Bach in a time of Coronavirus

What can violinists do when they're stuck at home? Julia Fischer's solution? Call some friends and record a joint Bach Chaccone, of course. In a Facebook post, she and her colleague explained:

I had the idea to do a "quarantine version" of Bach's Chaconne together with some other violinists. Here's what Augustin Hadelich says about how it started: "In early April, I was talking to my friend The Official Julia Fischer, and she told me about an idea she had during this quarantine: what if she played the first 8 bars of Bach's Chaconne and then asked friends and colleagues to record the other variations? I immediately jumped on board, and volunteered to compile the videos from everybody, and now the video is ready! Other members of the "cast" include (in order of appearance): Renaud Capuçon, Klaidi Sahatçi, Alexander Sitkovetsky, Nicola Benedetti, Andreas Janke, Daniel Röhn, Lisa Batiashvili, Lena Neudauer, James Ehnes, Stefan Jackiw, Rudens Turku and Vadim Gluzman! (And everyone plays more than once) It was really fun to work on something together, and this video will make for a lovely memory of this strange time in which we are living!"

Watch the complete performance(s) below:

Main image is a screenshot from the video. Images are used under the principle of "fair use" for the purposes of review and study, and will be removed at the request of the copyright holder(s). Read an extract from my article for The Strad magazine about Shostakovich's violin music, including interviews with Julia Fischer and Vadim Gluzman, here.

Baltic Nights with Britten Sinfonia

Alina Ibragimova (Photo: Sussie Ahlburg)

 

“Pēteris Vasks’s Violin Concerto “Distant Light” presses the button marked “spiritual angst” quite effectively, but for all its sincerity, feels hamstrung by the chunkiness of its transitions. Alina Ibragimova gave it the very best performance its composer can possibly have wished for (he was present and looked very pleased), directing the ensemble of strings while burrowing deep into its heartfelt expressive core with an unyielding intensity that marks her out as one of the world’s most powerfully persuasive violinists. It brought a large part of the audience to its feet but left me only intermittently touched. Ultimately, I’m unable to shake the feeling that Arvo Pärt does this sort of thing better.”

Read the full review at Classical Source.

Extreme Bach

I, for one, will not be trying this at home.

Maria Bachmann: Glass Heart

Glass Heart

Glass, Schubert, Bach/Gounod, Ravel

Maria Bachmann (violin)

Jon Klibonoff (piano)

Orange Mountain Music OMM7006

Maria Bachmann holds a cut glass heart before her on the cover of this violin recital disc and, indeed, the Glass is the heart of a programme ostensibly designed to compliment a new work for violin and piano.  Philip Glass has written a violin sonata and, with it, has stepped into a long and formidable tradition hinted at in this attractive and enjoyable album.  Does Glass's new work hold its own against such formidable companions as Schubert's great A major Sonata?  I'm not so sure.

Glass Heart follows swiftly from Orange Mountain Music's live recording of Glass's 2nd Violin Concerto, subtitled the American Four Seasons, but Maria Bachmann's playing on the present album presents none of the problems of Robert MacDuffie's strained and inconsistent performance in the concerto.  Bachmann's way with Glass is tender and gently expressive and her mellow tone is suited to the sonata.  She is well balanced with pianist Jon Klibonoff, who throughout demstroates the same sensitivity and lightness of touch.  The sonata, though, is less memorable.  For the most part, it feels like a retread of the familiar Glass style, complete with copious arpeggios and repetitive figurations.  It might seem ignorant to accuse the most high profile of minimalists of being repetitive, but here Glass's repetitions seem more to do with a musical style based around a paucity of material than one the hypnotic and slowly transforming minimalism of old.  Each movement is actually based on a conventional chaconne model and, in the case of the first movement, the sequence of underlying chords yields only limited possibilities.  There are some moments of finely realised beauty, however; the second movement stands out for its regretful and reflective character and its opening bars are really quite special.  If only the rest were that good.

