Thoughful orchestral music from a true original

 

Charles Koechlin: Symphony no. 1

Charles Koechlin's First Symphony began in 1916 as a String Quartet - his Second - and was reconfigured for full orchestra by the composer in 1927. He adds orchestral colour in such a tasteful way; nothing garish, but subtle touches here and there, especially from the brass, opening things up from chamber music to a full romantic symphony orchestra experience. This is a modernist sound that also hearkens back to French music before Debussy and Ravel: one of his teachers at the Paris Conservatoire was Jules Massenet, and his fellow students included George Enescu and Florent Schmitt. Later he studied with Gabriel Fauré, along with Maurice Ravel, and it's Fauré who had the greatest influence on him. There isn't a lot of drama or incident in the symphony, but rather a thoughtful development of attractive themes. As with so much French music of the period, one can also hear the echoes of Richard Wagner, but strained through a French, and specifically Parisian, sensibility. This is music that deserves more attention, and it has a wonderful advocate in conductor Ariane Matiakh and the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen.

In the eight years between 1935 and 1943, Koechlin produced his 4-volume Traité de l'Orchestration (available to download at IMSLP here). Surely he made good use of his experience in adapting his String Quartet for full orchestra in the creation of this major project. Besides this work and his own compositions, Koechlin is known for his biography of Fauré (the first), and his significant work as a teacher. Among his pupils were Germaine Tailleferre, Roger Désormière, Francis Poulenc and Cole Porter.

There are two additional works on this album: the Symphonic Poem Au Loin, op. 20, from 1900; and 3 Mélodies, op. 17, written in the period 1895-1900. The latter are orchestrated by Robert Orledge, and sung beautifully here by soprano Patricia Petibon. Au Loin, as its name suggests, has a far away feeling, a high Romantic piece sounding more of the 19th century than the 20th. Both this and the songs owe a lot to Fauré, and I'm sure the teacher was proud of his student's work.

Charles Koechlin is such an appealing character: a fine composer embedded in the French conservatory tradition who charted his own course in his compositions. He was a passionate cinemaniac, writing his Second Symphony, "The Seven Stars" (also recorded by Ariane Matiakh) as an homage to the great Hollywood idols of the time. I love this portrait of the composer from 1948, two years before his death at 83. A wonderful playoff beard! A highly recommended recording.

Koechlin by Boris Lipnitzki, 1948

Vital reinventions of early music

Electric Fields: Music by Hildegarde von Bingen, Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, Bryce Dessner & David Chalmin

The Audio CD and streaming versions of this Alpha disc are now available. I'm reviewing the 180 gram double-LP version of this release, which is due to be released on June 6, 2025.

Photo by Umberto Nicoletti

Electric Fields is a project of this good-looking crew: soprano Barbara Hannigan, composer and electronics performer David Chalmin, and the duo-pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque. It's based on the music and texts of the remarkable medieval polymath Hildegarde von Bingen, as well as music by two women composers of the early Baroque: Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini. This music becomes the raw material for improvisations of the team, as well as original compositions by Chalmin and Bryce Dessner.

These are more than mere pastiches; they're serious 21st century reinterpretations of early music. Though there's an immersive feel to all the music here, especially with the warm sound of vinyl, this project is not built in the studio, but rather through live performances. That gives a vital pulse to the music, with even a hint of swing in the improvised pieces. Of course Barbara Hannigan is thoroughly familiar with Historically Informed Practice when it comes to the music of Strozzi and Caccini, so we're on solid ground when it comes to reinterpretation in a new idiom.

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia Harmonie Celestium Revelationum", published in modern facsimile by Alamire

You have to be of a certain age to look at this score of Hildegarde von Bingen and think immediately of IBM punch cards, but that was my first response. Hildegarde wrote this music some 850 years ago, so there's an element of translation involved in any performance. With the lack of any performance tradition in the intervening centuries, Hildegarde is a strong candidate for a true reinvention in modern times. Besides her skills as a musician, she had an interest in scientific analysis and even cryptography. There are two pieces on this album - by Bryce Dessner and David Chalmin - that use Hildegarde's "Lingua ignota", her invented language. The intellectual curiosity of this one-of-a-kind 12th century woman lives on in these two tracks, but one can also say that something of her spirit has also survived.

