Night 

in Tunisia’. These are composed works. Nei- 



ther Goluses nor Taylor takes the tunes and 

improvises. This comes off as chamber music, 

based on borrowed melodies and worked out 

in their style. Still, who can resist the heartrending 

beauty of ‘Round Midnight’, one my 

favorite jazz tunes of all time. And sparks do fly 

in ‘Night in Tunisia’, an effective close. 

I’ve played Falla’s Suite Popular Espanol 

for decades, with singers and with melody 

instruments. Goluses and Taylor omit one of 

the songs, the ‘Seguidilla Murciana’—it relies 

on rapid repetitions of text on a single pitch, 

and doesn’t work well in an instrumental transcription. 

The notes indicate that they are 

using the Max Eschig edition, but I hear a 

number of differences, each effective, that the 

players have made in the transition from voice 

to viola. I love the subtle use of the mute for 

the final phrase of the ‘Jota’. 

Samuel Adler taught composition at Eastman 

for many years and wrote Into the Radiant 

Boundaries of Light for Goluses and violist 

John Graham. His goal was to create a work 

that represented the two instruments equally, 

allowing each player to demonstrate his musicianship, 

without making a virtuoso showpiece—think 

of Berlioz’s Harold in Italy. The 

work is a beautiful, rich, neo-romantic treasure. 

I reviewed an all-Gnattali recording (J/F 

2011), and my favorite performance on that 

disc was the sonata for cello and guitar. That 

was the first all-Gnattali disc reviewed for ARG; 

now, for this issue, I got two more recordings 

of the work, both worthy (see Admir Doci’s 

above). My favorite performance remains the 

first one, Marc Regnier on Dorian, but this is 

almost as fine. I do miss the richness of the 

cello, but viola balances better with the guitar. 

Gnattali wrote Concerto Copacabana for my 

major prof, Juan Mercadal, so I’ve known at 

least that part of his work for some time. 

The least interesting work is the last, 

Michael Kimber’s Hispanic Famtasy. It’s a 

slight work, filled with Spanish-sounding 

cliches. It’s too long for an encore, but that’s 

sort of the role it serves here. Still, I’m sure it’s 

popular with audiences. 

Performances for this combination are 

rare, and ones of this caliber are rarer still. 

Enjoy this one. 

KEATON 

Everything but the City 

HENZE: Minette; 3 Fairytale Pictures; 

TAKEMITSU: A Boy Named Hiroshima; Bad 

Boy; NIEMINEN: Night Shadows; WOU- 

DENBERG: Everything but the City 

Helsinki Guitar Duo—Pilfink 30—56 minutes 

Mikko Ikaheimo and Rody van Gemert are the 

soloists in Moreno Torroba’s concerto for two 

guitars, Tres Nocturnos, reviewed in this issue. 

I found their playing effective and idiomatic, 

but was a bit disturbed by their less-than-precise 

ensemble. This recital is even better musically, 

though they still sometimes have trouble 

playing exactly together. That’s not an easy 

challenge—listen to some all-pizzicato passages 

in orchestral works, like the scherzos in 

the Sibelius second or the Tchaikovsky fourth, 

and you’ll often hear a real mess. Apart from 

that, the performances are committed and 

imaginative. They have a nice range of tone 

and dynamics, and use it effectively. 

If you know Hans Werner Henze only 

through his Royal Winter Music for guitar or 

from some of his thorny, difficult orchestral or 

stage works, these duos will come as a surprise 

to you. Indeed, Henze adapted his music to 

whatever he chose at a given time. His reluctance 

to let theory dictate kept him at odds 

with some of the Darmstadt folks, which was a 

good thing. These works are charming, neoclassical, 

and quite tonal. 

The cycle from Minette is based on arias 

from his opera The English Cat, about a trio of 

pacifist cats raising a baby mouse. Really. The 

music is charming, with almost a cabaret-like 

style, and the arrangement of seven movements 

for two guitars is effective. The Fairytale 

Pictures is from the opera Pollicino (Tom 

Thumb to English speakers). The opera was 

written for children to perform and the music 

is easily accessible. The Helsinki duo’s performances 

of both sets have all the gentle charm 

the music needs. In March/April 2011 I 

reviewed another performance of three pieces 

from that opera, but that was a different three 

pieces, and for guitar solo, rather than the duo. 

Both Takemitsu pieces are from film scores. 

They are melodic, very pretty, and frankly 

rather more vanilla than one normally hears 

from this composer. They are more in the vein 

of his arrangements of popular music, and I’m 

sure these pieces will please many listeners. 

Kai Nieminen’s Night Shadows is, like his 

Acquarelli della Notte (see the review of his 

solo recital in this section), based on the Aurora 

Borealis. It also is a colorful piece, but 

meanders along without leaving much of an 

impression. On the other hand, Rijndert van 

Woudenberg’s Everything but the City is fascinating. 

It was written for these performers and 

deals with the clash between city life and the 

natural world. III is especially moving—a 

beautiful piece written as a Requiem for the 

composer’s father, who died while swimming 

in the North Sea. And the final movement, 

based on a seabird’s mating dance, builds to a 

truly raucous climax. 

This is an interesting collection of music 

you’re not likely to find performed elsewhere, 

and played quite well. 

KEATON 



Sharon Isbin, guitar 

CORIGLIANO: Troubadours; SCHWANT- 

NER: From Afar; FOSS: American Landscapes 

St Paul Chamber Orchestra/ Hugh Wolf 

EMI 50999—67 minutes 

This is a reissue of a recording that was made 

for Virgin in 1995 (J/F 1996—Mr Ellis was 

warm in his praise, though he was as annoyed 

by the Schwantner as I was charmed). I’m glad 

to see it continues to circulate. 

Sharon Isbin is a national treasure. She is a 

magnificent musician, and she continues the 

Segovia tradition of expanding the guitar 

repertory with commissioned and inspired 

works. Each of these works is a worthy offering 

from one of America’s leading composers, and 

each is presented in an excellent performance. 

Corigliano’s Troubadours is typical of that 

composer in a lyric mood. It is a large set of 

variations based on a theme inspired by the 

melodies of the troubadours (in fact, the last 

third of the theme is a quotation of a song by 

the trobairitz—a female troubadour—Beatriz, 

Comtessa di Dia, ‘A Chantar’). The music is 

colorful and rich, yet still simple, in keeping 

with its origins. It evolves from active to calm, 

from powerful to meditative. Isbin’s performance 

is superb, and she is well matched by 

the St Paul players. 

Joseph Schwantner’s From Afar... is the 

most virtuosic work here. It is swirling and colorful—understandably 

so, since this is the only 

work whose composer is actually a guitarist (or 

was in his early years). It was composed when 

Schwantner was composer-in-residence for 

the St Louis Symphony—the first time that a 

guitar composer was commissioned by a 

major American orchestra. 

Luca Foss’s American Landscapes is the only 

work here that is actually based on American 

folk music. The first movement includes several 

folk song quotes, including ‘Jefferson and Liberty’ 

and the unfortunately named ‘Dog’s Tic’; the 

slow movement is a set of variations on ‘Wayfaring 

Stranger’, with some witty use of quarter 

tones (including one point where the guitar detunes 

one of the bass strings—which Isbin executes 

with amazing accuracy). The final movement 

is based on a pair of bluegrass tunes, ‘Cotton-eyed 

Joe’ and ‘Stay a Little Longer’, and 

ends with an Ives-like quote of ‘America the 

Beautiful’ in another key. 

In the last 15 years, none of these works 

have caught on—conductors seem inclined to 

learn the Aranjuez and be done with it if they 

pay attention to guitar concertos at all. But 

they are worthy, and Isbin’s and Wolff’s collaboration 

means that at least there is a good 

model. 

KEATON 

Johannes Moller, guitar 

BARRIOS: El Sueno en la Floresta; CRAEY- 

VANGER: Der Freischutz Variations; VILLA- 

LOBOS: 3 Etudes; Cadenza; GOUGEON: 

Lamento-Scherzo; REGONDI: Reverie; 

BROUWER: Sonata; MOLLER: Poem to a 

Distant Fire Naxos 572715—73 minutes 

Johannes Moller is the winner of the 2010 Guitar 

Foundation of America Competition, probably 

the most important in the Americas. The 

first prize includes a Naxos recording contract 

along with several concerts. The contest 

always attracts the highest levels of talent, and 

Mr Moller is no exception. It is not enough to 

have an excellent technique—the winner must 

also have a distinct musical personality, an 

interpretive viewpoint. This recording is one of 

the most musical and expressive programs I’ve 

heard. 

Yes, Moller has a virtuosic technique, but 

he’s not eager to show it off at any opportunity, 

especially if there are areas to be explored 

that need space, quiet, and contemplation. 

And he has an amazing range of sound expression. 

Timbre is for him a distinct interpretive 

tool, so any given passage marked, say, pizzicato 

will not be identical to any other. Each 

phrase, each piece, creates its own world. 

This is even evident in his programming. 

Who would have thought to play the cadenza 

from the Villa-Lobos concerto as part of a 

recital? But it works, and by creating a set of 

Etudes 7, 9, the cadenza, and Etude 12, he has 

made the aesthetic equivalent of a four-movement 

sonata. It was sheer genius to see how 

naturally the ending of the cadenza led into 

the wild, swirling portamento chords of the 

last etude. And it was nice to hear such a loving 

performance of Etude 9, a beautiful piece I’ve 

always adored, but I’ve never heard it performed 

outside of a complete set. One could 

quibble with some of Moller’s rhythmic choices 

in 7 or 9, but he clearly has his own conception, 

and he presents that convincingly. 

The opening Barrios is played with all the 

mysterious, dream-like mood it should have. 

The Weber variations by Karel Arnoldus Craeyvanger 

(who?) is a treat. The music could be by 

Weber; it inhabits a world a generation after 

Sor and Giuliani, and the variations avoid the 

trap of the obvious that older composers so 

often succumbed to. 

The Lamento-Scherzo by Denis Gougeon 

was the required piece for the competition, yet 

Moller plays it like he’s known it for years. It’s 

a challenging work, making demands on both 

the virtuosic technique and the intellectual 

and intuitive understanding of the player. 

Regondi’s Reverie is an overblown piece, with 

way too many notes, but Moller makes it all 

convincing. 



The Brouwer sonata is another modern 

masterpiece, full of wild contrasts, mystery, 

and humor (note the quote from Beethoven’s 

Pastoral Symphony at the end of the first 

movement). Brouwer’s scores are notable for 

the level of detail they include, for timber, 

dynamics, articulation, and special effects. He 

loves lots of contrast in his music, and I’m sure 

he would love Moller’s performance, which is 

one of the finest I’ve heard. 

Moller’s bio describes him as “guitarist and 

composer”—self-taught. As a teacher, I can’t 

approve, but as a musician, I love the final 

work on the program, his Poem to a Distant 

Fire. It is a beautiful work with ambiguous 

tonality that reminds me a bit of Scriabin. It is 

totally without cliches, so easy to fall into on 

guitar music; the final set of extremely high 

harmonics brings the program to an end quietly. 

This made me sad when it was over. I look 

forward to more from Mr Moller as his career 

develops. 

KEATON 

In the Woods 

FALLA: Homenaje; MILHAUD: Segoviana; 

ROUSSEL: Segovia; GOMEZ-CRESPO: 

Nortena; TAKEMITSU: In the Woods; Piece 

for the 60th Birthday of Sylvano Bussotti; 

Equinox; TORROBA: Suite Castellana; Nocturno; 

Madronos; NIEMINEN: Acquarelli 

della Notte 

Kai Nieminen, g 


Kai Nieminen is a well-established guitarist 

and teacher based in Finland, with an active 

European career. He plays with Duo Upingos, 

a guitar-oboe ensemble, whose release is also 

reviewed in this issue. He is also a composer, 

and one can hear his music on this recording 

and on one by the Helsinki Guitar Duo, also 

reviewed here. 

Nieminen presents a recital mostly of 

miniatures from the Segovia repertory. I wish I 

found his playing more convincing. His sound 

is bold and varied—perhaps too bold. I wish 

there were more gentleness in many of the 

pieces. Gomez-Crespo’s Nortena simply 

sounds harsh. And his rubato often breaks the 

flow rather than enhances it. Rubato needs to 

do one of two things: either make a passage 

more beautiful or clarify the phrase structure. 

Is there a need, for instance, in Torroba’s 

Madronos, to stop the piece’s magical, gentle 

flow every few beats? Other choices just seem 

odd. Torroba’s Nocturno starts promisingly, 

but why spoil the mystery in the middle section 

by playing the chords staccato and the 

same volume as the melody? 

His own piece, Acquarelli della Notte is col- 

orful—appropriate for music inspired by the 

Aurora Borealis—but tends to meander. It’s 

never a good sign when half way through a 

piece, you start thinking “Isn’t this over yet?” 

Each of the other pieces has had better 

performance in other hands. Unless you want 

this particular set of pieces, you are better off 

elsewhere. 

KEATON 

Sans Souci 

TORROBA: Castles of Spain (4); BARRIOS: 3 

Waltzes; SATIE: 3 Gnossiennes; ASSAD: 

Saudades; SPOOR: Sans Souci; BROUWER: 

Un Dia de Noviembre 

Aaron Spoor, g 

ATSTA 0—47 minutes (800-529-1696) 

The jacket lists Mr Spoor as producer and 

recording engineer, and indicates that the project 

took ten months in 2010. Other than that 

there is no information about Spoor or the 

music. 

I’m afraid Mr Spoor is simply not ready for 

prime time. These performances are amateurish. 

His rubato is both self-indulgent and predictable 

(it’s tricky to be both). Slurs are 

rushed, tempos uneven, scalar passages sloppy. 

His tone is not bad, but is often on the 

twangy side. Beyond his immediate family and 

friends, I don’t know who would be interested 

in this. 

KEATON 

Machaca—Mano a Mano 

PONCE: Prelude; Estrellita; PIAZZOLLA: 

Bordel 1900; Café 1930; Nightclub 1950; 

LAURO: Natalia; IANNARELLI: Valzer Brilliante; 

BROUWER: Danza Caracteristica; 

Cancion del Cuna; BELLINATI: Jongo; 

VILLA-LOBOS: Bachianas Brasileiras 5: 

Aria; ROTH: Quintet 

Morgan Szymanski, g; Jose Menor, hpsi; Ruth 

Rogers, v; Laura Mitchell, s; Luzmira Zerpa: g, 

cuatro; O Duo, Oliver Cox, perc; Gemma Rosefield, 

vc; Phuong Nguyen, acc; Sacconi Quartet 

Sarabande 1—68 minutes 

Szymanski, born in Mexico and trained at the 

Royal College of Music in London, has taken 

some well-known works, many originally 

solos, and arranged them for chamber ensembles. 

The results are, for the most part, charming 

and enjoyable, if not always especially exiting 

or compelling. 

Ponce’s ‘Preludio’ is usually heard as a 

solo, and it’s one of the most joyous, delightful 

bits of Ponce’s neo-classic output. He made an 

arrangement with harpsichord. The harpsichord 

part is interesting, but too busy. Piazzolla’s 

Histoire du Tango is a four-movement 

work, originally for guitar and flute (I believe— 

with Piazzolla it’s hard to say). But any melody 



instrument can fill in for the flute. Szymanski 

plays only three movements, two with violin 

and guitar, and the slow ‘Cafe 1930’ with 

accordion. It works well. 

The addition of percussion to Brouwer’s 

‘Danza Caracteristica’ is a brilliant touch. Less 

so the percussion in the lullaby, ‘Cancion de 

Cuna’. Nor am I convinced of the addition of 

voice and text to the lullaby, even though they 

have found the text from Ernesto Grenet’s 

original setting. Laura Mitchell has a light, 

pretty voice—too light for my taste. Text is also 

added to the Lauro waltz, and she sings the 

Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras 5. She has 

considerable competition on that work, and 

falls short of most of it. 

The most interesting work—and by far the 

best performance—is Alec Roth’s Guitar Quintet. 

It’s one of the finest essays for guitar and 

strings I’ve ever heard. It has beautiful 

melodies, interesting harmonies, evocative 

effects—and, if one can judge by the titles of 

the movements, considerable extramusical 

inspiration. That makes the total lack of notes 

frustrating. What does it mean, when the first 

movement is supposed to be ‘In Memoriam 

Lobgott Piepsam’? Or the second says ‘Papa H 

Dances’? Papa Haydn? Papa Honegger? Hitler? 

The rest of the performances range from 

charming and delightful to a bit disappointing, 

but the recording is worth getting for the quintet 

alone. (This may only be available thru 

Internet sources.) 

KEATON 

In South American Twilight 

DESPORTES: Pastorale Melancolique; Pastorale 

Joyeuse; PESSARD: Andalouse; 

GOSSEC: Tambourin; VILLA-LOBOS: 5 Preludes; 

Aria from Bachianas Brasileiras 5; 

Distribuicao de Flores; CHAVEZ: Upingos; 3 

Pieces; SOR: La Romanesca; PIAZZOLLA: 

Café 1930 

Duo Upingos (Kai Nieminen, g; Juha Markkanen, 

ob) 


I review another of Nieminen’s releases in this 

section, and I wasn’t very impressed with it. 

This is better. In particular, I was happy to 

hear the combination of guitar and oboe—a 

lovely sound, and I actually prefer it to the 

ubiquitous guitar and flute ensemble. Many 

combinations of guitar and flute can substitute 

oboe without any changes, as is the case with 

many of the works here. Markkanen has a 

beautiful sound, though he’s not the most subtle 

in his phrasing. Nieminen balances well 

with the oboe, and his tendency to a bold 

sound actually serve him well in this setting. 

The opening four pieces are pleasant, if 

insubstantial. Pessard’s ‘Andalouse’ is one of 

those pieces that represent what a Frenchman 

thinks a Spaniard sounds like, and the Frenchman 

is wrong. The next ensemble works are 

the two Villa-Lobos pieces. The Bachianas 

Brasileiras should have been magical, but is 

just prosaic. Neither player makes any attempt 

to come down in sound for the return of the 

aria melody, when the work calls on the singer 

to hum (it is marked boca chiusa, closed 

mouth). 

Nieminen has several solos here. The five 

Villa-Lobos preludes are some of the most 

popular in the guitar repertory, and there is 

considerable competition. These performances 

can’t be recommended. Most of the 

technically demanding passages are either 

sluggish or uneven—and he slows down parts 

of the arpeggio in the middle section of No. 2. 

The three pieces by Mexican composer 

Carlos Chavez are better, especially the final 

‘Un Poco Mosso’. Markkanen then plays his 

own solo, ‘Upingos’, the source of the duo’s 

name. It’s technically fluid, if a bit unimaginative. 

Somehow both players really came alive in 

the last two pieces. Sor’s ‘La Romanesca’ is 

actually my favorite performance of the lot, 

and both players are suddenly sensitive and 

expressive to a degree I hadn’t heard. Piazzolla’s 

‘Cafe 1930’ is from his set Histoire du 

Tango, and is given a moving, mysterious, and 

romantic performance. 

But why name your disc In South American 

Twilight when only two of the composers are 

actually from South America? 

KEATON 

Happy Here 

VEDDER: Rise; JEFFES: For a Found Harmonium; 

BACH: Sheep May Safely Graze; 

BRUCE: White Room; COUPERIN: Mysterious 

Barricades; O’RIADA: Women of Ireland; 

COULTER: Redwood Waltz; VERDERY: 

Happy Here; Tread Lightly; TRAD: Costa de 

Galicia; One Night in Bethlehem 

William Coulter, Benjamin Verdery, g 

Mushkatweek 400—48 minutes (503-477-7103) 

This came with a note from the Editor, “this 

may not be for ARG”. It is, indeed, not the classical 

repertory, except for the Bach and 

Couperin. The rest is in various folk traditions. 

But Ben Verdery is a well-established, wellrespected 

classical guitarist (Bill Coulter is just 

as renowned and specializes in Celtic music). 

Music for guitar often has one foot in the cultivated 

world and another in the vernacular. I’ve 

had recent reviews of such music of Columbia, 

another of Chile—and don’t get me, or Mr 

Vroon, started on Piazzolla. Besides, this is 

damned fine music-making. 

The notes (another nearly illegible mess of 



tiny type superimposed over color shots) tell 

just a bit about each piece, and most seem to 

have arisen out of one of the two starting to 

play something, and the two improvising 

together. With average musicians, that could 

be dreadful, but these are not average musicians. 

They play with taste, affection, and 

imagination. The results are never disappointing 

and often delightful and moving. Verdery 

plays a nylon-stringed instrument, Coulter a 

steel-stringed acoustic. Some of the cuts seem 

to be solos, though the notes don’t specify. The 

sources are disparate. Couperin’s ‘Mysterious 

Barricades’ is well known, and the transcription 

by Alirio Diaz stays close to the original. 

Bach’s ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ is given a 

looser arrangement, without the pulsing bass 

that would identify it as baroque, but who can 

resist this gorgeous music in any guise? 

Other sources are more surprising. ‘Rise’ is 

by Eddie Vedder of the band Pearl Jam, and 

‘White Room’ is by Jack Bruce of Cream. Yet 

neither arrangement seems like anything 

taken from an electronic, highly amplified 

source, and the performances are moving and 

wholly natural. 

The traditional music from Ireland and 

Spain has the players in more familiar territory. 

‘One Night in Bethlehem’ is achingly beautiful, 

and the final work, ‘Peggy Gordon’ even 

more delicate and lovely. Both Verdery and 

Coulter contribute here as composers as well 

as arrangers. There pieces are in folk style, as 

would be expected in this project. ‘Tread 

Lightly’, written in memory of Verdery’s brother 

Dan, is sweet, gentle, and deeply moving. 

I took great pleasure in this recording, and 

I’ll return to it often. 

More Bizarre or baRock 

Elizabeth Anderson, hpsi 

Move 3326—64 minutes 

KEATON 

Here is a collection of harpsichord favorites, 

pop-jazz-baroque fusion pieces, and contemporary 

harpsichord music. Anderson is a 

dynamic and imaginative player. I enjoy her 

energetic rendition of Mozart’s Rondo alla 

Turca. She also has a sensitive, introverted 

side; and several of the pieces she has programmed 

for this recording, like Herbert Howells’s 

poignant ‘Lambert’s Fireside’, show her 

in that light. The harpsichord is supported in 

some pieces by a jazz rhythm section of bass, 

drums, and vibes, in various combinations. 

The Australian didjeridu makes an appearance 

in Ron Nagorcka’s ‘This Beauteous Wicked 

Place’. 

KATZ 

American Music for Percussion 2 

CARTER: Tintinnabulation; CHILD: Refrain; 

COHEN: Acid Rain; HARBISON: 

Cortege; LERDAHL: First Voices 

Yelena Beriyeva, Yelizaveta Beriyeva, p; Kimberly 

Soby, s; Mary Kate Vom Lehn, mz; Thea Lobo, a; 

New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble/ 

Frank Epstein 


There’s one nice thing about modern percussion 

music: you don’t have to sit there nagging 

yourself because you can’t hear and keep track 

of the tone rows. And, I’ve heard some good 

non-pitched percussion pieces in my time, but 

these seem simply so much organized striking 

of clangy objects—or maybe I’m too populist 

and I need an occasional steady beat to hold 

onto. John Harbison’s Cortege is a sometimes 

angry tribute to his friend Donald Sur, who 

died in 1999. Alas, maybe because I’m already 

used to percussion being, well, percussive, the 

anger doesn’t come across. Maybe it’s in the 

playing, but I think it’s easier to grasp brutality 

when it’s coming from strings, for example. 

The ticking clock feeling at the end is effective, 

though. 

The First Voices, by Fred Lerdahl, is a setting 

from Rousseau’s On the Origin of Language, 

about there being no difference 

between speaking and singing at the beginning 

of the evolution of language. The singers perform 

with very little vibrato; the dry harmonies 

dance to the rhythms, and the sound is similar 

to Partch’s Delusion of the Fury. The playing is 

good, and the sound is deep and very clear. 

There’s nothing that would draw me to listen 

to this again. Notes in English, with a 

translation of the Rousseau. (Also, there’s a 

percussion instrument called a “rape”? That’s 

unfortunate, though it does remind me of a 

graffito I saw in graduate school: “the lute is 

often accompanied by the rape and the pillage”.) 

ESTEP 

Czech & Moravian Oboe 

Marlen Vavrikova 


The robust history and culture of the Czech 

Republic continues to yield new fascinations. 

These mostly unpublished works are scored 

for a combination of oboe with strings and 

piano. For the soloist, Marlen Vavrikova, assistant 

professor of music at Grand Valley State 

University in Michigan, they embody perhaps 

only a sampling of homeland favorites. A few 

of them belong solidly to the classical tradition, 

some to folk, and others to a much more 

modern idiom. 

A work by Edvard Schiffauer, born in 1942, 



called Fantasy about Love falls neatly into the 

category of abstract work, whereas the two 

quartets by Pavel Masek (1761-1826) are undeniably 

classical, if not quite reminiscent of 

early Mozart. Others come from the country’s 

rich folk tradition. Ctirad Kohoutek’s Sonatina 

Semplice, for example, while a modern work, is 

the depth of Czech and Moravian tradition and 

its modern composers’ interests in preserving 

their heritage. And as much repertoire of certain 

instruments as the oboe have been developed 

over time by composers writing pieces 

specifically for competitions and juries at conservatories, 

Pavel Cotek’s Miniatures is a collection 

of nine short works designed to test 

specific technical abilities using an appealing 

melodic context. 

Overall, Vavrikova doesn’t try too hard to 

sell the unfamiliar repertoire, which can often 

achieve the opposite result. That is, pushing 

the performance beyond this level of effort 

reduces the appeal. Instead, she plays with 

intuition and subtly uses vibrato to maximum 

effect. The result is that her performance holds 

great appeal for the listener, while widening 

the repertoire available to the instrument. 

SCHWARTZ 

In Memoriam Nadia Boulanger 

BOULANGER,L: Pie Jesu; BOULANGER,N: 

Prelude; Petit Canon; Piece on Flemish Folk 

Airs; Improvisation; FAURE: Pie Jesu; 

IBERT: Fugue; THOMSON: Pastorale on a 

Christmas Plainsong; COPLAND: Preamble 

for a Solemn Occasion; FRANCAIX: Suite 

Carmelite; LEE: Mosaiques; CONTE: Prelude 

& Fugue 

Carolyn Shuster, org; Magali Leger, s 

Ligia 109206—70 minutes 

This recording was made 30 years after the 

death of Nadia Boulanger and it is welcome. 

The compositions are pieces written by Nadia 

and her sister Lili, friends of Nadia, and her 

pupils. Shuster is currently titulaire of the 1867 

Cavaille-Coll choir organ at Trinite Church, 

Paris; Magali Leger is a concert and opera 

soprano; the organ is the 3-53 Cavaille-Coll 

(1894) in Saint-Antoine-des- Quinze-Vingts, 

Paris (12th arrondissement). 

It may be redundant to most ARG readers, 

but Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) was an internationally 

known musician who aside from 

her own talents as a composer, taught and 

counseled Daniel Barenboim, Elliot Carter, 

Aaron Copland, and organists Gerre Hancock 

and Marilyn Mason. It may be that it was Nadia’s 

role in promoting the music by her incredibly 

talented sister Lili that made her known to 

many. Her own pieces, while neatly crafted 

and quite pleasant, lack that special touch, 

that unexpected turn here and there that 

would set them apart. 

Of the four pieces heard here, the Prelude 

is most interesting. I came across the music of 

Lili years ago with a recording of her works 

done by Markevitch and the Lamoureux 

Orchestra (originally on Everest, and now on 

EMI 64281). Her only appearance on this disc 

is her Pie Jesu, a haunting solo for mezzo 

soprano. Leger’s voice is too heavy for this sensitive 

work. She does a better job with Fauré’s 

selection from his Requiem. 

Ibert’s delightful 1920 Fugue from Three 

Pieces has a simple subject that may make this 

an attractive addition to the repertory of 

organists. Divinum Mysterium opens Thomson’s 

piece followed by five variations. The 

most complex of the settings has the opening 

tune in the left hand, ‘Vom Himmel Hoch’ in 

the right hand, and ‘God Rest You’ in the 

Pedal. Copland’s entry gets a powerful performance 

from Fournier as befits the solemnity of 

the title. Francaix’s 1960 work was taken from 

the Dialogue of the Carmelites film. The organ 

adaptation is dedicated to Pierre Cochereau, 

who replaced Francaix’s father as Director of 

the Mans Conservatory. The six very brief 

pieces in this suite (mostly one to two minutes) 

are dedicated to specific nuns. 

Mosaiques by Noel Lee (b.1924) is nine 

minutes of rhythms and tunes in an atonal 

framework. Not very pleasant. David Conte (b 

1955) teaches composition and leads choirs at 

San Francisco Conservatory. His prelude slowly 

broadens after a hushed beginning, concluding 

powerfully. The four-note subject of 

the fugue is easy to follow. This also builds to a 

dramatic conclusion. I find the Fugue more 

attractive than the Prelude. In sum, a well 

played tribute to Nadia Boulanger. 

METZ 

Late Issue? 

When ARG is mailed (usually around the 

23rd of the month before the cover) it is out 

of our hands. It may take 3 or 4 weeks to get 

to you. (It takes longer around the Christmas 

holidays and may seem to take longer in late 

February, because that is a short month.) But 

if it hasn't arrived by then, let us know so we 

can replace it in the next mailing. We generally 

cannot afford to mail individual copies, 

so if you renew late, you will have to wait for 

the issue you missed. The same if you forgot 

to tell us a change of address. 



Martha Argerich & Friends, 

Lugano 2010 

SCHUMANN: Violin Sonata 1; Adagio & 

Allegro; CHOPIN: Rondo for 2 Pianos; Piano 

Concerto 1; BRAHMS: Schumann Variations; 

LISZT: Les Preludes; KORNGOLD: 

Piano Quintet; BARTOK: Sonata for 2 Pianos 

& Percussion; GRANADOS: Piano Quintet; 

STRAVINSKY: Firebird Suite; GRAINGER: 

Fantasy on Porgy & Bess; SCHNITTKE: Piano 

Quintet 

Martha Argerich, Nicholas Angelich, Sergei Edelmann, 

Carlo Maria Griguoli, Alexander Gurning, 

Stephen Kovacevich, Lily Maisky, Alexander 

Mogilevsky, Gabriela Montero, Daniel Rivera, 

Alessandro Stella, Georgia Tomassi, Lilya Zilberstein, 

p; Renaud Capucon, Lucia Hall, Geza 

Hosszu-Legocky, Alissa Margulis, Dora Schwarzberg, 

v; Lida Chen, Nora Romanoff-Schwarzberg, 

va; Gautier Capucon, Mark Drobinsky, Natalia 

Margulis, Jorge Bosso, vc; Louis Sauvetre, Danilo 

Grassi, perc; Italian Swiss Orchestra/ Jacek Kaspszyk 

EMI 70836 [3CD] 240 minutes 

Since 2005, a 3CD set of concert recordings 

from the Lugano Festival has been an annual 

EMI release. Over the years these recordings 

have garnered many awards and consistently 

outstanding reviews. For people who have 

enjoyed them in the past, like me, here is one 

more superlative release in the series. The 

tenth annual Martha Argerich Project, promoted 

by the Lugano Festival, took place June 8 to 

30, 2011—around when I was listening to last 

year’s highlights for this review. Each year 

some 50 artists are brought together around 

the great pianist, all of whom are either highly 

regarded musicians or talented young players. 

A number of people listed above have performed 

often enough to be considered regulars. 

Several of the younger pianists have come 

my way for review, and all have listed playing 

with Martha Argerich at Lugano prominently 

in their biographies. 

Designed as a showcase for ensemble 

music, the event is presented as a workshop, 

with artists in residence invited to play rarely 

performed compositions alongside masterpieces 

of the repertoire. We have three almost 

unknown piano quintets, all given very convincing 

performances. The two large Schumann 

works with the Capucon brothers 

accompanied by Argerich are wonderful. The 

two-piano works are varied and all at a very 

high level, whether or not Argerich is one of 

the participants. I particularly enjoyed the 

Liszt and the Grainger setting of Gershwin. I 

have seen a program from the 1800s where 

Liszt’s two-piano version of Les Preludes ended 

a big concert with the composer and Saint- 

Saens as the pianists. The Bartok as done here 

by the husband and wife team of Argerich and 

Kovacevich is easily the best concert performance 

of the work I have ever heard. 

I learned Chopin’s Piano Concerto 1 from 

Argerich’s first recording about 40 years ago. 

She hasn’t lost her touch with it, and is strongly 

supported by Jacek Kaspszyk. About the only 

work on the three discs that I could do without 

is the three-piano version of the Firebird Suite. 

It is performed well and I’m sure the pianists 

had a great time with it, but I am convinced 

that Stravinsky knew what he was doing when 

he did his piano arrangements of Petroushka 

and Sacre du Printemps (see other reviews in 

this issue) and did not do a similar arrangement 

of Firebird. 

Martha Argerich is the heart and soul of 

this event. She turned 70 this past June and is 

universally acknowledged as one of the greatest 

pianists of her generation. I cannot imagine 

any ARG reader who would not enjoy just 

about everything here. 

HARRINGTON 

Beethoven and His Teachers 

BEETHOVEN: Piano Duet Sonata, op 6; 

Waldstein Variations; Marches, op 45; Variations 

on Ich Denke Dein; Grosse Fuge; 

ALBRECHTSBERGER: Prelude & Fugue; 

NEEFE: 6 Easy Pieces from The Magic Flute; 

HAYDN: Divertmento 

Cullen Bryant & Dmitry Rachmanov, p; Maria 

Ferrante, s 


This is an outstanding release and one that 

might easily be overlooked. While I am not 

generally a period instrument person, I do 

appreciate hearing works performed on an 

excellent instrument appropriate for the period 

where they were written. Here we have not 

one, but two fascinating fortepianos: Caspar 

Katholnig, Vienna, circa 1805-10 and Johann 

Tröndlin, Leipzig, 1830. Both have been 

expertly maintained and preserved by the 

Frederick Historic Piano Collection in Ashburnham, 

Massachusetts. All works except the 

Three Marches and the Great Fugue are performed 

on the Katholnig, reserving the 

Tröndlin for the two largest works. The 

dynamic range coaxed out of both instruments 

is a testament to the abilities of Bryant and 

Rachmanov, who should also be commended 

for their absolute dead-on ensemble. I have sat 

shoulder-to-shoulder with another pianist at 

an 1860s square piano (once played by 

Brahms) and can only imagine the difficulties 

the earlier, smaller instruments would present. 

A telling picture in the booklet shows both 

men off at a slight angle to the center of the 

keyboard. The sound these instruments produce 

is different from a modern piano in the 



sonorities for each register (low, middle, and 

high). The highest notes sound much more 

akin to a plucked violin or even a marimba or 

xylophone, while the middle is closest to our 

modern home spinet pianos. The bass is, as 

expected, not as full and sonorous as a modern 

grand, but very clear and never muddy. At the 

loudest moments in the Marches you hear 

kind of a raspy twang that reminds you of the 

percussion that is often associated with 

marches—a truly unique effect. 

It would be easy to label this entire release 

rarities. Of the five significant compositions by 

Beethoven, which account for more than half 

the total time, only one, the Grosse Fuge, has 

come my way for review in the past several 

years. The Variations on ‘Ich denke dein’ are 

listed as a world premiere recording. Beethoven 

notated the theme for soprano and 

piano four-hands. The Magic Flute pieces are 

quite enjoyable and the only thing I have ever 

heard by an early teacher of Beethoven, Christian 

Gottlob Neefe. Perhaps the most entertaining 

piece here is the Haydn Divertmento. 

Based on the familiar Harmonious Blacksmith 

theme, this two-movement work is a set of 

variations and a minuet. The variations, as the 

subtitle ‘Il Maestro e lo Scolare’ implies, 

exploits the master and student relationship. 

Never was there a master and student who 

could so accurately imitate each other as the 

two pianists here. 

Whether you are an expert in the field of 

period instruments or just curious about their 

sound, you owe it to yourself to make this 

recording a part of your collection. The repertoire, 

performers, booklet notes, and recorded 

sound are all superb; and I plan to keep this 

one on my active listening stack for the foreseeable 

future. 

HARRINGTON 

Hans-Goran Elfving 

DEBUSSY: Ce qu’a Vu le Vent d’Ouest; Poissons 

d’or; Le Puerta del Vino; Les Collines 

d’Anacapi; SJOGREN: Andantino ur Stemningar; 

Morgonvandring ur Folklivsbilder 

de; FALLA: Ritual Fire Dance; Fantasia Baetica; 

THUNAEUS: Preludes 1, 11, 12, 14, 19, 

20; BRITTEN: Holiday Diary; NILSSON: Om 

en Resa; BRAHMS: Rhapsody in B minor 

Nosag 187—79 minutes 

This gives good value for your money in terms 

of playing time. There are some drawbacks, 

however. Hans-Goring Elfving plays with a 

rather clangorous tone and his touch is somewhat 

uneven. I can’t tell you much about him 

as the jacket notes are only in Swedish. Two of 

the three Swedish composers—Ragnar Thunaeus 

(1898-1972) and Torsten Nilsson (1920- 

99)—are ones I have never heard of before. 

Neither one is particularly appealing. 

BAUMAN 

Tao Lin 

CHOPIN: Piano Sonata 3; MOZART: Sonata 

14; SCARLATTI: Sonatas 

Artek 55—67 minutes 

The actual title of this release is “Tao Lin Live 

in Concert”, but our editor considers the term 

“live” redundant. Fully agreeing with Mr 

Vroon, I will admit that the prospect of seeing 

an artist dead in recital might really be a 

ghoulish thing, though an experience never to 

be forgotten. 

