Review: "Some" rather than "The" essential Joe Hisaishi

Dream Songs: The Essential Joe Hisaishi

Decca

Decca’s double album of Joe Hisaishi film music isn’t quite as essential as is claimed on the cover, but contains enough good stuff to justify a listen. The best comes from a session Hisaishi recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra back in 2010, not previously released outside Asia. The LSO’s playing is as sumptuous and tight as you’d expect, with a selection of familiar pieces from Miyazaki Hayao’s films and some more unusual items, such as Water Traveler from an unfamiliar 1990s Japanese film about kid samurai. Leader Roman Simovic is luxary casting in the Kiki's Delivery Service violin solos. The LSO’s strings give the heft needed to do justice to Hisaishi’s trademark sound and sweeping melodies; elsewhere in the collection, which is a hodgepodge of recordings from lots of sources, the playing is less compelling. Hisaishi himself plays the piano on many of the tracks, but his hard and rhythmically rigid playing left me wondering what a more accomplished pianist might make of some of the ballades. There is, however, plenty for a Hisaishi fan to enjoy.

Review: An Absorbing Schubert "Great" from Bavaria

Schubert: "Great" Symphony in C

Jansons/BRSO

BR Klassik

Here’s another live Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra recording that makes you wish you’d been there. Schubert’s 7^th, 8^th, 9^th or just “Great” Symphony (depending how you count) is given a straight forward but absorbing performance, very well played, bar an uncharacteristic moment of confusion in the acceleration out of the first movement’s introduction. Mariss Jansons chooses quick tempi, and it’s a sign of his good judgment that the fast movements move swiftly by without feeling hurried along, though the Andante is a little harried. This “Great” is light and cheery where others are burdened by darker things; it’s more like a massive escalation of Haydn than a premonition of Bruckner. And if that all sounds like the point has been missed, it hasn’t. It’s just that they’ve found a different point in this big box of possibilities.

For regular reviews and blog posts, follow this blog using the bar on the right, or on Twitter at @devilstrillblog.

Read previous record reviews here.

Review: Mariss Jansons's extraordinary Bruckner 8

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8

Jansons/BRSO

BR Klassik

I had thought Bruckner a closed book to me; all that repetition, all that alienating monumentalism. This, though, is a record to challenge prejudices. Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra have produced an extraordinary, flowing performance, filled with the kind of playing and thinking needed to make sense of this vast symphony. It’s all beautifully recorded – only the concluding applause gives away that this is a concert performance. Bruckner fans are talking about this as one for the ages; it’s certainly one to convince the cautious and sceptical.

For regular reviews and blog posts, follow this blog using the bar on the right, or on Twitter at @devilstrillblog.

Alexander Kniazev plays Franck and Ysaye

Franck & Ysaÿe: Music for Cello and Piano

Alexander Kniazev (cello)

Plamena Mangova (piano)

Fuga Libera FUG587

The notes for Alexander Kniazev’s disc of borrowed music open with an incomprehensible justification for the practice of transcription. In truth, no argument is necessary: if these musicians wish to take music written for violin and play it on the cello, they are welcome. In practice, some transfer better than others, as demonstrated by this recital.

Kniazev is far from the first cellist to play César Franck’s evergreen Violin Sonata and, as a transcription, it works well. The long lyrical lines of the Sonata, composed for the young Eugène Ysaÿe in 1886, are rendered well on Kniazev’s instrument and there isn’t too much rapid fingerwork to get caught up in. Kniazev’s performance slows the opening Allegretto to a grandiose showcase of his remarkable sound, a torrent of extraordinarily rich legato tone redolent of the Oistrakh and Rostropovich. It really is something to behold - whenever the Sonata obliges, Kniazev opens the taps and that sound comes out. It results, however, in a monolithic performance, basking in the glory of these edifices but revealing disappointingly little of the music’s drama and narrative. Pianist Plamena Mangova often has to make do with unsympathetic tempos which disrupt the flow of Franck’s keyboard writing.

