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.

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Read previous record reviews here.

Back Reviewing Concerts: Nicholas McGegan Conducts the Bournemouth Symphony

Conductor Nicholas McGegan (Photo: Steve J Sherman)

I haven’t reviewed a concert in quite a while, so it was good to get back in the business, thanks to Bachtrack. Conductor Nicholas McGegan and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra certainly brought sensitivity and vitality to a collection of pieces by Shcubert, Mozart and Beethoven:

"At the other end of the programme, a rather more serious proposition in four movements: Schubert’s reasonably early but oh-so-mature Fifth Symphony. A product of Schubert’s 19th year, the Fifth demonstrates the charms of a composer who never seems to have suffered the stylistic growing pains of a man struggling for a mature voice. It was here that McGegan drew the best from the BSO, letting the music flow, bringing it to life by making the most of dynamic contrasts and pointed accents. He saw no need to tug at the tempi, and the orchestra responded with playing of considerable subtlety, a case in point being the hushed but nuanced sound of the strings giving space to the conversations of wind instruments as the first movement slipped from exposition to development."

Read the whole thing at Bachtrack.

Roger Chesterfield: Dreaming of Schubert

Veteran record producer and music critic Roger Chesterfield encounters one of history’s greatest, and apparently crankiest, musicians.

I think what began as a late-evening snifter must have turned into two or more likely three, and before I knew it – bound volume of the 1957 Gramophone on my lap and snoozing dog at my feet – I drifted into that special slumber only the older bottlings of Highland Park seem to induce. Perhaps it was the fascinating article on exposition repeats in Schubert’s later works (The Gramophone, April 1957, p.44), but the glow of the fire beside me seemed to transform into a somewhat murky scene of an enticing gathering of people, cut through with a particularly splendid turn at the piano (Schubert’s Deutsch 960, if I’m not mistaken), somewhat beyond the range of my vision. And as I approached the congregation, I happened upon a smallish plump figure standing apart, looking on with an air of depression.

I must say, I spoke before really realising just who I was addressing, but as I uttered the words, I identified my interlocutor with nervous delight.

“I say, odd place for a party”, I blurted.

“Some party when one’s music is trashed with chat and giggles!” said the man with something approaching irritation, and as he turned, so appeared the face of Franz Peter Schubert himself! Somewhat dumbfounded, I stammered and stuttered a little and received a look shot through with ire for my efforts.

“Do you presume to add further to the barrage of nonsense currently destroying my greatest work for the keyboard?!”

I replied that I did not, and then, understanding that I might not have caught Vienna’s most unfairly unloved musical son at the best of moments, remembered that on meeting one’s heroes, it was wise to pose some pressing question while the opportunity remained.

“I say”, I began, “I suppose you might not be aware, but your music is rather more appreciated in my day than it ever was in yours” – a softer look and a nod now for the great man, which I took as progress – “but I wonder if I might ask just one thing. It’s always bothered me, you see, and Alfred Brendel says it’s acceptable, but is it really alright to forgo the exposition repeat in the B flat Sonata? I imagine Brendel is as qualified to say as anybody, but it just isn’t cricket…”

I trailed off, sensing from Schubert’s tightening features that the tricky matter of exposition repeats was not the fruitful topic of conversation it seemed at so many meetings of the editorial board of Historical Record Quarterly. The next words seemed to explode from his pursed lips with all the pent up bile of one subjected to an entire Lang Lang concert:

“One question. ONE QUESTION!” – shouting now – “and that’s your question?! Don’t you people have ANY sense of priority? Not “Oh, dear Franz Peter, why was your life so tragically cut short?” Or even “Oh, how ever did you plan to end the Unfinished”? No, just more of this inane obsession with repeats and dynamics, as if I didn’t already have to spend an eternity fielding endless such irrelevances from Johannes Brahms.”

There was, needless to say, a fairly grim atmosphere developing that even the fairly blunt Chesterfield social radar had no trouble detecting. I uttered some faltering apologies before he cut in, this time in a more conciliatory manner:

“No, no, the apologies should be mine. It isn’t unreasonable to ask, but, my friend,” – I liked that, liked that a lot – “does it really matter? Play the repeats, don’t play the repeats, it’s all still there in the score. And after all, it isn’t as though anyone can’t read the score, is it!” This didn’t seem the time to inform him of the twenty-first century’s lamentable levels of musical literacy. “It’s more important that you feel and think and listen than worry about whether everyone heard the exposition the first time around. This is exactly what I’ve been telling Brahms, but his brain seems to be diminishing in inverse proportion to the size of his beard. Oh dear, here comes the cloth-eared buffoon now."

This seemed a bit harsh, especially given my recent acquaintance with some of Brahms’s splendid but neglected choral works, but as the elderly figure shuffled in our direction, the vision of the gathering and of my young Viennese companion faded, robbing me of the chance to enquire about Brahms’s recent fortunes with Clara Schumann. With a start, I snapped out of sleep as the ’57 Gramophone struck the floor, waking both me and the dog. I wondered blearily if I should raise these thoughts on the always-controversial issue of repeats at the next Historical Record Quarterly editorial meeting. Given, though, that William Fitz-Tuckwell’s recent contention that applause might be appropriate between the first and second movements of the Emperor Concerto had very nearly ended in bloodshed, I reasoned that perhaps my own fireside encounter with Schubert might not be accepted as the last word on the matter.

Read Roger Chesterfield's previous guest post here: Wagner's Clap.