Now, to the Chinese-American Mr Lin. 

Admitted to the Shanghai Conservatory of 

Music at the age of eight, he eventually moved 

to the United States and became active as a 

solo performer and chamber music player. His 

many awards include the William Kapell International 

Piano Competition. He is currently 

Professor of Collaborative Piano at Lynn University 

in Boca Raton, Florida. 

This recording, made at the Gary Soren 

Smith Center for the Fine and Performing Arts 

in California, has a mid-auditorium perspective 

in a rather resonant hall. The two Scarlatti 

sonatas show Lin’s impressive technique, but 

not always to best advantage as the wash of 

sound robs the music of some clarity. The 

Mozart grouping, consisting of the Rondo, K 

485, Fantasy, K475, and Sonata 14, are all 

straightforward and quite pleasant but with little 

to excite the imagination or to distinguish 

them from many others. 

Chopin’s Sonata 3, which has captured the 

fancy of a legion of today’s pianists, is not 

always an easy work to bring off. While grander 

in scale than its well-known predecessor, it 

lacks the fancy and emotional concentration 

of that work. Lin certainly knows how to handle 

Chopin properly with playing that is exciting 

and flows naturally. Once again the recording 

is muddy, particularly in passagework. 

With all the currently available recordings this 

one is not really competitive. 

BECKER 

Liisa Pohjola, piano 

with Olli Pohjola, fl; Jeanne Loriod, ondes martinot; 

Finnish Radio/ Sakari Oramo 

Alba 286 [3CD] 207 minutes 

Pohjola studied piano with Timo Mikkila at the 

Sibelius Academy, with Richard Hauser in 

Vienna, with Detlev Kraus in Essen, and with 

Magda Tagliaferro in Paris. She gave her debut 

recital in 1955 and has mostly been on the 

European concert scene. As Professor of Piano 

at the Sibelius Academy from 1976 to 2001 she 



championed the music of her contemporaries 

and continues to do so as an active teacher. 

This very welcome set gathers together a 

host of recordings of mostly short pieces by 

Finnish and 20th Century composers. With the 

exception of a handful of Haydn, Schumann, 

and Chopin, most of her repertory will be 

unfamiliar to all but a few of our readers. 

Recording dates are supplied in the booklet 

along with thorough notes for this most 

unusual set. 

Stravinsky’s Capriccio is the only work with 

orchestra. Its dry wit and capriciousness 

comes across well, particularly with the 

Finnish orchestra. As many times as I have listened 

to this piece over the years, it has never 

found a warm place in my affections. Pohjola 

and Oramo manage to capture its desiccated 

spirit perfectly. 

Four of Debussy’s Etudes and three of 

Schumann’s Fantasy Pieces display the artist’s 

stirling technical abilities and the remarkable 

strength of her fingers. This kind of virile playing 

is not encountered very often. 

The Finnish Folk Song Arrangements by 

Sibelius combine a more quiet, reflective kind 

of writing, with, in the case ‘That Beautiful 

Girl’ an obvious appreciation for the more 

zaftig aspects of attractiveness. The composer’s 

Nocturne Op.51:3 uses a flute and is 

drawn from his incidental music to Belshazzar’s 

Feast. Two additional pieces from the 

composer’s Op. 24, ‘Romanze’ and ‘Barcarola’, 

are most attractive. 

Kocab by the Finnish composer Erkki 

Salmenhaara (1941-2002) is named after the 

second brightest star in the constellation Ursa 

minor. It packs a terrific wallop in its fourminute 

duration and is quite a discovery. Also 

a discovery (even with a momentary sound 

blip) is the Chopin Nocturne Op. 27:1, played 

with just the right amount of forbidding dark 

cloud cover and lyrical loveliness. 

Prokofieff’s Sonata 5 has Pohjola easily 

holding her own among the competition. The 

gentle, almost nonchalant writing is played 

with stunning clarity and forward momentum. 

With the Andantino we have the sardonic 

nose-thumbing so typical of his colleague 

Shostakovich. As with its predecessor, it ends 

with a whimper before advancing to a last 

movement similar to the opening. Pohjola 

rightfully makes no attempt to emulate the 

pile-driving dynamics of the later sonatas. 

Finnish composer Aarre Merikanto (1893- 

1958) is represented by his Six Pieces, Op. 20. 

Each of these is an attractive romantic miniature, 

but with far more impressionist harmonies 

than one might initially expect. Pohjola 

is well attuned to the character of each piece 

and makes of them a joyful discovery for the 

listener. 

Haydn’s Sonata 37 in E might seem an 

unusual choice here, and its early recording 

date (1971) shows in the sound. Despite the 

boxiness, it’s a sprightly reading perfectly in 

tune with what we have come to expect from 

excellent Haydn interpreters—crisp, clean, 

refined—but not too refined. 

Three pieces from Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata 

were recorded in 1969 and take a little over 

seven minutes to perform. While this composer 

does not immediately come to mind when 

thinking of accessibility, these three pieces 

have relatively little of the avant-garde about 

them. If they finally fail to capture the heart, 

they are not too indigestible. 

Rare pieces by Arensky and Rimsky-Korsakoff 

are pleasant enough, but Anton Rubinstein’s 

famous ‘Romanze’ still has the ability to 

leave a lump in the throat—at least in the right 

hands and susceptible throats. ‘Andante 

orgoglioso, ma con grazier’ by Erik Bergman 

(1911-2006) is quite an impassioned piece as 

heard here, and his Hommage to Christopher 

Columbus, while more modern in sound, 

makes use of some interesting chordal clusters 

and other sonorities. If Columbus, or his journeys, 

never once came to mind, its two movements 

are effective, especially the rhythmic 

‘Guanahani’ (San Salvador). 

Andre Jolivet’s Three Poems for Ondes 

Martenot and Piano were written shortly after 

the years he spent with Edgard Varese. The 

electronic instrument is similar in sound to the 

Theremin and has been used like the 

Theremin to evoke otherworldly sounds in 

many films. Jolivet’s work is definitely weird 

and otherworldly—perhaps only lacking a 

monster to pop out at the appropriate time. 

Crashing piano chords contrast with the wailing 

sound of the instrument, and long quiet 

stretches create a feeling of unease. It was a 

long 16 minutes. 

Messiaen’s Catalog of Birds uses the piano 

to recreate and elaborate on a series of bird 

calls. Pohjola plays more than half an hour of 

them and does what she has to do very well. 

Stylistically they sound abstract and aleatory. 

People attuned to this composer may find 

them more interesting than I did. Even the 

sounds of the ‘Nightingale’ sound ugly in this 

setting. 

Usko Merilainen (1930-2004), a student of 

Merikanto, wrote his Sonata 2 in 1966. It’s in 

three classically styled movements and sounds 

quite modern. For all its athematic content, it 

hangs together formally and does not outstay 

its welcome. Tempos are predominantly slow 

until the Presto finale, when Pohjola gets to 

display her skillful handling of rapid repeated 

notes. I would be curious to hear Merilainen’s 

remaining two sonatas, dedicated to the 

pianist. 



For readers inclined towards exploration, 

this set will point them in a few new directions. 

BECKER 

Russian & Armenian Music 

for 2 Pianos 

KHACHATURIAN: 4 Dances from Spartacus; 

6 Dances from Gayne; Suite for 2 Pianos; 

TCHEREPNIN, A: Fantasy on Chinese Folk 

Melodies; ARUTIUNIAN-BABADSHANIAN: 

Armenian Rhapsody 

Queen Elisabeth Duo 

Telos 14—70 minutes 

This is a collection of exciting music, powerfully 

performed and very well recorded. The 

notes, at least as translated from the German, 

are not clear and actually caused me a considerable 

amount of work to sort out the works 

presented here. I am still unsure of the origin 

of the Khachaturian arrangements from his 

two most famous ballets. I would guess that 

they were done by the composer himself but 

cannot confirm that. The Tcherepnin is the 

composer’s arrangement of his Piano Concerto 

4, but it is not clear if it is a standard 

arrangement of the orchestra for one piano 

and the original solo part for the second, or 

some more creative combination and rearrangement 

of the music. There are a number 

of added percussion effects in this work by 

unnamed musicians. 

The real find here is the Tcherepnin. As the 

parent of two adopted Asian daughters, my 

interest in Chinese music has increased significantly 

in the past dozen years. I have not ever 

encountered a piece written in the traditional 

Western style that incorporated Chinese 

melodies and harmonies so effectively. Most of 

the time I run into composers imitating Puccini 

more than real oriental music. Tcherepnin 

actually lived in China for several years, and 

his wife was Chinese. He was a true musician 

of the world and ended up living here in the 

US. 

All together, there is a sameness to the 

music that only the Tcherepnin interrupts. I 

would recommend this for the Tcherepnin and 

also if you want to explore the world of Armenian 

concert music for two pianos. 

HARRINGTON 

Mozart to Gershwin 

Margery McDuffie Whatley, Steven Hesla, p 

ACA 20110—79 minutes 

This attractive Georgia-born pianist now 

resides in Missoula, Montana. For the twopiano 

version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue 

she has linked with Steven Hesla, a faculty 

member at the University of Montana. This is 

Whatley’s third recording for ACA. 

Besides the Gershwin, Beethoven’s Sonata 17 

is the other main work on this recording. 

Whatley plays it with little pedal and articulates 

with great clarity. Although the competition 

is fierce, she more than manages to hold 

her own and gives a strong profile to the 

music. Despite an almost endless list of fine 

performances, there is always room for yet 

another if it is of this quality. 

Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is a warhorse 

that has managed to survive practically every 

permutation, especially in the hands of 

pianists with imagination and flair. Whatley 

has both and manages to swing with the best 

of them. Hesla is an effective partner, and one 

rarely misses an orchestra (or jazz band). At 

around 17 minutes, the music is uncut. 

Chopin’s Scherzo 1 and Nocturne 8 are 

models of expressive clarity. There are no 

blurred passages in the difficult Scherzo, and 

the Nocturne is lovingly executed. Debussy’s 

‘Reflects dans l’eau’ and Griffes’ ‘White Peacock’ 

are both impressionist pieces and call for 

a bit more indulgence and pedal than Whatley 

is willing to give them. All is a little too clear— 

too direct, when a slower, more introspective 

approach might work better. Not willing to 

continue with this nitpicking, I must admit her 

performances are quite pleasing, and I might 

eventually be won over by her approach. 

Mozart’s Variations will always be, a crowd 

pleaser. ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ sparkles. 

BECKER 

20th Century Russian Piano 

GUBAIDULINA: Ciaconna; PART: Partita; 

SHOSTAKOVICH: 8 Preludes; SHCHEDRIN: 

2 Preludes & Fugues; KARAYEV: 10 Preludes 

Vladimir Yurigin-Klevke 

Delos 2008—58 minutes 

Yurigin-Klevke’s tone is very steely, and the 

piano is bright and poorly regulated—sometimes 

it sounds thin enough to be an electric 

piano (or a fortepiano in Shchedrin’s Prelude 

and Fugue 12). The ‘Toccatino-Fughetta’ 

movement of Pärt’s Partita should sound fleet 

in the opening; here it’s heavy all the way. I 

much prefer my music, even 20th Century 

writing, to have more roundness to the tone. 

The phrasing is too inconsistent in the 

Shostakovich (Preludes Op. 34: 1, 2, 3, 10, 14, 

16, 17, and 24): ponderous one second, hammered 

the next, then lighter, but nearly always 

edgy. 

Kara Karayev (1918-1982; G’s and Q’s may 

be substituted for K’s) was an Azerbaijani composer 

and a student of Shostakovich; these 

preludes are in between his teacher’s and 

Kabalevsky’s in quality—they’re not works of 

genius, but they’re not bad at all. Prelude 23 in 

F has some genuine humor and jazz influence, 



as if Claude Bolling got drunk and wrote a tribute 

to one of Shostakovich’s more baroque 

preludes. I’d like to hear more of the Karayev 

(on a better piano). Notes in English. 

ESTEP 

Mad Dances 

Larsen, Diamond, Del Tredici, Albright, 

Isaacs Dan Goble, sax; Russell Hirshfield, p 


Here, Western Connecticut State University 

professors Dan Goble and Russell Hirshfield 

give a recital of recent American music for saxophone 

and piano. The liner note explains the 

theme of the album, but in reality it is a mix of 

absolute and descriptive elements, and each 

work is best taken on its own merits. Libby 

Larsen’s Holy Roller (1997) supposedly refers 

to a Pentecostal church meeting; WCSU faculty 

member Kevin Jay Isaacs contributes 

Skookum Suite (2009), after the Native American 

name for the Sasquatch creature rumored 

to inhabit the forests of the American Northwest; 

the late William Albright and the late 

David Diamond are each represented with 

their saxophone sonatas (both 1984); and for a 

neo-romantic departure we are given David 

Del Tredici’s Acrostic Song for flute and piano 

from his Lewis Carroll stage work Final Alice 

(1976) for soprano and orchestra, adapted for 

saxophone and piano. 

Much of the concert is abstract and difficult 

to grasp, but Goble and Hirshfield tackle it 

with enthusiasm. Goble, in particular, always 

goes for it, calling on the full dynamic 

resources of his instrument and fearlessly traveling 

to its extremes. He also renders the 

extended techniques in the scores, especially 

multiphonics, with ease and comfort. At the 

same time, his coarse timbre, undisciplined 

embouchure, and mechanical vibrato undermine 

his efforts. His sound can be pleasant at 

very soft volumes, but his mezzo range is 

reedy, and his loud playing is honky. Intonation, 

too, is not always steady, often owing to 

overt jaw pinching and loosening, and while 

the recital is well rehearsed, it has a few 

instances of unsure articulation and fingers. As 

a result, he never quite transcends the harmonic 

and rhythmic chaos, and his performance 

of the beautiful Del Tredici is rough 

around the edges. Hirshfield is a highly skilled 

and flexible artist who digs into the thorny 

passages, yet renders the handful of special 

moments with wonderful touch and sincerity. 

HANUDEL 

Jonathan Wintringham, sax 

Hindemith, Chambers, Djupstrom, Lynch, 

Nagao 

with Timothy McAllister, sax; Erika Tazawa, 

Michael Djupstrom, p 

Equilibrium 98—70 minutes 

In his first release, New Jersey native and University 

of Arizona graduate Jonathan Wintringham 

invites his teacher Timothy McAllister, 

Japanese pianist Erika Tazawa, and Philadelphia-based 

pianist and composer Michael 

Djupstrom for a recital of contemporary saxophone 

music that concludes with Wintringham’s 

arrangement of the Hindemith Viola 

Sonata, Opus 11:4. The rest of the program 

consists of Japanese composer June Nagao’s 

La Lune en Paradis (1995), written for Nobuya 

Sagawa; Djupstrom’s Walimai (2005), based 

on a short story by the Chilean-American 

author Isabel Allende; University of Michigan 

composition professor Evan Chambers’s Deep 

Flowers (1992) for solo alto saxophone and 

Greensilver (1990) for two alto saxophones; 

and British composer Graham Lynch’s Spanish 

Café (2004), written for the London group 

Tango Volcano. 

Wintringham has been a major force in the 

saxophone world for several decades. He has a 

nice and resonant sound; he boasts an excellent 

set of fingers and articulation; he phrases 

with an artistic awareness well beyond his 

years; and he tackles the postmodernist content 

of his program with extreme volume 

shifts, daring color changes, and a deft command 

of glissandos and slap tongue. Still, he 

has room to grow. His timbre can be a little 

reedy; his high register can be a bit thin; his 

low register could use more clarity; and his 

intonation sometimes goes awry at the loud 

end. His vibrato is thoughtfully rendered, 

always warm and well placed; but even so, it 

could use more subtlety. Tazawa is a superb 

collaborator, boldly undertaking the demanding 

keyboard parts with boundless technique, 

dynamic range, and expressive understanding. 

HANUDEL 

Hermann Baumann Collection 

Telemann, Haydn, Pokorny, Mozart, Czerny, 

Beethoven, Rossini, Krufft, Strauss, 

Gliere, Saint-Saens, Chabrier, Dukas, Weber 

Leonard Hokanson, p; Folkwang Horn Ensemble; 

German Natural Horn Soloists; Academy of St 

Martin in the Fields/ Iona Brown; St Paul Chamber 

Orchestra/ Pinchas Zukerman; Gewandhaus 

Orchestra/ Kurt Masur 


I don’t remember when I first heard of Hermann 

Baumann (b 1934), but I do remember 

hearing the Weber Horn Concertino one day in 

the mid-1980s and wondering, Who is that?! I 



was captured by the sheer artistry: the refined 

tone with its subtle vibrato, the steely strength 

of his high notes, the dazzling technical skill, 

and the cadenza with his startling multiphonics. 

And so it was a special treat to find that 

wonderful recording in this boxed set. Each of 

the seven discs reprises an earlier release. The 

Weber, for instance, is mere filler between 

blockbusters—the two Strauss horn concertos—on 

an amazing 1983 album with Kurt 

Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra. The 

same team is heard again in a 1985 collection 

with the Gliere Horn Concerto, Saint-Saens’s 

‘Morceau de Concert’, Chabrier’s Larghetto, 

and Dukas’s ‘Villanelle’. I find that something 

of a letdown, though, because Baumann’s 

vibrato is a fairly constant quiver—sometimes 

subtle but too often distracting. 

Baumann twice collaborated with Iona 

Brown and the Academy of St Martin-in-the- 

Fields. A 1984 collection deals with music by 

Telemann, offering vigorous readings of the 

Horn Concerto, plus four works for two or 

three horns, strings, and continuo (with horn 

players Timothy Brown and Nicholas Hill). In a 

1988 recording, Baumann and Brown are 

heard again in Haydn’s 2-horn Concerto. But 

the piece most worth hearing on this album is 

Haydn’s Horn Concerto 1, if only because of 

Baumann’s remarkable technical skills—the 

fat low notes; the soaring, sustained high notes 

in II; and what has to be the fastest lip trills 

ever. Also on this disc is the Haydn-like Horn 

Concerto by Frantisek Pokorny (1729-94), not 

heard often but recently given a fine reading 

by Radek Baborek (Sept/Oct 2010: 265). 

The four Mozart horn concertos are from 

1984, performed with Pinkhas Zukerman and 

the St Paul Chamber Orchestra. I appreciate 

how differently Baumann approaches the 

Haydn (it’s rambunctious) and Mozart (elegant 

and beautifully shaped). The sonics are 

excellent—all voices natural, clear, and in balance. 

I always love to hear the sweet contributions 

of the clarinets in Concerto 3, for 

instance, and they are easily heard but not too 

prominent here. This is my first exposure to 

Karl Marguerre’s completion of the Rondo (II) 

of Concerto 1. Is it good? Well, sure, but so are 

the ones by Sussmayr and Humphries and 

Levin. It’s just that none of them really sound 

like Mozart. We don’t know how Mozart would 

have written it. 

Baumann and pianist Leonard Hokanson 

offer a recital of 19th-Century works in Disc 4 

(1986). Carl Czerny’s Andante e Polacca is 

given a buoyant reading, the virtuoso piano 

part handled deftly. The Beethoven Horn 

Sonata and Nikolaus von Krufft’s Horn Sonata, 

cut from the same cloth, are played aggressively. 

Rossini’s Prelude, Theme et Variations is 

delivered with aplomb, while Strauss’s little 

Andante is given an emotional reading where 

Baumann’s vibrato is all a-quiver. 

Over the years, I have reviewed a number 

of albums by hunting-horn ensembles. This 

collection includes one of the best (May/June 

1992: 165), where the Folkwang Horns and 

German Natural Horn Soloists team up with 

Baumann and other horn soloists. It all takes 

place in a big, resonant church with a wonderful 

organ. ‘Marche d’entrée’ is a great example 

of the strange yet stirring sound of massed 

hunting horns: throaty tone that is by turns 

deep and rather fragile, intonation that is by 

turns beautiful and weird (because of the halfstep 

sharp 11th overtone). And then, after so 

much magnificent noise, the ending fades 

away. 

Hermann Baumann is one of the great 

horn soloists of our time—maybe not revered 

like Dennis Brain, but surely in the same 

league as Barry Tuckwell. He suffered a serious 

stroke in 1996, but he has apparently recovered 

and is playing again. This marvelous collection 

captures some of his best work. 

KILPATRICK 

Best of Malte Burba 

BACH: Air; BURBA: Voyage II; NEWMAN: 

Syphilis; HESPOS: Iosch; HEYDUCK: 

Alphorn Solo; GOEBBELS: Nachtstuck II; 

RIERMEIER: Circle III: SEIL: Super Paradise; 

HOLSZKY: WeltenEnden 

Thorofon 2575—63 minutes 

It’s been a very long time since I laughed at 

Malte Burba’s absurd Tears of Brass album 

(Jan/Feb 1992: 149), a Cagean collection of 

blips and bloops and long silences. While it 

might have been amusing to some, it seemed a 

waste of time and money to me. So, was this a 

mistaken conclusion based on too little evidence? 

Born in Frankfurt in 1957, Herr Burba is a 

renowned trumpet pedagogue, has collaborated 

with many composers in the development 

of new works, and has made many recordings. 

Seven are excerpted here. Burba’s former student 

Chris Walden is the arranger of Bach’s 

familiar Air, where Burba plays the melody 

with lovely tone on piccolo trumpet while all 

manner of wacky sound is synthetically produced 

by Walden. At first and again later, the 

accompaniment is Bach’s but sounds like 

something from the old Switched-On Bach 

album from the 1960s. The middle section has 

a completely free-form harmonization on synthesizer 

keyboard with a stream of strange 

sound effects. 

Burba says that his own Voyage II “combines 

train sounds with reminiscences of brass 

music classics to create an irritating collage”. 



Well said! It doesn’t really sound like that, 

though—it’s more like we’re sitting under a 

waterfall while listening to someone play 

trumpet snippets. Except for a moment when 

Burba imitates a beginner, we can tell he is a 

fine player. 

The next work (‘Syphilis’) begins without 

pause. Why Chris Newman called it that is not 

explained, nor can it be discerned by listening, 

since it is simply a collection of random 

sounds. The big piece, Hans-Joachim Hespos’s 

iOSCH is a montage where seven pieces are 

superimposed in seemingly abstract fashion. 

Burba makes all manner of sound on several 

instruments, standard and non-, including a 

lovely belch. Nikolaus Heyduck’s ‘Alphorn 

Solo’ begins with airy sounds, adds ones that 

might be the plucking of a comb’s teeth, and 

then has Burba making sounds on alphorn. 

Each of these is electronically looped, and 

some are quite triadic and lovely. 

And so it goes through the remaining 

works. 

KILPATRICK 

Horn Constellation 

Bujanovsky, Scriabin, Strauss, Barboteu, 

Fuchs, Arban, Shaw, Marais 

Jacek Muzyk; Grace Chu, Caterina Domenici, 

Casey Robards, p; Angela Baranello, fl; 

JoAnn Falletta, g; Sebnem Mekinulov, s; 

Suzanne Thomas, hp; Michal Muzyk, hn 

Summit 563—47 minutes 

You don’t have to be a horn player to fall in 

love with this recital by Polish-born Jacek 

Muzyk, who is the principal horn of the Buffalo 

Philharmonic and recently also assumed the 

associate principal post with the Houston 

Symphony. 

The recital includes two works by Vitaly 

Bujanovsky (1928-93), former principal horn of 

the Leningrad Philharmonic and a leading 

light in the Russian school of wind playing. His 

philosophy was that technique is essential, but 

only as tool to prove that the horn can be as 

expressive as any other solo instrument. From 

Muzyk’s performances here, it is obvious that 

he buys into Bujanovsky’s credo. His technique 

is so secure that he makes everything 

sound easy. Even on repeat hearings I was 

more impressed by the sinuous fluidity of his 

lines and his immaculate sense of phrasing. 

This is apparent in the opening work, 

Bujanovsky’s 1977 ‘Espana’ for solo horn. It 

requires stunning virtuosity. But as the piece 

progresses from its blazingly fanfarish flourishes 

and whispered responses, one quickly 

senses that it is not just a showpiece, but is 

highly expressive musically as well. And Muzyk 

delivers it to you with a pristine but command- 

ing natural lyricism. It is, quite simply, riveting 

listening. 

Later, Bujanovsky’s four-movement sonata 

for solo horn is a further exposition of the horn 

as a purveyor of nuanced and deftly phrased 

lyricism. Although there are many difficulties, 

they don’t stand out vividly but appear as 

inside stuff, such as tortuous figures played at 

pianissimo level, triple-tongued phrases, 

buzzed textures, and even a passage where the 

player sounds one tone and simultaneously 

hums another. The lingering memory of 

Muzyk’s performance, however, is primarily of 

extremely expressive music played as naturally 

as you and I breathe, and only secondarily as a 

potential nightmare for the horn player. 

Elsewhere the recital offers a number of 

delightful rarities such as Scriabin’s 1890 

‘Romance’ for horn and piano and Richard 

Strauss’s almost unknown 1878 ‘Alphorn’ for 

soprano, horn and piano, with a poem by 

Justinus Kerner about magic and mystery of 

that Alpine instrument’s resounding, echoing 

ambience. The performance is slightly diminished 

by soprano Mekinulov’s wide, excessive 

vibrato. 

In other unusual ensemble works, the 

horn-flute-harp sonorities in Georges Barboteu’s 

1940 ‘Esquisse’ cast impressionist images 

reminiscent of the more intimate works of 

Pierne or Fauré, while the just as private but 

more contemporary ‘Evensong’ by American 

composer Kenneth Fuchs pair the horn’s probing 

meditations with wandering guitar underpinnings 

played by noted conductor JoAnn 

Falletta. 

The only work smacking of warhorse literature 

is Jean-Baptiste Arban’s variations on 

‘Carnival of Venice’, transcribed from the original 

setting for cornet. But even here Muzyk 

manages to leave behind more memories of 

the horn’s capacity for pliant phrase shaping 

and clean articulation than for showy display. 

Two true miniatures close the recital. Lowell 

Shaw’s ‘Bippery No. 1’ has Muzyk in a 40second 

horn duet with his 11-year old son 

Michal, and Marin Marais’s well known ‘Le 

Basque’, a favorite encore piece of Dennis 

Brain, winds things up with lyrical elegance 

and a wonderful closing upsweep as an exclamation 

point. 

One might quibble over the 47-minute 

playing time, but it left me with the feeling that 

Muzyk had said just enough. 

TROTTER 

Athletics are a symbol of a society whose values 

are bankrupt—not only a reinforcement 

of an unsound value system, but also one of 

the main ways young people are socialized 

into that system, coerced into conformity. 

—from American Values 



Act I 

CASTEREDE: Sonatine; PUCCINI: Arias; 

DONIZETTI: Una Furtiva Lagrima; UBER: 

Romance; MOLINEUX: Manipulations; 

TOMASI: Trombone Concerto; PRYOR: Starlight; 

Blue Bells of Scotland 

Weston Sprott, trb; Hanako Yamagata, p 

WS 1—72 minutes (503-595-3000) 

Weston Sprott is a member of the Metropolitan 

Opera Orchestra. What a life that trombone 

section must lead, waiting through interminable 

rests until called on to play at the big 

moments. But they get to listen to great singers 

during those rests, and that would be quite an 

education. You can hear that influence in 

Sprott’s readings of five arias by Puccini and 

Donizetti. While I’m never completely happy 

with instrumental renditions of vocal works— 

repeated notes can be very boring without text, 

to name just one reason—it is clear that Sprott 

knows these inside and out. He feels the emotion 

of every note and phrase, which is exactly 

what they need. David Uber’s ‘Romance’ fits 

well with these beautiful vocal works. 

The program opens with Jacques Casterede’s 

Sonatine, a wonderful but vexing work, 

and one without a recording that seems just 

right. This might come closest. Everyone does 

fine with the lovely II, but the lively outer 

movements demand lightness and the right 

tempos for the sake of clarity in the fiendish 

piano accompaniments. In I, Sprott captures 

the breezy, French folk-song quality perfectly. 

The tempo is just fast enough to be lively while 

allowing the excellent pianist Hanako Yamagata 

to handle the metric and contrapuntal complexity. 

In II, Sprott takes his time and plays 

very tenderly; but in III, although clarity is 

once again superb, the tempo seems just a bit 

slow. Also from the core repertory, and also 

played superbly, is Henri Tomasi’s Trombone 

Concerto. 

I had to go to the web to learn that Allen 

Molineux was born in 1950 and teaches at 

Claflin University in Orangeburg SC. His fiveminute 

‘Manipulations’ for solo trombone 

reminds me of Leslie Bassett’s Suite for Unaccompanied 

Trombone. Molineux has the 

soloist shift abruptly from contemplation and 

scampering and back, but he asks for no 

extended playing techniques. 

Sprott and Yamagata end the program with 

two turn-of-the-20th-Century works by 

Sousa’s trombone virtuoso Arthur Pryor. 

‘Starlight’ is a lively, often sentimental waltz; 

and ‘Blue Bells of Scotland’ is a renowned 

showoff piece. Sprott gives it plenty of stylistic 

variety, adds his own touches to the cadenzas, 

handles the considerable technical demands 

with ease, and maintains excellent intonation 

and beautiful tone at all times. It is an exemplary 

ending to an outstanding recording. 

KILPATRICK 

After a Dream 

Carsten Svanberg, trb; Birgit Marcussen, org 

Danacord 710—54 minutes 

A lovely-melodies recording with the beautiful 

tone qualities of trombonist Carsten Svanberg 

and Birgit Marcussen on the 1993 Gunnar 

Husted organ in Denmark’s Egebjerg Church. 

Some of the melodies are quite familiar: Purcell’s 

‘Trumpet Tune’, Parry’s ‘Jerusalem’, 

Grieg’s ‘Song of Solveig’, Schumann’s 

‘Traumerei’, Brahms’s ‘Lullaby’, Rossini’s 

‘Cujus Animam’, and ‘Ravel’s ‘Apres un Reve’. 

Others are probably known by Scandinavians. 

Several works for organ solo are also heard, 

including one of my all-time favorites, Oskar 

Lindberg’s beautiful and melancholy ‘Gammal 

Faboldpsalm’. 

KILPATRICK 

Best of Guy Touvron 

Trumpet concertos by HAYDN, L MOZART, 

HUMMEL; BELLINI: Oboe Concerto; AR- 

BAN: Carnival of Venice; Cavatine et Variation; 

Traviata Fantasia; BACH: Suite 3; 

SCHUBERT: Ave Maria; SCHUMANN: 

Reverie; MOZART: Queen of the Night Aria; 

MASSENET: Meditation; RACHMANINOFF: 

Vocalise; GAUBERT: Cantabile et Scherzetto; 

RAVEL: Pavane 

Nelly Cottin, p; Olivier Vernet, org; I Soloist 

Veneti/ Claudio Scimone; Prague Chamber 

Orchestra—Ligia 105220 [2CD] 139 minutes 

French trumpeter Guy Touvron turned 60 last 

year, so Ligia has released this collection compiled 

from seven 1990s albums. The selections 

I enjoy most are three sets of variations by 

19th-Century cornet virtuoso Jean-Baptiste 

Arban. Two are on themes from the Verdi 

operas Nabucco and La Traviata (Jan/Feb 

1997: 59), but best of all is the famous ‘Carnival 

of Venice’—not the standard one with boring 

piano accompaniment, but Gilles Herbillon’s 

imaginative, quirky one with orchestra. Then 

there are the trumpet concertos. I was moderately 

enthusiastic when I heard Touvron play 

the Haydn and Hummel almost two decades 

ago (May/June 1992: 169), but now they strike 

me as uninteresting—nothing more than tone, 

elegance, and technical skill. It’s pretty, but the 

phrases lack shape and emotion. 

Arrangements of Bellini’s Oboe Concerto 

and familiar works by Schumann, Mozart, 

Schubert, Massenet, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel 

are lovely vehicles for Touvron’s beautiful 

tone, expressiveness, and singing style. 

KILPATRICK 



French Horn Colours 

STRAUSS: Andante; SCHUMANN: 3 Romances; 

Adagio & Allegro; ROSSINI: Prelude, 

Theme & Variations; FRANCAIX: 

Divertimento; POULENC: Elegie; KIRCHN- 

ER: 3 Poems 

Szabolcs Zempleni; Peter Nagy, p 


Hungarian horn player Szabolcs Zempleni (b 

1981) won a number of international competitions 

about ten years ago, and this outstanding 

recording shows why. He has a full, potent 

tone quality and the personality needed for the 

full range of expression. In Strauss’s little 

Andante, Schumann’s Adagio & Allegro, and 

Poulenc’s Elegie, we hear everything from 

warm and melting to searing and heroic. 

Rossini’s Prelude, Theme & Variations is tuneful 

and lively, Jean Francaix’s Divertimento 

playful. 

The most unusual works are Schumann’s 

Romances, originally for oboe (or violin) but 

sounding excellent on horn; and Volker David 

Kirchner’s Tre Poemi (1986-9), heard only once 

before in an excellent reading by Spanish horn 

player Javier Bonet (March/April 2002: 203). 

Among the dramatic work’s many arresting 

sound effects are ones involving piano strings: 

sympathetic vibration (horn pitches directed 

toward resonating strings); rumbling bass glissandos 

(fingers on the strings); and slow, eerie 

bass sounds as hammers slowly contact the 

vibrating strings. These are only a few of the 

fascinating elements in a mesmerizing piece. 

Truly outstanding recording. Excellent 

piano work by Peter Nagy. 

KILPATRICK 

Viola Reflections 

SCHUMANN: Marchenbilder; HINDEMITH: 

Sonata, op 11:4; BRITTEN: Lachrymae; 

WAELBROECK: Sonata 2 

Dominica Eyckmans, va; Frederik Croene, p 

Pavane 7531—66 minutes 

Dominica Eyckmans just isn’t good enough to 

be a soloist. She seems to be just making it 

through these readings, and she doesn’t have 

the technique to project much of a personality. 

The Schumann, Hindemith, and Britten are 

famous works in the viola repertoire and there 

are several recordings of each that are much 

finer than Eyckmans’s. 

The one thing that makes this release 

worth acquiring is the sonata by the Flemish 

composer Jean-Pierre Waelbroeck. The work 

recalls neoclassical modernist music from the 

mid-20th Century. It is in four movements of 

traditional form: a fast sonata form movement, 

a scherzo, a slow movement, and a moderate 

finale. While I wouldn’t count it a masterpiece, 

it is engaging and I think could make a fine 

effect in the hands of a more accomplished 

player. 

MAGIL 

Songs for a Lonely Heart 

Emanuel Borok, v, Cullan Bryant, p 

Eroica 3448—61 minutes 

This recording includes the usual array of lovethemed, 

expressive violin encores by Kreisler, 

Massenet, Rachmaninoff, Elgar, Sarasate, 

Brahms, Paganini, and Tchaikovsky that young 

violinists study, perform, and record; but there 

is a great deal of difference between the way 

young musicians play this music and the way a 

truly seasoned musician like Emanuel Borok 

plays it. His experience is reflected in every 

note and every phrase, and his musical sincerity 

makes even the most over-played and overrecorded 

pieces sound fresh and compelling. 

Borok has the rare ability to play with his heart 

on his sleeve without ever sounding inappropriately 

sentimental. This might be due, in 

part, to his impressive sense of the long 

phrase—something that makes me want to listen 

to Elgar’s ‘Salut d’Amour’ over and over 

again. 

Emanuel Borok recently retired from his 

position as the concertmaster of the Dallas 

Symphony (1985-2010), and before that he 

spent 11 years as the assistant concertmaster 

of the Boston Symphony. Borok and his superb 

accompanist, Cullan Bryant, also include 

music by a handful of less-likely suspects on 

this recording, including Robert Schumann’s 

‘Romance’ from the F.A.E. Sonata, Josef Suk’s 

‘Love Song’, Carlos Gardel’s ‘Por Una Cabeza’, 

and the vocalise from the end of Richard 

Strauss’s Daphne that the title character sings 

after she is transformed into a tree. What a fitting 

way to end a superb recording of violin 

music. 

FINE 

Mosaic 

Lavry, Bloch, Perlman, Chajes, Goldfaden, 

Bonime, Saminsky, Dobrowen, Ravel, Warshawsky 

Orsolya Korcsolan, v; Judit Kertesz, p 

Solo Musica 150—58 minutes 

This is music of Jewish character by mostly 

Jewish composers. Most of the works collected 

here are quite short, and the longest is Ernest 

Bloch’s Baal Shem Suite from 1923. The Three 

Jewish Dances of 1951 by Marc Lavry (1903-67) 

are very energetic, appealing pieces. Another 

work of Bloch’s here is the Abodah, a Yom Kippur 

melody he wrote for Yehudi Menuhin in 

1929. ‘Dance of the Rebbitzen’ by George Perlman 

(1897-2000) is a movement from his Suite 

Hebraique. The Chassid of 1939 by Jacques 


Sig08arg.QXD 7/22/2011 4:52 PM Page 209 

Chajes (1910-85) is a soulful prayer. ‘Raisins 

and Almonds’, a lullaby, is the best-known 

song by Abraham Goldfaden (1840-1908), the 

father of Yiddish drama, and is taken from 

Shulamith, his most famous work for the 

stage. 

Danse Hebraique by Josef Bonime (1891- 

1959), the pioneering music supervisor of CBS 

radio, is one of his few works that draw on his 

Jewish heritage. The Hebrew Rhapsody by the 

Ukrainian Lazare Saminsky (1882-1959) was 

written for the American violinist Helen 

Teschner Tas shortly after he arrived in the 

USA. ‘Melodie Hebraique’ was written by Issay 

Alexandrovitch Dobrowen (1891-1953), who 

made a career as a conductor first in the Soviet 

Union, then in Germany, and finally in Scandinavia. 

‘At the Fireplace’ by Mark Warshawsky 

(1840-1907) is believed by many Jews to be an 

actual folk song. The only work here by a non- 

Jewish composer is the arrangement of the 

Kaddish by Maurice Ravel. Ravel and Bloch are 

by far the two most accomplished composers 

represented here. 

Mostly, this is a collection of rather homely 

pieces, all quite good, some very folk-like. 

Orsolya Korcsolan is an excellent violinist who 

is based in Vienna and studied under Dorothy 

Delay and Itzhak Perlman, and these performances 

are very polished. She plays a violin 

made in 2004 by the Viennese maker Johannes 

Rombach. 

MAGIL 

is rare that a violinist would make a transcription 

from the violists’ far-smaller literature). II 

is also filled with the spirit of Robert Schumann, 

and, with the incorporation of the 

lower-register viola pitches into the piano part, 

requires very little in the way of octave 

changes. III sounds much more humoresquelike 

on the violin than it does on the viola, 

because of the violin’s comparatively quick 

response. 

FINE 

4 Strings Only 

BLOCH: Solo Violin Suites; BACH: Sonata 2; 

BEN-HAIM: Sonata in G; BERIO: Sequenza 8 

Herwig Zack, v 


This is a program that fits together remarkably 

well. Between all of the modern works’ relationships 

to Big Daddy Bach and the Jewish 

origin of both Bloch and Ben-Haim there is a 

lot to listen for. Another plus for this listener is 

that both of the Bloch suites are included. 

The suites by Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) are 

some of his last works, written in 1958. They 

are quite Bachian in sound as his late pieces 

tend to be, less outwardly Jewish than his earlier 

compositions. They surround the Bach 

sonata happily and are none the worse for the 

association. Paul Ben-Haim (1897-1984) is 

more overtly ethnic in style, full of energy and 

imaginative ideas with a touch of klezmer 

about some of them. Luciano Berio’s Sequenza 

is modeled on the great Bach Chaconne in 

Brahms & Friends 6 

many ways and is by no means the dissonant 

BRAHMS: Sonata 2; REINECKE: 3 Fantasy piece that one might expect it to be. It is a work 

Pieces; JENNER: Sonata 2 

of depth, and it dies out under the influence of 

with Rainer Schmidt, v: Saiko Sasaki-Schmidt, p a practice mute that is called for in the music. 

Divox 29604—54 minutes 

Of course, all of this is secondary to the 

quality of Zack’s playing. That is another plus: 

Rainer Schmidt and Saiko Sasaki-Schmidt 

he is a remarkably smooth technician and full 

made this excellent recording in 1996. It’s the 

of feeling and evident love for the music he 

sixth volume of a series called “Brahms and 

plays. The recording itself has a remarkably 

Friends”. I love their reading of the Brahms A- 

clean and natural sound, making it a pleasure 

major Sonata, and its proximity to the sonata 

to hear and to recommend to you. 

by Brahms’s faithful student Gustav Uwe Jen- 

D MOORE 

ner (1865-1920) shows the influence it had on 

his Second Sonata. These performers take the 

Manto & Madrigals 

Jenner for the fine student imitation of Brahms 

that it is. Perhaps these musicians, who play 

Thomas Zehetmair, v; Ruth Killius, va 

the piece with a great deal of attention to 

ECM 15573—49 minutes 

detail, feel protective of Jenner, in much the You are what you eat, musically speaking, and 

way Brahms might have. 

Zehetmar and Killius are very much at home 

Carl Reinecke was a decade older than with the technical demands of later 20th Cen- 

Brahms, and he wrote his Fantasy Pieces quite tury music (microtones, complex rhythms, 

early in his career. He also wrote them for the odd timbres, and extended techniques). It 

viola. The piano part remains in the original seems that the more conventional music on 

octave in this transcription, and everything this recording, like the Martinu Madrigals, 

remains in the original keys. I is a particularly lacks the kind of warmth that I normally asso- 

beautiful take on the ‘Hymn of Thanksgiving’ ciate with it, but their reading of the Madrigals 

that Robert Schumann used in his Second Vio- is precise, and it fits together vertically like the 

lin Sonata, and it sounds lovely on the violin (it gears in a Swiss watch. 



I am not able to judge the accuracy of the 

microtones in some of this music (anything 

smaller than a half step is a quarter tone to 

me), but from the accuracy of the conventionally-pitched 

music I can assume that the 

microtones are played as they should be. 

I really like Rainer Killius’s setting of an 

ancient Icelandic folk song, ‘O min flaskan 

frido’ (love song to a bottle), but it’s difficult 

for me to grasp Giacinto Scelsi’s ‘Manto’, a 

piece for solo viola where the violist (who 

needs to be a woman or a man with a high 

voice) sings. In addition to microtonal intervals, 

Scelsi calls for an unconventional tuning, 

which is further disorienting. I imagine that 

the point of the piece is to be disorienting. 

Heinz Holliger wrote his Drei Skizzen in 

2006 for use as an encore following a performance 

of the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante. 

Killus and Zehetmair wanted an encore that 

would not require retuning the viola after the 

Mozart (a piece in the key of E-flat that violists 

find preferable to play with the viola tuned half 

a step higher, so that it feels like playing in D 

major). The resulting sound quality of two 

instruments resonating in two different sound 

spectrums is truly unusual. 

There’s some Bartok here, but it doesn’t 

sound at all like normal Bartok. It’s a piece he 

wrote in 1902 as an imitation of Mozart’s 

‘Table Music for Two’ (the music is placed on a 

table, and the violinists read the music from 

either side—one plays it upside-down and 

backwards, while the other plays it rightsideup 

and forwards). Peter Maxwell Davies’s 

‘Midhouse Air’ (1996) sounds more like Bartok 

than the Bartok, though the folk inspiration is, 

as to be expected, from Orkney. 

Nikos Skalkottas’s 1938 Duo is a real virtuoso 

work for both instruments, and grows in 

excitement as the piece progresses; and 

Johannes Nied’s ‘Zugabe’ is kind of serial 

hocket that uses only a few pitches and divides 

them between the two instruments, requiring 

precise divisions of beats. It resembles the 

sound of a pitched game of ping pong, but 

without the predictability. 

FINE 

Yes, very. These Finnish players have been 

together for more than a decade, and in this 

album they offer serious music by three composers. 

Arctic Hysteria (Woodwind Quintet 2, 

2006) by Atso Almila (b 1953) deals with the 

disadvantages of living where darkness and 

winter last so long. In six movements, the 20minute 

work is by turns somber and lively; the 

harmonic language, while dissonant, is by no 

means atonal. The formidable technical challenges 

are handled with seeming ease by all, 

and there are some astonishing sounds—especially 

when both horn and bassoon are playing 

very low notes. 

Pehr Nordgren (1944-2008) contributes 

two works. In The Good Samaritan (2007) he 

tries to depict the story’s events in the music: 

opening quietly, becoming first violent (when 

the traveler is beaten) and then somber (when 

passersby avoid him), then turning optimistic 

(when the Samaritan does his good deed). The 

work is marked by poignant sonorities, and the 

playing is sensitive and secure. Nordgren 

wrote his three-movement, 16-minute Quintet 

2 in 1975 after living in Japan for three years. 

Opening with an interesting horn sound effect, 

I then becomes insistent. II is quite dissonant 

and includes shakuhachi-like pitch-bending 

by all of the instruments. III begins with alto 

flute (again evoking traditional Japanese 

music), then gives solos to each instrument. 

The work ends pensively. 

Joonas Kokkonen’s four-movement Quintet 

(1973) packs much meaning and challenge 

into its mere 11 minutes. I is a pensive, anxiety-ridden 

Andante; II a spritely Allegro Vivace 

where fleet lines are passed around the group. 

III is breezy with moments of repose, and IV 

scampers brightly. 

Excellent ensemble, program, and recorded 

sound. 

KILPATRICK 

Petite Patisserie 

Trio d’Anches Cologne—Telos 162—63 minutes 

Arctic Hysteria 

Almila, Nordgren, Kokkonen 

Arktinen Hysteria Wind Quintet 

Alba 307—57 minutes 

This program of French Wind Trios shows how 

expansive repertoire for the woodwind trio has 

become. Though its title is silly and the program 

notes mere afterthoughts, the assembly 

of music from early classical to contemporary 

is satisfying. They weave Bozza with Bach, 

Piazzolla with Haydn and Leopold Mozart, and 

“Despite its name, the Quintet’s attitude to a couple short ragtime works by Ingo Luis with 

music-making...is anything but hysterical.” So Errol Garner’s ‘Misty’. 

say the notes, and it’s good to know, but then In the first half of the program, while most 

the Arktinen Hysteria Wind Quintet says about of the pieces reveal a strong and disciplined 

itself that it “sings, growls, echoes, screams, blend, there was a weakness that caught my 

muses, crows, and warbles like virtuosos...with ear too often. The Haydn London Trio reveals 

oodles of vim and vigour and jolly harmony”. their delightful tone and their sense of propor- 

They seem to be a fun-loving group of young tion, but it was a bit disappointing that Bozza’s 

woodwind players. Are they any good? 

little trio didn’t have the same sense of propor- 



tion. Instead, it lacked dynamic contrast. And 

while their performance of the Bach inventions 

was technically impeccable, it also lacked 

contrast. A common trap when playing Bach’s 

music is relying too heavily on its gracious harmonic 

structure to communicate shape to the 

listener rather than crafting it. 

The second half falls into a different category. 

Though they sound sometimes like fish 

out of water bending pitches and relaxing 

rhythms, they do eventually warm up to the 

idea of having a good time. In Piazzolla’s Four 

Seasons, for example, they finally achieve that 

dynamic contrast missing from the first half; 

and the clarinetist actually lets a bit of vibrato 

creep in during the unaccompanied ‘Misty’. 

Overall, it’s clear that they’re top quality 

musicians who enjoy what they’re doing, and 

so it doesn’t really matter that there may be 

performers who can bend pitches with greater 

ease or let their hair down more. 

SCHWARTZ 

Woodwind Quintets 

Pirmin Grehl, fl; Florian Grube, ob; Johannes Zurl, 

cl; Dmitry Babanov, hn; Bence Boganyi, bn 

Profil 8063—63 minutes 

Each musician of the Quintet Chantily holds a 

position in an orchestra in Munich or Berlin. A 

few years ago the ensemble released a recording 

on the same label with a Beethoven quintet 

and a few works by Mozart (9002). While that 

recording did not promote works outside the 

standard repertoire, this release has three of 

the finest examples from the woodwind quintet’s 

19th and 20th Century literature: Paul 

Taffanel’s quintet, Samuel Barber’s Summer 

Music, and Carl Nielsen’s quintet. Many quintets 

have recorded Summer Music, and even 

more have recorded Carl Nielsen’s beloved 

quintet. But fewer ensembles have recorded 

the Taffanel. 

Their performance of the Taffanel is well 

proportioned. The first movement ebbs and 

flows gently, executed with a good sense of 

balance between effect, articulation, dynamics, 

and color. The horn solo that makes up the 

substance of II is very well done and with a 

sturdy tone. While I first thought the tempo of 

I was too slow, the brisk vivace of III gives the 

whole piece better balance that way. In this 

issue (under DANZI) we review a Crystal 

Records re-release of the Soni Ventorum quintet’s 

1978 performance. Since then, not many 

other recordings have emerged. 

Samuel Barber’s Summer Music has only 

been in the quintet repertoire for a little over 

50 years, yet it has endeared itself to performers 

and audiences. The ensemble very effectively 

manages the transition points between 

its 11 sections. Their grasp of the music is very 

intuitive, and their style and phrasing is natural. 

Best on their program is the Nielsen, with 

its great solos and ingenious textures and combinations. 

This performance gets a lot of things 

right. They give it a genuine grandeur without 

pomposity and an innocence that is honest 

and respectable. 

SCHWARTZ 

Fanfare, Capriccio & Rhapsody 

NELSON: Kennedy Center Fanfare; Medieval 

Suite; TULL: Tudor Psalm Sketches; Rhapsody; 

BARKER: Capriccio; BOYSEN: Wind & 

Percussion Symphony 1 

Vince DiMartino, tpt; Chicago Saxophone Quartet; 

Indiana State University Faculty Winds & 

Wind Orchestra; Kent State University Wind 

Ensemble/ John Boyd—Naxos 572528—72 mins 

A compilation of old recordings by three concert 

bands, John Boyd conducting. The Indiana 

State Faculty Winds gave a good account 

in 1999 of Ron Nelson’s ‘Kennedy Center Fanfare’. 

The Kent State Wind Ensemble is heard 

in 1984 readings of Fisher Tull’s ‘Sketches on a 

Tudor Psalm’, ‘Rhapsody for Trumpet’, and in 

Nelson’s Medieval Suite. These recordings 

have been re-released before—I could not help 

but comment on the terrible recorded sound 

then (Jan/Feb 2000: 221). Trumpeter Vince 

DiMartino delivers an impassioned reading of 

‘Rhapsody’, but tinny recorded sound again 

undermines the effort. 

Two works by Warren Barker sound better, 

though still not great. The Capriccio for saxophone 

quartet and band is heard in a fine 1994 

reading by the Chicago Saxophone Quartet 

with the Indiana State University Wind 

Orchestra, and that band sounds very good in 

the Symphony 1 for Winds and Percussion. 

KILPATRICK 

Marquee Mojo 

NELSON: Hour of Sunrise Fanfare; BERN- 

STEIN: On the Waterfront Suite; LABOUN- 

TY: How Deep the Father’s Love for Us; 

GOLDSMITH: The Wind and the Lion; SUL- 

LIVAN: Mikado Suite; MOZART: Magic Flute 

Overture; BROUGHTON: Silverado Overture; 

KING: Barnum & Bailey’s Favorite 

March UNLV Wind Orchestra/ Thomas Leslie 

Klavier 11185—60 minutes 

Thomas Leslie makes consistently good 

recordings with his University of Nevada at Las 

Vegas Wind Orchestra—this is at least the seventh 

such to pass my way, and his band 

sounds terrific. The program is something of a 

hodgepodge, but film music seems to be the 

main theme. 



The Suite from Bernstein’s On the Waterfront 

(arranged by Guy Duker) is the big piece, 

and Frederic Stone’s excellent horn solo sets 

the tone for a reading marked by dramatic 

moments, secure solos, fine intonation, and 

ensemble precision. Jerry Goldsmith’s music 

from the historical drama Wind and the Lion 

(arranged by Michael Davis, 1975) has power 

and sweep, intimate moments, and virtuoso 

lines that are handled very impressively by 

clarinets, trumpets, and saxophones. 

The very familiar music from Arthur Sullivan’s 

Mikado—four movements arranged for 

the UNLV band by David Irish—is given a 

wonderful, technically precise reading. Bruce 

Broughton’s Overture from Silverado, 

arranged by J Morsch, sounds suitably spectacular. 

And while it is not from a film, the 

Overture to Mozart’s Magic Flute (arranged for 

band by Teresa Stewart) sounds great, with 

beautifully blended chords and lively playing. 

In a different vein is Anthony LaBounty’s 

setting of the hymn ‘How Deep the Father’s 

Love for Us’. LaBounty, UNLV’s assistant 

director of bands, composed the work in memory 

of his colleague Leslie’s father. The program 

opens with a Ron Nelson barnburner, 

‘Fanfare for the Hour of Sunrise’, and ends 

with Karl King’s wild ‘Barnum & Bailey’s 

Favorite March’. 

Recent recordings make the case that the 

quality of many American university wind 

ensembles is improving by leaps and bounds. I 

am hearing, in recordings like this one, sounds 

and skills that were once the sole province of 

the best conservatories. 

KILPATRICK 

Psallat Ecclesia—Medieval Norway 

Schola Solensis/ Halvor J Osttveit 

2L 70 [SACD] 47 minutes 

Liturgical sequences were sung between the 

Alleluia and the Gospel in the Catholic mass. 

They probably originated in the practice of fitting 

words to the lengthy melismas of the 

Alleluia chants, but eventually they took on a 

life of their own. In the Middle Ages the repertory 

of sequences reached the thousands. The 

Council of Trent purged all but four of them 

from the Roman liturgy. 

The present recording presents 11 of the 

111 sequences preserved in the archives of the 

Norwegian archbishopric of Nidaros. They 

include sequences for various feasts of the 

church year as well as for the feasts of saints 

who were patrons of important Norwegian 

cathedrals. In some instances related chants 

are given along with the sequences: for example, 

the Introit and Alleluia for the feast of St 

Agatha (February 5). Included in the program 

is one of the sequences retained by the Council 

of Trent: ‘Victimae Paschali Laudes’ for 

Easter Day. 

Schola Solensis, an ensemble of women’s 

voices, was founded in 1995 by Halvor J 

Osttveit in connection with the consecration of 

Sola Ruin Church, built on the site of a 12th- 

Century foundation. That church is their home 

base. The booklet lists nine singers besides a 

soloist. The singing is at once flowing and restful 

with a unanimity of movement and phrasing 

that can only come when an ensemble 

sings this repertory together for a considerable 

time and the singers learn to merge their individual 

voices self-effacingly into the unison 

choral tone. The recorded sound is warm but 

clear. 

GATENS 

Mors et Resurrectio 

Requiem Mass; Easter Sunday Mass 

Ronald Greene, cantor; Ensemble Torculus/ Haig 

Mardirosian—Centaur 3028—52 minutes 

The program includes complete recordings of 

both the Proper and Ordinary chants for the 

Requiem and Easter Masses, plus the 

‘Asperges’ chant ‘Vidi Aquam’ sung in Eastertide. 

The singers prefer the traditional method 

of singing chant over the more highly nuanced 

style now in vogue. That is, they like the unwavering 

tone and smooth cadence of melody 

one associates with “the sound of Gregorian 

(i.e. Roman) chant”, and not the sliding and 

ornamental practice that sounds like middleeastern 

chant. They show sensitivity to text 

phrasing, and use dynamics to illustrate the 

strong and weak cadences. They are also sensitive 

to the medieval practices of alternation in 

antiphonal and responsorial chants. We hear 

Ronald Greene’s clear tenor voice in the intonations 

and psalms of the responsorial chants; 

but the antiphonal chants are left to the entire 

chapter of singers. The recording comes without 

notes. Texts are in English. 

LOEWEN 

L’Orient des Troubadours 

Ensemble Beatus—Ad Vitam 110115—57:27 

Ensemble Beatus on this recording includes 

only two performers. Jean-Paul Rigaud, who 

sings and plays hurdy-gurdy, has been a member 

of a number of other medieval ensembles 

(such as Diabolus in Musica and Ensemble 

Organum) for more than 20 years. Jasser Haj 

Youssef, a much younger performer in styles as 

varied as traditional music from the Maghreb, 

medieval music, later classical music, and jazz, 

plays viola d’amore. 

This anthology of troubadour song ranges 

from a reconstruction by Rigaud of the melody 



for ‘Farai un vers’ by Guillaume IX (1071-1126), 

who was at the very beginning of the traditions 

of secular song in Occitan, to Jaufre Rudel’s 

‘Lanquan li jorn’, Peire Vidal’s ‘Pois tornatz’, 

and Gaucelm Faidit’s ‘Lo gent cors onratz’, 

which have all been recorded before. I know of 

no earlier recordings of the songs by Rigaud de 

Barbezieux (‘Atressi cum Persavaus’) and Uc de 

Saint Circ (‘Tres enemics’). In between the 

songs, Youssef offers instrumental interludes, 

some based on traditional melodies from 

North Africa and some his own improvisations. 

The use of a viola d’amore is rather unusual 

since most medieval groups use modern 

reconstructions of medieval-style vielles; but 

the tonal color of this baroque musical instrument 

is not that different, especially when 

played in a more folk-like manner by Youssef. 

While most other recordings I know that combine 

a singer with a single instrument in this 

repertoire have rather restrained accompaniments 

(I am thinking of Brice Duisit, Mar/Apr 

2006, and the Duo Trobairitz, Nov/Dec 

2007:246), the support Youssef offers is rather 

more prominent. In a few places I found this 

distracting when it felt as if the song was 

accompanied by a medieval version of a Bach 

unaccompanied sonata or in songs where the 

hurdy-gurdy offers a simple drone and Youssef 

sounds like Ravi Shankar playing sitar. In other 

songs the accompaniments are subdued and 

subtle. While I find this variety of accompaniment 

styles distracting, it does make for a 

more interesting recording. The deciding factors 

are the sensitive performances by Rigaud 

and the repertoire. 

BREWER 

The Sacred Bridge 

Boston Camerata/ Joel Cohen 

Warner 69895—65:24 

This recording, first released in 1990 (Erato 

45513), remains a fascinating attempt to document 

in sound the complex and controversial 

theories of how Jewish music and musical traditions 

influenced the Christian traditions 

both in antiquity and the Middle Ages. The 

title of this collection is taken from Eric Werner’s 

1959 book that examined some of the documentation 

and conjectures. In the decades 

that followed its publication, scholarship continued 

to examine, expand, and refine some of 

his conclusions. Joel Cohen and The Boston 

Camerata had already released in 1979 a significant 

collection of Jewish baroque music by 

Salamone Rossi, Louis Saladin, and Carlo 

Grossi (Harmonia Mundi 1901021, which also 

deserves to be reissued) and this later recording 

opened a sonic window into the even more 

complex musical and cultural interrelationships 

in the Middle Ages. 

The repertoire is derived from many 

sources. Most prominent is music from oral 

traditions, including the cantillation of biblical 

texts and the folksong tradition of the 

Sephardic Jews who had been expelled from 

Spain in 1492. Those selections are often 

paired with similar music from the Christian 

traditions. Cohen has also recorded secular 

songs by Jewish musicians that were destined 

for the entertainments at court, including a 

song by the trouvere Matthieu le Juif and a 

German song by Suesskint von Trimberg 

(though in this case Cohen had to borrow a 

melody from another Minnesinger, Der wilde 

Alexander). 

The two high points of the recording are 

both sung by John Fleagle: Psalm 137 from the 

Sephardic tradition of Jerusalem and a reconstruction 

of a 12th Century eulogy to Moses by 

Obadiah the Proselyte, a Norman convert to 

Judaism. 

The performers often add instrumental 

drones and improvised interludes to the original 

melodies, but even after two decades they 

seem restrained and tasteful. The disc includes 

only minimal information. Texts, translations, 

and essential historical commentary scanned 

from the original booklet are available online. 

This is an essential recording both in terms of 

the significant repertoire and effective performances. 

BREWER 

Sancte Deus: Renaissance 

Sacred Polyphony 

New College Choir/ Edward Higginbottom 


This is a re-release of recordings of Renaissance 

polyphony made by the Choir of New 

College, Oxford in 2000. The program draws on 

nearly every region of Europe: Tallis and Byrd 

from England; Lassus from Germany; Ugolini 

and Palestrina from Italy; Victoria, Guerrero, 

Lobo, and Cardoso from Spain; Gombert from 

Austria; and Josquin from the Netherlands. It 

is an impressive cast of some of the greatest 

masters of the era. There are neither notes nor 

texts. 

LOEWEN 

A Meeting Place 

Munir Nurettin Beken, ud; August Denhard, lute 


Most people probably know that an ud (perhaps 

more often spelled oud) is a Middle Eastern 

stringed instrument; what they may not 

know is how much it sounds like a lute or that 

the two instruments most likely started out 

from a common ancestor and then developed 

differently in the East than in the West. In this 



magnificent program, the musicians play each 

piece together, and it is difficult to distinguish 

one instrument from the other. 

The mix of songs is quite unusual, and I 

was unfamiliar with many of the pieces. The 

program starts out with ‘Greensleeves’, but 

then I recognized only one other tune. Much 

of the music is quite lively, and all is expertly 

played. Especially delightful are two pieces by 

composer Joanambrosio Dalza, an Italian 

lutenist and composer who is known to have 

been alive in 1508. The final piece does not 

belong to either time represented here but is 

rather a 20th Century work by Mutlu Torun 

that is based on a medieval Turkish instrumental 

form that is similar to a rondo. 

The sound is excellent, the playing superb. 

This program is a cut above an ordinary lute 

program in both quality and interest. 

CRAWFORD 

The Renaissance Album 

Lute Songs from the English Renaissance 

Robin Tritschler, t; Janne Malinen, g 


This release from Finland presents some of the 

most familiar songs from renaissance composers, 

including Philip Rosseter, John Dowland, 

Robert Johnson, Robert Jones, and Francis 

Pilkington. About half of the songs are from 

Dowland. The notes present only information 

about the composers, in English and Finnish. 

Texts for the songs are in English only. 

Janne Malinen is a talented young Finnish 

guitarist who, having graduated from the 

Sibelius Academy with a master’s degree in 

music, now teaches there. Robin Tritschler, 

another young musician, graduated from the 

Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Royal 

Academy of Music in London. He has established 

an international singing career, performing 

in every venue from recitals to operas. 

The performances here are very warm and 

nuanced. This duo works together extremely 

well and has produced one of the finest programs 

of renaissance songs I’ve heard recently. 

Since some of the most familiar songs are 

included here, this would be a good introduction 

for a newcomer. 

CRAWFORD 

Venezia 

String Sonatas by Rosenmuller, Legrenzi, 

Stradella 

Rare Fruits Council/ Manfredo Kraemer 

Ambronay 28—82 minutes 

Originally from Germany, Bergamo, and Tuscany, 

Johann Rosenmuller (c 1619-84), Giovanni 

Legrenzi (1626-90), and Alessandro 

Stradella (1644-82) were all active in Venice 

around 1677. Their writing for strings drew on 

different traditions, advanced the evolution of 

string chamber music, and further cemented 

the violin’s ascendant position as a solo and 

ensemble instrument. 

This is excellent in all ways. The seven players 

in The Rare Fruits Council (founded in 1997 

by director and violinist Manfredo Kraemer) 

are very adept and imaginative. The ensemble 

is tight and agile, with rapid changes of direction 

spot on. In Legrenzi’s Sonata 3 for two violins 

and viola da brazzo the lines are nicely 

shaped, with a sweet languor in the slower passages. 

The contrapuntal character of Rosenmuller’s 

pieces allows the players to draw out 

the taste-filled sourness of chromatic lines (as 

in Sonata 11) and to balance dramatic contrasts 

and meter changes. The three sinfonias 

here by Stradella—a generation younger—give 

even more complex music to the solo players. 

In Sinfonia 11 the many soft and delicate violin 

passages are played with effortless grace, and 

the very active bass line is poised and precise. 

Even in extremely fast passages, the music 

is never graceless, never at all in the “speeding 

bullet” school of Ardella Crawford’s taxonomy 

of interpretive approaches to Vivaldi (J/A 2011, 

p 213), and the well-sequenced program is 

endlessly refreshing to hear. One of the many 

ways The Rare Fruits Council builds its color 

palette is to use organ both as part of the continuo 

and also as a “flute” in the melodic texture 

(as in Rosenmuller’s Sonata 2 for two violins 

and Legrenzi’s Sonata 6). 

John Barker (Biber sonatas, Astree 8630, 

S/O 1999) and Ardella Crawford (Naive 8840, 

J/F 2004, p 229) have high praise for this 

ensemble. All three composers have small 

discographies, especially for their instrumental 

works. After you have bought this, Peter 

Loewen’s top rating for Rosenmuller’s psalm 

concertos (Christophorus 77333, J/A 2011) will 

spur you beyond the instrumental music into 

the polychoral Venetian style. 

C MOORE 

Dancing in the Isles 

Musica Pacifica Baroque Ensemble 

Solimar 101—75 minutes 

(CD Baby: 800-BUYMYCD) 

This rather unusual collection of music is 

assembled to demonstrate the wide variety of 

musical styles in the British Isles in the 17th 

and 18th centuries and also to show the influence 

of folk tunes on classical music in that 

period. The program begins with a set of 

dances from John Playford’s English Dancing 

Master and then presents parts from an English 

court masque. Sonatas by James Oswald 

and Matthew Locke demonstrate the influence 

of English folk tunes. A short medley of traditional 

Scottish tunes follows, along with some 



airs by Nicola Matteis. The program concludes 

with another medley, this time of Irish tunes, 

part of a sonata by Veracini that is a set of variations 

on a Border ballad called ‘Tweed Side’, 

and a short work by Henry Purcell. 

This is a lively program, played with plenty 

of joy and verve. It’s easy enough to find complete 

programs of either folk tunes or classical 

music from this time period, but not so easy to 

find a combination of the two, skillfully intertwined. 

The notes are quite thorough and the 

sound excellent. 

CRAWFORD 

Treasury of German Baroque 

Bach, Buxtehude, Fasch, Lubeck, Pachelbel, 

Quantz, Telemann 

Hanoverian Ensemble—MSR 1380—64 minutes 

Trio sonatas and a flute duet are interspersed 

with short organ pieces, all by major composers 

of the day. The trio sonatas use flute 

and recorder with cello and harpsichord; this 

is a period instrument performance. Tempos 

are sprightly and playing is spirited. 

The first organ selection is a brawny and 

impressive Buxtehude Prelude in C; I just had 

to hear it again before going on. This performance 

has lots of pomp, and I say this having 

recently attended a Cameron Carpenter concert. 

The last chord of the Buxtehude alone is 

worth mention: a particularly bold statement. 

The power of this organ music certainly contrasts 

with the flute and recorder selections. 

The sound is clear and direct, and everything 

in the manuals and pedals comes across, 

including the flourishes. The Pachelbel that 

concludes the program offers a tour of the 

organ’s stops. 

The Hanoverian Ensemble is a group of 

accomplished New York players that has six 

other recordings on MSR: two of Telemann 

(1309, Sept/Oct 2009; 1113, Jan/Feb 2006), one 

of Michel de La Barre (1191, not reviewed), and 

three collections (two reviewed: 1087, 

Sept/Oct 2003: 218; 1099, Sept/Oct 2005: 181). 

There are 3-1/2 pages of notes in English, 

plus biographies of the players and two photos 

of the baroque organ (by Fritts, at Vassar College). 

Flutists might enjoy this release more for 

the organ pieces and vice versa. 

GORMAN 

Kingdoms of Castille 

Spanish, Italian, Latin American Baroque 

Castellanos, Falconieri, Handel, Zipoli 

El Mundo/ Richard Savino 


Spain’s baroque Empire spread Spanish culture 

to many parts of the world, and this program 

brings together music from Italy and 

Latin American, two places where the artistic 

links are the strongest. There are 11 composers: 

two Spaniards active in the Hapsburg 

court (Marin and Hidalgo); five—Spanish and 

Italian—from Rome and Naples (Domenico 

Scarlatti, Falconieri, Mazzocchi, Manelli, 

Aranes); one each from Germany (Handel in 

Naples), Peru (Aparicio), and Guatemala 

(Castellanos); and Domenico Zipoli, an Italian 

by birth who joined the Jesuits in Spain (1716) 

then went with the Order to Paraguay, spending 

most of the rest of his life in Argentina. 

The El Mundo ensemble demonstrates an 

engaging assertiveness (for example, the full 

sound and nice swagger in Falconieri’s ‘Ciaconna’), 

and solo violin and baroque guitar 

shine in the intricate figuration of the anonymous 

instrumental ‘Folia’. Accompanying 

forces vary in color and size and support the 

singers very well, with guitar, tambourine, and 

castanets used effectively. There is some 

raggedness in ensemble and tuning in the 

excerpt from the opening of Zipoli’s opera San 

Ignacio, which may be caused by performing 

forces too small to fit the music. 

Soprano Nell Snaidas sings with vivid color 

and abandon in the Castellanos homage to 

Mary (‘Oygan Una Xacarilla’) and animates 

Hidalgo’s stophic song ‘Esperar Sentir Morir’ 

with suave and passionate seduction. Soprano 

Jennifer Ellis-Kampani sings the Handel cantata 

expressively; it is one of the few pieces in 

Spanish by Handel, and the only one specifying 

guitar accompaniment. In the bass solos 

(such as Marin’s ‘Coracon Que En Prision’) 

Paul Shipper—who also plays guitar and percussion—sounds 

rather dry in the higher and 

lower registers; but his voice is better suited to 

the Aranes ‘Parten Las Galeras’, a solemn 

reflection on departure, pain, pleasure, and 

sadness. 

Compositions fit the theme well, and very 

fine booklet notes by director and guitarist 

Richard Savino explain the context and stylistic 

connections. The program has fine variety 

and contrasts, but not all performances are on 

a high level. Fewer performers and composers 

might be better: for example, more of Handel’s 

Spanish-language pieces, music for sopranos, 

and no Zipoli. 

John Barker liked two discs by El Mundo 

(of music by Duron, Dorian 92107, S/O 2010 

and by various composers, Koch 7654, M/A 

2006, p 227). There are now many recordings 

of Latin American baroque music. Mr Barker 

and Ardella Crawford have very high praise for 

the series by Ex Cathedra conducted by Jeffrey 

Skidmore on Hyperion (67600, J/A 2008, p 243 

& 67524, J/F 2006, p 264) and I am among several 

ARG reviewers who applaud many releases 

on the K617 label, which led the way in 

recording this repertory. William Gatens covered 

three fine ones (S/O 2002, p 218, K617 



120, 121, 123) and Charles Brewer another 

(139, M/J 2003, p 187). Mr Barker liked two 

Jesuit “operas” by Kapsberger and Zipoli conducted 

by James David Christie (Dorian 93243, 

S/O 2003), and I liked Zipoli’s San Ignacio Vespers 

conducted by Gabriel Garrido (K617 027, 

S/O 1993) but not the Zipoli cantatas by the 

same performers (K617 037, S/O 1994). As you 

collect discs of colonial Spanish music, note 

that there is almost no repertoire duplication 

among them. Notes, bios, texts, translations. 

Il Giardino Armonico 

Warner 63264 [11CD] 11:18 

When I first opened this boxed set, compiled 

from the Teldec recordings of Il Giardino 

Armonico, my first thought was that I was 

again meeting a number of good old friends, 

some of whom I had not encountered for some 

time. Along with these old friends, I also 

noticed some new “faces” that I had not seen 

before. Among the old friends were two 

C MOORE recordings of Vivaldi (double and triple concertos, 

Nov/Dec 1995 and chamber concertos, 

Sept/Oct 1993), and the new faces included 

Come to the River 

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and his concertos for 

An Early American Gathering 

lute and mandolin. Also among the old friends 

Apollo’s Fire/ Jeanette Sorrell 

were Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (Mar/Apr 


1998) and an unusual recording pairing Biber’s 

Apollo’s Fire, the period performance ensem- Battalia with Matthew Locke’s incidental 

ble based in Cleveland, has taken a break from music for The Tempest (July/Aug 1999). Also 

the baroque and classical eras. Director new to me (but not ARG) were three collec- 

Jeanette Sorrell and her harpsichord are joined tions: Christmas concertos (Nov/Dec 1992: 

by flutist Kathie Stewart, sopranos Sandra 266), Baroque “chestnuts” (Pachelbel’s Canon 

Simon and Abigail Lennox, Tina Bergmann on et al., Mar/Apr 2002: 214), and Neapolitan 

the hammered dulcimer, and other players to Chamber Music (Sept/Oct 1994: 255). A com- 

investigate our country’s 19th Century folk trapletely new “face” to me (and ARG) was a very 

ditions. The result of their collaboration is a good collection of Italian instrumental music 

vibrant American sampler that is one of the from the early 17th Century (including compo- 

most joyous releases to have crossed the ARG sitions by Tarquinio Merula, Dario Castello, 

choral desk in some time. 

Giovanni Battista Riccio, Salomone Rossi, and 

The program is divided into thirds: Marco Uccellini). A number of these record- 

Appalachian Wagon Train, Love and Death, ings have held up well over the years. The four 

and Revival Meeting. The classification scheme original recordings of the Vivaldi chamber 

had me scratching my head once or twice concertos (represented in this collection by a 

(Irish dances at a prayer meeting?); but there’s single disc) are still among the best interpreta- 

no arguing that this is a well-chosen, welltions of these works; and while there are some 

paced anthology that holds the interest. 

idiosyncratic performance decisions in Biber’s 

Special touches abound as these artists 

Battalia, it is still an enjoyable interpretation, 

evoke the spirit of a rural American gone by. In 

and if you wish, the Sonata Representativa has 

selections like ‘Swinging on a Gate’, ‘Ways of 

its captions read by the lutenist. Other discs 

the World’, and ‘Glory in the Meetinghouse’, 

(including the Brandenburg Concertos and the 

Tina Bergmann’s hammered dulcimer conveys 

various baroque anthologies) contain good 

the gratitude of people intoxicated by the 

interpretations, if not necessarily first choices. 

sheer joy of being alive. (She plays the thing, 

My sole surprising disappointment was 

by the way, like Horowitz played the piano.) 

that the interpretation of Vivaldi’s Four Sea- 

Matters of the spirit are raised with affecting 

sons is rather bland, especially compared with 

tenderness in soprano Abigail Lennox’s ‘Way- 

the inventiveness the performers demonstratfaring 

Stranger’ and in a moving choral 

ed on their other Vivaldi recordings. While in 

arrangement of ‘Down In the River to Pray’. 

some cases (the Vivaldi chamber concertos) I 

Vivid story-telling in such varied offerings as 

wished for more, this is a suitable selection 

‘Oh When Shall I See Jesus?’, ‘The Fox Went 

from some of the best recordings made by this 

Out on a Chilly Night’ and ‘The Three Ravens’ 

ensemble in their formative period. 

turns the program into musical time travel. 