It's Heitor Villa-Lobos's modern reinvention of Bach in the mid-20th century that I kept coming back to when I listened to this music. Villa's Bachianas Brasileiras reinvents Bach's music in the light of Brazil's popular music traditions, of the Amerindians of the Amazon and the urban choros musicians of Rio de Janeiro. Like the Bachianas, Electric Fields is a vital hybrid of old and new, erudite and popular.

It's all grist for the mill:

• The Labeque sisters' recordings of Mozart, Schubert, Gershwin, Philip Glass, Moondog and many others;
• Bryce Dessner's contemporary classical compositions and collaborations with people like Sufjan Stevens and Nico Muhly, as well as his experience in the rock group The National; 
• Barbara Hannigan's operatic singing, especially in the Baroque repertoire, and her move to become an important conductor, with wonderful recordings of Nono, Messiaen, Berg, Ligeti and others;
• David Chalmin's production work in jazz and classical music, his electronic composition and live electronic performance, as well as his collaborations with the Labeque sisters.

There seem to be no barriers for these wonderful musicians. They've produced an album that will reward multiple listens and close study, but which is also just there in its particular groove, inspiring wonder.

21st century sounds with echoes from the past

 Erkki-Sven Tüür: Symphony no. 10, "Aeris"; Phantasma; De Profundis

Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;

Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive

    to my cry for mercy.
- Psalm 130, A song of ascents

This new CD, due to be released on May 23, 2025, contains a major new symphony by the great Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür, his Tenth, subtitled "Aeris" and written in 2023. As well, there are two additional substantial works for orchestra, Phantasma, from 2018, and De Profundis, from 2013.

This music is by no means avant-garde; it's mainly in the modernist idiom of the mid-20th century, atonal but as accessible as the best orchestral film music. Indeed, its expressive, highly diversified sounds have the richness of John Williams or Howard Shore's best scores, or even those of Bernard Herrmann. This is music written for virtuoso orchestral players, and Olari Elts gets impressive performances from the Estonian National Orchestra. 

Tüür's 10th Symphony is written as a one-movement Symphony Concertante, with solo parts for four horns, played beautifully here by German Hornsound. This adds texture the Symphony, and the horn sounds provide echoes of the musical past - Mozart, Schumann, Von Weber, Wagner, Richard Strauss - to its 21st century soundscape.

The remaining two orchestral works provide some dramatic contrast to the mainly static Symphony. Phantasma is a brooding piece that makes use of micro-interval clusters. It was written as an homage to Ludwig van Beethoven, and is based on a theme from his Coriolanus Overture.

Tüür based De Profundis on Psalm 130; it's a kind of musical prayer which, like the Psalm, begins in the depths and ascends to a place of redemption.

ECM is doing a major service to music lovers with their series of recordings of the Estonian composer's work. I look forward to future releases.

I was surprised and pleased to learn more about Erkki-Sven Tüür's musical beginnings. In 1983, at the age of 20, he headed up the Estonian prog-rock group In Spe. This is in the pastoral style of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull and Gentle Giant. It's an impressive debut, and an interesting path that he began that's led him to become one of the finest contemporary classical composers.

A worthwhile Shostakovich grab-bag

Shostakovich: Chamber Symphony, String Quartets, Piano Music

This new 4-CD set coming on June 6, 2025 consists of recordings made by Capriccio and BR Klassik in the period 2004-06. There's a lot of music here - about four hours altogether - and it's definitely a worthwhile purchase, at a bargain price.

Here are the complete contents of the set:

The first CD includes some works from this 2004 CD from Capriccio, namely Rudolph Barshai's version of the 8th String Quartet for String Orchestra, the Prelude and Scherzo, op. 11, and Alfred Schnittke's Prelude in Memory of Dimitri Shostakovich. These are all marvellous works, and good performances. The Schnittke piece is especially moving, and a valuable addendum to such a large compendium of Shostakovich's music.

As well, the first disc includes Lena Auerbach's arrangement of the Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, op. 143, from a 2006 CD. These are poignant poems sung by soprano Zoryana Kushpler, with comments from a string quartet, here the Petersen String Quartet of Berlin, sometimes pithy, sometimes full of compassion.