The booklet notes suggest that the rest of the programme has been chosen to reflect aspects of Glass's musical character.  Gounod's heavenly Ave Maria melody over Bach's masterclass in arpeggiated writing is an obvious comparison, though I feel the Bach/Gounod team do it rather better.  I suppose certain works of Schubert share Glass's introspective quality, but not the Sonata in A (originally published as the Duo) and in any case, the comparison between Glass's Sonata and Schubert's isn't a kind one.  Schubert's Sonata is a great work, though Bachmann's subdued take on the first movement saps some of its energy.  She seems always to be pulling back from Klibonoff's more incisive accompaniment and is unresponsive to the darting changes of character.  Her playing is stylish, though some of her more extravagant shifts are in poor taste and she generally is better suited to Ravel's posthumously published violin sonata, which receives a lovely performance.  Again, the stated connection to Glass's music is dubious, but Bachmann's sweet tone and control of colour suit it perfectly. 

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.

Proms week 3: Part 2

We're doing very well for violin concertos at this year's Proms, though as (bad) luck would have it, I'll be missing many of the best at the other end of the series.  Prom 24 (BBCSO/Davis/Little - Elgar/Grainger/Strauss - August 2nd) gave us one of the very best:  The Elgar.  Tasmin Little has recently recorded it for Chandos, though hers appears shortly after acclaimed versions from James Ehnes and Nikolaj Znaider.  I've not heard her disc, so I'm not sure how it compares with this concert performance, but here it seemed that Little's interpretation was more successful at some moments than others.  The slow movement was particularly impassioned in her hands and the dream-like accompanied cadenza at the heart of the finale appropriately wistful, but in casting so much of the great first movement as a sombre elegy Little gave it a rather one dimensional reading.

One of the delights of a concert (and even more so a Prom), is that, unless you're one of those people who makes for the exit at half time, there's a good chance of hearing something totally unexpected and utterly wonderful.  Those moments are some of my most treasured concert memories - John Adams's Harmonielehre conducted by the composer; Saint-Saens Fifth Piano Concerto with Stephen Hough; a revelatory Brahms 1st Symphony with Mariss Jansons and the Concertgebouw when I didn't think I liked the piece.  I'm adding Percy Grainger's suite In a Nutshell to that list, which opened out in it's third movement, Pastorale, into an awe inspiring landscape with twinkling pianos and percussion redolent of Charles Ives at his zaniest.  UK readers should watch it on iplayer where it's available for a few more days.

My last Prom before the weekend was Wednesday's Prom 26 (BBC Scottish/Runnicles/Harrell - Debussy/Dutilleux/Ravel - August 3rd).  Runnicles has done great things with the BBC Scottish, though he's had a fine tradition from previous maestros Osmo Vanska and Ilan Volkov to build on.  His Daphnis et Chloe was terrific, resisting luxuriating in the fine details in favour of pace and balance; the playing and singing were also excellent and I really think we're in a golden age of the BBC orchestras (something politicians would be wise to realise before hacking away at the BBC any more).  A low key Prelude a l'apres midi d'un faune began the concert, though the flute solo at its outset was ruined by dreadful clattering from the boxes.  The level of coughing throughout the Prom was also infuriating; this seems to be particularly (though not exclusively) a Proms problem that isn't getting any better.

The string interest came with Lynn Harrell's traversal of Dutilleux's nocturnal cello concerto Tout un monde lointain... .  Harrell is a fan of the work and it showed is his flowing and transfixed performance.  His face was often a picture of wonderment, mouthing along to the rhythms of the orchestral tuttis and in an encore of music from Bach's Third Cello Suite, he beamed at the prommers, as though enjoying our enjoyment of what he was doing.

Life in general got in the way of the most recent few Proms, though I'd point you in the direction of the always interesting Richard Whitehouse at Classicalsource for Runnicles's second Prom and David Allen for coverage of the Second Coming of Dudamel and the Bolivars, and for yesterday's NYO Prom.

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.