Franck’s song Nocturne of 1884 is successful without the words, but two pieces by Ysaÿe reveal the more problematic aspect of transcription. Both the Berceuse and the Poème élégiaque were composed for violin and orchestra, though both are more commonly encountered in versions for violin and piano. Ysaÿe’s often virtuosic writing pulls Kniazev away from his comfort zone and, in all honesty, the transcriptions sound uncomfortable. In addition, Ysaÿe music was often specifically composed around the possibilities of his own instrument. A funereal episode in the Poème élégiaque is a case in point: Ysaÿe asks the violin to detune the bottom string by a whole tone, producing an unexpected and unusually deep sound. This section lies well within the reach of the cello, and the effect is lost.

The disc is very clearly recorded, somewhat to the detriment of the impressionistic Berceuse. While I’ve no problem with musicians looking further afield for repertoire, I really wonder why Kniazev and Mangova chose to record two of Ysaÿe’s violin works, when both his Sérénade and Méditation for cello and piano have (to the best of a my knowledge) never been recorded. Then there’s a darkly intense Sonata for Solo Cello, which Kniazev might have excelled in. Maybe next time?

December's IRR reviews

December’s International Record Review is out now and again features reviews I’ve written. Here’s what I was sent this month:

American Serenade - Rachel Kolly d’Alba

Gershwin/Bernstein/Waxman (Warner Classics 2564 65765-7)

“If the career to date of Swiss violinist Rachel Kolly d’Alba proves anything, it’s that it is possible (thankfully) to enter the field playing something other than standard rep and warhorse concerti. American Serenade is her third album for Warner Classics... [It] explores the cross-contamination of “high” and “low” art inherent in American culture.”

Russian String Quartets – Leipziger Streichquartett

Afanasiev/Borodin/Rachmaninov/Rimsky-Korsakov (MDG307 1758-2)

“The familiar nestles among the obscure in the Leipziger Strechquartett’s album of Russian quartets. Borodin’s evergreen example is mirrored at the programme’s start by a work from a man (Afanasiev) geographically far removed from the heart of Russia’s nineteenth century musical renaissance, providing a glimpse of the artistic inspirations of the time.”

Wolfgang Rihm – Complete works for violin and piano

Tianwa Yang & Nicholas Rimmer (Naxos 8.572730)

“Yang and Rimmer prove to be outstanding guides to Rihm’s fiercely focused music. They are alert to every tiny change in dynamic and texture, to every finely weighed gesture that Rihm sets out. Their strengths are immediately apparent in Phantom und Eskapade, a piece completed in 1994 for Anne-Sophie Mutter and bearing one of Rihm’s typically opaque titles. Rimmer’s wonderfully precise touch illuminates the questioning opening and continues to alternate delicacy with barbed urgency throughout this enigmatic piece.”  

James Ehnes plays Bartók's Violin Sonatas

Bartók

Violin Sonatas 1 & 2

Rhapsodies 1 & 2

James Ehnes (violin)

Andrew Armstrong (piano)

Chandos CHAN10705

Bela Bartók was nothing if not a collaborator. Many of his compositions were written for specific musicians with whom he forged strong associations – Jelly D'Arányi; Zoltán Székely; Joseph Szigeti; Yehudi Menuhin: and that's just the violinists – and in each case those collaborators brought big musical personalities to the table. The violin works have stood as some of the most demanding and spartan in the repertoire; still an enormous challenge to the technique and charisma of violinist and their keyboard partner. Canadian violinist James Ehnes brings an iron clad technique to his assault on the Violin Sonatas and Rhapsodies, which follows on from his widely acclaimed recording of Bartók's two Concertos for violin and one for viola for Chandos. But is he the most compelling of guides to this thorny music?