BREWER 

Sorrell’s accompaniments from the harpsichord 

and her sensitive handling of a set of 

Rose of Sharon 

dances from the Old World and the New aren’t 100 Years of American Music (1770-1870) 

run of the mill either. Brilliant engineering Linda Brotherton, s; Deborah Rentz-Moore, mz; 

clinches the deal. Maybe if we could tap into Timothy Leigh Evans, t, perc; Joel Frederiksen, b, 

the communal wisdom of our musical past, g; Ensemble Phoenix Munich/ Joel Frederiksen 

our national values would be better. 


GREENFIELD In the Early American Gathering hosted by 

Apollo’s Fire (above) you can easily lose the 



historical impetus and just surrender to the 

Appalachian folk idiom in all its glory. Here, 

the music is on historical display and you 

never quite forget it. The songs are keyed to 

the American Revolution, “Singing Schools” 

where itinerant Christian singers traversed the 

fledgling nation teaching the faithful to read 

music, Shakerism, and the Civil War. There’s 

also a set of three songs by William Billings, 

America’s first composer of note. But while 

everything pretty much remains in “museum 

mode” as the eras roll by, it’s an attractive 

exhibit and quite an interactive one at that. 

It seems odd to be taught American history 

by an ensemble based in Munich; but one 

gathers from the heading that the main singers 

aren’t German—certainly not director Joel 

Frederiksen, who trained in New York and 

Michigan and was a member of the Waverly 

Consort and the Boston Camerata before 

founding his ensemble. He has a flair for music 

history, and there are all sorts of interesting 

things here that will be new to most of us. 

‘The Death of General Wolfe’ is a sad tribute 

to the English commander who perished 

on the Plains of Abraham in the French and 

Indian War. (The Brits, you’ll recall, were on 

our side in that one.) In Singing School, the 

public learned that military men could be a 

philandering lot (‘The Gentlemen Soldiers’); 

that evil must surely be punished (‘Captain 

Kidd’), and that the Savior’s love is a liberating 

force easily celebrated while dancing a jig 

(‘Leander’). This anthology also offers a welcome 

introduction to William Billings’s ‘God Is 

the King’, which is complex enough to 

approach mini-cantata form and is accompanied 

by instruments to boot. (Why did I think 

all of his choral stuff was a cappella?) The 

female singers are more engaging than the 

men, who are a mite stuffy from time to time. I 

also can’t shake the feeling that Frederiksen’s 

basso is maybe a bit too profundo for this 

music, especially in the SATB selections, where 

his pungent timbre is tough for the others to 

match. He’s more affecting as a guitarist, conductor, 

and as the historical mind who put the 

whole thing together. 

I can’t remember a Harmonia Mundi 

release that didn’t sound terrific, and this one 

is no exception. What I don’t like is the annotation 

design, where full notes, bios, and translations 

are spread across two booklets in multiple 

languages. Matching the correct track 

with its translation and commentary amid all 

the checking and cross-checking you have to 

do could turn you into a bit of a historian yourself. 

GREENFIELD 

Cantus Sollemnis 

Divina Musica/ Juha Pesonen 


Divina Musica is a Finnish ensemble consisting 

of four female singers—Heidi Monanen, 

soprano; Jaana Ravattinen, alto; and Kirsi Hirvonen 

and Susanna Karjalainen, mezzosopranos. 

Their program offers considerable variety: 

chant, sacred polyphony from the Renaissance 

and romantic periods; and contemporary 

sacred and secular songs from Finland and 

Georgia. The artistic purpose behind the program 

strikes me as more about the “sound” of 

the music than the substance—no texts and 

translations for any of the works. 

I like the sound of the ensemble, though it 

is enhanced by reverb. I’m a little more concerned 

about the undifferentiated style of the 

singing. They appear to like warm, rich chords. 

Why not? It sounds terrific. But it all sounds 

the same, whether they’re singing Hildegard, 

modern Finnish or Georgian songs, or Victoria. 

The notes tell us that the purpose of the 

release is to “compose the listener to prayer”. 

The secular songs are meant to sound “soothing”. 

Indeed, the music does sound soothing; 

but I would like to know what they are singing 

about. Brief notes are in English. 

LOEWEN 

Choral Anthology 

HASSLER: Deus Noster Refugium; Verbum 

Caro Factum Est; O Admirabile Commercium; 

Cantate Domino; Jubilate Deo; O Domine 

Jesu Christe; O Sacrum Convivium; 

CORNELIUS: Liebe, Dir Ergeb’ Ich Mich; Ich 

Will Dich Lieben, Meine Krone; Thron der 

Liebe, Stern der Gute; BRUCKNER: Tantum 

Ergo; LISZT: O Salutaris Hostia 

Exon Singers/ Christopher Tolley 

Priory 5042—53 minutes 

Joy is the operative word here—joy in the 

music and joy in the bright, fresh singing of the 

28 English men and women entrusted with the 

task of bringing that music to life. The Renaissance 

motets of Augsburg’s Hans Leo Hassler 

(1562-1612) couldn’t be lovelier or livelier. 

Peter Cornelius (1824-74), the notes tell us, 

was a friend and disciple of Berlioz, Liszt, and 

Wagner whose most famous work is an opera 

called The Barber of Baghdad. All I know about 

him first-hand is that he wrote these three 

handsome, deeply-felt songs, which are sung 

with palpable affection by the female sopranos 

and male everything elses of this choir from 

Britain’s southwest. 

Poised, devout Bruckner and Liszt make up 

the remainder of the program. I love everything 

about this: the music, the singing, the 

engineering (clear, warm sound), and the 



cover art. The latter is a lovely photo of the 

grand interior of Peterborough Cathedral, one 

of my favorite haunts in England. We lived 30 

miles south of Peterborough during our Fulbright 

year in Britain, and the city’s train station 

was our jumping-on point for several trips 

north. We strolled the cathedral every chance 

we got. Walk a bit down that left aisle you see 

pictured and you can step—reverently, one 

would hope—on the grave of Catherine of 

Aragon. What an amazing place, and what an 

uplifting program! 

Strid 

Oslo Chamber Choir/ Hakon Daniel Nystedt 


GREENFIELD 

The title Strid (Norwegian for “struggle”) sums 

up the spirit and (partial) intent of this very 

unusual and oddly fascinating effort from the 

excellent Oslo Chamber Choir. Over the past 

25 years, the ensemble has made a specialty of 

Norwegian folk music. 

But don’t let the choir’s folk specialty mislead 

you. This is a first-rate group, capable of 

singing just about anything well. And they 

prove it in four pieces that superimpose tradi- 

O Vos Omnes 

tional Norwegian sacred folk songs over unal- 

Ganymede/ Yvan Sabourin 


tered classical choral movements and motets 

by Rachmaninoff, Grieg, Bruckner, and 

Tchaikovsky. At first, these numbers tend to 

Ganymede is a Montreal-area male choir that strike the ear as musically incongruous—such 

grew out of the local gay community. Here classical treasures heard mostly as background 

they offer us a pleasant assortment of 17 beneath the plain-voiced folk soloists as they 

arrangements and original works for men’s intone their much simpler hymns, complete 

voices; most selections are from the Renais- with the unique vocal swoops and inflections 

sance era and modern times, with a light that are the hallmark of the traditional Norwe- 

sprinkling from in between. Of the modern gian style of singing. 

composers, Canadians are favored—most of 

whom you’re not likely to know. 

And it is in the listener’s sometimes vain 

attempts to reconcile such stylistic conflicts 

It soon becomes apparent to the fussy lis- that the “struggle” suggested by the title is 

tener that this is a choir of average amateur found. But, on repeated listening, a certain 

voices. Bless them, for just such voices are the sweet confluence became apparent to my 

backbone of everyday choral singing world- ears—at least in most of these “odd-couple” 

wide. But director Sabourin has made a fairly pairings—mainly owing to the apparent care 

competent ensemble of them. Everything here that was taken in matching the moods and 

is a cappella, and the singers generally stay on sacred sentiments of the otherwise disparate 

pitch well; their collective diction is excellent, musical elements. After a while, my ear began 

whether in French, German, or English. I par- to adjust to the coolly melancholy, spiritually 

ticularly enjoyed their lovely renditions of sincere Scandinavian voices washing over 

Schubert’s ‘Die Nacht’ and Morten Lauridsen’s familiar choral masterpieces. I was particularly 

ubiquitous ‘O Magnum Mysterium’. 

taken by ‘O, the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus’, 

But their lack of professional refinement is drifting atop the exquisite Bruckner motet, 

heard in some minor technical flaws: I noted ‘Locus Iste’. And ‘My Heart Always Dwells’, 

occasional ragged entrances and cutoffs, plus underscored by the ‘Cherubic Hymn’ from 

slightly awkward vocal execution in some of Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy, turned out to be a rare 

the trickier passages. Sabourin seems to culti- treat. 

vate a smoothly subdued, even bloodless interpretive 

approach, unlike the overtly macho 

swagger you hear from most male ensembles. 

For example, their rendition of Pablo Casals’s 

famous ‘O Vos Omnes’ (the title piece)—a 

work of agonized sacred passion and power— 

sounded sweetly insipid to me. Their rather 

amorphous, bottom-heavy sonic textures didn’t 

help, either (they could use a few more 

tenors); I was often hard-pressed to distinguish 

between the various sections. While I 

enjoyed many of their individual numbers, listening 

to the entire album at one sitting left an 

overall impression of blandness. Recording 

quality is quite good, and the booklet is complete. 

The album’s eight remaining selections are 

devoted exclusively to traditional folk material. 

Some of the pieces—probably intended for 

congregational singing in rural churches— 

sound like Norway’s equivalent to America’s 

Sacred Harp or Shape-note traditions, with the 

entire choir singing in simple folk style. In others, 

the original solo (or unison choral) 

melodies are delivered over more sophisticated 

background arrangements. One of the more 

complex and effective examples is ‘Hallelujah, 

our Struggle Ends’. I took particular delight in 

‘The Lost Sheep’: a touching sacred song— 

arranged by conductor Nystedt—that begins 

with a protracted episode of raucous, cunningly 

overlapped herding calls from three differ- 

KOOB ent Norwegian regions. 

But perhaps the greatest pleasure offered 



by this recording is the sheer sonic alchemy of 

its engineering. I’ve had the pleasure of covering 

several of 2L’s previous SA hybrid releases 

(also playable in standard stereo), and they all 

make for unforgettable listening. Here the 

evenly-spaced choir is recorded in the round 

in a church, as if surrounding the congregation; 

the incredibly rich and detailed sound 

comes at you from every angle—and the effect 

is truly magical. The booklet will tell you everything 

you need to know. 

Not everybody will go for this music. But 

choral fans blessed with adventurous ears and 

broad musical minds should enjoy it 

immensely—particularly the SACD sound. 

KOOB 

Otto Voci: Bleu de Lune 

HOSTTETTLER: Le Rouge-Gorge; Songe 

d’une Nuit d’Ete; Sable; Le Coquelicot; La 

Rose; GAUDIBERT: Intermezzo; FALQUET: 

Hirondelles; D’une Tourterelle; L’oiseau- 

Prophete; RICOSSA: 3 Madrigali Crepuscolari; 

KODALY: 3 Madrigali Italiani; PART: 2 

Beter; Peace Upon You, Jerusalem 

Gallo 1313—57 minutes 

Otto Voci is eight voices, all women. They hail 

from Switzerland and this is their first CD. It’s 

an impressive debut; the voices are youthful 

and attractive, and technical matters are 

attended to with commendable skill. Not only 

do the voices blend nicely, but there’s a flair 

for communication in evidence through a variety 

of musical styles. The freshness of Michael 

Hostettler’s quartet of 4-part songs reminds 

me of Hindemith’s Six Chansons. The Voci 

attend to their shifting moods with breezy 

assurance. Best of all are Kodaly’s madrigals, 

which are lush, rich, and full of fun. Expressive 

story-telling is on display in Part’s ‘Peace 

Upon You, Jerusalem’, which is as feisty as it is 

holy. Alas, ‘Zwei Beter’, Part’s evocation of the 

Book of Luke 18, is interval spinning and not 

much more. The dissonances that pile up in 

some of the other works grow wearisome as 

well. 

In the future the group needs to work on 

the production values of their releases. Luca 

Ricossa’s madrigal set is marred by some audible 

clicking in the background—an electronic 

goof that should not have been allowed on an 

internationally distributed release. The program 

notes are vague, pretentious blather that 

is of no help to the listener. And while the 

annotation is printed in German, French, and 

English, the texts are given in their original 

languages only. Only Part’s ‘Jerusalem’ and 

one stanza from Gaudibert’s ‘Intermezzo’ are 

in English. 

GREENFIELD 

Our Lady 

LANGLAIS: Mass, Salve Regina; Ave Maria; 

Ave Maris Stella; DURUFLE:Tota Pulchra es, 

Maria; HADLEY: I Sing of a Maiden; 

GORECKI: Totus Tuus; BINGHAM: Ancient 

Sunlight; BIEBL: Ave Maria; BRITTEN: 

Hymn to the Virgin; PEETERS: Toccata, 

Fugue & Hymn on Ave Maris Stella 

Ruaraidh Sutherland, Thomas Corns, org; Fine 

Arts Brass, St Mary’s Collegiate Church Choir, 

Warwick/ Thomas Corns 


This recording is a musical tribute to Mary, 

adoration for whom was renewed in the 19th 

Century; selections come from the 20th Century. 

It was made in St Mary’s Collegiate Church, 

Warwick; the choir of 18 boys, 22 girls, and 15 

men is supported by two organs: a 3-59 

Nicholson & Co. (1980) at the west end and a 

2-33 Davies (1969), Nicholson (1979) in the 

transept. The Fine Arts Brass (3 tpt, 5 trb) plays 

only in the Langlais mass. The combined 

choirs are heard only in the Gorecki. The 

largest single piece—Langlais’s Mass, premiered 

at Notre-Dame in 1954—is performed 

well musically but without the pomp and 

grandeur one really wants. The tempos are 

close to the ones from the Westminster Cathedral 

Choir (MHS 515525, M/A 2000), and both 

are noticeably faster than the original (and 

best) recording from Notre-Dame (Haydn 

Society 9008 or MHS 3745). It was written for a 

television audience on Christmas Eve, 1954. 

Langlais calls for congregation, two choirs, two 

organs, three trumpets, and five trombones. At 

the rehearsal before the service there were 600 

early participants in the congregation. Get the 

original if you can. 

The organ solos are excellent, especially 

the Peeters setting. I find the girl’s choir best 

overall, with fine balance and blend in the 

Duruflé and Hadley, though the enunciation 

should be clearer in the Hadley. The men’s 

choir is not uniformly balanced between parts. 

The tenors often stand out, and the soloist who 

opens the Gloria in the Langlais Mass and 

Biebl’s ‘Ave Maria’ has a tremolo that makes it 

sound as though he were new to the group and 

very nervous. 

The strangest selection is Ancient Sunlight 

by Judith Bingham. It is in three parts, and we 

are told that it calls to mind Giotto’s frescoes 

in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Hogwash. It 

seems to go nowhere and includes occasional 

low Pedal dissonances. I fail to understand 

why this piece was included in an otherwise 

quite respectable recording. 

METZ 



Pater Noster 

Cherubini, Gounod, Verdi, Nicolai, Liszt, 

Meyerbeer, Tchaikovsky, Janacek 

Philharmonia Choir of Stuttgart/ Helmut Wolf 

Profil 11003—66 minutes 

This is a set of “Our Fathers”, ending with 

Mendelssohn’s organ variations on Martin 

Luther’s hymn ‘Vater Unser in Himmelreich’. 

It was recorded in 1988 for Calig (Sept/Oct 

1989: 136). 

There’s wonderful music from start to finish, 

and most of it is not well known. The two 

stunners are a gorgeously uplifting 8-part setting 

from Otto Nicolai and Janacek’s 16minute 

affair set for solo tenor, harp, organ, 

and choir. Janacek’s undertaking (sung here in 

German) was inspired by a set of paintings 

depicting laborers in worship, a jailed penitent, 

a family in mourning, a bountiful harvest, 

and the Lord’s protection of people at rest. It’s 

a terrific piece that turns the prayer into a discursive 

mini-oratorio given shape and direction 

by colorful writing for the soloist. His joyful 

eruption at “Dein Reich” is the most exciting 

moment here. 

Cherubini, Gounod, and Liszt (an excerpt 

from his oratorio Christus) are the other notables. 

The choir is very good, but not of the 

highest caliber. They don’t quite get the 

intense louds and softs required to bring off 

the Verdi, and there are entrances the soprano 

section could have used another crack at. The 

choir could have done a lovely job with 

Stravinsky’s ‘Pater Noster’. I wonder why it 

wasn’t included, along with one of the towering 

readings of the ‘Otce Nas’ from the Eastern 

church. (Maybe Rachmaninoff’s from his 

Liturgy?) Tchaikovsky’s 2-minute work is sung 

in German and sounds more western than 

eastern. 

Well, enough quibbling about what isn’t 

here. This is definitely worth acquiring for 

what is. Brief English notes are included, along 

with the text of the prayer in Latin, German, 

and Italian. 

GREENFIELD 

The Winchester Tradition 

WESLEY: Ascribe unto the Lord; Thou Wilt 

Keep him in Perfect Peace; WEELKES: 

Hosanna to the Son of David; DYSON: 

Morning Service in D; Lauds; Magnificat & 

Nunc Dimittis in C minor; ARCHER: Mass, 

Omnes Sancti; Domum, Dulce Domum; 

CLARKE:O Jesu, King Most Wonderful; 

HUMPHREY: I Sing of a Maiden; PROVOST: 

Jubilate Deo; COLE: A Heart Alone 

Paul Provost, org; Winchester College Choir/ Malcolm 

Archer—Regent 331—71 minutes 

Here’s a collection of music written by composers 

associated with Winchester College 

from the late 16th Century to the late 20th. The 

college itself was founded in 1382. Extensive, 

mostly biographical liner notes for each composer 

are included along with the texts for 

every piece. The 41-voice male choir (14-7-9- 

11) includes one Miss Coralie Ovenden (alto). 

Winchester has a remarkable history as an 

ecclesiastical center since the seventh Century 

A.D. The quality of composers who worked or 

composed for the choirs may be judged from 

the names above. 

The quieter pieces—Wesley’s ‘Thou Wilt 

Keep him’, Dyson’s Nunc Dimittis, and the 

Agnus Dei from Archer’s Missa Omnes—are 

especially well done and sound most like the 

traditional English choir. The other selections 

tend to be sung forcefully. The choir is the 

loudest I have heard, and whether the reason 

is dry acoustics or too close miking, I wish they 

had toned down their enthusiasm. 

This disc includes the first recordings of 

Provost’s own Jubilate Deo and arrangement 

of Clarke’s O Jesu, pieces by Humphrey and 

Cole, and Archer’s Domum. 

METZ 

Shakespeare Inspired 

Elgar, Gurney, Parry, Quilter 

Michelle Breedt, mz; Nina Schumann, p 

Two Pianists 1039077—67 minutes 

Here are 28 songs about Shakespeare or settings 

of his texts from 18 composers, most of 

them well-known 20th Century British composers. 

Only a few of the songs are really great 

(‘Sleep’ by Ivor Gurney, ‘Silent Noon’ by 

Vaughan Williams, ‘The Poor Sat Sighing’ by 

Stuart Findlay) but all of them are good to hear 

and many are seldom heard (e.g. ‘Who is 

Sylvia’ by Eric Coates, ‘I Know a Bank’ by Julius 

Harrison, and ‘Homing’ by Teresa del Riego). 

Several strikingly different paired settings of 

texts make for engaging listening (‘Under the 

Greenwood Tree’ by Walton and Mervyn 

Horder and ‘Take, O Take Those Lips Away’ by 

Parry and Rubbra). 

Breedt is a South African singer with good 

technique that relies heavily on letting phrases 

trail off, a touch that most of the time works in 

the service of the song. She has excellent vocal 

agility, shimmering soft singing, and a wonderful 

ability to float high notes. Her diction is 

clear, though some of her “sh” pronunciation 

sounds like she studied elocution with Sean 

Connery. Schumann’s accompaniment is 

excellent, and the recorded sound is very present 

but not too immediate. Here is a chance 

to discover rare repertoire that will be familiar 

in style; it’s a well-planned program performed 

with great elegance. 

Notes by Breedt and texts included. 

R MOORE 



Gre Brouwenstijn 

BEETHOVEN: Ah, Perfido; Arias from Freischutz, 

Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Dutchman, 

Don Carlo, Trovatore, Forza 


The Dutch soprano Gre Brouwenstein (1915- 

99) was one of those singers whom audiences 

and record collectors truly seemed to love. I 

hope Newton’s reissue of an old Philips recital 

will win her some new fans. She seemed personally 

involved in everything she did, even 

Beethoven’s strange excursion into Italian 

opera aria—this anonymous protagonist might 

well be a character one can sympathize with. 

She was perhaps best known for her lyric Wagner 

roles (though she recorded only Sieglinde). 

The arias here allow her to return repeatedly to 

the warmest, loveliest part of her voice, and 

the Tannhauser and Lohengrin excerpts are 

about as beautiful as you’ll ever hear. 

The Verdi arias are also stunning, despite 

some weakness on the bottom. She never had 

a Tebaldi-like lower range, but her top is 

secure and radiant, and she knows exactly how 

to phrase the music. The original recordings 

were made in the 1950s, with conductors Van 

Otterloo and Moralt, and still sound fine; and 

there’s more where this came from, so perhaps 

we can look forward to future reissues. 

Brouwenstijn seldom visited the recording studio—we 

know her primarily from a slew of 

bootleg performances—and what she did 

should be preserved. Newton supplies notes 

but no texts. 

LUCANO 

The Very Best of Placido Domingo 

Mozart, Handel, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Massenet, 

Tchaikovsky, Puccini, Boito, Mascagni, 

Wagner, Verdi, Strauss Jr, Zeller, Lehar, 

Guerrero, Sorozabal, Alonso, Rodrigo, J 

Gade 

EMI 48676 [2CD] 149 minutes 

Considering the staggering number of Domingo 

recordings, the very best must surely 

include far more than what is on these discs! 

Domingo is quite a versatile artist. Everything 

here is handsomely sung, and the best tracks 

demonstrate what all the fuss has been about. 

1971-2002 are the years covered. 

The first six tracks are Mozart and Handel, 

composers Domingo doesn’t sound quite 

comfortable with. But if you like Domingo the 

“baritone”, the ‘La ci darem’ duet with Susan 

Graham will please you. (Domingo can sing 

baritone roles without key changes, but he 

doesn’t sound like the real McCoy.) The 

French selections fare better, and Lensky’s aria 

in passable Russian is lovely. The Puccini and 

Verdi arias are for the most part beautifully 

done. 

The zarzuela arias and Spanish songs are 

splendid. Domingo began his performing 

career in zarzuela; he really has it in his blood. 

I enjoyed the Viennese excerpts purely as 

singing, yet Domingo lacks a natural feel for 

this repertory. In a clever piece of tape editing, 

the tenor conducts himself in the Night in 

Venice aria that ends the collection. 

There’s plenty Grade A Domingo here— 

enough to indicate what makes him so special. 

Domingo buffs will want this even if they own 

most of the recordings the tracks are taken 

from. No texts or translations. 

MARK 

Jardin Nocturne 

Songs by Poulenc, Halphen, Massenet, 

Chausson, Fauré, Hahn 

Isabelle Druet, s; Johanne Ralambondrainy, p 

Aparte 13—68 minutes 

The relative newcomer Isabelle Druet is no 

slouch, given her credentials and the awards 

she has racked up. So why does she sound like 

such a slouch in this interesting program of 

French songs? 

Part of it is her approach. She sings Poulenc as 

if he were Palestrina. Her voice comes off as far 

too thin, far too “white”, for the music at hand. 

Sometimes she really comes through, but it 

doesn’t happen enough. 

Part of it, too, is the uncomplimentary 

recording venue, which colors everything with 

a brassy, metallic tinge. No one could sound 

her best under such conditions, though her 

accompanist, Johanne Ralmbondrainy, comes 

off splendidly, her piano sounding rich and 

full. 

There must be more to Ms Druet than 

meets the ear on this album. Let’s hope we 

hear it on her next one. 

BOYER 

The Ballad Singer 

Beethoven, Loewe, Schubert, Schumann, 

Brahms, Wolf, Mahler 

Gerald Finley, bar; Julius Drake, p 


Here are 14 songs, nine by the leading 19th 

Century German masters and five less-often 

heard (aside from Sullivan’s ‘Lost Chord’). 

Defining what exactly constitutes a “ballad” is 

not easy, but Richard Wigmore in his excellent 

notes points out that the genre originated in 

the Middle Ages as a dance-song sung by street 

musicians that dealt with sensational, ghoulish, 

and supernatural themes and evolved into 

how it is generally understood today: “simply a 

popular song in (usually) a slow tempo. Sentiment 

still rules.” 

There are so many extraordinarily fine 

baritones singing today that it is impossible to 



name one as “best”, but clearly Finley is in the 

handful of the elite—and one of the three or 

four baritones most desirable for this literature. 

He delivers a highly dramatic reading of 

Loewe’s ‘Edward’ that surpasses the settings of 

either Schubert or Brahms. He captures both 

the energy and the mystery of the text in Wolf’s 

‘Der Feuerreiter’, and Drake brings great fire 

and drama to the song. In Schubert’s ‘Erlkonig’ 

he does not offer very subtle distinction 

between voices, though it is still a fine performance. 

The emotional investment in these 

songs is very convincing without going over 

the top, whether it is in the humor of 

Beethoven’s song of the flea (‘Aus Goethe’s 

Faust’), Cole Porter’s sardonic ‘The Tale of the 

Oyster’, Mahler’s haunting setting of a girl’s 

encounter with the specter of her soldier 

sweetheart (‘Wo die Schonen Trompeten 

Blasen’) or Stanford’s setting of ‘La Belle Dame 

Sans Merci’ of Keats. The oddest item here is 

Cyril Scott’s arrangement of ‘Lord Randall’ 

that sets an altered version of the text leading 

to some odd pronunciation, with “my” sometimes 

pronounced “mah”. 

The team of Finley and Drake continues to 

produce some of the finest recordings of 

songs. Both artists are at the top of their game. 

Hyperion’s characteristically fine sound and 

intelligent program notes add to the picture. 

Texts and translations. 

R MOORE 

Mirella Freni 

Adriana, Boheme, Tosca, Turandot, Carmen, 

Manon, Aida, Figaro, Onegin 

Munich Radio Orchestra/ Kurt Eichhorn, 

Vladimir Ghiaurov 

BR 900303—60 minutes 

Nicolai Ghiaurov 

Faust, Jolie Fille de Perth, Sadko, Life for the 

Tsar, Aleko, Boris, Boccanegra, Don Carlo, 

Barber, Much Ado About Nothing 

Munich Radio Orchestra/ Georges Pretre, Alfredo 

Antonini 


The Munich Radio Orchestra began its series 

of Sunday concerts in 1952, and at first they 

played mostly “light classics”. With the coming 

of conductor Kurt Eichhorn, the emphasis 

shifted more toward opera, and in the past six 

decades there was no shortage of great singers 

willing to perform in Munich. The Freni collection 

comes from three concerts, given in 1971, 

1983, and 1987. The program begins and ends 

with Adriana’s ‘Io Son l’Umile Ancella’, first 

from 1971 and then from 1987, and it’s a marvel 

that the voice remained so consistent over 

the years. The earlier performances are of 

more lyrical material: Puccini, and arias for 

Micaela and Manon. In later years, Freni tack- 

led heavier roles, like Aida, and she also (with 

the encouragement of Ghiaurov, her second 

husband) turned to the Russian repertory. 

Tatiana’s 14-minute letter scene must have 

been the centerpiece of the 1987 broadcast. 

Fans of Freni will already be familiar with her 

recordings of this and the other items here, so 

there’s really nothing new, but it’s still a pleasure 

to hear her, even in such familiar fare. 

Ghiaurov’s programs (1966, 1969) were a 

little more adventurous. In 1966 he sang the 

full Coronation Scene from Boris, with chorus; 

and in 1969, arias from Sadko, A Life for the 

Tsar, and Aleko, sung in Russian to an audience 

that most likely had been unfamiliar with 

the music. The Sunday concerts had clearly 

come a long way. Ghiaurov leavened his programs 

with more popular arias from Faust (a 

very extroverted Mephistopheles), Boccanegra, 

and Don Carlo, and a really hammy ‘La Calunnia’ 

from Barber—he seemed to enjoy playing 

to the Munich audience. A real rarity is an aria 

by the Russian composer Tichon Khrennikov 

(1913-2007), a drinking song from the opera 

Much Ado About Nothing. It was apparently an 

encore, and the audience loved it. Ghiaurov 

was at his best in the 60s, though he sometimes 

seemed to be all voice and no heart. 

Audiences would bring out the best in him, 

and he really does seem involved in the Faust 

arias and the Aleko monolog, though the 

heartbreak of the great arias for Fiesco and 

King Philip is rather muted and impersonal. 

Still, what a voice this was, and what a pleasure 

to hear it in its prime! 

The sound is of excellent broadcast quality 

for both programs, and the audiences are 

remarkably quiet. Applause intrudes only once 

or twice. 

LUCANO 

Fete Galante 

Fauré, Ravel, Debussy, Poulenc, Honegger, 

Vuillermoz 

Karina Gauvin, s, Marc-Andre Hamelin, p 


One of Canada’s most accomplished sopranos 

is joined by one of that country’s most remarkable 

pianists in this lovely collection of French 

song. One could have wished for a slightly 

more prominent role for Mr Hamelin, considering 

the importance of the piano parts and 

his talents, but the balances are more than 

acceptable. There can be no question of Ms 

Gauvin’s stunning singing, which, from the 

most powerful fortissimo to the most delicately 

spun pianissimo, is all that anyone could 

hope or wish for. In a crowded field of French 

songs albums, this one stands out. 

BOYER 



Long Island Songs 

CIPULLO: Long Island Songs; BRUNNER: 3 

Japanese Songs; PHILLIPS: 4 Broadway 

songs; MCLEER: 3 Light Pieces; Longing 

Eternal Bliss 

Monica Harte, s; Tom Cipullo, Noby Ishida, Anne 

Dinsmore Phillips, Christian McLeer, p 

MSR 1310—48 minutes 

Halte’s voice seems disconnected from its 

core—sometimes it sounds as if she’s trying to 

force it to make up for its light weight; her diction 

is mushy in the classical pieces and her 

phrasing square, though in Tom Cipullo’s 

‘Invocation’ the dynamics are well done. She’s 

often flat. Cipullo’s Long Island Songs are pretty 

good, and George Brunner’s settings are 

exquisite and sad, though the sparse textures 

in Western settings of Asian poetry is becoming 

a predictable gimmick. 

Anne Dinsmore Phillips’s four songs are 

musically shallow (I suppose some would call 

them simple and melodic, but I’ve heard more 

intricate Southern Gospel songs); there’s much 

better Broadway stuff out there—Jason Robert 

Brown’s Last Five Years, for instance. In the 

first of Christian McLeer’s Three Light Pieces, 

there is a narrated part about someone’s 

brother’s butt catching on fire on a camping 

trip—the dad trying to put it out with his beer 

and the sibling comparing it to a firefly are 

hilarious, especially the childish whispering of 

the word “butt”—but even here, her diction is 

too vague. Notes and texts are in English; passable 

sound. 

ESTEP 

Come Away, Death 

Korngold, Plagge, Sibelius, Ratkje, Finzi, 

Moussorgsky 

Marianne Beata Kielland, mz; Sergei Osadchuk, p 


Here is a recording that really reaches out and 

grabs you. With state-of-the-art sound and 

challenging programming, this is a deeply satisfying 

album. The title comes from Shakespeare’s 

‘Come Away, Death’ sung by the 

clown in Twelfth Night, and it includes three 

very different settings of the text (Korngold, 

Sibelius, Finzi). Wolfgang Plagge’s riveting 

Sodergrang Songs (1960) makes demands on 

the artists as well as the listeners. The most 

unusual and thorny work is HVIL (Rest) composed 

in 2008 by Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje 

and Aasne Linnesta, an avant-garde plea from 

the earth to humanity to slow down and care 

for this fragile planet. The text, untranslatable 

into English, is a guttural cry of anguish and 

despair that speaks to the soul at a level deeper 

than its curious words (e.g. “Cu cu mu lus 

humilis cumulus hum... Solkasterbranner 

...Hvil. Alt. Er”). It is as though the whole earth 

speaks with one voice that draws syllables 

from various tongues. This work makes 

extreme demands on the singer and pianist. 

The program concludes with Moussorgsky’s 

Songs and Dances of Death. 

Kielland sang the premiere of HVIL at the 

Nordlande Musikkfestuke, Bodo in 2008 and 

gives a bravura performance here of this challenging 

20-minute work. Her voice has enough 

of a Slavic timbre to sound right for the Moussorgsky 

songs, and she sings them with considerable 

authority. She is a strong interpreter of 

18th Century music (e.g. her Naxos 557621 

recording of Bach cantatas), and she made me 

wonder the first time I heard her recording of 

Wiederstehe doch der Sunde if I was listening to 

a countertenor. Her voice is very distinctive, 

exceptionally clear, and highly expressive. 

With superb sound and outstanding performances 

this most imaginative program is a 

remarkable tour-de-force and deserves a wide 

audience. Notes in English, texts in Norwegian, 

English, and transliterated Russian. 

R MOORE 

Paul Martyn-West 

Warlock, Moeran, Stern 

Nigel Foster, p 

Diversions 24152—69 minutes 

Here are 37 songs by three 20th Century 

British composers—13 by Ernest John Moeran, 

16 by Warlock, and seven by Geoffrey Stern 

(1935-2005). Warlock’s songs are the best of 

the lot. 

The program begins with Moeran’s 

arrangements of Six Folksongs from Norfolk 

(1923) and continues with Seven Poems of 

James Joyce (1929) including ‘Strings in the 

Earth and Air’, the title used to market this 

program. Warlock’s Candlelight—A Cycle of 

Nursery Jingles (1923) is a collection of 12 little 

gems, most of them less than a minute long. 

His Three Songs (1916-17) and ‘The Fox’ (1930) 

are particularly delicious. Stern was a friend of 

Martyn-West, and the style of the songs heard 

here (Three Wordsworth Songs of 1953 and 

Four Songs of James Joyce of 2001-5) is very 

much in the tradition of Moeran and Warlock. 

Martyn-West’s voice is a classic—almost 

generic—English choir tenor, closer to the 

sound of Gilchrist and Kennedy than Padmore; 

it’s a sweet, gentle voice without much variety 

of color or dynamics from song to song—other 

than mimicking the voice of an old woman in 

Warlock’s ‘There Was an Old Woman” and he 

never really sings louder than (mf). It is, nevertheless, 

a truly lovely voice that is well suited to 

these songs. Foster is an able and responsive 

collaborator. 

Notes and texts included. 

R MOORE 



Aga Mikolaj 

Cosi, Figaro, Don Giovanni, Capriccio, Ariadne; 

4 Last Songs 

Cologne Radio/ Karl Sollak 


This appears to be a transcription of a radio 

broadcast by Radio Cologne. Aga Mikolaj is a 

native of Poland and a new name to me. After 

initial studies in Posen, she was accepted in 

the master classes of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in 

Austria. But, unlike her mentor’s many recordings, 

her diction here is poor. In the Four Last 

Songs she sings the notes well but lacks expression 

and color. These wonderful songs have 

been, I dare say, over-recorded, with the result 

that a young singer like Mikolaj has very little 

to say about them that Schwarzkopf, Della 

Casa, Fleming, Te Kanawa, and others haven’t 

already said, with deeper insights and greater 

expressivity as well as more beautiful voices. 

This also applies to the four Mozart arias; 

these are some of the best known of that composer’s 

prodigious output. Mikolaj sings them 

well; but, again, her performances don’t stand 

out in a crowded field. The least known selection 

here is the final scene from Strauss’s 

Capriccio—also a Schwarzkopf specialty. 

Mikolaj is evidently familiar with her recording, 

and she does fairly well in her own way; 

but Schwarzkopf, Te Kanawa, and others have 

colored the words better, with more insight 

and deeper emotional involvement. 

The WDR Orchestra, directed by Karl Sollak 

(also a new name to me) supports the 

soloist well. Texts and translations. 

MOSES 

Camilla Nylund 

Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Walküre, Tristan, 

Arabella, Daphne, Ariadne, Salome 

Tampere Philharmonic/ Hannu Lintu 

Ondine 1168—73 minutes 

Camilla Nylund is a Finnish soprano now 

active primarily in European opera houses 

who is scheduled to sing the role of Elsa in next 

season’s Lohengrin in San Francisco. As it happens, 

‘Elsa’s Dream’ is the first selection here. 

Her voice seems ample but it’s quite wobbly; 

and while she has good diction, there’s not 

much expression. That is true in many of the 

selections. Also, her voice, while strong and in 

some respects appealing, lacks warmth and 

tonal beauty. Her lack of control and steadiness 

appear also in Elisabeth’s two arias from 

Tannhäuser, at the climax of Sieglinde’s narrative 

‘Der Männer Sippe’ (Act 1 of Die Walküre) 

and even at the beginning of Isolde’s 

Liebestod. Clearly, Nylund has little control 

over this flaw in her singing. 

The longest excerpt here is the final scene 

from Salome, starting with ‘Es ist kein Laut zu 

vernehmen’. Nylund has the vocal strength for 

the music but she still struggles in a few spots. 

The Tampere Philharmonic sounds 

impressive, and Lintu’s conducting is quite 

competent. Texts and translations. 

MOSES 

Apres un Reve 

Strauss, Fauré, Mendelssohn, Chausson, 

Bouchot, Poulenc, Britten 

Sandrine Piau, s; Susan Manoff, p 


This enchanting program presents 25 songs 

related to the night and dreams. Notes by Agnes 

Terrier offer general information about the 

composers. An introductory comment by Piau 

and Manoff suggests what they have in mind: 

“In the beginning is the night, the cradle of our 

childhood terrors, peopled with creatures as 

fearsome as they are fascinating...in that magical 

region where everything is possible.” 