Here's the original Capriccio BR Klassik album cover for the Piano Quintet and two String Quartets on CD 2, from 2005:

There's a lot of music to review here, and I've only listened all the way through once. But I like what I've heard so far. Of course, with the String Quartets, the bar is set very high, by groups like the Borodin Quartet, the Fitzwilliam Quartet, the Brodsky Quartet, and my favourite, the Pacifica Quartet. The Petersen Quartet don't give us the total experience that these intense readings provide, but these are more than passable interpretations. Their relaxed approach is perhaps better matched to Shostakovich's fraught 4th Quartet than to the spring-like First, which flags at times rather than flowing freely.

The Piano Quintet is most probably the greatest work in this set, with the most daunting recording competition. There are 70 recordings on Apple Classical; my favourites are Sviatoslav Richter with the Borodin Quartet, Marc-André Hamelin with the Takács Quartet, and Martha Argerich with Maisky, Margulis, Capuçon & Chen. Ewa Kupiec and the Petersen Quartet provide a fine performance here, though perhaps not in the same league as these.

CDs 3 and 4 are filled with music for one and two pianos, played by Margarete Babinsky and Holger Busch, originally released on this 2-CD set from 2006:

I love Shostakovich's music for solo piano, most especially his great set of Preludes and Fugues, op. 87, from 1950/51. His 24 Preludes, op. 34, recorded here by Margarete Babinsky, are from 1932, and are as indebted to Chopin as his Preludes & Fugues are to Bach. The composer's shifting moods and his use of mock heroism, sarcasm and parody give the performer lots of room for interpretation, and I generally like Babinsky's choices here. Of course she doesn't bring the same authenticity to Shostakovich's piano music that Tatiana Nikolayeva does, but there is no single right way to play this music. And Babinsky has considerable technique, though her 36-second version of the Fifth Prelude doesn't go quite as hard or as fast as some I've heard. Andrey Gugnin's 2019 recording on Hyperion probably wins that particular competition, though I don't condone drag races on piano keyboards. (19 seconds, but who's counting?)

I was likewise impressed with both of Babinsky's versions of the two Piano Sonatas, the 1st from 1926-27, and the 2nd from 1943.  The First provides a portrayal of the October Revolution of 1917 unfiltered by the Soviet Realism of Shostakovich's October Symphony, his no. 2. It's powerful music, capably communicated by Babinsky. The Second is also impressive, especially the remarkable theme and variations of the third movement, which the pianist builds with Hitchcockian suspense.

Shostakovich wrote his Concertino for Two Pianos for his teenage son Maxim to play with a fellow student, and there's a very pleasant family feeling to the piece. Margarete Babinsky and Holger Busch don't make too big a meal of this work; there's lots of drama here, but I don't think the stakes are especially high. A fun piece!

So this has been a pretty rapid tour of a big chunk of the much, much bigger chunk of music Shostakovich wrote in almost every genre, over a working life of five decades. Though none of these performances is in the top rank, they're all better than average, and some considerably better. Thanks to Capriccio and BR Klassik for this compilation!

A serial beginning; a neo-romantic future

Guerra-Peixe: Symphonies no. 1 and 2; Nonet

Here's a welcome release in the "Music of Brazil" series from Naxos, a must for everyone interested in the classical music of that great country. It's their version of Mostly Mozart: Not Just Villa-Lobos. A few years ago I reviewed an earlier disc in the series that included music by César Guerra-Peixe, performed by the same forces on this album: The Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra under Neil Thomson, though this time we have two choirs added: the Goiânia Symphony Choir and the Goiás Youth Symphony Choir.

Guerra-Peixe was born, and died, about 30 years after Heitor Villa-Lobos; his music represents a major shift in the classical music of Brazil. After World War II, serialism came to the country in the person of Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, a pupil of Paul Hindemith. Guerra-Peixe and a number of his colleagues formed the forward-looking Música Viva group under Koellreutter's guidance.

By the 1940s Villa-Lobos, once the firebrand revolutionary who established new music in his home country - he was the only composer represented in the Semana de Arte Moderna in São Paulo in 1922 - now represented the musical establishment. Villa had moved away from modernism towards an idiom heavily inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach, tinged with folkloric content, a merger of African, European and Indigenous folk musics. Villa was firmly opposed to serialism, and never even dabbled in it, unlike modernist colleagues like Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland.