Many of Bartók's darkest works contain a clear thread of existential dread. There's a tone of hopelessness to them, most clearly heard in his thoroughly unpleasant stage works, the opera Bluebeard's Castle and the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin. In those pieces, there's a narrative to make concrete what the music screams at us. The same tone is there in the gloomiest chamber works, ready to be found by musicians able to lift the notes from the page. Take the Second Violin Sonata of 1922. Written for D'Arányi, its violin line hangs in the first movement like a lament carried on a lazy wind, regarded rather than comforted by the piano. Ehnes spins his part with great care; his delivery is nuanced and fragile, but he can be tortured and anguished when required. His faultless technique, though, never sounds stretched by Bartók's enormous demands, and intonation and tone seem precisely weighed at every turn. He's also well matched to his pianist, Andrew Armstrong, a musician of similar command over the cascades of notes.

The same is true in the more impressionistic First Violin Sonata (1921), also written for D'Arányi. It's not a work of quite such determined grimness, but there's still little light. The Adagio is particularly striking: a high, yearning violin line met by granite chords from the piano. Armstrong weighs them perfectly; Ehnes contrasts with a tone of quiet depression. But neither Sonata ever grips completely: in conquering Bartók's strenuous demands quite so completely, Ehnes misses the spontaneity and danger of a performance at the edge. He's certainly never close to playing ugly. Listen to Bartók and Szigeti at the Library of Congress in 1940 in the Second Sonata (Vanguard Classics ATMCD1583) and you'll hear an intensity of storytelling that transcends the initial knottiness of the music.  Their performance is riveting, with a (perhaps unsurprising) feeling of authenticity and directness that’s never been bettered.

The two Rhapsodies, composed in 1928, stem from Bartók’s interest in folk music and are generally easier listening than the Sonatas.  Included at the tail end of the disc is an intriguing bonus: an adapted conclusion to the second part of the first Rhapsody, to be appended when the movement is played by itself.  Space on this extremely well filled disc doesn’t allow for a complete repeat of the Rhapsody’s conclusion with the alternate ending, but the hi-fi savvy can programme their players to jump to the desired track.  Ehnes’s calculated precision is less of a problem in the Rhapsodies, though they do miss the last degree of folky swagger.  In total contrast to the mature Bartók is a brief Andante, written in 1902 in a tiny notebook, totally free of intimations of the music to come.

Chandos’s recording is excellent and Paul Griffiths notes thorough.  “Volume one” suggests a second to follow: hopefully, Armstrong and Ehnes will produce something less cleanly efficient and more open to the grim danger of these works.

Wendy Sutter plays Glass's First Cello Concerto

Philip Glass

Concerto for cello for orchestra No.1 

Wendy Sutter (cello)

Orchestra of the Americas

Dante Anzolini

Orange Mountain Music 0076

There was a time when the traditional form of the concerto was an anathema to the pared back language of minimalism.  The two big beasts of the first wave of minimalism who are still in the public eye, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, came up with titles as spare as their music: Music in the Shape of a Square; Music for 18 Musicians; Music in Twelve Parts; etc., etc.  Both graduated to more poetic titles, but Reich never fell back on the forms of old.  Glass did, though, and he's now on his ninth symphony and second each of concertos for violin, piano and cello.  But as he's shoehorned his hugely distinctive sound into these traditional structures, the original intensity of the style has been diluted and replaced with something altogether more conventional.

Glass's own label, Orange Mountain Music, gives us their second recording of Glass's Cello Concerto No.1 after a recording by the work's first interpreter, Julian Lloyd Webber, appeared in OMM's Glass Concerto Project series (OMM 0014).  There it was coupled with Glass's Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra; here we get only the 31 minutes of the Cello Concerto with no filler – not much music for a full priced disc.  Richard Guérin's sleeve notes don't mention why this concerto is numbered No.1, being mainly concerned with the performance history of the work since its composition in 2001, but Glass's website reveals it's because a second is to be premièred in 2012 and will be based on music from Glass's Naqoyqatsi soundtrack.

As for this first concerto, it begins well with a darkly shifting sequence of chords ground out by the cello: a weightier sound than usual from Glass and one which promises something a little different.  But come the first orchestral tutti and we're into fairly generic Glass territory.  The material of the second movement is brooding in a way that Glass does very well, but the variations that follow do outstay their welcome.  The finale has a certain swagger to it, but comes to an abrupt halt in a way that suggests Glass doesn't really know where his material is heading.

I've not had a chance to hear OMM's first recording of the concerto, so cannot compare Wendy Sutter's performance against Lloyd Webber's.  She does make the best case for the solo part with her dark and intense tone and faultless technique, though she's too prominent in the mix and the orchestra's contribution tends to fall away into the background.  On paper, though, there's no reason to choose this disc over the earlier OMM one, as that release was double the length and I suspect only Glass completists are going to want Sutter's new recording.  A shame, because she's clearly an appealing instrumentalist able to enliven a fairly dull piece of music.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb-International.

Prokofiev's Violin Concertos from Pavel Berman

Prokofiev 

Violin Concertos

Sonata for two violins

Pavel Berman (violin)/Anna Tifu (violin, Op.56)

Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana/Andrey Boreyko

Dynamic CDS 676

He may have been a pianist, but something about the violin excited Prokofiev enough for him to produce some of the instrument’s finest works.  Not much of the twentieth century’s repertoire for the violin can match the dazzling colour of the First Violin Concerto, completed in 1917 but not performed until the dust had settled after the Russian revolution, or the gravity and rhythmic energy of the Second, composed in 1935, shortly before Prokofiev returned to the Soviet Union to assume the role of most favoured composer.  Pavel Berman’s attractive coupling of the two is complemented by the Sonata for two violins of 1932, an ingenious and witty work much favoured by the father-son partnership of David and Igor Oistrakh.

In keeping the menu an all Prokofiev affair, Berman’s Dynamic recording would initially seem a more appealing proposition than some previous sets featuring both concertos.  Maxim Vengerov’s recordings with Rostropovich were at one time available with the Glazunov concerto, while Decca’s CD rerelease of Kyung Wha Chung’s 1970s performances came with the Stravinsky concerto.  Both of these venerable sets offer more persuasive performances, however, and while there are still things to be enjoyed in Berman’s playing, it was a disc that I found myself liking less as it progressed.    

The First Concerto begins promisingly.  Berman sets an unusually swift tempo, lending a dancing and dotted character to the opening melody, but this creates problems when he reaches the faster central section.  There’s nowhere to go and little contrast to be found, and this lack of care over the pacing continues across both concertos and, ultimately, everything feels rather generalised.  There are fine moments, though, particularly the first moment’s tranquil coda, captured very well by Berman and the Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana.

Berman’s performance of the Second Concerto is also a mixed affair, with the first movement proceeding quite carefully; indeed, one moment seems to find Berman struggling with the basics of getting his fingers round Prokofiev’s passage work.  The Andante suffers from more generalised pacing, stretching it out and making it feel more repetitive than it ought to. But the finale is a success, with Berman finding more grit and swagger for the unhinged rustic dance.  In the Sonata for Two Violins, Berman is well matched with partner Anna Tifu, though the recording here lacks body.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb-international. 

Georges Lentz's incredible Ingwe

Georges Lentz

Ingwe from Mysterium (“Caeli enarrant... VII) 

Zane Banks (electric guitar)

An hour long work for solo electric guitar might not sound like the best idea in the world, but in the hands of composer Georges Lentz it's an hour of startling power.  Lentz was born in Luxenbourg but lives in Australia, and has spent two decades composing music for a monumental series of works:  Caeli enarrant... (The Heavens are Telling (Psalm XIX)).  Ingwe means 'night' in the indigenous Australian langauge of Aranda, and it's a very dark night of the soul exposed in this episode from the larger sub-cycle Mysterium, the seventh segment of Caeli enarrant.

Ingwe conjures visions of sand blasted expanses in its depiction of the vast barrenness of the Australian outback, which itself serves as a metaphor for the spiritual vacuum contemplated by Lentz as he ponders the uncaring void of the universe.  Of course, there's no text here expounding Lentz's point of view, but it's amply communicated by the wailing intensity of Zane Bank's electric guitar which is rich in imagery and suggestion.  At moments, we are enveloped by unyielding storms of sound (or maybe wind and sand), while another moment seems to depict the passing of a giant freight train which melts into the distance.  Slices of silence punctuate the wall of noise, while the work's conclusion is the most violent episode of all; a series of cataclysmic bassy strokes that grow and grow in volume, bringing to my mind an image of bombs being dropped on an already dead city.

If all this sounds rather one-note, there are many moments of quiet reflection to counter the charge and, in the seventh of the eight continuous sections, an unexpected moment of clarity in the form of a soulful and tender melody picked out on the guitar.  This episode begins with chords emerging intermittently only as the guitar's volume is turned up, producing gripping gulfs between the rise and fade of the sound.  Throughout the work, the variety of timbre and technique that Lentz and Banks draw from the guitar is fascinating and makes this a genuinely involving hour that passes much faster than it feels it might at the outset.

Ingwe is Naxos's second disc of Lentz's music and features excellent notes from Richard Toop who gives a valuable guide through to the work.  The earlier disc (8.557019) includes further segments of Mysterium, and we can only hope that Naxos bring us more slices of Lentz's ongoing cycle.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb International.

Naxos 8.572483

Ehnes the violinist and violist in Bartok

As promised, here's my review of James Ehnes's new Bartok disc posted on Classicalsource.

Divine Art's Prokofiev

Russian Piano Music Vol.7: Prokofiev

Piano Sonatas 2 & 7

Visions fugatives (selections)

10 pieces from Romeo and Juliet (selections)

Sergei Dukachev

Divine Art DDA25096

It seems appropriate that Prokofiev wrote some of his finest and most varied music for his own instrument, the piano.  Prokofiev left a handful of recordings of his own playing for posterity, setting a high standard for those wanting to follow in his footsteps and tackle this remarkable oeuvre.  That bar was maintained by two of Prokofiev’s pianist colleagues, Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Ricther, so that anyone attempting this repertoire is stepping into a mighty tradition.  This volume continues Divine Art’s survey of an even grander tradition: the hi-ways and by-ways of Russian piano music.

Divine Art’s Prokofiev compilation begins with the Second Piano Sonata of 1912, the most substantial among the first five.  It’s a case of serving the best first in Dukachev’s case, as this performance is the most secure on the disc with only the final Vivace suffering from a few blemishes.  The Andante is successful, with Dukachev building the tension effectively throughout. 

Only a few notes into his selection from the Visions Fugitives, however, and alarm bells ring.  Dukachev misses a chord in the left hand of No.1, leading to a bar or so of mismatched left and right hands.  It sounds so deliberate that I questioned my own edition of the score, but checking the original Russian print confirms that it must be a mistake on Dukachev’s part.  It turns out that these are live recordings, taken from a number of different concerts; not that you’d know from the back of the box.  So, a memory slip could be forgiven - it’s certainly happened to the very best in the past – but who is going to want to listen to this mistake again and again?

Armed with the knowledge that these are live recordings (only confirmed inside the booklet), the lack of audience noise throughout (save for the end of the 7th Sonata, which includes applause) is a relief, and the disc’s live status goes some way to explain Dukachev’s untidy finger work in the faster passages of the Op.22 selections.  All pianists make mistakes in concert, but these performances aren’t persuasive enough in their own terms to warrant anyone returning to them and hearing those mistakes again.

Four of Prokofiev’s Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet suffer from the same issues, though they confirm that Dukachev is at least good at dreamy atmosphere, such as that conjured for the beginning of Romeo and Juliet before parting.  The Seventh Sonata, one of Prokofiev’s fiercest works in any genre, is given a reasonable performance which impresses mostly in the shell-shocked second movement Andante coloroso, but the Precipitato finale is disappointingly underpowered. 