Having established herself with great distinction 

in early music, Piau has been expanding 

her repertoire—and doing so very well. The 

program begins with sublime readings of three 

Strauss songs. It is refreshing to hear them 

sung with such tenderness by a sylphlike voice. 

Spectacular technique, stunning phrasing, and 

spot-on tonal accuracy are evident at every 

turn. She captures equally well the dreaminess 

of Poulenc’s ‘C’ and the manic nimbleness of 

‘Fetes Galantes’. 

The most unusual and welcome inclusion 

here is Vincent Bouchot’s setting of Morgenstern’s 

demented Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs) 

with its surreal images (e.g. “The Man and 

Woman in the Moon lie howling on their knees, 

howling to show their teeth to the sulphurous 

hyena”). The program concludes with three 

Britten songs, where her English, with its slighting 

of consonant sounds, is almost understandable 

without following the texts. Her singing of 

‘The Salley Gardens’ is wonderful, but the 

album ends enigmatically with the nearly unaccompanied 

‘I Wonder as I Wander’. 

The one low point of the program is her 

singing of the title song ‘Apres un Reve’, Fauré’s 

magical setting of an anonymous poem 

translated by Romain Bussine about a dream 

of meeting a dead lover in heaven and wishing 

to return to this dream state after waking. At 

2:07—possibly the fastest reading on record— 

it feels rushed and misses the magic. 

Nearly everything here is first rate. Manoff 

is Piau’s frequent accompanist and is also 

excellent. The recorded sound is outstanding, 

with just the right resonance. This is one of the 

most engaging vocal releases of recent years. I 

can hardly wait for her recital in Boston this 

season that will include much of this music. 

Texts and translations. 

R MOORE 



Mostly Americana 

Jennifer Poffenberger, s; Lori Piitz, p 

Enharmonic 12—66 minutes 

What a pity that this album, which can boast 

Ms Poffenberger’s clear, lyric soprano and an 

attractive program of American music that 

includes several lovely songs by American 

Record Guide’s own Mark Lehman, is so badly 

let down by the engineering. The sound is distant, 

tubby, hiss-filled, and marred by different 

perspectives from the various recording sessions. 

Even the finest voice singing the greatest 

music could not overcome sound this bad. 

BOYER 

Hermann Prey 

Cornelius, Pfitzner, Fortner, Brahms, Strauss 

Günther Weissenborn, p 

Hänssler 93713—54 minutes 

Timothy Richards 

Traviata, Rigoletto, Ballo, Macbeth, Tabarro, 

Boheme, Turandot, Forza, Tosca 

Minsk Orchestra/ Wilhelm Keitel 

MDG 909 1664—[SACD] 51 minutes 

Welsh tenor Timothy Richards’s performances 

of well-known arias face loads of stiff CD competition. 

He has a noticeable baritonal timbre, 

especially in mid-range. The voice is certainly 

attractive, but there’s not much variety of 

expression to his singing. Each of the tracks is 

pretty much like the others, and the sluggish 

conducting is no doubt partly responsible. 

Keitel’s takes on the Traviata and Macbeth 

preludes and the Forza overture are more of 

the same. No texts or translations. 

MARK 

This documents Prey’s recital at the Schwetzingen 

Festival on May 15, 1963. The program 

is an interesting one: four songs from Cor- 

Storyteller 

Mary Elizabeth Southworth, s; Philip Amalong, p 

Southworth 0—58 minutes 

(CD Baby, 800-BUYMYCD) 

nelius’s Lord’s Prayer cycle; four Eichendorff People who attend faculty concerts in the 

settings by Pfitzner; four Hölderin songs by regions outside our largest cities know there 

Wolfgang Fortner; and finally three of Brahms are many accomplished musicians (and actors, 

and two of Strauss. The last five are well for that matter) who have never, and will 

known; the others are not. But the rarities never, become famous. There are many rea- 

make a fine impression. The Cornelius pieces sons for that, though it probably comes down 

are warmly romantic, while Pfitzner’s are often to the limited number of reasonable, full-time 

dark and expressive, in style more like Wolf positions compared to the remarkable pool of 

than Pfitzner’s 20th Century contemporaries. available talent. 

The Hölderin songs are early works of Fortner The citizens of Cincinnati are probably 

(1907-87); they were composed in 1933-34, familiar with one such case, soprano Mary 

before he was drawn into the Nazi movement. Elizabeth Southworth, heard here in a self-pro- 

After the war he was associated with the Darmduced concept album that is neatly described 

stadt group and taught at Detmold and by its creator thus: “I have always been drawn 

Freiburg. His style in these songs is post-tonal, to music with evocative images, emotions, and 

but supple and singable; they too are very stories. [...] Ordering the selections into an 

effective. 

unusual sequence [permitted]...characters 

Prey was in excellent voice back in 1963. [that] could be more readily defined, circum- 

I’ve always felt his voice sounded a bit constances more expressly detailed, and closure 

gested and cottony; but he sang with great created for pieces that lacked tidy endings.” 

authority, and his top notes could be thrilling, It’s an interesting idea, and while Ms 

e.g. in Strauss’s ‘Befreit’. I’ve also felt (does Southworth discusses the individual selections 

anyone agree with me on this?) that almost all in her notes to the album, in the end it is diffi- 

of his singing seemed to be on the underside of cult to say what it is that binds these songs 

the pitch—not really flat, but placed a hair too together. In a personal communication to the 

low. In any case this malady is minimal here. I author, she expressed her regret that not every 

don’t think I’ve heard him sound better. I do number from this program, which she has per- 

remember Prey as something of a rival to Fisformed many times in concert, could be 

cher-Dieskau, who was born in 1925, four included because of roadblocks thrown up by 

years before Prey. I had lost track, though, and some copyright holders. Perhaps these missing 

did not realize Prey died in 1998. 

elements would have made things clearer, but 

Expert accompaniments from Weis- it remains at the very least a varied and attracsenborn 

(though he commits a blunder in tive program. We hear songs and arias from 

Brahms’s ‘Wie Melodien’). The 1963 sonics are such disparate sources as Poulenc, Menotti, 

excellent for the period. Texts in German and and Walton; works from the stage that 

English. 

approach the operatic like Sondheim’s ‘Green- 

ALTHOUSE finch and Linnet Bird’; and even spoken readings 

from The Great Gatsby and Paul Lawrence 



Dunbar’s ‘Sympathy’ (“I know why the caged 

bird sings”). 

Ms Southworth’s resume is a key to what 

one can expect to hear from her. She has sung 

Gretel in Humperdinck’s opera, as well as the 

solo in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. Indeed, 

were I the conductor of an orchestra looking 

for a soprano who could convey the child-like 

sweetness needed for that work but who had 

the vocal heft to compete with Mahler’s 

orchestra, Ms Southworth would be near the 

top of my list. Hers is a sweet, pure, lyric voice 

that reminds one in many ways of Heidi Grant 

Murphy. Heard in the more popular numbers 

like the Sondheim, it is a young Joan Morris 

who comes to mind. Indeed, she tosses off the 

Sondheim and Jules Styne’s ‘I Said No’ so ably 

that it is she, rather than Ms Morris, the author 

would rather hear. Still, though she is perfectly 

at ease in the popular idiom, it is the field of art 

song and opera where one hopes future 

encounters with her will be made. 

The production is greatly aided by pianist 

Philip Amalong’s contributions, and by the 

excellent engineering that allows both to be 

heard to full advantage in a spacious, natural 

perspective. 

Let us not close without a few quibbles. 

There are no texts. Since everything is sung in 

clear English, that is no great loss, but they 

would still have been handy. Ms Southworth 

also announces the title of each spoken reading, 

which detracts from the natural flow of 

one number to the next. It makes the spoken 

readings sound slightly out of place, though 

they are well rendered. 

Finally, our soprano adopts the current 

trend of including extended acknowledgements. 

There is no harm in this, but she uses 

up two pages of space that might have been 

devoted to more extensive notes. Further, they 

start to get a bit personal, ending with a gush 

of affection for her husband and children that 

would inspire in any boy of seven years a distinct 

feeling of yuckiness—and inspires in a 

certain boy of 47 years just a twinge of jealousy. 

Ms Southworth, you see, is an exceedingly 

lovely woman, something made clear by the 

numerous photographs by Ethan Hahn that 

grace the booklet. 

BOYER 

WORD POLICE: Notoriety 

People confuse this word with "fame". In a 

magazine article about writers, it said, "They 

write because they enjoy it and because it 

gives them notoriety within the industry, 

which certainly helps with career advancement." 

Notoriety would not help their 

careers! It is a bad reputation--unfavorable 

fame. ("Within" is also wrong in that sentence.) 

Frederica Von Stade 

Duets 

Judith Blegen, s; Charles Wadsworth, p 

Sony 78514—42 minutes 

Song Recital 

Martin Katz, p—Sony 78516—54 minutes 

Italian Opera Arias 

National Arts Center Orchestra/ Mario Bernardi 


MAHLER: orchestral songs 

London Philharmonic/ Andrew Davis 


FAURE: songs 

Jean-Philippe Collard, p—EMI 94425 

Sony continues to reissue old titles from their 

RCA and Columbia stock at their original LP 

length, using the notes and album art that first 

accompanied them. In our last issue we discussed 

several 1960s era recordings of Shirley 

Verrett. This time we have four 1970s albums 

of Frederica von Stade, plus one unrelated rerelease 

from EMI. No texts are included for any 

of these releases. 

From 1975 we have an album of duets with 

soprano Judith Blegen, accompanied by 

Charles Wadsworth. In some ways having Ms 

Blegen along is to Ms Von Stade’s detriment, 

because she grabs our attention. Our mezzo 

certainly does nothing less than good, but Ms 

Blegen has the more lovely voice and, perhaps 

more important, a certain “way with a song” 

that her colleague lacks. Mr Wadsworth’s contributions 

are slightly recessed, though not 

uncomfortably so, and the whole effort is 

blessed by satisfactory sound. 

Two albums from 1978 follow. First is a 

song recital covering everything from John 

Dowland to Carol Hall (b 1939). The balance 

between the soprano and the accompanist, in 

this case Martin Katz, is somewhat more realistic; 

though the sound, which is perfectly clear 

for the mezzo, is for the piano rather gritty. Ms 

Von Stade sings beautifully, but one wishes for 

a bit more involvement, a bit more characterization. 

Of note are the editions used for Dowland’s 

‘Come Again’ and Liszt’s ‘Oh! Quand je 

Dors’. The latter has a short introduction unfamiliar 

to me, while the former sounds more 

like an 18th Century arrangement than a genuine 

16th Century lute song. 

The second entry from 1978 is an album of 

Italian opera arias that avoids the “best of” 

and “world’s favorite” cliches, instead offering 

lesser known fare by Rossini and Leoncavallo, 

as well as selections by Giovanni Paisiello 

(1740-1816) and Riccardo Broschi (1698-1756). 

Ms Von Stade is again her professional but 

detached self, while Mario Bernardi and the 



National Arts Center Orchestra supply vigorous 

support. 

Last of the Sony recordings is a 1979 album 

of Mahler’s orchestral lieder in stunning analog 

sound. The clarity and depth is remarkable, 

and the engineers are to be commended for 

making Mahler the real star of the show rather 

than our singer, who comes off, to her credit, 

as just one more instrument at the composer’s 

disposal. In a note accompanying this album, 

our editor complained of the singer’s thin, 

insipid sound, though he found the five Ruckert 

Lieder that close the recording better. I 

must confess that too often Ms Von Stade does 

sound dull and even boring, but the Ruckert 

Lieder indeed come off splendidly. 

Finally, we have a 1982 recording of Fauré 

songs, accompanied by Jean-Philippe Collard. 

The sound is excellent, the balances realistic, 

and the singer seems to have matured a bit, for 

she sings with more conviction. Either that, or 

French song suits her better. Perhaps it’s a bit 

of both. 

BOYER 

Till Solveig... 

Grieg, Rangstrom, Sibelius, Debussy 

Karen Vourc’h, s; Susan Manoff, p 

Aparte 2—55 minutes 

Karen Vourc’h has one those biographies that 

makes one do a double take. Does it really say 

DENNEHY: Gra Agus Bas; That the Night 

Come 

Iarla O Lionaird, vocals; Dawn Upshaw, s; Crash 

Ensemble/ Alan Pierson 

Nonesuch 527063—59 minutes 

ROBERTS: The Avocatus Suite Part I 

Elisabeth Toye, s; Michael L Roberts, p 

Nota Bene 25—42 minutes 

The Newest Music 

Terminal Velocity 

GORDON: Yo Shakespeare; ANDRIESSEN 

arr. POKE: De Snelheid; BRYARS: The 

Archangel Trip; LE GASSICK: Evol; LANG: 

Slow Movement 

Icebreaker 

Cantaloupe 21031—75 minutes 

LA BERGE: Drive; Brokenheart; ur_DU; 

Away; 800 Speakers 

Anne La Berge, voice, fl, electronics; Misha Myers, 

Josh Geffin, Amy Walker, Stephie Buttrich, Patrick 

Ozzard-Low, voice; Cor Fuhler, p 

New World 80717—76 minutes 

she graduated from the Ecole Normale 

Superieure with a degree in physics? This is the 

most arresting fact about a young singer since 

we read that Isabel Bayrakdarian took an honors 

degree in biomedical engineering from the 

University of Toronto. 

In any case, Ms Vourc’h is a formidable 

young talent. There are performers who have 

such an ability to convey the best in music that 

they allow us to enjoy composers to whom we 

otherwise have little affinity. Grieg’s songs, I 

must confess, have always left me a bit cold, 

but Ms Vourc’h makes them come alive in a 

way that no other singer does. She makes the 

Nordic idiom of Grieg, Rangstrom, and 

Sibelius entirely her own, making one wish she 

had found another ten or 20 minutes of like 

music (which, after all, we know is there) to fill 

out the running time of the album. 

Even the five songs by Debussy that close 

the album, seemingly at odds with the 15 

Nordic songs the precede them, are sung in 

such a way as to make their inclusion perfectly 

natural. 

Ms Vourc’h is ably accompanied by Susan 

Manoff, whose contributions are captured in 

vivid, detailed sound. 

BOYER 

BAIN: Music of the Primes; Butterfly Effect; 

Chaos Game (For Nancarrow); God Does Not 

Play Dice!; When Inspiration Came; Language 

of the Angels; Strange Attractors & 

Logarithmic Spirals; Pi Day 


GABER: In Memoriam 2010 


Quartet for the End of Space 

NORT: Outer; Inner; BRAASCH: Web Doppelganger; 

Snow Drifts; LOPEZ: Untitled 

270, 273; OLIVEROS: Mercury Retrograde; 

Cyber Talk Pogus 21059—70 minutes 

(50 Ayr Rd, Chester NY 10918) 

LIGETI, L: Without Prior Warning; On Patterned 

Time; Timelessnesses; From the 

Ground Up; Translucent Dusk; A Hook in the 

Sky; Tunnels Alight 

Benoit Delbecq, p; Gianni Gebbia, sax; Aly Keita, 

balafon; Michael Manring, electric bass; Lukas 

LIgeti, perc, toy balafon 




AKIHO: Hadairo-Beige; Kiiro-Yellow; Because of the dual tunings, strange clashes 

Murasaki-Purple; Aka-Red; Karakurenai- 

Crimson; Daidai Iro-Orange; To Walk or 

Run in West Harlem; The Ray’s End; No One 

to Know One; 21 

Andy Akiho, steel drums 


occur in the background, but I found them 

enjoyable. There are great moments where the 

ensemble bolsters the vocals and the melody 

lines soar gracefully over a tonally supportive 

accompaniment. The last several minutes 

there is a rush to a cacophonous climax with 

Marimba Commissions 1 

WUORINEN: Marimba Variations; BUR- 

HANS: Lullaby for Madeline; SAPERSTEIN: 

Marimba Solo I-III 

Payton MacDonald 

whirling winds, percussive brass, and straining 

strings. Dennehy’s settings of Yeats poems in 

the 6 movements of That the Night Come range 

from the lush and pastoral tones of ‘He Wishes 

his Beloved Were Dead’ to the eclectic, quirky 


language in ‘These are the Clouds’. ‘White 

BARBER, S: Chanson Rond Point; Conversatio 

Morum I+II; Marbles; Elvis & Annabelle I- 

III; Multiple Points of View of a Fanfare I+II; 

Quartet I; Les Mots; The Killing 

Lucy Schaufer, s; Stephen Barber, p; Darren Dyke, 

steel drums; Tosca Strings; The Boiler Makers; 

Meridian Arts Ensemble; American Repertory 

Ensemble 


BECK: In Flight Until Mysterious Night; Sonata 

2; In February; Gemini; Slow Motion; 

Third Delphic Hymn; September Music 

IonSound 


Birds’ begins with devilish mystery but unveils 

its beauty in the second half as soprano Dawn 

Upshaw sings over several different, repeated 

motives. Each piece is reverent in its treatment 

of Yeats while exploring rhythmic punctuations 

and, most often, layered, repeated patterns. 

In 2003, Michael Roberts survived a prolonged 

and life-threatening illness. His distress 

was compounded by the passing of two dear 

friends as well. The Avocatus Suite Part I, his 

response to the events in his life, is lyrically 

and musically somber. The moods are dark, 

but more transient and humbled before the 

fragility of the human condition than wallow- 

GALBRAITH: Other Sun; Traverso Mistico; 

Island Echoes; Night Train 

Stephen Schultz, electric fl; Barney Culver, Simon 

Cummings, Ben Munoz, Tate Olsen, Nicole 

Myers, electric vc; William Yanesh, p, hpsi; Brandon 

Schantz, Marcus Kim, Brandan Kelly, 

Zachary Larimer, Andrew Wright, perc; Carnegie 

Mellon Contemporary Ensemble/ Walter Morales 


Awake 

GREENSTEIN: Change; FRIAR: Velvet Hammer; 

MAZZOLI: Magic with Everyday 

Objects; DANCIGERS: Burst; CROWELL: 

Waiting in the Rain for Snow; BURKE: 

Awake 

NOW Ensemble 

New Amsterdam 29—52 minutes 

Pianos in The Kitchen 

GLASS: Third Series Part 4 (Mad Rush); 

MONK: Travelling; Paris; PALESTINE: Evolution 

of a Sonority in Strumming & Arpeggio 

Style (exc); DAVIS: A Walk Through the 

Shadow; JARRETT: Ritual for Piano (exc); 

BUDD: Preludes for Solo Piano (exc) 

Orange Mountain 70—57 minutes 

ing. Roberts uses a chromatic language with 

jazz inflections and improvisation. The block 

chords in ‘The Last Corridor’ intermingle with 

brief moments of repose and a stunning, simple 

vocal line at the end. Elisabeth Toye’s 

soprano is gentle, clear, and mournful. High 

voice sections as in ‘The Deserted Star’ have 

light accompaniment, and she is never piercing. 

‘Arrogance, Be My Friend’ has a distinctly 

different mood, its driving bass giving way to 

triplets. It would be the best track on the 

album were it not for the confused ending. 

‘Avocatus’, instead, is given the title for its 

return to the simplicity begun in the program’s 

opener. The harmonic language is softer, but 

still emotionally burdened. 

Icebreaker’s performances are heavy and 

energetic. Even Gavin Bryars’s slow-moving, 

tonal Archangel Trip has zest. The punch and 

snap of the percussion beneath the soprano 

saxophone in Archangel Trip are nothing compared 

to the romping, overblown runs in 

Damian Le Gassick’s Evol. Intensely syncopated 

and displaced lines disrupt the sense of 

time, and the themes are quickly passed to and 

between instruments. Icebreaker’s take on 

Donnacha Dennehy’s opening to Gra Agus Bas Michael Gordon’s Yo Shakespeare falls victim 

is warm and annoying at the same time. Iarla to its recording environment. The piece is too 

O Lionaird’s vocals are strong and clear, loud, and instruments and articulations are 

singing in the sean-nos tradition of Ireland, lost. The electric guitar wails but is entirely 

while pure and tempered scales interact apart from the ensemble and dynamics reach a 

around him. The Crash Ensemble busily plays plateau too early. The glacial, droning Slow 

around the singer, weaving motives derived Movement by David Lang is the program closer 

from the sung parts in with new material. and high point. The mass of sound, the jumble 



of colors, and the concentration on electronic 

instrumentation makes for a splendid prolongation. 

Anne La Berge’s electronic compositions 

are more like stories with improvisations. 

Drive includes a lengthy narrative from a 

woman with a southern accent with rapid-fire 

electronic pulses in the background. Brokenheart 

also includes a narrative but then dives 

into wild oscillations and high pitches over 

pulsating hums. A 19-tone octave is the basis 

for Away, and specific instructions guide the 

performer in ur_DU. These facts are secondary 

to the actual experience of listening to the program, 

which was far from enjoyable for me. 

Reginald Bain’s program, like La Berge’s, 

contains many pieces using Max/MSP for its 

programming language. Prime numbers, the 

Fibonacci sequence, chaos theory, and fractals 

are all inspirations for him. The Music of the 

Primes sounds like a straightforward electronic 

beat with emerging pedal tones under it. Butterfly 

Effect has a performer interact with the 

equation for the Doppler effect to create 

changing glissando textures while soft tones 

ebb and flow in the background. The program 

finally comes alive with the third work, Chaos 

Game (For Nancarrow). Two musical lines 

weave around and through each other while 

undergoing constant phasing. The harmonic 

language shifts as well, while the rampant percussion, 

especially the triangle, ground the listener. 

Dripping faucets and the logistic equation 

are the basis for When Inspiration Came. 

It begins with promise, creating melodies from 

the naturally occurring sounds of faucet drips, 

but the faucet is given no help from other 

sounds except the same sort of wind-swept, 

washed out pedals Bain uses in every piece. 

Harley Gaber’s 64-minute In Memoriam 

2010, like Bain’s program, lacks a variety of 

sounds. The first 25 minutes are filled with 

bubbling, garbled pulses and filtered feedback 

that rises and falls in pitch. There isn’t enough 

sound for it to be a noise piece, and there is 

too much motion for it to fit as a drone, leaving 

the hour-long work an ethereal ambience 

where the listener follows the airy, hollow electronics 

through lengthy sections and a gradual, 

steady decrescendo. 

The Quartet for the End of Space comprises 

extensive evolutions of the four composers 

playing together on several different occasions 

both at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and 

the Deep Listening Institute. Doug Van Nort’s 

Outer and Inner are slow to emerge and reveal 

themselves. Inner seems to be manipulations 

of mostly vocal sounds, but the effects make it 

hard to pinpoint the source. Outer floats in a 

sonic bog before turning up the volume and 

throwing in heavy clip distortion and bit 

crushing. The two untitled tracks by Francisco 

Lopez offer more activity to the listener’s ears 

while retaining the same detached, underwater 

sound Nort uses. Electrical hisses punctuate 

before becoming pedals, and soft squeaks 

play detached themes. Mercury Retrograde by 

Pauline Oliveros moves much closer to traditional 

music because it includes many instruments 

and she wants the listener to be able to 

recognize them. This is in direct contrast to the 

busy, shuffling Cyber Talk. With pitch shifts, 

cuts, crinkles, and lots of Doppler effect, Cyber 

Talk is extremely busy and contains many layers. 

Lukas Ligeti continues to write hip percussion 

based music oozing with style and new 

sounds. The entire album explores polymetrics 

and, sometimes, layers of different time signatures 

as well. Apparently, Ligeti keeps track of 

where he is in extended beats and what signature 

he is in not by counting bars but with the 

choreography of his limbs. On Patterned Time 

is quirky, jerky, and immersive. The seemingly 

unconnected parts are glued together so tangentially 

that it can be difficult to hear the 

piece as one ensemble playing cohesively. All 

the puzzle pieces do, of course, fit somehow; 

and the results of this feat entranced me. The 

balafon and saxophone give range and color to 

the experimental ensemble. The thorough 

exploration of polymetrics and the Afro-jazz 

nature of the tracks means there are few 

straight-ahead sections to enjoy where cohesion 

and ensemble playing is simple. On the 

other hand, with the variety of rhythms, patterns, 

and downbeats, there is always something 

new to discover. 

I find it very difficult to listen to an hour of 

steel drum music. The obtrusive timbre is jarring 

in any ensemble, and I can rarely divorce 

the instrument’s sound from island images in 

my mind. Andy Akiho’s program is centered 

around it. Whole tone scales, jazzy interludes, 

prepared steel drums, and full ensemble 

accompaniment are all used in the mostly diatonic 

program. To Walk or Run In West Harlem 

is highly chromatic, with rough cello bowing, 

but the piece uses prepared vibraphone rather 

than steel drum for its mallet percussion. The 

compositions certainly have merit, with the 

trumpet, violin, steel drum trio in The Ray’s 

End standing out as particularly memorable 

with its subtle dynamic changes, ostinato, and 

the weaving of motives among the instruments. 

Super Marimba II, by Payton MacDonald, 

is still one of my favorite albums that I have 

reviewed. His latest effort, a collection of solo 

marimba commissions, removes the technological 

effects and concentrates on exploring 

the instrument’s wooden sounds. His performance 

is strong and he displays a large range 

of dynamics and impeccable rhythmic preci- 



sion. Lullaby for Madeline, by Caleb Burhans, 

is filled with gently rolled chords and expressive 

arpeggios that push and pull the tempo. 

Rolls dominate I of David Saperstien’s Marimba 

Solo, becoming points of return after rising 

lines as well as slow, separated pieces of a 

melody. The finale’s quickness points out 

MacDonald’s dexterity with some extremely 

fast runs that he absolutely nails. Wuorinen’s 

Marimba Variations is the low point of the 

record. It, like Finnegans Wake, starts and ends 

mid-sentence. The numerous tempo changes 

supply a disjointed listening experience that 

estranged me. 

A highly eclectic composer, Stephen Barber; 

gives us serialism and frozen register, 

chromatic language, Renaissance flair, standard 

chord progressions, and sweeping, 

romantic melodies. The confusion in Multiple 

Points of View of a Fanfare is brimming with 

robust energy and round, tight articulations 

from the brass. Elvis and Annabelle II is touching 

and lush. The mix of muted brass, dark 

strings, and the saxophone creates a thick, 

warm sound. The short string quartet spreads 

chromatic themes across the ensemble and 

uses small motives as building blocks for its 

angular lines. Conversatio Morum I has the 

energy of a rousing Copland with the sound of 

a flowing, but unrelenting, piece for Asian ballet. 

Like any Navona release, all sorts of extras 

are packed on this varied but solid disc. 

Jeremy Beck’s program, performed by Ion- 

Sound, is filled with light-hearted, tonal chamber 

works. In Flight Until Mysterious Night has 

warmth and spunk. The clarinet floats through 

and with the cello while a surprising marimba 

lends it a soft timbre. The quick, syncopated 

melody is pop-like. In February, a quartet for 

soprano, violin, clarinet, and piano, expresses 

complex emotions lyrically, but stagnates in a 

musical mood of pastoral, flowery longing. 

Slow Motion is actually rather quick, but the 

interplay between the vibraphone and piano is 

best in calm passages. Beck seems more adept 

at writing the slower sections. 

Continuing with programs with new chamber 

ensemble configurations, Nancy Galbraith’s 

Other Sun combines an electric 

baroque flute with electric cellos, percussion, 

and a harpsichord. The opening, ‘Journey’, 

won me over with its minimalist tilt and poplike 

chord progression. The piece’s contented 

mood continues in the lyrical ‘Between Stars’. 

The light percussion refuses to mesh with the 

ensemble, and the metallic hits seem like 

cameos. Island Echoes is a percussion ensemble 

piece for three players. It is a nice break 

from the flute, and the light timbres of the keyboard 

percussion are refreshing, but some of 

the playing isn’t clean. Night Train has more 

confident, brash passages than any of the 

other pieces. The amplification of the flute in 

some sections takes it into dangerous territory 

where it loses its charm. Galbraith’s compositions 

are tonal, but the harmonic language she 

uses combined with the timbre of the electric 

flute leads the listener specifically toward 

Native American dances. 

NOW Ensemble’s new album begins with 

the fantastic Change by Judd Greenstrein. The 

minimalist opening is filled with excited energy 

as it builds. Forward motion undergoes its 

own development section as the electric guitar 

enters, completely altering the sonic landscape. 

In a couple of minutes, however, a rousing, 

charged piece gounded by piano and 

pushed by the flute and clarinet erupts. Mark 

Danciger’s Burst employs circular rhythms and 

pentatonic melodies with classical sensibilities. 

The pedals affecting the guitar make it 

sound like incidental background music from 

an 80s movie, but it meshes much better in the 

return of the introductory figures when the 

flute and clarinet become much more active. 

The lengthy figures in David Crowell’s Waiting 

in the Rain for Snow are dark and motive. Just 

as rain under certain conditions can transform 

into white flakes, the material undergoes shifts 

and changes. Pedal tone shifts usher in minor 

mode treatments of motives while other 

major, pop chord progressions float above. 

The coexisting harmonics add great depth to 

the quick, syncopated piece. 

Volume 5 of “From the Kitchen Archives” 

celebrates piano performances from 1976 

through 1983. Philip Glass’s haunting, sonorous 

Third Series IV (Mad Rush) opens the program 

with its steady pulse and repeated patterns. 

Anthony Davis’s Walk Through The 

Shadow is a darker piece, with temporally disjointed 

motives, some loud trills, and ascending 

figures. Meredith Monk’s Travelling is the 

sole performance with more than piano. Her 

voice chants more than sings, and there are no 

lyrics. She shrieks and wails above a simple 

accompaniment while humming little ditties 

and sounding off as if she were a pioneer 

about to tackle the Oregon Train. The excerpt 

from Keith Jarrett’s Ritual for Piano is tonally 

based, with a gospel chord progression. The 

melody is tender, with simple motion at midtempo. 

Unexpected notes and short passages 

that sound like errors crop up, but they fold 

seamlessly back into cadential material. 

LAMPER 



Newest Music 2 

MCLEAN: Caverns of Darkness, Rings of 

Light; Desert Voices; Cries and Echoes; 

Xakaalawe 

James Gourlay, tuba; Jonathan Aceto, midi violin; 

Ronald Feldman, vc; Charlie Tokarz, woodwinds; 

Priscilla McLean, voice 

MLC 0—74 minutes 

(55 Coon Brook Rd, Petersburgh NY 12138) 

MUHLY: Seeing Is Believing; Motion; By All 

Means; Step Team; 

BYRD: Miserere Mei; Bow Thine Ear, O Lord; 

GIBBONS: This Is the Record of John 

Thomas Gould, elec v; Aurora Orchestra/ Thomas 

Gould 


On the Nature of... 

ICHIYANAGI: Portrait of Forest; NORGARD: 

I Ching; DRUCKMAN: Reflections on the 

Nature of Water; DI SANZA: Concerto for 

Darabukka & Percussion 

Anthony Di Sanza, darabukka; Jason Richins, Tim 

Russell, Jamie V Ryan, Cindy Terhune, perc 


Songs & Cycles 

DIEMER: Strings in the Earth & Air; The 

Caller; One Perfect Rose; Shall I Compare 

Thee to a Summer’s Day?; RAHN: Vicarious; 

Shore Grass; FREIBERGER: The Coffee-Pot 

Songs; Winter Apples; LARSEN: Songs from 

Letters; Calamity Jane to her Daughter Janey; 

AUSTIN: Sonnets from the Portuguese 

Linda McNeil, Kathy McNeil, s; Stephanie 

Shapiro, ob; Carolyn True, p 

Leonarda 357—76 minutes 

(808 West End Ave Suite 508, NY 10025-5305) 

RICHTER: Riders to the Sea; Kyrie 

Melissa Maravell, a; Susan Holsonbake, Julie 

Nord, s; Anna Tonna, mz; Aram Tchobanian, 

William George, t; Judith Mendenhall, Jill Sokol, 

fl; Ingrid Gordon, perc; Susan Jolles, hp; William 

Schimmel, acc; Tali Kravitz, Aleeza Wadler, Kelly 

Hall-Tompkins, v; Anoush Simonian, va; Ellen 

Rose Silver, Rubin Kodheli, Maxine Neuman, vc; 

Pawel Knapik, db/ Daijiro Ukon 

Leonarda 358—67 minutes 

ASENJO: The Batrachomyomachia; Palm-ofthe-Hand 

Tales; Basile’s Pentameron 

Slovak Symphony/ Kirk Trevor 


NIEMINEN: Il Viaggio del Cavaliere... 

(Inesistente); In Mirrors of Time...; La 

Serenissima 

Erkko Palola, v, va; Anni Kuusimaki, hp; Pori Sinfonietta/ 

Jukka Iisakkila 


TICHELI: An American Dream; MCLOSKEY: 

Prex Penitentialis 

Leilah Dione Ezra, Andrea Fullington, s; Frost 

Symphony/ Zoe Zeniodi; HGNM Chamber 

Orchestra/ Brad Lubman—Albany 1258—64 mins 

SHAPEY: Violin Sonatas; Solo Violin Sonata 

1; Adagio & Allegro; 4 Etudes 

Miranda Cuckson; Blair McMillen, p 


ARAUCO: Envoi; Ritorno; Fantasy-Quartet; 

Cello Sonata; Piano Quartet; Meditation 

Hirono Oka, v; Burchard Tang, va; John Koen, vc; 

Paul Demers, cl; Matthew Bengtson, Charles 

Abramovic, p—Albany 1249—54 minutes 

CHILD: Songs of Bidpai; Pantomime; Promenade; 

Viola Sonata; Rilke Songs 

Olivia Robinson, s; Rebecca Lodge, mz, Lontano/ 

Odaline de la Martinez—Lontano 131—66 mins 

American Percussion 1 

TOWER: DNA; SANDLER: Pulling Radishes; 

HIGDON: Splendid Wood; RODRIGUEZ: El 

Dia de los Muertos; SCHULLER: Concerto for 

Percussion and Keyboards 

New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble/ 

Frank Epstein, Gunther Schuller 


LIANG: Ascencion; Winged Creatures; Journey 

into Desire; Yuan; Lake; Harp Concerto; 

Milou 

Meridian Arts Ensemble; Takae Ohnishi, hpsi; 

Kate Hatmaker, Jeff Zehngut, v; Chia-Ling Chien, 

vc; Pablo Gomez, g; Radnofsky Quartet; John 

Fonville, Jane Rigler, fl; June Han, hp; Manhattan 

Sinfonietta/ Jeffrey Milarsky; New England Conservatory 

Chamber Singers/ Tamara Brooks; 

Lenny Breton, Eric Hewitt, Conrad Kline, Shyen 

Lee, Samuel Lorber, Greg Ridlington, sax; Christopher 

DeChiara, Jeremy Friedman, Phillip Kiamie, 

Matthew Masie, Eric Millstein, Mei-Ying Ng, Gary 

Wallen, perc; Van Weng, elec g; Jon Sakata, p; Lei 

Liang, hpsi—New World 80715—69 minutes 

Commissions & Concertos 

ENGEBRETSON: Wind Symphony; SAPIE- 

YEVSKI: Trumpet Concerto; HIDAS: Rhapsody; 

MAYAZUMI: Percussion Concerto; 

BOELTER: Mountains & Mesas 

SUNY Fredonia Wind Ensemble/ Paula Holcomb 


Light & Shadow 

WORTHINGTON: Tracing a Dream; OS- 

WALD: Finding the Murray River; Sleep, 

Child; ALBERT: Boundaries; Interiors; 

RUSSO: Family Voices; LOMBARDI: Tonisadie; 

PERTTU: Light & Shadow in the 

Yosemite Valley 

Russian Philharmonic/ Marinescu; Moravian 

Philharmonic, Pilsen Philharmonic/ Vit Micka; 

Ohio State University Symphony/ Marshall Haddock 




Priscilla McLean has long been a part of the 

new music scene, in association with her husband 

Barton McLean. This DVD shows off her 

video artistry as well as four pieces of music 

composed by her. The music is full of extended 

techniques and often uses electronic manipulation, 

and it is obvious she knows very well 

how to make interesting and beautiful sounds 

from a number of instruments. Caverns of 

Darkness, Rings of Light is for tuba, Desert 

Voices for midi violin, and Cries and Echoes is 

for cello. These are all recorded in concert, but 

the fourth piece is a studio work, Xakaalawe 

(Flowing) for woodwinds and voice, with 

McLean herself performing the vocals. They 

are all very interesting musical explorations 

and performed very well. 

The video art that accompanies each work 

is not as good. From a slow slide-show of landscape 

photos to meagerly manipulated lowquality 

video of the instruments in close-up 

(and the performers’ hands), these visuals all 

share one thing in common—they just aren’t 

very interesting. They are sometimes blatantly 

bad. This very interesting music—and these 

very good performances of it—would have 

been better served by an audio release. 

Seeing Is Believing, the title track on the 

recording of works by Nico Muhly, is a piece for 

six-string electric violin and orchestra. Muhly 

gets some attractive sounds from the orchestra, 

and the whole has some moments of beauty— 

but these alternate with longer sections of less 

interest. The work seems longer than its 25 

minutes. In Muhly’s other works recorded here, 

his interest in English vocal music is very evident, 

which is driven home by the interspersal 

of three English works in arrangement—two by 

Byrd and one by Gibbons. Step Team is in 

many ways the most interesting, with precise 

rhythmic articulation and occasional brief 

moments of hesitation. The Aurora Orchestra 

here performs exceptionally well. 