Bychkov and OAE impress with Schubert in Basingstoke

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Bychkov

The Anvil, Basingstoke

5 April 2014

Semyon Bychkov

When Ludwig van Beethoven died, in 1827, 20,000 people lined the streets of Vienna to watch his funeral procession pass. Among them was the 30 year old Franz Schubert, an ardent admirer of his older colleague, but when he himself passed away, a year later, his death was little marked beyond his own circle of friends and family.  Beethoven’s fame was immediate and unprecedented; Schubert’s reputation grew slowly over many decades, thanks in part to the rediscovery of his epic final symphony, subtitled the ‘Great’, which the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and eminent Russian conductor Semyon Bychkov placed alongside Beethoven’s Seventh for this Anvil performance.

The vast scale and difficulty of Schubert’s ‘Great’ Symphony (sometimes dubiously known as the Ninth) baffled those who saw the score in the first years after it was composed. Today, however, it’s now a central part of the repertoire and the OAE proved how totally modern orchestras are able to manage its hour-long duration. Bychkov chose his tempos carefully, making sure to sustain the piece’s remarkable, unbroken momentum, and the orchestra responded with beautifully refined and tireless playing that balanced their customary concern for historically-informed performance with richness of sound not always associated with period-instrument ensembles. So many of Schubert’s late masterpieces speak to us with a profound expressive power that seems barely believable from such a young man, and this symphony is no expectation – this is never truer than in the infinitely touching central section of the third movement, rendered with melting tenderness by orchestra and conductor.

Bychkov’s steadiness and certainty – such virtues in the Schubert – proved less well suited to Beethoven’s feisty Seventh Symphony, dubbed “the apotheosis of the dance” by Richard Wagner. Much of this music revolves obsessively around dance-infused rhythms and motifs, needing an excitable performance to truly bring it to life. Perhaps Bychkov hoped to retreat from the crazed power that can inhabit this piece and invest it with greater nobility, but in putting off the energetic vigour until the finale he missed the riotous unpredictability that courses through this music. He wanted for nothing from the orchestra, but the impression was of an approach better suited to one composer than the other. 

This review originally appeared in the Basingstoke Gazette.

Review: Joshua Bell and Sam Haywood at Wigmore Hall

Bell & Haywood

Joshua Bell and Sam Haywood at Wigmore Hall, London

11 December, 2012

Of all the violinists doing the rounds, Joshua Bell seems closest to the model of the mid-twentieth century greats who made their way in America – as comfortable in the serious repertoire as in showpieces and the old-style crossover. His Wigmore Hall programme – given with regular recital partner Sam Haywood – offered the kind of variety that we’re used to from this hugely popular American violinist. It alighted on the territory of some of the last century’s greatest – Heifetz and Oistrakh – and found him standing tall in their company.

Bell began with Schubert’s Rondo in B minor, D895 - a vigorous workout of a piece that tripped up the violinist more than once. Largely, though, his rapid finger-work was precise and his tone wonderfully clear. He was on surer ground in Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata in E flat, Op.18, which revels in the kind of long singing lines that Bell is so good at carrying. It’s one of those finely crafted but rather anonymous early Strauss pieces that offers only glimpses of the instantly recognisable style familiar from the career that followed. Strauss struck his personal sound very suddenly in 1889, the year after composing the Sonata, with Don Juan; had we known him only from the Violin sonata, we’d remember a fiercely Romantic imagination coupled with forgettable melodies. There are some intriguing things, though, in the slow movement, such as the gently turbulent figures that dog the piano part – so delicately captured by Haywood – and the sudden burst of fire that grips the finale in its closing moments.

Bell suspects the influence of Gershwin (or at any rate, jazz) on Prokofiev’s Second Violin Sonata. I can’t hear it, but he placed Jascha Heifetz’s arrangements of Gershwin’s Three Preludes before the Sonata to make the point. The Preludes, originally for piano, sit a little awkwardly when spread between two instruments, but Bell’s swaggering way with them had an authenticity that I suspect only a New Yorker can muster.

Prokofiev originally composed the Second Violin Sonata for flute, adapting it for violin at the suggestion of David Oistrakh. He then wrote what became known as the First Violin Sonata – a work of such ferocious mechanical anguish that the Second can seem a pale flower beside it. Bell and Haywood, though, made it surging but nostalgic and richly coloured. Bell’s vivid sense of narrative flow carried it in a way I’ve never heard before, enriching it with a fragile turn of phrase that didn't negate power. The audience went wild for what followed – Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen and an arrangement for Chopin’s C sharp minor Nocturne – but it was the Prokofiev that stole the evening.

UK readers can hear the recital on BBC iPlayer until Tuesday December 18th.

Things to do in Vienna when you're dead

I couldn't visit Vienna without making the pilgrimage to see Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert in their final resting places. Luckily, the Zentralfriedhof is on the line out to the airport, making a visit to Vienna's central cemetery very easy. You've got to have the legs for it, though: the cemetery covers a slightly larger area than the city centre and, if you walk from one side to the other, like I did with my suitcase, you'll get a good workout to boot. Luckily for you, I took some snaps of the composers I found.

Mozart's memorial. Mozart is actually buried up the road, near a big motorway junction. Yes, we do know where he is buried, though the precise plot isn't known.

Beethoven, sitting just behind the Mozart memorial and next to Schubert. The two were exhumed from their original graves and reburied here in the late nineteenth century. Apparently, Bruckner had to be dragged away from their corpses. Nice.

 

Schubert, to the right of Beethoven's grave.

Brahms, looking a bit worried, as you'd expect.

Hugo Wolf, looking a little like he'd expected there to be the body of a muscle man painted below the hole for his head.

An appropriately modernist grave for Arnold Schoenberg.

Zemlinsky, with the shiniest grave in the cemetery.

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.