Across the entire disc, there is the added problem of poor sound, which varies quite noticeably between pieces but which is always consistently bad.  It would have been poor by the standards of four decades ago; the fact that all of these recordings were taped during or after 2000 makes the situation particularly unforgivable.  I’m inclined to give Dukachev the benefit of the doubt in some cases of muddy playing, as the acoustic and production can only have made the problems worse than they might have seemed at the time of the performances.  But the sound problems are enough on their own for me to direct anyone interested in sampling Prokofiev’s wonderful piano music elsewhere, such as to Bernd Glemser’s three budget priced discs of Prokofiev’s complete piano sonatas (including the Romeo and Juliet pieces) on Naxos (8553021; 8554270; 8555030), at the very least.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb International.

Herwig Zack: 4 Strings Only

4 Strings Only: A Recital for Solo Violin

Bloch

Bach

Ben-Haim

Berio

Herwig Zack (violin)

AVIE AV2189

Several themes run through this album of solo violin music from German violinist Herwig Zack.  Four of the works suggest a broadening of the repertoire in the shadow of the fifth; Bach’s violin works, after all, being so dominant in the repertoire.  Three of them were composed for Yehudi Menuhin, a prolific commissioner of new music, while Menuhin’s Bach remains one of his most important legacies.  And, perhaps more trivially, this disc reminds us that besides Bach, plenty of other Bs wrote solo violin music.

Zack’s recital gives us the two Suites by Bloch, in reverse order and separated by a sample of Bach’s mighty example of violin writing.  Bloch’s Suites for solo violin, composed for Menuhin, date from quite late in the composer’s life (both written in 1958) and maybe their close proximity makes them sound like two sides of a musical coin.  The Suites’ language is lonely, anguished, and at times quite angular.  If anything, the First Suite in more introspective than the Second, though its initial upward stab makes for a striking and combative opening.  At its heart is a brief Andante, just two lines long in the score, which evokes the more simple tonality of Bach.  Zach underscores this link by paring back his tone and vibrato, a technique also deployed in the Bach Second Sonata.

The Second Suite occasionally slips into a Bartokian sound world, and perhaps its most striking moment is a series of declamatory chords in the moderato second movement.  These are both intriguing works, but I must admit that despite having listened to them a number of times, I’ve struggled to retain the sound of them in my memory.  Zack’s intonation is always precise, but he’s let down, particularly in these works, by the recording’s lack of dynamic contrast; fortissimo moments are often little varied from pianos that follow them, though I sense that this is not Zack’s fault.  The dynamic issues are less of a problem in Bach’s Second Sonata, BWV 1003, in which Zack’s borrows period simplicity with minimal vibrato and sustain.  He adapts his sound very well, though a less self consciously stylised performance might have made more of the lines of the Fuga or of the famous andante.  

The last two works on the disc turn out to be the most appealing.  Paul Ben-Haim’s Sonata of 1951 makes a great play of Jewish elements, such as a distinctive harmony and single note drones maintained beneath modal flourishes.  Zack is at his very best in Berio’s Sequenza VIII, which plays with the idea of closely pitched clusters of notes and, in a brilliant central section, a ghostly toccata of smudged semi quavers.  At one point, Zack excels himself by continuing the toccata while interjecting four-note chords into their flow without ever loosing the thread of the underlying semi quavers.  It’s a bravura moment from a very impressive violinist.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb-International.

Review: Ehnes's Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn
Violin Concerto in E minor

Octet

James Ehnes (violin)
Philharmonia Orchestra/Vladimir Ashkenazy
Musicians of the Seattle Chamber Music Society

ONYX 4060

We are very lucky that Canadian violinist James Ehnes is so frequent a visitor to this country; certainly, this recording of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, recorded live in Warwick with the Philharmonia Orchestra, is testament to the great work that he continues to do with British groups.  Ehnes’s view of the Mendelssohn concert is fiery and impassioned, while being admirably tender at turns.  He is imploring and swift in the opening melody, but the first movement’s second theme is fragile and intentionally hesitant.  Throughout the Andante, Ehnes holds the long melody with a beautiful legato, and his finale sparkles:  a wonderful little shift in the left hand into the finale’s lyrical countermelody [2:29] is evidence of the ease with which he is able to shape the music.  He does occasionally push a little too hard such as at 4:31, where his power produces one of the very few moments of intonational uncertainty.  But his sound on the whole is wonderfully warm, which is matched throughout by the Philharmonia.  A very quiet audience and a good reverberant acoustic round off this very attractive performance.     

Ehnes pairs one of Mendelssohn’s final masterpieces with his very earliest, the miraculously precocious Octet of 1825.  No matter how often one hears the piece, it remains difficult to believe that it is the work of a sixteen year old composer.  Too advanced to be considered juvenilia, the Octet nevertheless exudes the passions of youth, something which mature musicians can fail to grasp.  Ehnes and his colleagues from the Seattle Chamber Music Society certainly present an immaculate account of the Octet, but I’m not sure they capture the music’s exuberance. 

It begins very promisingly, with Ehnes and co setting an ideal tempo for the opening Allegro moderato.  This is a lean and subtly shaped performance, the virtues of which suit the first movement very well.  But I have doubts about this ensemble’s conception of the remaining three movements; that youthful fervour is largely absent from the Andante and the Scherzo lacks a vital degree of sparkle.  That’s not to say that there aren’t many fine moments; Ehnes, for example, dispatches the fiendishly difficult trilling passage at the centre of the Scherzo with nonchalant ease, but he generally fails to lead the ensemble into the dynamic extremes specifically requested by Mendelssohn in the score.  This is a good performance of the Octet, but not a great one; my own preference is for Hausmusik London’s performance on Virgin Veritas (5618092), though some will dislike the period instruments and lowered pitch.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb-International.

Small scale Górecki

"If ever there was a one-hit wonder, surely Henryk Górecki was it. Even when he died, in 2010 at the age of 76, his career was summed by a work rendered inexplicably famous during the 1990s which had itself languished in relative obscurity for a decade and a half. His Symphony No.3, known as Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, defied predictions that the wider public was not interested in contemporary classical music when David Zinman and Dawn Upshaw's Nonesuch recording climbed the charts; yet even when its composer died most people would have been hard-pressed to name another of his works."

Read my review of Górecki's String Quartets as played by the Royal String Quartet over at Classicalsource.

Review: Ruth Palmer's Hidden Acoustics

Hidden Acoustics

Bartok 

Sonata for solo violin
Bach

Partita No.2 for solo violin in D minor, BWV 1004  

Ruth Palmer (violin)

Nimbus Alliance NI6133

Ruth Palmer is an enterprising British violinist with a talent for creating intriguing projects. Her first album featured music by Shostakovich, accompanied by a self financed documentary about her own personal journey with the music of the Russian master. Now she turns to two great pillars of the solo violin repertoire: Bartok's fearsome Sonata and the great D minor Partita by Bach. The album Hidden Acoustics coincides with a tour taking in a number of unusual venues in which music can interact with space. Alas, I find I have missed her in my area, but this disc offers full recompense with gripping performances of these mighty works.

Late in life, the uncompromising hard edge of Bartok's music softened a little: works such as the Concerto for Orchestra, the Third Piano Concerto and even the Second Violin Concerto step back from the musical precipice glimpsed in some of his more astringent works of the 1920s and 30s. You'll have to look hard for that softness in the Sonata for solo violin of 1944, but it's there in the greater recourse to lyrical melodic material, particularly in the reserved beauty of the third movement. Palmer is adept at emphasising the moments of tenderness in this score, though her interpretation is also shot through with muscularity and tremendous momentum. It's a riveting performance of a forbidding work aided by her sense of the emotional narrative of the music. The individual voice of the Fuga might not be as carefully characterised as in Isabelle Faust's Harmonia Mundi  recording (HMG 508334-35), but Palmer makes a greater sense of the overall trajectory of the piece than I've heard from anyone else. She thankfully opts for the restored quarter-tones in the finale (originally excised by the work's dedicatee, Yehudi Menuhin, after Bartok's initial uncertainty as to the success of the effect) and her excellent intonation helps make this as compelling a case for this sonata as we're likely to hear.