On the Nature of... is a collection of percussion 

pieces performed by Anthony Di Sanza 

and others. The short work by Ichiyanagi is 

aimless and derivative, but there are two excellent 

works on the program—the astoundingly 

difficult (and seminal) I Ching of Norgard, 

which charted his exploration of the infinity 

row in a non-pitched context, and the beautiful 

Reflections on the Nature of Water by 

Druckman—both performed very well by Di 

Sanza. The last work on the program is by Di 

Sanza himself, a Concerto for Darabukka and 

Percussion Quartet. The Darabukka is a middle-eastern 

goblet-shaped drum. With it (and 

his quartet) he creates a fascinating work of 

many facets, influenced by middle-eastern 

music (of course) and Japanese drumming. 

A compilation of songs (mainly with piano) 

by “contemporary American women com- 

posers”, Songs and Cycles is marred by harsh 

vocals with nearly epileptic vibrato. With the 

best recording imaginable these performances 

would be severely compromised, but on top of 

this the mix is heavily in favor of the voice. Most 

of the songs are mediocre at best in any case. 

With a libretto taken from John M Synge’s 

play of the same name, Riders to the Sea by 

Marga Richter is about loss and the cruelty of 

the sea, and about life in rural Ireland. The 

music fits the text well—sometimes heavy, 

sometimes somewhat folksy, often tender and 

melancholic. The vocal performances are 

somewhat lackluster, but there are some interesting 

moments musically. Also, there is a 

short Kyrie for string quartet and double bass 

that is very accessible and songful. Lyrical 

melodic passages lie on low drones in the bass 

and create a lush, beautiful effect. 

Asenjo’s Batrachomyomachia is a work for 

orchestra based on the ancient Greek work of 

the same name, a parody of the Iliad. Lyrical 

sections are often interrupted by short declamations 

and chords, and it has an interesting 

mix of colors. Palm-of-the-Hand-Tales is a collection 

of 10 pieces—incidental music to ten of 

the Palm-of-the-Hand-Stories by Yasunari 

Kawabata. They are less interesting than the 

first piece—an amalgam of cliched phrases 

without much aim, often sounding saccharine. 

Basile’s Pentameron is again based on literature, 

this time on (you guessed it) the Pentameron 

by Giambattista Basile. The Pentameron 

is a source for some of the stories 

later found in the tales of the Grimm brothers 

and Perrault—and the stories themselves are 

more interesting than these musical episodes. 

Il Viaggio del Cavaliere...(Inesistente) is a 

concerto for violin and orchestra based on 

Cervantes’s Don Quixote. It is quite colorful, 

and the solo writing is sometimes very beautiful. 

The first movement is especially attractive—a 

quicksilver shifting of moods and colors. 

In Mirrors of Time... (through Colours of 

Autumn) is a piece for orchestra dedicated to 

the memory of Nieminen’s colleague Lasse 

Eerola. It is appropriately meditative, and he 

makes good use of the orchestra—even if he is 

slightly too obvious with the harp sometimes. 

His viola concerto, La Serenissima, is an evocation 

of the mystique of Venice. The viola part is 

very interesting and performed very well. 

[More of Nieminen’s music and playing are 

reviewed from Pilfink releases in Collections.] 

Frank Ticheli’s American Dream is a “symphony 

of songs for soprano and orchestra” 

with texts by Philip Littell. His aim with this 

work was to express the anxiety felt in America 

at the close of the previous century. The songs 

are expertly constructed, sometimes (appropriately 

and subtly) disturbing, and the texts 

are rich and evocative. The third song, ‘Out- 



side in the night, a woman cried out’ is espe- This recording of American Music for Percially 

good. Leilah Dione Ezra sings with style cussion collects works by five composers. Joan 

and character. Lansing McLoskey’s Pres Peni- Tower’s DNA is a listenable representation of 

tentialis is a work for soprano and orchestra the physical structure of DNA. Felicia Sandler’s 

with text excerpted from two works of Petrar- Pulling Radishes—the title comes from a short 

ch—Canzoniere and Pres Penitentialis. A more Japanese poem, translated in the booklet as 

introverted work, it has a soaring vocal line “The man pulling radishes pointed the way 

accompanied with restraint by the orchestra. It with a radish” comprises small rhythmic 

is an ethereal and beautiful piece, performed motives and interesting color changes, and is 

very well here by Andrea Fullington. 

one of the most effective works on the record. 

Ralph Shapey is called a “radical tradition- Splendid Wood, by Jennifer Higdon, is called 

alist”. His grounding in the western classical by the composer “a celebration of the splendor 

tradition was firm, and this recording shows his of the marimba”. And that it is—the beautiful 

music at its most characteristic—tightly con- sound of the instruments (three marimbas) 

structed, rich with ideas, modernist but expres- takes center stage, though the piece is well 

sive. It also shows another aspect of his music: written and Higdon knows how to exploit the 

it is difficult to listen to very much of it at once. instruments’ idiosyncrasies. Robert Xavier 

There is an ineffable monochromatic element Rodriguez’s El Dia de los Muertos is inspired by 

that makes an entire program of his music the Mexican “day of the dead”. It is a work for 

something of a trial, no matter how fantastic eight percussionists that evokes a somber 

the performers. And these performers show a mood. Gunther Schuller’s Grand Concerto for 

technical mastery and musical sensibility of the Percussion and Keyboards is the least interest- 

highest class. Still, the three sonatas are very ing piece presented. It is a long work (almost 

well constructed pieces, and anyone interested 26 minutes) for huge forces (over 100 percus- 

in high modernism would do well to listen. sion instruments, plus piano, harp, and 

With a harmonic language heavily influ- celeste) and quite sparse. 

enced by the Second Viennese School, the Milou, a varied program of music by Lei 

works by Ingrid Arauco are both atonal and Liang, opens with Ascension for brass quintet 

harmonically complex. The influence doesn’t and percussion. It combines glissandos and 

end there, however—the way her ideas and deep rumblings—among other things—into a 

motives evolve reminds one of Schoenberg rather conversational whole. Winged Crea- 

and, especially, Berg. These are attractive tures—A Cadenza for Harpsichord is an espe- 

works and well performed, but finally sound cially beautiful and delicate work for harpsi- 

derivative. The Fantasy-Quartet is an exciting chord and strings, where the harpsichord 

demonstration of writing for dissimilar instru- improvises on the shape of the Chinese charments 

and one of the most effective pieces on acter for “flight”. In this performance Takae 

the program. The cello sonata, more tonal Ohnishi uses the inside of the harpsichord as 

than the other works, borders on trite in the much as the keyboard—rubbing the strings 

first movement—but II is a lyrical slow move- with her palm, plucking them with her fingerment. 

The Piano Quartet has five short movenails, etc. All of this is accompanied beautifully 

ments, each very different from the other. It is by the strings and makes for a lovely piece. A 

an effervescent romp—light and airy. 

Journey into Desire for guitar, based on the 

The texts of Peter Child’s Songs of Bidpai Dream of the Red Chamber (one of the “Four 

are from Libyan poet Muhammad al-Faituri Great Classical Novels” of China), is an inter- 

and are something of hybrid of western modesting work that gets distinctly Asian sounds 

ernism and an Islamic aesthetic. This is in a from the guitar using accents and pitch bends. 

way appropriate; these songs were written Lake is a piece for two flutes, delicate and 

with the attacks on the World Trade Center in beautiful. The title piece is for chorus, percus- 

mind. They are extroverted and rhythmically sionists, saxophonists, electric guitar, piano, 

very inventive, and performed expertly by and harpsichord. It opens with an imitation of 

Olivia Robinson. Pantomime: Seven Lyric Beijing opera recitation by a saxophonist 

Scenes for Oboe Quartet is a playful work, excit- vocalizing through a mouthpiece and contains 

ing and exuberant. The Viola Sonata is a well- many interesting sounds and colors—but it 

written dialog between the viola and the suffers from a lack of direction, and many of 

piano, changeable in mood and rich in ideas. the vocalizations end up sounding contrived 

In almost direct opposition to the opening and empty of meaning. 

song cycle, the program closes with Child’s Commissions and Concertos is a compila- 

Rilke Songs—a set of seven introverted and tion of wind ensemble music performed by the 

beautiful songs for mezzo-soprano and SUNY Fredonia Wind Ensemble. They range 

ensemble on short poems by Rilke. Rebecca from Mark Engebretson’s Symphony for 

Lodge has some pitch problems, but the songs Winds, a four-movement work for large 

are satisfying. 

ensemble, to the short Mountains and Mesas 



by Karl Boelter. Little stands out as exceptional, 

except perhaps the excellent performance, 

by Randall Hawes, of Frigyes Hidas’s Rhapsody 

for Bass Trombone and Wind Band. The works 

in general sound rather pedestrian, but they 

are performed well. 

The high point of the Navona Records 

release Light and Shadow would have to be 

Having seen the Collegiate Chorale’s revival of 

the Kurt Weill-Maxwell Anderson musical 

Knickerbocker Holiday this past January, I was 

happy to hear it was recorded, as this would 

give me a chance to appreciate the score more 

fully. (Ghostlight 84450). The Anderson book 

remains ponderous and political, and the 

lyrics are not easy to assimilate, But at least 

half of the score (the first act) is truly 

admirable. The huge chorus and the excellent 

orchestra conducted by James Bagwell are 

marvelous, and the recording offers many 

chances to appreciate Weill’s gorgeous orchestration. 

The style is operetta-ish, a combination of 

something like Der Kuhhandel and a touch of 

Gilbert & Sullivan; but the book, instead of 

being primarily comic, is so concerned with 

proto-facism and Rooseveltism that is sinks 

under its own weight in Act II. But the numbers 

in Act I are sensational, especially on a 

recording, where you aren’t bothered with 

most of the dull dialog. ‘There’s Nowhere to 

Go but Up’ has delightful twists and turns, 

ending rapturously. ‘It Never Was You’ is wonderfully 

sung by Ben Davis and Kelli O’Hara, 

and what an enchanting melody it is. The tune 

to ‘How Can You Tell an American?’ is memorable, 

and the lyrics are appropriately pithy. 

Then comes the entrance of the Governor 

Pieter Stuyvesant, and his songs, first ‘One 

Touch of Alchemy’, then ‘All Hail the Political 

Honeymoon” with its fascist ‘Strength 

Through Joy’ refrain. Then the charmingly pattery 

‘One Indespensable Man’ and finally the 

famous ‘September Song’. Victor Garber may 

have had his nose in the script during the performances, 

but on the disc he gets away with 

most of these numbers nicely—and with a certain 

gusto—not quite with the raffish, scowling 

style of the original Stuyvesant, Walter Huston, 

with his patented, devilish charm, but with his 

own Garberish charm. (I wasn’t too impressed 

with ‘The Scars’—that came off less well.) 

There are other pleasant diversions, like 

the waltz chorus ‘Young People Think about 

Love’, the lesser love duets like ‘Will You 

Adrienne Albert’s Boundaries, a consciously 

repetitive and well-performed short orchestral 

work. The Russian Philharmonic under Ovidiu 

Marinescu performs Rain Worthington’s Tracing 

a Dream with a beautiful, lush sound, but 

most of the rest of the recording leaves much 

to be desired. 

Classical Broadway 

BYELICK 

Remember Me?’, quite Germanic, and the 

Latin-sounding ‘We Are Cut in Twain’. Finally 

we have a complete recording of this 1938 

score, and it is to be cherished. It doesn’t yet 

have the more fully Broadway style of later 

works like Lady in the Dark or One Touch of 

Venus, but there lies its fascination. It is Kurt 

Weill slowly leaving Europe for the USA. 

The revival of How to Succeed in Business 

Without Really Trying is doing excellent business 

on Broadway, mainly, one would suppose, 

because of Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe 

playing the role originated in 1961 by 

Robert Morse. The last Broadway revival, with 

Matthew Broderick, was a sorry affair that 

added no luster to this fabled show. 

The current production (Decca Broadway 

15645) uses an orchestra of about 14, probably 

half the original, and has been reorchestrated, 

as usual these days, this time by Doug Besterman. 

There’s a conscious effort to approximate 

the lounge-y style of the the 1960s, to go 

with the look and feel of Mad Men, the hit TV 

series. That’s fine, but I do prefer the original 

glorious orchestrations by Robert Ginzler, 

which were supremely theatrical. 

In the recording, Mr Radcliffe sounds 

earnest and agreeable, with an approximation 

of an American accent. No problem there. But 

I miss some of the original supporting cast. (I 

haven’t seen this production yet.) The most 

missed is Charles Nelson Reilly, as Bud Frump; 

the new actor, Christopher J Hanke, has no 

discernable comedic sound. John Larroquette 

sounds OK as the magnate, and the girls all 

sound agreeable. 

The nice thing about this recording is that 

you get expanded versions of many of the 

songs, with reprises, and things that went 

unrecorded in 1961, in the dear old days of the 

LP. Examples include the narrator’s spiel at the 

beginning done by Anderson Cooper, items 

like ‘Martini Time’, the Act I finaletto, the 

music accompanying the bows at the end of 

the show, and even the orchestral exit music. 

Plus an extended version of the Pirate Dance, 

part of a TV quiz show sequence. 



But the great ensembles still retain their 

mythic glory: ‘The Company Way’, ‘Been a 

Long Day’, ‘Paris Original’, and the executive 

washroom scene, with the singing businessmen 

and ‘I Believe in You’. ‘Coffee Break’ falls 

flat here, but the secretarial ‘Cinderella Darling’ 

sounds just spiffy, with its typing or tapdancing, 

or both. 1The Brotherhood of Man’ 

looked rather busy on the Tony Awards TV 

broadcast. 

The London Palladium, which started as a 

vaudeville house, is now in the business of 

mounting spectacular musicals. A new version 

of The Wizard of Oz, based on the 1939 Hollywood 

film classic, is the current occupant 

(Decca 15692). I remember seeing another 

stage mounting of this by the Royal Shakespeare 

Company earlier—it was not memorable. 

The production, from the booklet photos, 

looks cheesily-spectacular British, though I 

have no doubt there are spectacular effects, 

this being the Palladium. 

This version adds unnecessary songs by 

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to the 

classics by Harold Arlen and EY Harburg. They 

BACH: Partita 1; Italian Concerto; English 

Suite 2; Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue 

Wanda Landowska, hpsi 

Paradizo 9—74 minutes (with DVD) 

Concert performances from 1935-36, recorded 

at her own concert hall in Saint-Leu-la-Foret 

and remastered in 2010. The interpretations, 

as always, are stunning; I’m amazed in particular 

at the variety of touch in the third movement 

of the Italian Concerto and her grand 

sense of expressive planning in the Sarabande 

from the Partita. It’s easy, indeed, to see why 

Landowska made and continues to make such 

an impression on enthusiasts of early music; 

her approach, strange to say, remains highly 

relevant today. 

The release includes a DVD-ROM that contains 

almost 200 photographs of Landowska, 

her teaching, letters, and other important documents. 

These materials have largely been 

available only by permission of the owners in 

whose archives they are stored. No Landowska 

devotee will want to be without this release, 

and most lovers of early music performance in 

general will be very pleased to own it as well. 

HASKINS 

Archives 

are completely out of character with the charm 

of the old ones, and are sung in a modern, 

drawly, power-ballad style that has nothing to 

do with the originals. The problem is compounded 

with a synthesizer-ish band that 

wreaks havoc with the original, glorious MGM 

orchestrations. 

The songwriters dare to add a new introduction 

to ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’: 

anathema! The attempt to musicalize scenes in 

the film that were perfectly good with dialog is 

another miscalculation. One, for the nominal 

star Michael Crawford, as Professor Marvel, is 

a model of syrupy world-gazing. 

The wit of Harburg’s brilliant rhymes 

endure, and although the arrangements have 

accretions by David Cullen, the songs left (relatively) 

alone come off best. The new ‘Red 

Shoes Blues’ has clever lyrics, if not much of a 

tune, and there’s a new sentimental anthem to 

take Dorothy back to her Kansas farm. But the 

film is so perfect, that the only reason I can see 

redoing this for the London stage is to bring in 

new generations of children. 

TRAUBNER 

BARTOK: Violin Concerto; 2 Portraits; Cantata 

Profana; Music for Strings, Percussion, 

& Celeste; Dance Suite; Divertimento for 

Strings; Rhapsody; Piano Concertos 1+2 

Tibor Varga, v; Geza Anda, Louis Kentner, Andor 

Foldes, p; Helmut Krebs, t, Dietrich Fischer- 

Dieskau, bar, RIAS Symphony/ Ferenc Fricsay 

Audite 21407 [3CD] 3:04 

The 1950s was the great decade for Bartok performances—would 

that the composer had 

been still alive! It was a remarkable recovery 

considering the comparative obscurity of his 

last years. But the 1950s were also a dicey 

decade for the interpretation of 20th Century 

works, because success came at the cost of 

homogenizing performance practices that 

deracinated some of the more exciting elements 

in modern music. Ferenc Fricsay, much 

admired then and since, was both a champion 

of Bartok and of the mode of conducting then 

displacing the more spontaneous mode associated 

that earlier Hungarian conductor, Artur 

Nikisch. These museum-friendly performances, 

made in 1950-53, lack the warmth 

and rubato one might expect in “authentic” 

Bartok. Fritz Reiner is much racier in the Concerto 

for Orchestra. 



The RIAS Symphony doesn’t help: they are 

competent in what must have been unfamiliar 

repertoire, but they certainly come across as 

Berliners: their sound is smooth and attractive 

but lacking in earth tones. That said, Fricsay’s 

soloists, Hungarian compatriots all, supply the 

necessary ingredients to make Bartok sing. 

The concertos are all wonderful, particularly 

Tibor Varga in the violin concerto and 

Geza Anda in the Third Piano Concerto. Conceding 

that Bartok performances can work 

even in the mode of high-modernist abstraction, 

I much prefer the color and inflection 

that typified central European music-making 

in the composer’s lifetime. Since Bartok concertos 

are not heard so often now as in the 

1950s, and since this collection has been 

admirably produced from original sources 

(studio and broadcast) it is well worth seeking 

out. 

RADCLIFFE 

BEETHOVEN: Missa Solemnis; VERDI: 

Simon Boccanegra, Act I, Scene 1 

Elisabeth Rethberg, Marion Telva, Giovanni Martinelli, 

Ezio Pinza; Schola Cantorum; NY Philharmonic/ 

Arturo Toscanini; Metropolitan Opera/ 

Ettore Panizza 

Immortal Performances 1011 [2CD] 125 minutes 

Here is a brief overview of Toscanini and Missa 

Solemnis. Working backward, we have 1953 

with the NBC Symphony with Marshall, Merriman, 

Conley, and Hines as soloists. This is the 

performance most of us know—fast, incisive, 

and in pretty good sound. In 1940 we have the 

same orchestra, but with generally superior 

soloists: Milanov, Castagna, Bjoerling, and 

Kipnis. A year earlier Toscanini conducted the 

work in Queen’s Hall, London with the BBC 

Orchestra and Milanov, Thorborg, Von Pataky, 

and Moscona. And finally we have the present 

recording from 1935. This was made from AM 

radio and was released by Eddie Smith in 1957 

and has been around in various forms, always 

with very poor sound and lots of pitch problems. 

Now Richard Caniell has undertaken the 

task of setting things right: patching together 

various sources, re-equalizing phrase by 

phrase, removing ticks and pops, and using 

gentle noise suppression to make this performance 

more listenable. 

And the performance is worth it. It is the 

slowest of the four recordings—monumental, 

powerful, and deeply expressive. The sound is 

still not very good. The level and type of noise 

vary often, and you have to screen out the haze 

to get to the music. But if you already know the 

piece fairly well, you can zero in on a fantastic 

performance of Beethoven’s masterpiece. If 

you’re not deeply into the Toscanini “thing”, 

you may prefer one of the later performances 

in better sound (the BBC one recently 

appeared in the BBC legends series). The 1935, 

then, will be of particular interest to followers 

of the soloists. 

The second disc is filled out with half an 

hour of Simon Boccanegra with three of the 

Mass soloists plus Lawrence Tibbett. This 

comes from the Met broadcast of February 16, 

1935, only two months before the Mass performance. 

It gives the opportunity, then, to hear 

these legendary soloists in repertory they were 

generally associated with. The performance 

itself is wonderful, and the sound, aided by 

four splices from the 1939 broadcast with the 

same performers, is quite listenable. In addition 

we have two interviews—three minutes 

with Rethberg, seven with Martinelli—that 

include reminiscences of Toscanini. 

So, many thanks to Immortal Performances 

for preserving such a wonderful part 

of our heritage. 

ALTHOUSE 

BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto 5; Sonata 28 

Robert Casadesus, Concertgebouw Orchestra/ 

Hans Rosbaud 


The Emperor was recorded in 1961 and 

released in the US on the budget label 

Odyssey. It reappeared on a Philips CD, and 

later as part of box sets dedicated to Casadesus 

(Sony France) and Rosbaud (DG). It’s not a 

revelatory reading—the outer movements are 

played well enough, and II flows along at a dispassionate 

pace that’s brisker than the norm. 

Casadesus is sensitive and poetic, but some 

degree of brio and bravado would help. The 

Concertgebouw doesn’t sound like its usual 

self—the strings are shrill, the ensemble doesn’t 

blend properly, and the acoustics are flat 

and dry. The sonata, recorded in concert 

(1978), is not stereo but it’s better on all counts 

except for the inevitable audience noises. 

KOLDYS 

HAYDN: Il Mondo della Luna 

Cesare Curzi (Ecclitico); Ernst Gutstein (Ernesto); 

Oskar Czerwenka (Buonafede); Anneliese Rothenberger 

(Flaminia); Vienna Philharmonic/ Bernhard 

Conz—Melodram 50076 [2CD] 

This recording has been around about forever. 

It was a Melodram LP set long ago and is now 

reissued in adequate monaural sound. The 

performance comes from the 1959 Salzburg 

Festival and is a good middle-European cast 

performing a good Haydn opera. There have 

been more recent recordings in infinitely better 

sound by Dorati and Harnoncourt, but this 

has its charms. 

Haydn’s opera is about a scheming 

astronomer who wants to trick credulous peo- 



ple into believing that they have been trans- not a saint. The fanatical neighbors believe 

ported to the moon. The credulous person in implicitly in Annina’s sanctity. The two ideas 

our story is an old man with two daughters collide in a dramatic scene in Act I, where, on 

whom he wants to marry off to rich suitors. Good Friday, she re-enacts the crucifixion of 

The daughters have other ideas. The fool is led Jesus and is given the stigmata. The neighbors 

to believe that he has been transported to the are driven out of the house by Michele. To add 

moon and winds up tricked into consenting to more complications, Michele is in love with 

(and funding) the marriages of his daughters the prostitute Desideria. She is jealous of 

to men they really care for. It’s slight stuff, and Michele’s love for Annina and accuses him of 

Haydn’s music is lovely, but not terribly specif- loving Annina—implying incest. Michele stabs 

ic. It’s hard to imagine that he believed the her and she dies in the arms of Annina, who 

piece would be performed twice. 

tries to sooth Desideria’s fears and teaches her 

The singers are all fine. The conducting is to pray. Although she is seriously ill, Annina is 

OK; and the VPO, in its guise as the pit orches- accepted as a nun. The opera ends in one of 

tra at Salzburg, makes it clear that it has some the most harrowing scenes in all opera, the 

experience playing Haydn. There is no special religious rite as Annina is made a nun. She dies 

reason to buy this instead of one of the more just before the ring is slipped on to her finger. 

recent ones. 

The opera has been condemned by some 

CHAKWIN as too melodramatic, too emotional. But isn’t 

that what opera is all about? Each act ends 

MENOTTI: The Saint of Bleecker Street; The 

Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore 

Gabrielle Ruggiero (Annina), David Poleri 

(Michele), Gloria Lane (Desideria), Maria Di Gerlando 

(Carmela), Leon Lishner (Don Marco); 

Chorus & Orchestra/ Thomas Schippers 


with dramatic intensity. Few operas have such 

an emotional shattering as the Saint’s Act I 

Festival of San Gennaro. It is celebrated with a 

procession carrying a statute of the saint. 

Michele is brutally beaten and chained to a 

fence as Annina is forcefully carried away to 

join the procession as a living saint. 

It is said that the Saint was Menotti’s favorite This recording was originally made by RCA 

of all his operas. Certainly it reflects his per- Victor in February and March 1955 with the 

sonal life, his inmost feelings. As a little boy original cast in the opera’s run on Broadway. 

growing up in Italy Menotti was a sincere Schippers was an advocate of Menotti’s music 

believer in the teaching of the Roman Catholic and a sincere interpreter as well. The dramatic 

Church. When he moved to Milan to study, tension is stunning. The unidentified chorus 

that simple faith was shaken by the complica- and orchestra are presumably from the Broadtions 

of modern life. In 1928 he moved to way production. 

Philadelphia for further study at the Curtis There is no doubting the sincerity of the 

Institute, and there his faith was even more singers. While not the greatest singers in the 

shaken. 

world, they more than fulfill their assignments. 

Menotti was a success. His first operas There is much beauty in Ruggiero’s singing, a 

were well received. Yet at the same time the rich, fruity voice and a heartfelt portrayal. 

young composer was consumed by feelings of Poleri’s unique voice borders on the ugly; but 

guilt and sin a growing disbelief in sanctity. In the ferocity, the power of his singing is over- 

1951 he paid a visit to a real-life saint, Padre whelming. Michele’s savage aria ‘I know that 

Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo. Padre Pio was you all hate me’ is raw drama. Lane’s sumptu- 

blessed (suffered) from the stigmata, bleeding ous Desideria and Lishner’s solemn priest are 

from both his hands. But the priest drove the best singing. 

Menotti away, claiming that the composer was There is another recording. (Chandos, 

driven by nothing more than curiosity. It Nov/Dec 2002). Richard Hickox leads a power- 

sounds like the Tannhäuser story in modern ful performance actually superior to the Naxos 

times. Menotti was severely shaken, and out of recording in every way except one: the Annina 

his confusion and pain grew his opera The is totally inadequate. That disqualifies the 

Saint of Bleecker Street. 

Chandos. 

The opera combines the two themes that Filling out the recording is Menotti’s rarely 

so haunted him: the feeling of exclusion and of performed madrigal fable The Unicorn, the 

religious fervor. This is a potent combination Gorgon, and the Manticore. It is part masque, 

and made for a dramatic opera. It is set in New part ballet, and part chamber music. It is three 

York’s Little Italy. First generation Americans, stages in the life of an eccentric poet, symbol- 

Annina and her brother Michele, must deal ized by the allegorical animals of the title. Its 

with the daily events of urban alienation and tender beauty is well realized by Schippers. 

traditional religion. Annina is believed by the There is no libretto for the opera, but the text 

locals to truly be a saint. Her skeptical brother of the madrigal fable is included. 

rejects any religious belief. His sister is ill, but 


PARSONS 

237


MOZART: The Marriage of Figaro 

Cesare Siepi (Figaro), Roberta Peters (Susanna), 

Ezio Flagello (Bartolo), Regina Resnik (Marcellina), 

Mildred Miller (Cherubino), Kim Borg 

(C1ount), Lucine Amara (Countess), Gabor Carelli 

(Basilio); Metropolitan Opera/ Erich Leinsdorf 


This was recorded January 28, 1961 from the 

stage of the Met, probably as a Saturday afternoon 

broadcast. As the notes put it: “the original 

monaural recording has been digitally 

remastered from original source material”. But 

the sound is quite poor; it’s noticeably deficient 

in high-frequency content and it strongly 

favors the singers. The orchestra sounds dull 

and sometimes inaudible; in the tuttis it lacks 

body and transparency. 

This is one of the fastest Figaros on 

records. Most performances take from 170 to 

190 minutes, depending on what has been cut. 

In this performance, the Act 4 arias for Marcellina 

and Basilio were omitted, as was usual at 

the Met. 

The cast is representative of what the Met 

offered at the time. There are several very good 

performances. Siepi’s Figaro is the best I can 

remember, and the Susanna of Roberta Peters 

is perky. But Lucine Amara is, at best, an indifferent 

Countess. Her voice isn’t steady enough 

for her arias; and her last lines, where she forgives 

her errant husband, lack poise and emotion. 

Kim Borg’s singing, as the Count, lacks 

elegance and smoothness—he sounds like a 

country bumpkin. But Regina Resnik’s Marcellina 

and Ezio Flagello’s Bartolo are very well 

sung and characterized, and Mildred Miller 

sings her two arias with pure and beautiful 

tine. The rest of the cast is competent enough 

but not always comfortable with Leinsdorf’s 

fast tempos. So this adds up to a fairly routine 

performance; it doesn’t show the Met at its 

best. After Levine took over this repertory, performances 

of the Mozart operas, in particular, 

became much better. 

No texts; only an English synopsis. 

MOSES 

PONCHIELLI: La Gioconda 

Zinka Milanov (Gioconda), Giovanni Martinelli 

(Enzo), Carlo Morelli (Alvise), Anna Kaskas (La 

Cieca), Bruna Castagna (Laura), Nicolo Moscona 

(Alvise); Metropolitan Opera/ Panizza 


brilliantly re-mastered by Richard Caniell, the 

answer is decidedly in the affirmative. 

In order to fit the work onto two discs, 

Symposium made a number of cuts, which are 

now all restored. Apart from Laura’s ‘Stella del 

marinar’, omitted that afternoon, almost the 

entire score is now here. Pitching has also 

been carefully checked. Even more praiseworthy 

is the new sound quality—almost as great 

an improvement over Symposium’s as that 

transfer was over the LPs. Bonuses include an 

interview with Milanov, a talk by Martinelli, 

and the splendid finale of Ponchielli’s I Lituani 

with Ottavio Garaventa, Yasuko Hayashi, and 

Carlo de Bortoli, conducted by Gavazzeni. 

This performance saw the debut of Milanov 

in a role that had been almost exclusively 

the property of Ponselle. Although often compared 

with her famous predecessor, in truth 

Milanov had more in common with Caballe. 

This was her debut at the Met, and she is in 

fine voice, though it is generally conceded that 

her 1946 performance was a more definitive 

assumption of the role. 

For many tenor enthusiasts it will be a joy 

to encounter Martinelli in a complete performance. 

After a slightly disappointing opening 

‘Assassini’—Ponchielli’s equivalent of Otello’s 

‘Esultate’—the tenor speedily gets into his 

stride and sings with a welcome range of 

dynamics and nuance—more than can be 

gleaned from many of his studio recordings. Of 

the entire cast, it is his voice that seems to 

have benefited most from this new transfer. If 

not the possessor of an intrinsically beautiful 

sound, he sings with such integrity as to disarm 

criticism. 

Carlo Morelli’s warm, vibrant tones, while 

perhaps too generous for the arch villain Barnaba, 

fall gratefully on the ears, as do Kaskas’s 

as La Chieca. Castagna’s refulgent voice is 

somewhat heavy for Laura, but it would nevertheless 

have been interesting to have heard her 

tackle Laura’s only solo—the sole omission 

from this performance. 

The late, greatly-missed, John Steane’s 

detailed and erudite notes further embellish 

this most worthwhile issue. It deserves a place 

in every collection. 

LIFF 

This truly immortal performance, from 30th 

December 1939, has been available for many 

PUCCINI: Tosca 

Renata Tebaldi (Tosca), Ferruccio Tagliavini 

(Cavaradossi), Tito Gobbi (Scarpia); Covent Garden/ 

Francesco Molinari-Pradelli 

ICA 5022 [2CD] 110 minutes 

years—originally surfacing on one of the infa- When the Covent Garden company was remous 

EJS LPs. To my knowledge, its last established in 1946 after the War, its new 

appearance was in much improved sound as a beginnings were almost provincial: opera in 

two-CD set on the Symposium label, prompt- English, with predominantly English singers. 

ing the question as to whether we really need As time passed, it became more international, 

yet another issue. After hearing this new set, so that when Renata Tebaldi made her 1955 



debut as Tosca, all the principals were Italian 

and only the supporting singers were British. 

Gobbi would sing Scarpia many times in London, 

and in 1955, he’s close to his best, the 

voice strong and menacing, the words sharply 

pointed. Tagliavini also knows how to use 

words and how to shape his lines, though he’s 

a lightweight Cavaradossi; and on this occasion 

his voice wasn’t flowing as freely as it usually 

did. 

Tebaldi, on the other hand, is in full flood, 

the voice just pouring out easily, the words 

crystal-clear. She’s not the most fiery Tosca, 

but her sincerity is palpable; and she sings so 

beautifully (aside from a couple of flat high 

notes), and with such power and richness (not 

least in her chest register), that it must have 

been thrilling to hear her. 

Molinari-Pradelli is a capable, well-seasoned 

conductor. The sound is fairly good in 

that the voices come through clearly, with 

some presence; the orchestra fares less well. So 

this is a Tosca for people who can’t get enough 

Tebaldi or Gobbi. Notes but no libretto. 

LUCANO 

VERDI: Il Trovatore 

Bianca Scacciati (Leonora), Francesco Merli 

(Manrico), Enrico Molinari (Count), Giuseppina 

Zinetti (Azucena), Corrado Zambelli (Ferrando); 

La Scala/ Lorenzo Molajoli 

Preiser 20059 [2CD] 116 minutes 

It was not long after the invention of recording 

that attempts were made to record complete 

operas. These were issued as bulky collections 

of shellac discs, which presumably enjoyed 

reasonable sales since all the major record 

companies offered examples, with varying 

degrees of sophistication as the technical side 

of the industry progressed. But it was not until 

the advent of electrical recording in the 1920s 

that these issues really took off. Two major 

firms in this field were HMV and Columbia. 

Both tended to concentrate on the standard 

operatic repertoire, and there was great rivalry 

between them. No sooner had HMV’s Il Trovatore, 

with its stellar cast of Pertile, Minghini- 

Cattaneo, and Granforte appeared on the topprice 

red label than Columbia offered its 

cheaper, black label release, the subject of this 

review. 

All the artists here enjoyed considerable 

success in the international field and sang at 

most of the world’s leading opera houses. The 

men are all easier on the ear than the ladies. 

Scacciati’s searing top is certainly not for all 

tastes, but she was an interesting artist who, 

several, long-departed friends affirmed, could 

be thrilling in the opera house. Azucena, the 

mad gypsy, is the one role Zinetti’s plangent 

tones sound eminently suitable for. Merli (a 

De Lucia pupil, believe it or not) is a fine if 

unsubtle Manrico—surely one of the most stupid 

of all Verdi’s heroes? Molinari sings Di 

Luna with warm tone and a good line, and 

Zambelli’s Ferrando is another positive boon. 

Indeed, although hardly the most refined reading 

available, the whole performance carries 

great conviction and is ably conducted by the 

ever reliable Molajoli. It has been excellently 

transferred. Hearing it again after a break of 

about 50 years is a potent proof of what has 

been lost in the operatic world. 

LIFF 

VIVALDI: Gloria; 4 Seasons 

Vienna Opera Orchestra/ Hermann Scherchen 

Tahra 697—77:30 

No. Some people liked Scherchen; I never 

understood that. In the Seasons the 1958 

sound is tinny and plunky—irritating and just 

plain ugly. And that would seem to be partly 

the conductor’s fault. Some like it stark. The 

1960 Gloria is dull and muffled. 

VROON 

WAGNER: Götterdämmerung 

Lauritz Melchior (Siegfried), Helen Traubel 

(Brünnhilde), Herbert Janssen (Gunther), Regina 

Resnik (Gutrune), Deszö Ernster (Hagen), Gerhart 

Pechner (Alberich), Margaret Harshaw (Waltraute); 

Metropolitan Opera/ Fritz Stiedry 


Well, here’s the Ring of the Month Club’s current 

entry, this time (at last) a really phenomenal 

and truly historic performance from 

December 1948. It was Melchior’s last Siegfried 

at the Met. It is of special interest to me, 

since I heard the music for the first time at a 

Met performance precisely like it—the same 

cast, orchestra and conductor, in the same 

locale—two years earlier. I was 19 years old, 

just beginning to form what was to be a lifetime 

commitment to Wagner, but also hearing 

a complete opera for the first time—not Carmen 

or Rigoletto, but Götterdämmerung, a 

drink from the fire hose if there ever was one! 

I expected a frayed, noisy, and distorted 

sound—after all, this was recorded before tape 

technology was available in the US. But I was 

surprised to hear the opening chords of the 

Norns scene bright, sharp, clear, and undistorted. 

Further investigation revealed that the 

original source must have been acetate FM 

broadcast masters—16-inch plastic discs that 

could accommodate 25 minutes per side, 

clear, distortion-free, and with a full frequency 

spectrum. Columbia’s first LPs were also 

recorded that way. 

The performance would have been recorded 

at the old Met at Broadway and 39th Street, 

a hall with good acoustics but a smallish 

orchestra pit. So the orchestra is somewhat 



lean and spare. But it is adequate to convey the 

musical thrust of the score, particularly as conducted 

by Stiedry. 

Fritz Stiedry (1883-1965) was younger than 

Muck and Weingartner, and older than Böhm 

and Krauss—roughly contemporary with Klemperer 

and Furtwängler. Like Karl Böhm, he 

began by studying law, and like Böhm, he 

earned a doctoral degree in that field before 

becoming a musician. His musical career 

began in 1907 as assistant to Mahler at the 

Vienna Opera. He later conducted opera in 

Kassel and Berlin until (being Jewish) he was 

forced in 1934 to leave Germany. His next post 

was conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic 

from 1934 until 1937, when he left for America. 

He settled in New York. His work in this recording 

leaves no room to question his skill as a 

Wagner conductor. His tendency was to keep 

the narratives moving along smartly while 

slowing down for the orchestral music and the 

great dramatic scenes. That technique results 

in a performance sculpted along the lines of the 

great Böhm Bayreuth performance recorded 20 

years later. Actually, in the presentation of Act 

III, he manages in some instances to beat 

Böhm at his own game! Indeed, his timing for 

the entire opera is a little faster. The 228minute 

time given in the heading reflects commentaries, 

applause, and an eight-minute 

interview with Melchior. Böhm’s time is 230:33. 

There is no question that Melchior was the 

greatest Wagnerian tenor of the 20th Century. 

His voice was baritonal in timbre, very loud, its 

carrying power unsurpassed. His pitch is accurate, 

and he can go up to the top with ease. He 

is not the subtlest artist, but all things considered, 

he’s at the top of the lists. In this performance 

he is singing his last Götterdämmerung 

at the Met, though this isn’t his last performance 

there. I heard his Tristan at the met 

three years later. 

Helen Traubel was the Wagnerian soprano 

of choice at this time, since Kirsten Flagstad 

was not to return to the US until much later. 

Traubel was a big woman with a big wideranging 

soprano voice with lots of carrying 

power. She was American-born, from a St 

Louis German-American family. Her voice was 

smooth and powerful, more colorful than Melchior’s 

if not as loud. Anyway, she was the US 

Brünnhilde of choice at the time, and this 

recording preserves that. 

Herbert Janssen was at the time the US 

Wotan of choice, his smooth, dark, lowpitched 

baritone perfect for the role, as fine as 

the European competition of the era, with the 

possible exception of Hans Hotter, who actually 

peaked a bit later. He also appeared as 

Wotan in a complete Walküre Act III alongside 

Traubel and the NY Philharmonic under 

Rodzinsky for Columbia (in 1948). The others 

are also quite fine, Ernster a threatening blackvoiced 

Hagen, while as his dad Alberich we 

have one Gerhard Pechner, as nasty as can be. 

At the other end of the spectrum. there’s Regina 

Resnik as Gutrune, and Margaret Harshaw 

as Waltraute, both as good as they come. As a 

whole, a finer cast could hardly have been 

assembled, then or now, anywhere. 

I shall treasure this in the time available to 

me on the planet, which is not infinite. It’s an 

experience I shall never forget, from a golden 

era at the Met. 

MCKELVEY 

WALTON: Violin Concerto; SAINT-SAENS: 

Havanaise; SINDING: Suite; CASTELNUO- 

VO-TEDESCO: Concerto 2 

Jascha Heifetz, Philarmonia Orchestra, RCA Symphony, 

Los Angeles Philharmonic/ William Walton, 

William Steinberg, Alfred Wallenstein 


This is a thoroughly happy collection: the 

compositions sort well together, and Jascha 

Heifetz commissioned the Walton concerto 

(heard in the 1950 recording). The Saint-Saens 

Havanaise is a work particularly associated 

with the great violinist, and the less familiar 

works by Sinding and Castelnuovo-Tedesco 

glow in his hands. The 1950s recorded sound is 

splendid, and the liner note is by Tully Potter. 

RADCLIFFE 

Celibidache 

GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue; RAVEL: 

Rapsodie Espagnole; BUSONI: Violin Concerto; 

CHERUBINI: Anacreon Overture: 

HINDEMITH: Piano Concerto; GENZMER: 

Flute Concerto; COPLAND: Appalachian 

Spring; TIESSEN: Hamlet Suite; Salambo 

Suite; Symphony 2; SCHWARZ-SCHILLING: 

Introduction & Fugue for Strings 

Gerhard Puchelt, p; Siegfried Borries, v; Gustav 

Scheck, fl; Berlin Philharmonic, RIAS Symphony/ 

Sergiu Celibidache 

Audite 21406 [3CD] 3:35 

Celibidache, famously, was the conductor who 

didn’t make recordings; he was long a cult figure, 

though since he died in 1996 he has been, 

if anything, overexposed through reissued 

broadcasts. This collection has particular 

interest, both historical and musical. Celibidache 

conducted the Berlin Philharmonic 

from 1945, when Furtwangler was banished, to 

the beginning of Karajan’s tenure in 1952. It 

was still very much Furtwangler’s orchestra, 

though some things had changed, as a glance 

at the contents indicates: this is music banned 

by the Nazis and so new to Berlin audiences in 

1948-50. (The three pieces by Heinz Tiessen, 

Celibidache’s teacher, were recorded for the 

RIAS in 1957). 



Celibidache was, like Furtwangler, a fundamentally 

subjective artist. In these early performances, 

the personal seems less significant 

than the social as the orchestra rejoices in the 

new liberal era. The Rhapsody in Blue is performed 

in the best sleazy-jazz Berlin manner 

reminiscent of Klemperer’s Three-penny Opera 

suite of an earlier day. By contrast the Hindemith 

seems mere cacophony as the spirit of 

the composer proves more elusive. The 

Tiessen works are middle-brow Teutonism 

that leaves one wondering what he could have 

done to run afoul of the Nazis. Reinhard 

Schwarz-Schilling’s piece is a pleasing homage 

to Bach; the Busoni concerto can be heard to 

much better advantage elsewhere. Harald 

Genzmer’s Flute Concerto is a neoclassical 

gem of the first water: I would very much like 

to hear more from this composer. 

The outstanding performance is Copland’s 

Appalachian Spring. Here one relishes the 

meditative qualities that made Celibidache a 

cult figure and an elfin grace and lightness that 

quite lift the spirit out of the body. Presumably 

this has more to do with the conductor’s relish 

for Buddhism than any feeling for Americana, 

but whatever the source, his gift for simplicity 

proves abundant. 

Anyone with a serious interest in Celibidache 

should seek this out. Audite’s production 

is first-rate, a far cry from the dismal pirated 

LPs where we first encountered Celibidache 

in the West. The orchestra is splendid. The conductor, 

the repertoire, and the epoch make this 

a historical reissue worthy of particular notice. 

RADCLIFFE 

Johanna Martzy 

BACH: Solo Violin Sonatas & Partitas 

Testament 1467 [2CD] 139 minutes 

SCHUBERT: Violin Pieces 

with Jean Antonietti, p 

Testament 1468 [2CD] 124 minutes 

Johanna Martzy (1924-79) was one of the last 

students of the prolific Hungarian virtuoso and 

pedagogue Jeno Hubay (1858-1937). Her style 

and tone production were more modern than 

Hubay’s students Franz von Vecsey and Joseph 

Szigeti, whose bowing was of the old German 

School. Martzy’s recordings with EMI have 

long been deleted and have fetched high prices 

from collectors. They have attained a legendary 

status. 

While her recordings of Bach must have 

sounded stylistically very modern and technically 

accomplished for their time, they have 

not aged well. Style has changed dramatically 

since the mid-1950s. Dynamics are not so terraced 

now, and rhythms are more pointed. 

Frankly, I find the recordings by Henryk 

Szeryng for Odeon and Nathan Milstein for 

EMI at the same time as these more satisfying, 

even though they also show some age stylistically 

and sonically. Szerying is more lyrical and 

noble, while Milstein is more energetic and 

playful, especially in the dance movements. 

Martzy is too stiff, and she doesn’t have the 

engaging personality of a world-class soloist. 

She is a bit more satisfactory in the Schubert, 

especially in the early sonatas. Perhaps 

the presence of a partner relaxes her. Still, 

these readings do not move to the top of the 

list. Schubert is a difficult composer to interpret. 

I write this from embarrassing experience 

as a quartet member. I have never heard completely 

satisfying recordings of Schubert’s 

music for violin. His demands are, of course, 

rarely technical, except insofar as technique is 

brought into the service of interpretation, 

which is the highest level of technique. The 

interpreter must first have the imagination to 

understand the significance of each note, and 

then must know how to make each phrase tell 

its story. In the more mature works, many sustained 

notes must go through a range of emotions 

and tone colors that the average violinist 

(and probably the average violin) is barely 

capable of mustering. 

These recordings were made in 1954 and 

1955, and the sound is very early hi-fi. Martzy 

plays the 1733 “Tarisio” Carlo Bergonzi violin, 

which is widely regarded as his masterpiece. 

Booklet notes are by that walking encyclopedia, 

Tully Potter. 

MAGIL 

Isaac Stern 

BEETHOVEN: Sonata 10; BRAHMS: Sonata 

2; FERGUSON: Sonata 2; SCHUBERT: 

Sonata 1 with Dame Myra Hess, p 

Testament 1458—79 minutes 

Stern and Hess began playing together in 1952, 

but they did not make any commercial recordings 

together. This is a BBC recording of a 

superb concert at Usher Hall in Edinburgh on 

August 28, 1960. It was their last concert 

together, and, owing to a heart attack that Hess 

had shortly after the concert, it was one of her 

last performances. 

I think Stern was at his very best in the 

company of Hess, and it is to everyone’s great 

fortune that we have this recording. The interpretations 

are personal and very spontaneous. 

The reading of Howard Ferguson’s 1948 

Sonata (new music in 1960) is particularly personal 

because of Hess’s friendship with the 

composer. 

This is a recording not to miss and one to 

return to often. 

FINE 



Irma Gonzalez, 1945-65 

Butterfly, Boheme, Manon Lescaut, Tosca, Turandot, 

Amico Fritz, Pagliacci, Andrea Chenier, 

Mefistofele, Norma, Manon, Herodiade, Carmen, 

Jeanne d’Arc; Traviata, Aida, Requiem, Otello, 

Forza 

Urtext 189 [2CD] 142 minutes 

After nearly three quarters of a century spent 

listening to voices, I was more than mildly 

astonished to come across a soprano I had 

never heard of. And it was one who seemingly 

enjoyed a major career—but almost entirely in 

the country of her birth (Mexico). Judging from 

many photos and these mainly air-check 

examples, the lady had almost every attribute 

required for an international career. A pleasing 

appearance, a fine voice of individual quality, 

a smooth legato line, instrumental-like phrasing, 

and splendid dynamic variety, all combine 

to make her a most exciting discovery. Virtually 

no appearances outside of Mexico and less 

than a handful of commercial recordings, may 

explain to some extent her relative obscurity. 

This handsomely produced double-fold 

tribute includes a slim booklet—unfortunately 

entirely in Spanish. It appears to omit any reference 

to her birth year (1916) but does 

include 2008 as the year of her death. She 

appears to have been most active in the middle 

years of the last century, from when all 

these recordings date. While the best of them 

are perfectly tolerable, none are exactly easy 

on the ear. But if prepared to cope with less 

than first rate sound, you will be rewarded by 

some truly magnificent singing. 

Two excerpts from Butterfly are moving 

and meaningfully sung, but Mimi’s two arias 

are even better. Musetta’s air, which follows, is 

a highly individual interpretation. The first 

total revelation is a genuinely affecting ‘Vissi 

d’arte’ noteworthy for being sung as scored— 

the final phrases taken in one breath. Also from 

Tosca is the final act, commencing at Tosca’s 

entrance. Her Cavaradossi is the ever-reliable 

Domingo. Despite a sound glitch near its conclusion, 

she triumphantly surmounts the hidden 

pitfalls of Nedda’s ‘Bird song’ and with Di 

Stefano in good voice, is thrilling in the Andrea 

Chenier finale. The trill may not be quite up to 

Alda standard in the first of the two arias from 

Mefistofele; but it is highly respectable, and she 

competes with Olivero in the second. ‘Mira, O 

Norma’ with Dominguez is good enough but 

not perhaps as noteworthy as hoped. Manon’s 

farewell to her table goes convincingly, and her 

seduction scene at St Sulpice is irresistible but 

somewhat bizarrely continues into the concluding 

duet, sung here as a solo! Pitching 

problems emerge in the Herodiade and Jean 

d’Arc arias, which sound as if transferred about 

a half to a full tone sharp. The orchestra in 

Micaela’s air (down a quarter tone at least) 

sounds almost unbelievably poor. The Nile aria 

is predictably fine, as are the Otello excerpts. 

She is joined in the love duet by Vickers—a 

highly idiosyncratic Moor. A splendid ‘Pace, 

pace’ from La Forza del Destino and a singularly 

smooth Recordare (down a half tone) with 

the unknown Aurora Woodrow further confirm 

her to have been a Verdi singer of note. A 

bonus track offers snippets from a session 

where Gonzalez sings Garland’s numbers from 

Meet me in St Louis, for its Mexican release! 

As a memorial to an important, unfairly 

neglected artist, this issue warrants the highest 

praise and deserves support. Whether to purchase 

it will probably depend on your tolerance 

of the somewhat indifferent sound, balanced 

against such superb singing and artistry. 

Singing of this calibre must surely entitle this 

soprano a place among the truly great singers 

of the past century. 

Gustav Neidlinger 

Preiser 93475—79 minutes 

242 September/October 2011 

LIFF 

This German bass (1910-91) was one of the 

superb, black-voiced basses of the 1950s and 

60s. Thanks to his performance in the Solti 

Ring cycle (Decca) Neidlinger became identified 

with the wicked dwarf Alberich. There are 

examples of his Alberich here: the Rheingold 

Curse, The Alberich-Wotan-Fafner encounter 

in Act II of Siegfried, and the Alberich-Hagen 

Scene from Gotterdammerung, all from a 1953 

Bayreuth performance with Erich Witte, Hans 

Hotter, and Josef Greind. 

But Neidlinger’s art was far more extensive 

than Alberich. Here is a chance to hear him as 

Wotan (‘Wotan’s Farewell’, a 1958 Electrola 

recording). The other Wagner selection is 

Pogner in Meistersinger. 

But who would have guessed his delight in 

comic roles? Here is Baron Ochs (Rosenkavalier, 

two arias from Mozart’s Garden of Love 

(sung in German of course), a rollicking scene 

for Fra Melitone (Forza), and Masetto’s ‘Ho 

capito, Signor, si’. There is great joy in Neidlinger’s 

singing, and a great, huge, cavernous, 

black voice to back it up. 

No texts. 

Kurt Baum 


PARSONS 

As the brief biography from Preiser points out 

“Few tenors have polarized opera fans more 

than Kurt Baum’. Although he was born in 

Czechoslovakia and studied voice in Germany, 

his principal repertoire was Italian—the “big


voice” repertoire. His principal opera house 

was the Metropolitan in New York, where he 

remained for 26 years. Some considered him a 

vocal bull in the china shop, with poor musicianship, 

an ugly voice, wooden acting, and 

only the incredible strength and reliability of 

his high notes to base a career on. The tremendous 

power of his high C riveted audiences 

and even impressed the critics. To his credit, 

Baum always sang at the original pitch, never 

needing to transpose. 

In the 1950s I saw Baum numerous times 

at the Cincinnati Zoo Opera. As a youth I was 

indeed impressed by his loudness and high 

notes, but terribly unimpressed by everything 

else about him. But on hearing this disc I 

began to mistrust my memory. Baum was bad, 

but not this bad! The 18 selections taken from 

an Allegro Royale LP and a Remington LP are 

studio recorded and are worse than anything I 

remembered. All singing is forte, fortissimo, 

and FORTISSIMO. The conductor, Wilhelm 

Loibner, Baum regards as an impediment. It’s 

all Baum’s way, or nobody’s. Aria after aria— 

Pollione, Faust, Manrico, Don Alvaro, Radames, 

Don Jose, Canio, Andrea Chenier, 

Rodolfo, Cavaradossi, Calaf, Enzo—even the 

Italian Tenor in Rosenkavalier—all sound the 

same. It’s take no prisoners, and it’s painful. 

Still, I don’t remember Baum being this 

bad. So, I dug out a complete Pagliacci (Walhall 

286) from Boston, the Met on tour, April 

13, 1957, with Fausto Cleva leading Lucine 

BEETHOVEN: Symphony 5; STRAUSS: Don 

Juan; WAGNER: Flying Dutchman Overture 

Covent Garden Orchestra; BBC Symphony/ Georg 

Solti 


Georg Solti had been Music Director of the 

Royal Opera House of Covent Garden for two 

years when he taped this Wagner performance 

in 1963. At the time, he was still controversial 

at the Opera because of his loud dynamics, fast 

tempos, nervous beat, and lack of lyricism. 

Still, his ground-breaking Decca Ring Cycle 

was well under way, so there was good reason 

for critics to be patient, and Solti went on to 

enjoy a good relationship with the Opera until 

leaving in 1971. The setting for this recordedfor-television 

Flying Dutchman Overture is 

visually striking. The orchestra is in full formal 

dress and arrayed on step-by-step risers— 

every row back goes one step up—with Solti 

standing before it like a raving sorcerer. The 

Videos 

Amara, Robert Merrill (Tonio), and Frank 

Guarrera (Silvio). What a wonderful surprise! 

Baum is more than a decent tenor; he really 

delivers a powerful, dramatic performance. 

Even the voice is prettier—brighter, still strong 

as iron, horrifically exciting, quite enjoyable. 

Perhaps it was the on stage performance or 

Cleva’s iron baton that kept Baum in order. He 

still isn’t the tenor of one’s dreams. 

PARSONS 

Albert Da Costa 


After Kurt Baum I turned to this American 

tenor (1927-67). There are several similarities 

to Baum: big voice, iron strength, not the most 

beautiful voice to belt from the stage. But there 

are major differences, too. Da Costa has a 

cleaner sound, good musicianship, and a generally 

good grasp of the dramatics. Of the 21 

selections here, only seven duplicate Baum. All 

of Da Costa’s selections were recorded in the 

studio and published on Allegro Royale and 

Concord LPs. 

Several repertory items here are from 

operas Baum never attempted: Puritani, Le 

Prophete, Otello, and especially some Wagner 

(Lohengrin, Meistersinger, Walkure, Siegfried). 

It is in this repertoire that Da Costa excels. The 

voice is robust, fresh, full of confidence, with 

strength to spare. 

No texts. 

PARSONS 

dark, shadowy photography is like something 

out of Orson Welles. As annotator David Patmore 

notes, the performance is stormy, with 

tight, fast tempos and a wide range of dynamics. 

The risers are gone for the 1967 Don Juan, 

and everyone is dressed casually. For this 

work, we get rehearsal excerpts as well as the 

performance—and what a rehearsal! It is easy 

to see why Solti was known as the “screaming 

skull” at Covent Garden. It is also easy to 

understand how the orchestra improved so 

much under his leadership. The man is everywhere 

on that podium, lunging from one side 

to the other, forward, back, up and down, 

involved and earthy. He waves his hands up 

and down like a mad condor, emphasizing 

upbeats, while still giving cues. Rather than 

stop often to make his verbal points, he shouts 

them over the music, along with descriptions 

of what is going on in the music’s program. 



When he does stop, he speaks quickly and nervously, 

teeming with energy and enthusiasm. 

Anyone wondering where Solti’s nervous performances 

came from need only watch this 

one. It is thrilling, raging, sweeping, and passionate 

(literally), but still tender when needed, 

a real tour de force. Along with the 

rehearsal excerpts, there is a long conversation 

between Solti and record producer John Culshaw 

about Strauss and Don Juan. Solti conversed 

just like he conducted—-all over the 

couch, always smiling, talking fast. 

In 1985, Solti was 73, 16 years into his 

Chicago Symphony directorship, when he 

conducted the Beethoven. Culshaw never 

thought much of Solti as a Beethoven conductor, 

and the conductor’s set of Beethoven symphonies 

with the powerhouse Chicago Symphony 

proved that point. The BBC Symphony 

adds some solidity and dignity to the cause, 

but this is still a Solti performance with strong 

accents, powerful punctuating chords, fast 

tempos, and an exultant finale. It’s not bad, 

and it is certainly entertaining. This is the only 

segment in color (somewhat faded), and it was 

made in concert in Royal Albert Hall. 

The sound is decent but not outstanding 

monaural. Patmore’s notes are brief but useful. 

The reasons to get this DVD are the Wagner 

and especially the Strauss. 

HECHT 

BELLINI: Norma 

June Anderson (Norma), Daniela Barcellona 

(Adalgisa), Shin Young Hoon (Pollione), Ildar 

Abdrazakov (Oroveso); Teatro Regio, Parma: 

Orchestra Europa Galante/ Fabio Biondi 

Arthaus 107 235 [2DVD] 163 minutes 

A too gosh darn dark but otherwise OK traditional 

production of Norma, with hardly a cut 

that allows the opera to unfold in a straightforward 

way without contempt. It was given in 

2001 with June Anderson in the autumn of her 

career. She was a major player in the bel canto 

world. (I have fond memories of her Puritani 

Elvira and Semiramide at New York’s two 

major opera houses.) She understands Norma 

thoroughly, and if time has robbed the voice of 

some luster and added a touch of dryness, 

there is still much expert singing. She has a 

great understanding of Norma’s emotions and 

brings them out very well. ‘Casta Diva’ and her 

duets with Adalgisa are high points. Bel canto 

style and drama. I wish Barcellona were a better 

partner. She’s done Adalgisa often, but here 

she sounds clumsy. Anderson seems to be 

working for two in their scenes together. The 

voice is attractive; was this an off night? 

Hoon is a lyric Pollione, not heroic in style 

but sturdy enough. Abdrazakov early in his 

career is an authoritative Oroveso—attractive 

singing in an ungrateful role. Orchestra Europa 

Galante is a period orchestra, and sometimes I 

longed for the richer sounds of a modern 

ensemble. But it isn’t unduly unattractive; the 

sound is fuller than some period orchestras I 

can think of. Biondi generally paces the show 

with an understanding of bel canto style and 

how to support his singers. Yet sometimes he 

does peculiar things. For example, the beginning 

of the overture slows down and almost 

runs out of steam and then suddenly picks 

up—full speed ahead. The chorus is a good 

group, though a mite unpolished. DG has a 

DVD with Gruberova that’s good competition. 

(I have heard the Caballé video only on CD.). 

This is mainly for Anderson fans—and I am 

one. 

MARK 

HAYDN: The Creation 

Arleen Auger, Gabriela Sima, Peter Schreier, Walter 

Berry, Roland Herrman; Collegium Aureum, 

Schoenberg Choir/ Gustav Kuhn 

Arthaus 107225—114 minutes 

This is a performance from 1982. 

The singers are distinguished ones with 

(except for Auger) mostly middle European 

careers. Kuhn (who was in his 30s when this 

concert was given) studied conducting under 

Maderna and Karajan. 

The Collegium Aureum was a German 

early instrument group with a relatively modern 

(and pleasant) sound. The strings have at 

least a hint of vibrato, and the brass and wind 

seem to be close to modern instruments. 

The chorus is a little light in weight. 

The soloists are all lovely in voice. It’s nice 

to be back in a time when Schreier and Berry 

had young, juicy voices and Auger was alive. 

Kuhn’s reading is a little light and sometimes 

slow, approaching slack, in ways that 

neither Karajan nor Maderna would have put 

up with for a moment. 

I wouldn’t choose this over Hogwood on 

video and would want to look at the Fischer 

DVD before I settled on this one. 

If I were going beyond DVDs, I would 

choose either Karajan, Solti, or Harnoncourt 

over this one. 

Still, this performance is perfectly pleasant, 

never goes seriously off the rails, and offers 

fine vocal work, especially when Auger is 

singing. I don’t mind having spent time with it 

and will go back. 

CHAKWIN 



MOUSSORGSKY: Pictures at an Exhibition 

Eyran Katsenelenbogen & Andrei Ivanovitch, p 

Eyran 9009—48 minutes (www.eyran.com or 617- 

267-1648) 

This concert was recorded on May 24, 2009 in 

Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory 

in Boston. It is the American premiere of an 

arrangement that these two pianists first performed 

in 2006 in Germany. The original piano 

solo version of this great work is alternated 

with jazz interpretations or reflections on each 

movement. Sometimes, especially in ‘The 

Great Gate of Kiev’, Katsenelenbogen (the jazz 

pianist) joins Ivanovitch in the original, adding 

an additional sound layer that seems perfectly 

appropriate. Audience response here and critical 

responses have been quite favorable. 

I have many different versions of Pictures 

at an Exhibition, from the piano original to 

Ravel’s (and other’s) orchestrations, to a synthesized 

version, pipe organ, and even the 

1960s rock version by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. 

I have also performed most of the movements 

on and off since first learning them in the early 

1970s. This Classical Meets Jazz version is a 

completely new and original approach, very 

well executed, thought provoking, and always 

interesting. 

My main reservation is how well the original 

works back-to-back with the jazz versions. 

As creative as they may be, it almost seems like 

a straight jazz version by itself might work better, 

much like the orchestrations or even the 

rock version. Imagine a pianist playing the 

opening Promenade on a concert grand piano, 

directly followed by a trio of Hammond Organ, 

Electric Bass, and Drums doing the same 

thing, slightly embellished. But my reservations 

are minimal. There is no booklet with 

notes. 

HARRINGTON 

MOZART: The Magic Flute (for Children) 

Ileana Cotrubas (Pamina), Peter Schreier 

(Tamino), Christian Boesch (Papageno), Kurt Rydl 

(Sarastro), Zdzislawa Donat (Queen of the Night); 

Vienna Opera/ James Levine 


This is an adaptation of The Magic Flute for 

children given in the Felsenreitschule as part 

of the 1982 Salzburg Festival. It uses the same 

scenery and costumes as the complete opera 

(Jan/Feb 2006) and has mostly the same cast. 

(The Zurich performance of this same opera 

for children had a different cast—July/Aug 

2010.) The audience is almost entirely children; 

adults were admitted only if they came 

accompanied by at least two children. Many of 

the children are pre-schoolers, and they were 

entranced by what they saw and heard. 

Christian Boesch, who is credited with the 

idea, acts as narrator (he also sings Papageno’s 

arias); he is charming as he explains what the 

children are about to see and hear, the music 

as well as the story. Unfortunately, he talks too 

much; less than half of the time is taken up 

with the music. The opera is reduced to 12 

musical selections. The musical numbers are 

sung very well. 

Children ho may well enjoy this, especially 

if they understand German. While subtitles are 

supplied, they do not keep up with all of 

Boesch’s jokes and explanations, and they go 

by so fast that I doubt that many children can 

keep up with them. 

Several years ago, Levine conducted a 

streamlined version of Julie Taymor’s production 

of Magic Flute at the Met, also meant for 

children. It dispensed with the talk and 

charmed the listeners with its more imaginative 

use of costumes and innovative stage business. 

It was very effective; if there is a Met 

video of it, it ought to be released. It was a 

much more magical production of Mozart’s 

opera. 

MOSES 

OFFENBACH: La Belle Helene 

Felicity Lott (Helene), Yann Beuron (Paris), 

Michel Senechal (Menelaus), Laurent Naouri 

(Agamemnon), François Le Roux (Calchas); Musiciens 

du Louvre/ Mark Minkowski 

ArtHaus 107403—127 minutes 

This famous production of La Belle Helene 

originated at the Chƒtelet in Paris in 2000, and 

then played internationally, from London to 

Santa Fe. It was originally released on the Kultur 

label, then on TDK. The terrific conductor 

is Mark Minkowski, the fabulous director Laurent 

Pelly. 

The production takes all kinds of postmodern 

liberties with the original Trojan-War timeframe 

and gets away with most of them, from 

the overture, with a bored, modern Helen 

(Felicity Lott) going into her bathroom, to a 

Nauplia (Act III) with modern guys and gals 

cavorting by the seaside. It adds an appreciable 

amount of sex and skin to a ribald work 

that for many years had been enbalmed in 

fussy costuming. One startling example for 

your delectation is having its Paris take a 

shower on stage. 

The Parisian critics raved about this show, 

and the Châtelet had a huge hit on its hands. 

The following Pelly-Minkowski Offenbach 

offering was a less-effective Grande-Duchesse 

de Gerolstein, also with Madame Lott. There 

have also been productions elsewhere with the 

same director or conductor of Orphée aux 

Enfers and La Vie Parisienne, but not with 

quite the same eclat. Of course, M. Pelly has 



gone on to furnish the Metropolitan Opera 

with more challenging vocal works like La Fille 

du Regiment. 

But do not disparage the vocal and acting 

talents required to pull off an Offenbach 

opera-bouffe. Fortunately, a superlative cast 

here has the goods required. Yann Beuron is a 

very sexy Paris, and François Le Roux is a very 

amusing Calchas, the soothsayer. The Kings of 

Greece are enacted wonderfully by Michel 

Senechal, Laurent Naouri, Erich Huchet, and 

others. Marie-Ange Torodovitch is the sparkling 

Orestes, a breeches part; and Stephanie 

d’Oustrac, who just wowed me considerably in 

the Champs-Elysées-Arts Florissants Armide 

(by Lully), appears as one of the courtesans. 

Felicity Lott was possibly a little too old to 

play the most beautiful woman in the (ancient) 

world and the “face that launched a thousand 

ships”, but her wry comedic ways and good 

singing and excellent French help her to get 

away with it. 

Belle Helene is a landmark Offenbach, and 

not to be missed. The DVD has English (and 

other) subtitles, and includes an interesting 

documentary at the end. The score follows the 

critical edition, but there has been some tampering 

with the original Meilhac-Halevy text by 

Agathe Melinand, as you might expect. 

TRAUBNER 

PUCCINI: Tosca 

Emily Magee (Tosca), Jonas Kaufmann (Cavaradossi), 

Thomas Hampson (Scarpia); Zurich 

Opera/ Paolo Carignani 


VERDI: Macbeth 

Thomas Hampson (Macbeth), Paoletta Marrocu 

(Lady Macbeth), Roberto Scandiuzzi (Banquo), 

Luis Lima (Macduff); Zurich Opera/ Franz 

Welser-Most 


Both of these productions are from the Zurich 

Opera, but only one is worth bothering with. 

We’ve all seen a lot of Eurotrash and a lot of 

preposterous opera stagings, but David Pountney’s 

2001 Macbeth sets a new low standard. 

Almost nothing you see has any relationship 

whatsoever to the story or the words. The 

props are arbitrary and irrelevant: typewriter, 

hula hoop, boom-box, newspapers. The costumes 

suggest no time or place at all, and the 

variety of styles would take too much space to 

describe. Macbeth’s is vaguely military; Lady 

Macbeth is almost topless, save for a few strips 

of cloth. Some characters are wearing newspapers. 

There’s no furniture on stage to speak of. 

The producer might have gone to a local charity 

shop, emptied it out, threw everything on 

and around the players, and called it Macbeth. 

Yes, there’s a dagger, and a lot of children wave 

branches about when Birnam Wood comes to 

Dunsinane, but nothing illuminates the drama 

at all. It’s rare—fortunately—to see such a 

complete mess on an opera stage. 

The actual performance is decent, no 

more. Though on the light side, Hampson is a 

good actor, and his strong top voice gets him 

through a role he’s not naturally suited for. 

Paoletta Marrocu has a strong, cutting voice 

and the right sort of dominant personality for 

Lady Macbeth. She’s no pleasure to hear, but 

she’s flexible enough for her arias, and she 

goes easily up to the top D-flat of the Sleepwalking 

Scene (where, for the first time, she’s 

modestly clothed). Scandiuzzi is an eloquent 

Banquo, and veteran tenor Luis Lima still has 

enough voice for Macduff. Welser-Most likes 

broad tempos, often to the detriment of the 

drama, but he holds it all together. 

The 2009 Tosca also has some silly moments, 

but next to Macbeth it’s a model of 

lucidity. The characters are in modern dress 

(you wonder why they’re so upset about the 

news of the battle of Marengo); the stage settings 

are drab but functional. The church 

might be a church (with a very oddly dressed 

congregation for the Te Deum and a theater 

curtain in the background), and Scarpia’s 

apartment at least looks like a habitable room. 

Act 3 is vague: nothing to suggest the Castel 

Sant’Angelo or Rome in the background, and 

no parapet for Tosca to leap from—she just 

raises her arms and walks into the darkness. 

Hampson, again in a role just a size too big, 

is a riveting Scarpia, handsome and unctuous 

and very much in command. His best vocal 

moments are at the top of his voice. Kaufmann 

looks perfect as Cavaradossi, very much the 

romantic hero. His voice has a baritonal cast 

on bottom but grows more ringing and 

thrilling as it rises, though it never sounds Italian. 

He sings so softly sometimes you wonder 

if he would be audible even in the small Zurich 

house. He and Emily Magee have good chemistry—they 

play off each other and really seem 

to be in love. She has a fresh, rather plainvanilla 

voice that, like Kaufmann’s, is stronger 

on top than on bottom, and her words are not 

really filled with the sort of emotion Italian 

sopranos put into them. But she’s tireless, and 

she keeps on rising to shining heights from 

beginning to end. I’m not entirely sold by her 

girl-next-door Tosca, but she’s honest and 

touching. Conductor Carignani sets even slower 

tempos than Welser-Most—Tosca doesn’t 

need this much deliberation—but the orchestra 

plays well for him. 

Sound and picture is fine for both performances. 

The Tosca is worth seeing but skip the 

Macbeth. 

LUCANO 



RAUTAVAARA: Aleksis Kivi 

Jorma Hynninen (Aleksis), Janne Reinikainen 

(August Ahlqvist), Riikka Rantanen (Charlotta), 

Pauliina Linnosaari (Hilda), Ville Rusanen (Young 

Aleksis); Finnish Opera/ Mikko Franck 

Ondine 4009—1:47 

Aleksis Kivi is regarded as Finland’s “national 

author”, creator of “the first major novels, 

plays and poems in the Finnish language”, 

according to the composer’s notes. He died of 

a combination of alcoholism, madness (said to 

be schizophrenia), and depression in 1872 at 

the age of 38. 

A genuinely tragic figure, Kivi’s downfall 

offers juicy material for 20th Century operatic 

treatment and is a good role for a strong dramatic 

baritone. Jorma Hynninen, for whom 

the role was written, fits the bill perfectly. A 

long-time operatic collaborator with 

Rautavaara, Hynninen is a master of the composer’s 

lyrical idiom and a fine actor. 

Rautavaara’s 1996 three act opera opens 

with a brief prologue, set near the conclusion of 

the protagonist’s demise. Act I proper begins as 

a flashback to the young Kivi (well sung by Ville 

Rusanen) feeling his oats and declaring his 

commitment to depicting the Finnish People 

warts and all, their crude language, heavy 

drinking, and gruff character naked and unexpurgated. 

He is surrounded by his two women, 

his considerably older patroness Charlotta 

(Riikka Rantanen) and her pretty, if air-headed, 

blonde pupil Hilda (Pauliina Linnosaari). All is 

not merry, though, since Aleksis has a jealous 

alter ego in the Professor August Ahlqvist, 

intentionally given a speaking role owing to 

what the composer regards as his inherent lack 

of musicality (played to the hilt by actor Jenne 

Reminkainen). Ahlqvist will have none of Kivi’s 

realist aesthetic, insisting instead on the duty of 

art to teach man “what should be”, rather than 

“what is”. His disgust at the rabble’s abuse of 

the Finnish language might sound familiar to 

readers of these pages. The act closes with 

Charlotta thinking better of her budding lust 

for artist Aleksis, and she leaves him after advising 

her pupil to leave him as well. 

Act II opens with the older Kivi asking the 

powerful Ahlqvist for aid in getting his works 

published. Not a chance! He tears up the manuscripts 

and throws Aleksis a penny to go 

drinking with. Act III finds the destitute Aleksis 

alone, drunk and delusional, tortured by the 

specter of Ahlqvist, assorted characters of his 

own invention, and apparitions of his past. An 

Epilogue finds Aleksis at death’s door in a 

mental institution, begging for peace. He sees 

himself revisiting his youth and sings a duet 

with it (a neat touch). The moving, almost 

Wagnerian finale is set to words that were also 

set by Sibelius. 

Rautavaara based his libretto on texts by 

Kivi himself, as well as by merciless critic 

Ahlqvist. They are set in a basically tonal, lyrical 

style, suitably dramatic sometimes, and are 

constructed with what amounts to set pieces in 

the traditional operatic sense. The production 

is austere, since this is essentially a chamber 

opera. Groups and spare characters are 

wheeled around on dollies by “the eighth 

brother” (an extra “Young Finn”: see below), a 

“dancing role” (Timo Saari) symbolizing, I suppose, 

Kivi’s active subconscious, or, more likely, 

his psychosis. It prances around like an irritating 

troll, which I suppose could be an apt 

portrayal of a mental illness. It is not an effective 

device theatrically after a while. Kivi’s 

male entourage, known as the “Young Finns” 

(there are seven of them), are always rather 

awkwardly hanging around, providing ensemble 

when needed. Least effective are the first 

act episodes involving the women, particularly 

the irritating Hilda. Her mooning all over Aleksis 

as he sings one of his poems is cloying and 

downright embarrassing. 

Pekka Milonoff’s direction is more clever 

than consistently effective. I found much of 

the staging distracting. Singing is generally 

excellent (though I’m not wild about Ms 

Linosaari’s contribution). The piece is worth 

seeing, though as a whole consider my 

response “mixed”. Included as bonus is ‘The 

Making of ‘Aleksis Kivi’’, which contains interviews 

with Rautavaara, Hynninen, and conductor 

Franck. The booklet includes an introduction 

by the composer, essays on the opera 

and Kivi, and a synopsis. Subtitling is clear; 

sound is excellent. 

GIMBEL 

SAINT-SAENS: Samson et Dalila 

Torsten Kerl (Samson), Marianna Tarasova 

(Dalila), Nikola Mijailovic (High Priest); Flemish 

Opera/ Tomas Netopil 

EuroArts 2058628—136 minutes 

Co-directors Omri Nitzan, an Israeli, and Amir 

Nizar Zuabi, a Palestinian, must have thought 

they had an absolutely brilliant idea when they 

updated Samson to the present. Israelis vs 

Palestinians in Gaza. Great idea, right? Wrong! 

The directors chose to make a political statement, 

biased, I think, toward the Philistines— 

oops, Palestinians. I thought the Philistines 

were the bad guys. And besides, the Philistines 

and their god Dagon aren’t around anymore in 

the era of three great monotheistic religions. 

Cultural Philistines don’t count. 

Leaving out the politics, this is still an icky 

production. There is dancing in the choral 

scenes that suggests slow dances and other 

stuff one might see on one of those TV reality 

dance shows. Pretty tame for a bacchanal or 



lamenting Hebrews. And some of the choreography 

for that bacchanal seems like a futuristic 

Rockettes number. Yikes! Samson’s blinding is 

tame stuff. In Act 2 Delilah puts a handgun to 

Samson’s head; sometimes she seems to be 

using it as a sex toy. The High Priest and Philistine 

crowd are about as menacing as students 

in a high school pageant. Modern dress and a 

refusal to face the fact that Samson is set in a 

fixed time and place—those demerits alone 

would be enough to irritate me. The bonus 

interview with the directors attempting to justify 

themselves is pure gobbledygook. 

The musical side of the show is notable 

mainly for Torsten Kerl’s sensitive singing— 

heroic sounds from a voice not really heroic. 

He tries hard to create a sympathetic figure, 

but the production does him in. I tried sometimes 

to close my eyes during his big moments 

and felt I was hearing a real effort to make the 

best of a bad concept. Tarasova’s cloudy, 

mature sounds and what I consider to be 

unsteadiness with a vibrato not in proper 

working condition don’t make for a believable 

seductress. The High Priest and supporting 

singers are no great shakes, but the chorus is 

fine. Conductor and orchestra are OK but not 

particularly stimulating. Who can blame them? 

If I want a good Samson, I’ll stick with CDs: 

Vickers-Gorr or Bouvier-Luccioni on EMI, to 

name just two of the best. 

MARK 

SCARLATTI: A Daring Game 

Francesco Leprino 

Concerto 2021—98 minutes 

This DVD will be of great interest to lovers of 

Scarlatti’s music. All we can hope to learn 

about the composer’s inner life must be 

gleaned from his music. The interviews documented 

by this film help paint a picture of who 

Scarlatti was. Harpsichordists Enrico Baiano, 

Emilia Fadini, and Gustav Leonhardt bring 

early music performance practice and scholarship 

to the table. Composer Salvatore Sciarrino 

and writer Jose Saramago discuss Scarlatti’s 

influence on their own work. The film maker 

has interlaced video footage of performances 

of Scarlatti’s music, from harpsichord solos to 

fado arrangements. 

KATZ 

SCHOENBERG: Gurrelieder 

Deborah Voigt, Stig Andersson, Mihoko Fujimara, 

Herwig Pecoraro, Michael Volle; Bavarian Radio/ 

Mariss Jansons 


Gurrelieder is a great work. It gathers the darkness 

and the soaring aspirations of the Romantic 

Era, from Beethoven through Mahler and 

Strauss, wraps them into one huge work of art 

and then sends them off with a blazing Cmajor 

sunrise, like some ancient warrior sent 

off to a sea burial on a blazing boat. 

This is only my second encounter with it 

on video. The first was a private recording of a 

BBC performance under Andrew Davis from 

some time ago. I don’t know why we don’t 

have more video recordings of it, since the 

recordings of it that exist almost all seem to 

come from concerts. The sheer spectacle of 

these massed forces is not easily forgotten; 

and, when you actually see things like what the 

double bass players have to go through in the 

Wild Hunt or the Wagner Tubas with their 

mutes opening Part III with unearthly sounds, 

you have a much better idea of how strange 

and ambitious this music is than most people’s 

unaided ears can offer. 

All of that said, I have some reservations 

about this performance. Jansons is a technically 

superb, superbly trained, and deeply sensitive 

musician. Many of his performances are 

ones that I treasure. But lately, perhaps for 

health reasons, perhaps because that’s just 

where he is in his development as an artist, 

some of his performances have become so 

understated that they seem short of energy. 

Parts of this performance are like that. The 

magical opening of the piece, so gorgeous in 

color, so full of light and shadow, in for example, 

the Inbal performance, is very muted here, 

almost conversational. The emotion in the big 

duets doesn’t soar. Over and over again, the 

camera pans to Jansons, who is physically very 

involved in the music, but what you see is not 

what you hear. I don’t know why this is. 

Voigt is in fine voice, and Andersson has a 

clean, slightly dry voice that’s a little small for 

the part but sounds good all the way through. 

They are both lovely to listen to but don’t have 

performing charisma. In most Gurrelieders, 

Tove and Waldemar grab your attention and 

don’t let it go. Not here. 

Who does grab your attention is Fujimara, 

the Wood Dove. Her voice is a good instrument, 

though there have been some fabulous 

singers in this part over the years. What makes 

the difference is that she has the charisma that 

nobody else does. She is absolutely riveting. 

Every note matters. Jansons isn’t there for her. 

He could have built the insanity in the orchestral 

response to what she was singing at the 

end, but no. He’s not intense. 

The chorus and orchestra and minor parts 

are all first-rate. The video editing (Brian 

Large) is sensitive and smart. 

Among the audio-only performances, 

Inbal is the best conducted that I know of. He 

revels in the colors of the score and handles 

the ebb and flow really well. Chailly, who is not 

on Inbal’s level as a conductor, has a great 



team of singers, and they are all great communicators. 

This performance is full of virtues but 

doesn’t add up to what I hoped for. But I 

would not want to give up the chance to hear 

Fujimara. 

CHAKWIN 

SOMERS: Louis Riel 

Canadian Opera/ Victor Feldbrill 

Centrediscs 16711—126 minutes 

Louis Riel (1844-85) was an important and 

controversial figure in Canadian history. A 

leader of the Metis (descendants of French settlers 

who paired with people already present), 

he led uprisings when the young Canadian 

government extended its reach westward in 

the mid-to-late 19th Century. For his deeds (or 

misdeeds, depending on your point of view), 

he was arrested, convicted of treason, and 

hung. Today he is hero to some, traitor to others—as 

he was a century ago. 

Composer Harry Somers (1925-99) and 

librettist James Mavor Moore were commissioned 

to write this two-hour, three-act opera 

in commemoration of Canada’s centennial in 

1967. The first runs were in Toronto and Montreal, 

and it has been revived several times 

since—including at the Kennedy Center in 

Washington DC during the US bicentennial in 

1976. The present recording is of a 1969 television 

adaptation and offers almost the entire 

original cast. The cast is large: 37 characters 

are listed. 

Introductory material, spoken and with 

archival news photos, lets us know that Louis 

Riel’s story has parallels in current events— 

that struggles between minorities and majorities 

still take place and still vex people in 

power. As stated in the notes, “the geographic, 

linguistic, and cultural fault lines emphasized 

in Somers’s opera have long haunted Canada’s 

past since Riel’s death and continue to persist 

in the present”. 

The opera is excellent, the performances 

are moving, and the overall production is marvelous. 

It appears that no expense was spared 

on sets and costumes. The atonal music fits 

the tense scenes quite well, and the gritty 

libretto packs punches. Texts are in English, 

French, Cree, and Latin. Conductor Victor 

Feldbrill coaxes fine playing from the orchestra, 

and the engineers make sure the cast can 

be heard clearly. The cast is very strong, musically 

and dramatically. Scenes are expertly 

crafted to portray the important events and the 

underlying conflicts. 

Principal characters are played by Bernard 

Turgeon (Riel), Patricia Rideout (Riel’s mother), 

Mary Morrison (his sister), Roxolana 

Roslak (his wife), Donald Rutherford (Prime 

Minister John Macdonald), Joseph Rouleau 

(Bishop Tache), and Thomas Park (Thomas 

Scott). The DVD includes a 10-minute interview 

with composer Somers and librettist 

Moore. 

KILPATRICK 

STURMINGER: The Giacomo Variations 

John Malkovich (Casanova), Ingeborga Dapkunaite 

(Elisa+), Florian Boesch (Count Almaviva+), 

Sophie Klussmann (Despina+); Vienna 

Akademie/ Martin Haselböck 


The Giacomo of the title is Giacomo Casanova 

(1725-98), the notorious rake and, perhaps, the 

model for Mozart’s Don Giovanni. He is the 

hero of this weird and rather silly Chamber 

Opera Play, allegedly based on Casanova’s 

memoirs and spiced with arias from Mozart’s 

Da Ponte operas. It’s more of a play than an 

opera, and it can also be described as a fantasy. 

Casanova is portrayed by the actor John 

Malkovich (not known as an opera singer); he 

is supported by the three singers listed above 

who are trained in opera. They sing the Mozart 

arias beautifully, and they try to persuade us 

that the goings-on in Casanova’s memoirs can 

be characterized by Mozart’s arias. (I am not 

that easily persuaded, but I love the music.) 

This idea and its realization is the work of 

Michael Sturminger, who also directs it. The 

spoken dialog (and there’s lots of it) is in English, 

but the arias are sung in the original Italian. 

Unfortunately, the libretto for this “play 

with music” is not supplied, though a terse 

commentary by the author is printed on the 

DVD box. “The 18th Century is nearly over. 

Mozart died seven years ago and the first bars 

of his Prague Symphony still resound a certain 

vicinity of death, when the Venetian adventurer 

Giacomo Casanova contemplates putting an 

end to his deplorable existence. Stranded as 

Count Waldstein’s librarian at the remote castle 

of Dux and lacking any eligible occupation 

for 15 years now, Giacomo has been doing 

nothing but writing his memoirs. Considering 

himself to be forgotten by the world, he is surprised 

to see the German poet Eliza van der 

Recke paying him a visit and showing serious 

interest in the 4000 pages of his ‘Histoire de 

ma vie’. Attracted by this fascinating woman, 

old Giacomo for one last time wages the struggle 

to capture a female heart, ready to show 

her “how young I can be”. Reciting Da Ponte’s 

lyrics to her, he recalls his first love and above 

all his falling in love with love.” 

Elisa then sings ‘Non so piu’, Cherubino’s 

Act 1 aria from The Marriage of Figaro. Is it relevant? 

Inspired by Elisa’s amazement, Giacomo 

cannot refrain from opening other chap- 



ters of his life, even granting Elisa a brief look 

into his “catalog of affairs”, such as Leporello’s 

“in Espagna son gia mille e tre”...And so on 

and on, for more than two hours. 

The staging, by the author, is primitive but 

emphasizes Casanova’s interest in sex. There’s 

much groping, undressing, and coupling on 

stage. The scenery is minimal but there are 

almost always beds. The costumes evoke what 

the upper class was wearing in the last decades 

of the 18th Century. Malkovich gives a fine 

performance; I just wish he wouldn’t try to 

sing; his vocal range, I’d guess, is at most one 

octave. The other soloists have smooth and 

alluring voices; they sing with a good understanding 

of Mozart style and they act with confidence. 

But some of the excerpts are used in 

situations quite different from Mozart’s intentions. 

For example, the trio ‘Suave sia el vento’ 

(Cosi Fan Tutte) is here sung as a duet after a 

duel between the two male soloists. After Giacomo 

is shot, that melody accompanies Elisa’s 

attempt to soothe her lover. Susanna’s ‘Deh 

vieni non tardar’ (from The Marriage of Figaro) 

is sung by Elisa just before she and Casanova 

make love together at a picnic. 

The accompaniments are well played on 

period instruments by the Vienna Academy 

Chamber Orchestra, which Haselböck conducts 

with vigor and authority. I’d be more 

inclined to recommend this release if a libretto 

were included. As it is, it can’t be taken seriously, 

and its humor is often strained. 

MOSES 

TCHAIKOVSKY: Nutcracker Act II; GLINKA: 

Ruslan & Ludmilla Overture; Life for the 

Czar Dances 

BBC Symphony/ Gennady Rozhdestvensky 


WAGNER: Meistersinger Excerpts; FRANCK: 

Symphony; FAURE: Pelleas & Melisande 

Suite Boston Symphony/ Charles Munch 


STRAUSS: Ein Heldenleben; DVORAK: Symphony 

9 

Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony/ Rudolf 

Kempe 


ELGAR: Symphony 2; Enigma Variations 

London Philharmonic/ Georg Solti 


Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker music has to be as 

close to perfection as any human creation has 

come. And if I had to choose its most nearly 

perfect interpreter, it would have to be Artur 

Rodzinski. But Gennady Rozhdestvensky and 

Eugene Ormandy (though he never recorded 

the complete ballet) would be extremely close 

second choices. 

Rozhdestvensky seemed to have a particular 

fondness for the score: it was one of the first 

pieces he led as a 20-year-old conductor at the 

Bolshoi Theater in the 1950s, his Melodiya 

recording of the whole score (Sept/Oct 1997) is 

something of a classic, he leads the Royal 

Opera House orchestra in the Covent Garden 

production widely circulated on VHS and DVD 

(a staple of my family’s Christmas celebrations)—and 

he seemed to like to lead the second 

act in concert. I remember being bowled 

over by his account with the Chicago Symphony 

in the early 1990s at the Ravinia Festival, 

after a blistering, life-altering performance of 

Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto with 

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. This performance 

was videotaped at Royal Albert Hall on 27 July 

1981 at the Proms, and it brings back memories 

of that one. It’s a spectacular traversal that 

anybody who loves this score really must hear 

and see. 

Rozhdestvensky was director of the BBC 

Symphony for only a brief period, from 1978 to 

1981, before the unrelated political fall out 

from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (I 

guess we should call it the First Afghanistan 

War now) and the last-gasp tightening foreign 

travel restrictions of the Communist Old 

Guard in the 1980s forced him to give up the 

position. By all accounts, he enjoyed the relative 

freedom and working conditions with the 

ensemble and regretted giving it up. Judging 

from what we see here, he seems to have a 

genial and mutually supportive relationship 

with the orchestra. 

It is definitely not the CSO—there are 

moments when Rozhdestvensky seems to have 

to hold back the tempo because the players are 

having trouble staying together. And sure, the 

trumpet soloist makes a few goofs in the intro 

to the ‘Spanish Dance’. But when everything is 

running well he knows that the orchestra doesn’t 

have to be manhandled into delivering the 

performance. He doesn’t over-conduct, and 

sometimes he doesn’t conduct at all, as when 

he steps back in the ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ and 

barely moves his arms. In the grand Finale, he 

actually steps back and crosses his arms at one 

point, an expression of pure satisfaction with 

the orchestra’s playing on his face! When he 

wants a certain kind of expression, he shapes it 

with his extremely long baton, which he sometimes 

sets down to guide the players with his 

hands. The beautifully lithe, sinuous rendering 

of the ‘Arabian Dance’ is reflected in his 

remarkably graceful, almost perfectly choreographed 

movements. 

So is Rozhdestvensky just showing off to 

the audience with a flashy conducting style? I 

don’t think so. His unforced, lively interpreta- 



tion is beautifully expressive, with careful yet formances seem to come from early video 

fuss-free attention to the wealth of detail in tapes, while the Fauré is obviously a Kinescope 

Tchaikovsky’s score. Turn off the picture and it (a movie film of a TV monitor). Oddly enough, 

sounds gorgeous; turn the TV back on and in portions of the Franck and Wagner, the cor- 

Rozhdestvensky’s gestures translate directly ners of the picture are sometimes cut off, as if 

into what we hear. 

viewed through a telescope. It reminds me of 

The program leads off with a lively, vibrant watching TV on the small black and white set 

Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture. Rozhdestven- we had in the basement when I was a kid. Just 

sky doesn’t treat it like a 50-yard dash, so it has be prepared that this is archival material; once 

energy without feeling rushed. There’s enough you adjust back to the way TV viewing was 50 

time for him and the orchestra to savor some years ago, it’s highly rewarding. 

of the delicious details in the inner voices that Munch was from Alsace-Lorraine, the 

usually get lost when the piece is treated like a province on the border of France and Germany 

slam-bang curtain raiser or encore. The Waltz, that is attached to whichever of the two coun- 

Mazurka, and Krakowiak from A Life for the tries won the last war. When Munch was born 

Czar are slighter, less inventive works, but you it was part of Germany, and his musical 

would never know it from the concentration upbringing was essentially German (eventually 

and savoring of detail by conductor and leading to becoming concertmaster of the 

orchestra. The Glinka items were recorded at Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra), but he even- 

the Proms about two weeks after the Tchaitually turned to conducting, leading his first 

kovsky. 

concert in Paris. 

Rozhdestvensky had probably led the Nut- Munch conducted and recorded a good 

cracker hundreds of times before this concert, deal of Wagner, and the three Meistersinger 

yet he still has the score in front of him and fol- excerpts presented here figured regularly on 

lows it all through the performance. 

his Boston programs. He combines serenity 

The video and audio production is quite (Act III prelude) with Mozartean geniality in 

good for 1970s television material. Despite the the ‘Apprentices’ Dance’ and grandeur in the 

age of the videotape, the color is quite vibrant, ‘Entrance of the Mastersingers’—Furtwangler 

and the camera work is straightforward and meets Toscanini, with balance and proportion 

businesslike. They’ll get you a shot of wherever in a sound that can only be Munch. The BSO 

the action is—often it’s on the podium—but plays brilliantly, but the sound isn’t hard or 

it’s usually the same angle each time. Don’t aggressive. 

expect the kind of close-ups and swooping Along with Pierre Monteux, Munch pretty 

around you see from modern, lightweight, much “owned” the Franck Symphony; it’s hard 

remote-controlled camera equipment. 

to think of a later interpreter who approached 

The recorded sound is OK. Ruslan and their mastery, let along topped it. The perfor- 

Ludmilla sounds distinctly monophonic, but mance Munch leads here makes the piece 

the rest of the program seems to be stereo— sound like something Beethoven might have 

perhaps only the quality of an FM broadcast, produced if he’d had a “French Period”. From 

but more than serviceable. 

the ominous introduction to the first move- 

Today, the Boston Symphony doesn’t quite ment, to the blistering allegro, to the move- 

have the profile it had in the 1930s through the ment’s wild final pages, Munch leaves no 

1960s, its status harmed by the long, dull doubt that this work, for him at least, is one of 

tenure of a music director who stayed too long the great masterpieces. II has repose and 

(Ozawa), followed more recently by a director scherzo-like interruptions—not a dull 

who had vision but not the physical health to moment. And of course the finale is brash and 

execute it (Levine). In the 1950s, though, it was vigorous and full of life—not bombastic in the 

a spectacular ensemble of virtuosos, led by slightest. The BSO plays with a rich, dark-hued, 

Charles Munch, and fully deserving of its place organ-like tone with burnish brass, fruity 

in the Big Five. Looking much like a trimmer, woodwinds, and lustrous strings. 

rather more stylish Carl Sandburg, “Le beau Charmingly called a “bonus” in the book- 

Charles” was BSO music director from 1950 to let, the suite of four movements from Fauré’s 

1963. Like Rozhdestvensky, he had a huge Pelleas incidental music puts the spotlight on 

baton, which he used boldly, decisively, and the first-chair woodwinds of the BSO, a roster 

assertively, though it could also express sereni- that reads like a Who’s Who of famous players. 

ty and stillness. All those characteristics are on It’s a piece not often played today, maybe 

display in this program. 

because few conductors can give it the charm, 

The material comes from three different color, and life that Munch did. 

concerts at Harvard’s Sanders Theater in three Although the picture is imperfect, the 

consecutive years: 1959 (Fauré), 1960 (Wagn- sound is solid monaural with adequate bass 

er), and 1961 (Franck). The picture is, of and a decently tamed treble that keeps the top 

course, black and white; and the two later per- of the violins’ range from sounding screechy. 



Balances seem quite good, much like what we 

know from Munch’s commercial recordings. 

Rudolf Kempe was not a particularly flashy 

podium figure, though he could get plenty animated, 

as he does several times here. Both 

interpretations have the depth, musical 

integrity, and cohesion that made him a 

beloved figure for a lot of record buyers and 

concert audiences. Back in the 1950s, 60s and 

70s, he was just one among many excellent 

conductors plying his art on the international 

circuit. Now, the Chicago and Boston Symphonies 

or the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics 

would be vying for his services. 

Kempe succeeded Beecham as conductor 

of the Royal Philharmonic and had a long and 

fruitful relationship with the ensemble. The 

Strauss, a Kempe specialty, is from his last 

concert with them, at the Proms in 1974. The 

Dvorak comes from almost exactly one year 

later, 29 August 1975, early in his tenure with 

the BBC Symphony. (He died a few months 

after this concert.) 

Kempe’s commercial recordings of Strauss 

are justly regarded as some of the best ever 

made. This is a superb opportunity to see him 

making the music with the orchestra he 

worked with for so many years. You won’t really 

hear anything much different from what we 

know in the studio recordings, but the visual 

element adds something for us who are too 

young to have seen Kempe in person. 

The Dvorak gets a big, bold, yet carefully 

balanced and paced interpretation. Kempe’s 

account is plenty animated, but he refrains 

from stirring up frenzy just to add excitement. 

The full melodic richness of the score is never 

short-changed, and as the album notes point 

out, he maintains a particularly wide dynamic 

range, fortunately captured in the full, vibrant 

stereo sound. Given the limitations of sound 

reproduction on the TV sets of the period, one 

has to assume that the BBC was also recording 

the audio for FM transmission. 

The video production is very fine, with 

exceptionally vivid color—better than many 

video tapes of the period, even the BBC’s. 

One has to be impressed by the quality of 

the old material ICA has trawled up from the 

depths of the BBC archives. The Solti Elgar 

program is a particular find. Despite the conductor’s 

long tenure with the Chicago Symphony, 

in a city with one of the largest PBS stations 

in the US, very little of his work there was 

captured on video. What we have was mostly 

taped during foreign tours and has already 

been issued on DVD. Solti “discovered” Elgar’s 

music (or perhaps finally realized its worth) 

shortly after becoming a British subject a few 

years before this Symphony 2 was taped. The 

album notes make a rather sizeable point out 

of his referring to Elgar’s own recording of the 

work when he was learning the score. Elgar’s 

performances of his own works are incisive, 

unsentimental, and often fiery. 

Does he pour the “Solti Hot Sauce” on 

Elgar? I’m probably not the best judge since, as 

a teenager, I was glued to the radio every Sunday 

afternoon to hear the Chicago Symphony 

broadcast. Certainly, his account of the massive 

Second Symphony has the sometimes 

abrupt, angular, Soltian phrasing in the vigorous 

passages. The first movement is one of the 

most intractable of Elgar’s large-scale works; I 

always get a bit fidgety during it. Solti moves it 

along but doesn’t convince me that he’s getting 

the most out of the music (but who does?). 

He makes up for it by plumbing the expressive 

depths of the slow movement—makes sense, 

given the conductor’s affinity for Mahler—and 

he builds from the end of II through the lighter 

Rondo of III and to a an earth-shattering 

finale. 

In some ways, Solti’s take on the more 

popular Enigma Variations is less convincing. 

As in his earlier CSO recording (made in 1976; 

this concert dates from 1979), he seems to miss 

the charm of the score, its melodic richness, 

and the composer’s genuine affection for the 

friends it depicts. Solti knows how to hammer 

through the vigorous variations, and ‘Nimrod’ 

is suitably expansive; but at this stage in his 

career he didn’t quite have the grasp of nuance 

in phrasing that he did in his last decade. He 

makes it into a series of episodes not closely 

related to each other. An exciting performance—and 

good to see the conductor in any 

video program I hadn’t encountered before— 

but probably not indispensable to the Elgar 

discography. 

As in the other two BBC programs, the picture 

quality is vivid and clean. I viewed all of 

these on my Sharp Aquous LCD, letting the TV 

upscale the feed from a Sony NS3100ES DVD 

player (also my playback machine for audio 

SACDs, by the way). It wasn’t Blu Ray quality, 

but it was quite impressive for 35-year-old 

broadcast TV material. 

HANSEN 

WAGNER: Parsifal 

Poul Elming (Parsifal), Linda Watson (Kundry), 

Hans Sotin (Gurnemanz), Falk Struckmann 

(Amfortas), Ekkehard Wlaschiha (Klingsor); 

Bayreuth Festival 1998/ Giuseppe Sinopoli 

Unitel 705908 [2DVD] 278 minutes 

This was recorded at the Festspielhaus in 

Bayreuth in July 1998. The production is credited 

to Wolfgang Wagner, grandson of the 

composer, at that time the sole director of the 

Festival. It dates from 1989, when James 

Levine conducted it with a different cast; his 

performance was recorded on Philips CDs. 



Sinopoli took it over in 1994 and conducted it haps the fault lies with Sinopoli’s rigidly-held 

every year until 1999 (when I happened to see and slack tempos that don’t give the singers 

it). It’s one of the slowest and most boring per- many opportunities for expressive interpretaformances 

of this work I have ever heard. tions. The Bayreuth Chorus is, as usual, out- 

Sinopoli establishes a slow tempo in the Prestanding; but the orchestral sound is somelude 

and rigidly holds on to it all through the times rhythmically slack, thick, and unbal- 

opera. The performance is slack, it lacks tenanced.sion and is full of luftpausen. I discussed it This performance is as long as Levine’s 

briefly in a review of several Bayreuth perfor- (Philips) but Levine at least varies the tempo 

mances (N/D 1999). This cast is the same freely and has a better feel for the drama and 

except that Linda Watson, the Kundry in 1998, the orchestral score. The slowest Parsifal on 

was replaced by Violetta Urmana in 1999. 

records is still Goodall’s, but only by less than 

Wolfgang’s staging breaks no new ground; 10 minutes. By contrast, the much-praised 

it’s a mixture of the traditional and the mod- Knappertsbusch Parsifal from 1964 clocks in 

ern. The stage is uncluttered, the dominant almost a half hour faster, yet many fans 

colors are green (Acts 1 and 2) and bluish pink. thought he was too slow! For a really “fast” 

The forest in the opening scene is represented performance, try Pierre Boulez’s—one hour 

by huge idealized green trees, and the only faster than Goodall’s. (These are all on CD.) 

props in the Grail scenes are the shrine for the Subtitles are available, and the overall 

Grail and Amfortas’s chair. Klingsor’s castle is sound is not bad; but the Bayreuth Orchestra 

notable by its absence. In the first scene of Act has sounded much better with Levine, Knap- 

3, the Holy Spring whose water refreshes and is pertsbusch, and even Barenboim at the helm. 

used to anoint Parsifal is a huge semi-sphere 

surrounded by a small moat; it also gushes 

MOSES 

water in the Act 3 Prelude. I don’t know why. 

If I Were A Rich Man 

Gurnemanz and his retinue in Act 1 wear green 

robes, Parsifal wears a green hunter’s suit, 

Amfortas is clad in black, and Klingsor and 

Kundry’s robes are violet with red stripes. For 

Act 3, Kundry has changed to a more neutral 

light-green robe. In this production, as I wrote 

in my 1999 review, Kundry does not die at the 

end; she officiates at the Grail’s unveiling with 

Parsifal, contrary to the composer’s stage 

directions. Perhaps she’ll become the first 

female Knight of the Grail. 

The best and obviously the most experienced 

singer in this cast is Hans Sotin. He has 

been singing Gurnemanz for a very long time, 

yet his noble and mellifluous voice is in good 

shape here and his diction and phrasing are 

superb. His bearing is dignified and his use of 

vocal colors unmatched. In the title role, the 

Danish tenor Poul Elming is most appealing 

and sometimes thrilling in his high register, 

notably in his last lines as he uncovers the 

Grail. Elsewhere and especially in his low register, 

his voice loses its tonal purity. He is also a 

stiff, unconvincing actor; he often looks bored. 

The American soprano Linda Watson was new 

to this production (and Bayreuth) in 1998, and 

perhaps she as yet hadn’t taken the measure of 

the place (and this production). Her voice is 

ample and smooth; but her acting, vocal and 

physical, is primitive and unconvincing. In Act 

2 she stands on the stage and keeps on waving 

her arms; it becomes a distracting and annoying 

habit that means nothing. She also moves 

awkwardly (when she moves) and she is surely 

no seductress. 

Falk Struckmann’s Amfortas doesn’t move 

the viewer as it should in the Grail scenes; per- 

The Life of Jan Peerce 

EuroArts 2058328 [DVD] 59 minutes 

This is greatly entertaining. Peerce (1904-84), 

Toscanini’s favorite tenor, is a wonderful storyteller. 

Through black-and-white photos and 

film and through intelligent, entertaining 

questions and comments by Isaac Stern, viewers 

get a look at Peerce’s humble beginnings as 

a synagogue choir boy, his deeply-rooted faith 

and cantorial background, life as a bandleader 

and Radio City performer, the Toscanini 

years, and Peerce’s family life, though mention 

of family members other than his devoted wife 

Alice is scarce. Viewers will get nothing whatsoever 

about Peerce’s long-lasting feud with 

brother-in-law Richard Tucker. But Peerce 

doesn’t come across as an unkind man. It is a 

joy to listen to the joie de vivre when he talks 

about his faith, career, and marriage. He has 

great timing, and even the serious moments 

are fascinating. The film and photos vividly 

convey bygone times, especially of New York 

City’s lower east side Jewish community. I 

remember Peerce’s appearances in the 1960s 

with Johnny Carson. The guy could have 

become an entertainer in the tradition of 

Myron Cohen and Alan King. This documentary 

was co-produced by Peerce’s son Larry. 

He did his father proud. 

MARK 



James Levine: 40 Years at the 

Metropolitan Opera 

Elena Park, ed. 

Amadeus Press, 230 pages, $35 

A bounty of CD and DVD performances has 

already been released to celebrate James 

Levine’s 40 years at the Met, and there has also 

been a PBS special, which will probably be 

issued on DVD as well. Now comes this hefty, 

richly illustrated book that neatly chronicles his 

Met career. Its basic format is a timeline that 

takes us through four decades. At the bottom of 

the pages, important premieres, new productions, 

and other milestones are listed by date. 

Levine himself comments on most of them (he 

should really get author credit), and sometimes 

there are additional remarks by singers, orchestra 

members, and stage producers. 

For instance, 1991 brought us Levine’s first 

Magic Flute, a new production of Parsifal, 

Mirella Freni’s 25th anniversary gala, the first 

tour of the Met orchestra, and the premiere of 

The Ghosts of Versailles. Aside from Levine, we 

hear from Marilyn Horne and John Corigliano, 

and there are copious photographs. To take 

another example, 1974 was the year of Levine’s 

first Don Giovanni and Wozzeck, the first Met 

performances of Vespri Siciliani, and Kiri Te 

Kanawa’s “eleventh-hour” debut in Otello. 

Again, Levine’s comments are illuminating, 

and Te Kanawa herself has words of praise for 

the supportive conductor. (“He didn’t just 

plow on but helped me all the way through.”) 

The weight and size of the book (9 1/2 by 

11 inches) make it a bit unwieldy, but once you 

prop it up, it makes addictive reading—or just 

browsing. And for us who remember Levine’s 

40 years, it’s a wonderful, nostalgic history, 

filled with good anecdotes and useful information. 

The book has some appendixes: tallies of 

all Levine’s Met performances, telecasts, premieres, 

opening nights, and orchestral concerts, 

as well as a discography of his Met 

recordings. 

LUCANO 

Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the 

Awakening of Finland 

Glenda Dawn Goss 

University of Chicago Press, 549 pages, $55 

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) is one of our most 

enigmatic composers and a nest of contradictions. 

A national symbol of Finland, he was 

nurtured in the German tradition. His sur- 

Books 

name was Latinized to Sibelius by his grandfather, 

and the composer himself Gallicized 

Janne to Jean. He was of working class origin, 

but his first language was that of the Finnish 

elite—Swedish. His music owes much to Finland’s 

history and folklore, yet most of his 

songs have Swedish texts. 

Sibelius is a natural for a biography, but 

there are few good ones in English. Enter Glenda 

Dawn Goss, an American who teaches at 

the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and was an 

editor of the Sibelius Edition. Goss writes like a 

good novelist and balances objectivity and 

observation, often humorously and sometimes 

bluntly. Convinced that to know Sibelius one 

must understand the Finland he lived in, she 

supplies more information on the country 

than any other Sibelius biographer I know. 

Finland was ruled by Sweden from 1155 to 

1809 (hence the two major languages, Finnish 

and Swedish) and as a Russian duchy from 

1809 to 1917 (though Russian never took root). 

Goss discusses the Russian czars who ruled 

Finland, but also tells about Nikolai Bobrikov, 

the ruthless, doomed-to-be assassinated Russian 

administrator of the duchy. She is excellent 

on the linguistic divide and life under foreign 

rule. She describes in detail how Finland was 

devoutly Lutheran and steeped in ancient folklore 

and how its social divisions were tempered 

by the Russians but exploded in a 

bloody civil war after independence. The book 

teems with information about everyday life, 

history, politics, and the arts, including the 

painter Axel Gallen, the poet Johan Runeberg, 

Finnish Symbolists, and musicians like Robert 

Kajanus. She even has a heart for the Finnish 

celebrations and political lotteries, which she 

covers down to the costumes. 

The problem is that Jean Sibelius often gets 

lost in this broad tapestry, coming and going 

as national events dictate. Much of what Goss 

tells about him is interesting, perceptive—and 

sometimes novel—but there is a hit-and-miss 

quality to her coverage. She is very good on 

capturing Sibelius, the superannuated man. 

Her explanation for his withdrawal from composition 

is probably closer to the truth than 

most. (Along with other points she raises, is 

the new-to-me theory that shaking hands 

made the revisions the composer insisted on 

doing himself difficult.) On the other hand, I 

could not find what Sibelius’s original family 

name was. (I believe it was Sibbe.) 

Goss writes more about Kullervo than most 

writers, but I don’t recall her mentioning that 

Sibelius pulled the piece from circulation. She 



tells us he turned down the directorship of the 

Eastman School of Music but not that the job 

went to Howard Hanson. She does not deny 

Sibelius’s drinking binges and marital problems, 

but neither does she bring them to life. 

And it would have been nice to read about 

Eugene Ormandy’s visit with Sibelius at home 

in the 1950s. 

Coverage of the music is variable, brief, 

and strictly speaking, not musicological, 

though she includes some generous samples. 

There is a lot about the Violin Concerto (mostly 

background) and Kullervo’s folkloric aspects 

and social effects. There is less about other 

major works, but quite a bit on some minor 

pieces. The criterion for inclusion seems to be 

a piece’s relationship to Finnish culture rather 

than musical interest. 

I must point out that the title is misleading. 

Readers who care nothing for Sibelius but are 

American Composers—July/Aug 1995 

American Symphonies—July/Aug 2007 

American Music—Nov/Dec 2007 

Bach—Nov/Dec 1997 

Bach Keyboard—July/August 2005 

Ballet Music—Mar/Apr 1996 

Bartok—Mar/Apr 2001 

Beethoven Piano Sonatas—May/June 2002 

Beethoven Quartets—Nov/Dec 2006 

Beethoven—July/August 2003 

Berlioz—May/June 2007 

Brahms—Sept/Oct 2006 

Brass—Sept/Oct 2005 

British Orchestral—Jan/Feb 2010 

Britten—July/Aug 1998 

Bruckner—May/June 2006 

Cello —Mar/Apr 2009 

Cello Concertos—Nov/Dec 1998 

Chopin—July/Aug 2011 

Choral Masterpieces—Nov/Dec 2000 

Debussy & Ravel—Jan/Feb 2000 

Dvorak—Sept/Oct 1998 

English Symphonies—Sept/Oct 2010 

Favorite Violin Concertos—Sept/Oct 1996 

Favorite String Quartets—Sept/Oct 1997 

Film Music—Mar/Apr 1998 

French & German Operas—March/April 2008 

French Favorites—Nov/Dec 1999 

Guitar Music—Sept/Oct 2003 

Handel Orchestral & Messiah—Nov/Dec 2002 

Handel Operas—Jan/Feb 2003 

Haydn—Mar/Apr 2002 

Historic Conductors—May/June 1998 

interested in Finland may never give this volume 

a thought—and they should—while people 

looking for a biography of Sibelius may 

skim it in frustration. The latter should start 

with Jean Sibelius by Guy Rickards or the biographical 

section of Robert Layton’s Sibelius, 

which has a lot of musical analysis. (Andrew 

Barnett’s Sibelius reads more like an annotated 

catalog of works than a biography.) The most 

comprehensive biography, Sibelius by the 

composer’s friend, Erik Tawaststjerna, is in 

three volumes, from the 1970s and 80s, and 

out of print, but well worth finding. Read one 

of those first. Then, by all means, take on Goss. 

The book is beautifully put together, with 

excellent pictures, endnotes, and bibliography, 

but no list of works. 

HECHT 

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Index to Overviews 

Italian Opera—Sept/Oct 2000 

Liszt—May/June 1999 

Mahler—July/Aug 2001 

Mendelssohn—Nov/Dec 2008 

Mozart Concertos—May/June 2008 

Mozart Operas—Jan/Feb 2002 

Mozart Symphonies—Nov/Dec 2001 

Music since 1975—Sept/Oct 2001 

Nielsen—May/June 2004 

Overtures—Part 1 Jan/Feb 2010 

Part 2 Mar/Apr 2011; Part 3 May/June 2011 

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Prokofieff—July/Aug 2004 

Rachmaninoff—Nov/Dec 2010 

Respighi—July/August 2010 

Russian Favorites—July/Aug 1996 

Russian Music beyond Tchaikovsky 

Part 1 —Jan/Feb 2004; Part 2—Mar/Apr 2004 

Russian Operas—May/June 2003 

Saint-Saens—Mar/Apr 2000 

Schubert—Nov/Dec 2003 

Schumann—Sept/Oct 2004 

Shostakovich Symphonies—Nov/Dec 2009 

Shostakovich other music—Mar/Apr 2006 

Sibelius—Jan/Feb 1999 

Spanish Music—Sept/Oct 2002 

R Strauss—May/June 2005 

Stravinsky—May/June 2001 

Tchaikovsky—Jan/Feb 2001 

Verdi—May/June 2000 

Wagner—July/Aug 2002 

Woodwinds—Nov/Dec 2005 




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