There are two works on this disc that represent Guerra-Peixe's serial period: the First Symphony, from 1945-46, and the Nonet, from 1945. The Symphony is a fine example of a serial work, severe and spiky; but still, this is quite accessible music. The Nonet is written for flute, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, cello and piano. Guerra-Peixe must have known Villa's Nonetto, written during his peak modernist phase in 1923, but the two works have little in common. That's partly a question of scope: Villa's interpretation of the number "9" was stretched to include a complete mixed choir (for up to 12 separate voices!), a large battery of percussion instruments, and the doubling of the flute with a piccolo, and the alto saxophone with a baritone sax. And the contrast in style is also clear: Guerra-Peixe's work is austere and inward-looking, but Villa's is, in a word sprawling. Villa's Nonetto is a great work, perhaps his greatest; Guerra-Peixe's Nonet is remarkable, a masterpiece, perhaps, but it seems like it was time for the young composer to move on.

Considering the controversy of Música Viva's reaction against Villa-Lobos in the 40s and 50s, it's a surprise that in the late 50s Guerra-Peixe should have made the same move that Villa made in the late 1930s, from modernism (Villa) or serialism (Guerra-Peixe) to nationalism through popular and folkloric music. It's perhaps no coincidence that Villa-Lobos died in 1959, and Guerra-Peixe's new tonal style came to fruition in his Symphony no. 2, "Brasilia".

The Brasilia Symphony is an out-and-out romantic work, fiercely nationalistic, and quite beautiful. The choral passages are stirring. With its modern new capital, Brazil was moving ahead, and it had a new generation of musicians leading the way: Santoro, Guarnieri, Mendes, Guerra-Peixe, as well as another Koellreuter pupil: Tom Jobim.

The wonderful cover art is Sol nascente, by Pablo Borges.

This album will be released on May 15, 2025.
 

My music growing fainter

Salieri: Piano Concertos

"Mozart’s corpus of piano concertos remains one of the most perfect achievements in all of Western music, on a par with Bach’s cantatas. That’s the miracle of this music." 
     - Andreas Staier

"Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art."
     - Peter Shaffer, Amadeus 

Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus, made into a wonderful film by Miloš Forman in 1984, has given us a very particular, and not at all accurate, picture of Mozart's rival, Antonio Salieri. It's a tribute to Shaffer and Forman, and most especially F. Murray Abraham, who played Salieri in the film, that this portrayal is the first thing I thought of when I came across this new disc of Salieri Piano Concertos. Chances are you did as well.

F. Murray Abraham as Salieri. Photo by Phil Bray, 1984

What this means is that even before we listen to this record for the first time, we've lined up Mozart's Piano Concertos on one side - pieces that everyone, most especially including Abraham/Shaffer's Salieri, agrees are miraculous works of art. On the other side is the unfortunate Salieri, the second-rater who came up against Mozart, who he feels is God's Beloved. 

"He killed Mozart and kept me alive to torture! 32 years of torture! 32 years of slowly watching myself become extinct. My music growing fainter, all the fainter till no one plays it at all, and his..."  

Back to the real world: The two Salieri piano concertos recorded here were written in 1773, when he was only 23. They're both confident, melodious and written in the latest galant style. The composer must have been proud of both of them; think of the smug performance of F. Murray Abraham early in the film. He had every right to be smug: he was at the top of his game, soon to be the maestro di cappella of the Imperial Court. 

One thing that's clear from listening to these two piano concertos, and those of composers like Joseph Haydn and Bach's sons, is that the 18th century galant piano concerto is a marvellous creation, providing operatic drama, tunefulness and opportunities to wow the musical cognoscenti of the time. They're just fun to listen to, and from the evidence of this recording, to play as well.

These are fine performances: conductor Giulio Arnolfi keeps things moving briskly, and gets stylish playing from the excellent musicians of the Accademia d'Archi Arrigoni. Pianist Constantino Catena provides elegant, assured, singing tones from his piano. He and Arnolfi are in synch, and together give us a pretty fair picture of Salieri at his best. By the way, both conductor and pianist get their chance to shine alone: in the Sinfonia in D Major "La Veneziana", a short work that shows how much at home Salieri was in the opera world. And for solo piano, a Sonata in C Major that sounds an awful lot like Scarlatti or Haydn, which is high praise. Wonderful stuff!