Palmer is warm toned but urgent in Bach’s most formidable Partita, the D minor, capped by a broad and involving performance of the mighty Chaconne.  At just shy of 17 minutes, Palmer’s Chaconne occupies more than a quarter of the disc’s duration and in this most demanding of solo violin works she takes the long view, carefully pacing her performance rather than exploiting contrasts.  She doesn't push on with the defiance of Arthur Grumiaux (Philips 438 736-2), but she is more flexible in the four shorter movements than Julia Fischer is in her admirable recording for Pentatone (PTC 5186 072).   Appropriately, given the disc’s title, the acoustic space feel vast and reverberant, but we miss no detail of Palmer's performance, thanks to the vivid and close recording of the violin.  Rather, the vast space is felt when the music stops; in pauses and particularly at the end of the Chaconne, the sound rings out into the space as though continuing on its journey once it's left our ears.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb-International.

Review: Midori plays Paganini and Tchaikovsky

Paganini

Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, Op. 6

Tchaikovsky

Sérénade mélancolique, Op.26

Valse-Scherzo, Op. 34 

Midori (violin)

London Symphony Orchestra/

Leonard Slatkin

Newton Classics 8802028 

 

If you've noticed a slew of red topped Newton Classics discs appearing in online catalogues and stores, the good news is that their mining of the recorded past is set to continue and will ultimately lead to new recordings of their own.  One such reissue is this early recording by Japanese-American violinist Midori, who set these pieces down on disc in 1987, at the age of just 13.  Her subsequent success has seen her avoid the pitfalls of such early precocity and forge a continuously rewarding solo career, but that first flush of talent is captured here and makes for startling listening.

From her first entry in Paganini's First Violin Concerto, Midori's playing demands no special allowances for her age.  She's extrovert and characterful and has a greater perfection of intonation than some of her prominent seniors.  If you were without prior warning, you'd never know that this super confident playing belonged to one so young. Her subtle slides are stylish and in the taxing cadenza she remains unfazed and commanding.  In this Concerto, she is certainly superior in technique to Ilya Kaler on Naxos (8550694) and though Hilary Hahn is more crisply characterful and rhythmically incisive (Deutsche Grammophon 4776232), that hardly reduces Midori's achievement. If age is at all telling, it is in the more purely melodic moments which lack the expressive shading and nuance of a more mature musician.

It's this lack of maturity that makes Midori's performances of the two Tchaikovsky items less appealing. Although she still plays with a full, attractive tone, her way with the growing melody of the Serenade Melancolique is a little one dimensional. Once set, the dynamics and weight on the bow alter little and she suggests little in the way of spontaneity.  The bounce of the Valse Scherzo is absent, and Leonard Slatkin's leaden direction in the orchestral introduction doesn't help. It may seem churlish to pick on aspects of musicianship that a 13 year old cannot yet possibly have developed, but if you're going to buy this disc for the repertoire alone, you'd be best looking for alternatives in the Tchaikovsky.  Julia Fischer's Pentatone recording (PTC5186095), coupling these two charming works with the Violin Concerto and the Souvenir d'un lieu cher, is one of the best violin records of recent years and would serve as a better first port of call.

Ultimately, this reissue works best as a document of a remarkable case of early talent, with Midori offering a very enjoyable performance of Paganini's D major concerto and a technical security far beyond her years.  The violin is consistently well recorded, though sits rather more prominently in the mix than the orchestral accompaniment.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb-International.