Both the C major and B-flat Major Piano Concertos have many felicities: some up front and obvious, especially both slow movements, which are lyrical without being overly sentimental. Though there aren't any really memorable themes in either opening movement, these are well-constructed, dramatically successful musical journeys, largely skirting the banal.

When I first heard the Menuetto of the B-flat Major Concerto I thought it was clunky, but in fact Salieri is doing this deliberately; he immediately provides relief with witty passagework for the solo piano. And he keeps us on our toes throughout, with mock-heroic themes, operatic pauses and flourishes, along with more elaborate passagework. In this movement the composer is closest to C.P.E. Bach or Haydn, the composer as magician.

So in the year 1773 things are looking pretty good for Salieri on the piano concerto front. And then, in December, disaster strikes. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who's only just turned 17 (he's six years younger than Salieri), writes his first real piano concerto, in D major, K. 175. No contest. Game over. No más!

Okay, so Salieri wrote some perfectly fine piano concertos, but he was blindingly eclipsed by a teenager on his first try. He still had much more fame and acclaim in his life than Wolfie, who died a largely unappreciated pauper. In his Book of Friends, Hugo von Hofmannsthal tells this story:

When someone mentioned to Kapellmeister Schwanenberg, a friend of Salieri’s, the rumor that Mozart had been poisoned by the Italian, Schwanenberg replied: “Non ha fatto nulla, per meritar tal onore. [He did nothing to merit such an honor.]”

I come away from this fine new recording, and the research I've put into this review, with a new appreciation for Salieri the composer. He isn't the mediocrity that I've lazily assumed him to be. And yet, somehow, the next time I see a new recording by Salieri (and it won't be for a while, I expect), I'll be right back where I started, with F. Murray Abraham's powerful performance overwriting everything we've learned about the unfortunate Salieri.

Ransom Stoddard: You’re not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?
Maxwell Scott: No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
     - from John Ford's 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence 

 

The Certain and Uncertain Symphony

 Molécule - Symphonie no. 1, "Quantique"

"This symphony is an imaginary and symbolic representation made up of probabilities, intuitions, certainties and uncertainties. It is an artistic adventure charged with encounters, openness, benevolence and learning; its cardinal point is love for sound and its vibrations."
- Romain De La Haye-Serafini, aka Molécule

"All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."
- Frank Zappa 

This fascinating new symphony by the electronic musician Molécule was made in remarkable way. The composer attended rehearsals of the Orchestre National de Lille over a period of two years, recording everything: 

"... the sliding of strings, harmony, the cracking of instruments, silences, melodies, musicians’ breaths, the inaudible frequencies of a double bass... I wasn’t looking for perfect notes, but for a collection of sounds that would give me enough material to start composing."

This gave Molécule his sound palette. He took those sounds, manipulated them, and then recombined them into the standard four-movement symphonic format we all know and love. After he had created his soundscape, it was transcribed by Sinan Asiyan into standard orchestral notation, and played by the 83 musicians of the orchestra, led by its conductor Alexandre Bloch.

Molécule's earlier works involved a more adventurous sound recording stage; he gathered sounds in Arctic Greenland, and at the legendary huge waves of Nazaré in Portugal. But as he says in this video, the project with the Lille orchestra had its own artistic risks:

Molécule's sound-gathering is the most interesting and innovative part of both his earlier work and the Symphonie project. It might be analogous to Bartok or Villa-Lobos's ethnomusical forays into the Hungarian countryside and the Amazon rainforest. Meanwhile, the classical sound collage has been a staple of post World War II avant garde music: Mauricio Kagel's Ludwig Van, from 1969, is a good example:

But as cool as the process is, the proof of this particular pudding is in the music itself. There are certainly some impressive moments in the finished works, and I was swept up in some peak passages throughout. The problem with this kind of pastiche is also its strength: the best-sounding bits are the least original. There are plenty of modernist clichés and avant garde clichés and movie soundtrack clichés in this work. But of course, the parts that sound the most like John Williams or Howard Shore also sound like those composers' (acknowledged) forebears: Gustav Holst and Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Though Molécule actually samples particular works - for example, Debussy's La Mer and Holst's The Planets in Mouvement II, No. 3: 335 398 400 - most of the source material has been massaged so that only echoes of the original music can be heard.

Symphonie no. 1, in the end, can stand on its own as a success of outstanding process and workmanlike structure. Listen for yourself: