Miraculous recordings from a great master

 Wilhelm Kempff: Bach, Mozart, Schubert & Schumann

This welcome historic release from APR Recordings includes Wilhelm Kempff's complete recordings for Polydor of music by Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Schumann, made in the period 1927 to 1936. We have here nearly 75 minutes of music, which together make for an appealing recital.

Indeed, though I know Kempff primarily through his recordings of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, I would find almost anything the great pianist plays to be appealing. But there's something special about these recordings, something quite miraculous. In spite of the relatively primitive technology involved in these early electrical recordings, I had no trouble at all forgetting sonic imperfections, and zeroing in on a great master channeling great composers. The French Suite no. 5 of Bach, recorded in 1935, is the highlight of the disc; it's a masterful interpretation. I was in awe of this from the first time I heard it, since I had the strong feeling that Kempff was communicating his own awe, as he so often does with Beethoven, before a great masterwork.

I was quite surprised by Kempff's interpretation of Mozart's Piano Sonata in A major, K. 331, recorded in 1935. It seems much more modern than I would have expected, with crisp, carefully delineated lines, and no hint of the romanticizing prettiness that plagued Mozart music of the period. While not completely Historically Informed, this performance once again demonstrates a real, personal connection between pianist and composer.

There are a number of Kempff transcriptions here, including some Bach pieces that have entered the repertoire of many pianists, and a very clever reworking of Liszt's version of Schubert's "Hark, Hark, the Lark!". The disc ends with a beautiful dream: Schumann's Träumerie, recorded in 1936.

I've characterized the piano playing of Wilhelm Kempff as a miracle, but there's another, albeit smaller, miracle involved in this release. It's quite amazing that one can listen to all of this music with little acoustic worries. That's a testament to the state-of-the-art German engineering behind the recordings themselves, but also, of course to work since then by the Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer for this project, Mark Obert-Thorn. The many years between recording and listening seem simply to vanish.

Stephen Siek's liner essay is first-rate, mixing in technical details, but making sure that storytelling prevails. Learning about Kempff's 1934 trip to Buenos Aires on the Graf Zeppelin adds a great deal to the charm of the entire project.

This disc will be released March 4, 2022.

Skeletal charm

 

Puccini, Strauss & Tchaikovsky: Opera Suites for Nonet, Act II

This is the second disc of Stefan Potzmann's clever arrangements of opera excerpts for a chamber ensemble of strings and winds. Puccini, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss are the perfect composers for this type of project, since they're all brilliant melodists, and the operas chosen - La Bohème, Elektra and Eugene Onegin - all have enough diverse elements to build dramatic suites of instrumental music. Of course there's much lost when the voices are tossed, but the musical bones that remain have their own skeletal charm. The committed performances of the nine members of Ensemble Minui makes this release a real treat - perhaps even better than the first in the series.

This album isn't yet available on Spotify, so I'll add a link to Ensemble Minui's Act I, released in 2020. Music by Puccini, Richard Strauss and Dvorak.

The long sobs of violins of autumn

 Harrison Birtwistle: Chamber Works

In the score for his 2011 Trio for Piano, Violin & Cello, Harrison Birtwistle adds the first section of Paul Verlaine's poem "Chanson d'automne":

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
   De l’automne

The long sobs
Of violins
   Of autumn

These lines were sent by the Allies' Special Operations Executive to the French Resistance in 1944, providing information about the upcoming Invasion of Normandy. I have no idea whether there's any extra-musical schema behind Birtwistle's marvellous piece; I couldn't find any reference to this on the web. However, the headings in the score - "choked and pale," "chiming of the hours", "an ill wind" - evoke at the very least emotions or states of mind. So it might not be completely fanciful to see a D-Day background in this anxious, foreboding music. The work is played with assurance and elan by violinist Benjamin Nabarro, cellist Adrian Brendel and pianist Tim Horton. Adrian Brendel, who is the son of the great pianist Alfred Brendel, also played on the 2014 recording of the Birtwistle Trio on a superb ECM recording.

Birtwistle's music seems to be connected in a more or less straight line to the modernist tradition of Stravinsky and Messiaen. The other works on this album - the Duet for 8 Strings from 2018, Pulse Sampler for Oboe and Percussion in a version also from 2018, and the Oboe Quartet from 2009-10 - demonstrate that the modernism of the early and mid 20th century is still viable in the 21st. The members of the Nash Ensemble provide stylish and lively performances of this important composer's music.

The cover of the album features a fine portrait of the composer by Philip Gatward.

Wonderful Leclair Concerti from Basel

Jean-Marie Leclair: Concerti per Violino, op. 7 & 10, no. 4 & 5

Jean-Marie Leclair wrote two sets of six violin concertos: his op. 7 from 1739 and op. 10 from 1743. This is the third and final release from Glossa of these twelve works with the very fine violinist Leila Schayegh and La Cetra Barockorchester Basel. The works are cleverly arranged on disc, with two from each set per disc; this time we have numbers 4 & 5 from each. 

These are scrupulously Historically Informed Performance recordings. Schayegh plays a marvellous Andrea Guarneri: Santa Teresia, from Cremona, 1675. The band is a compact group with four violins (plus a second solo violin), two violas, two cellos, one violone and harpsichord, played at A = 408 Hz.

Leclair's violin concertos show the influence of the Italian masters: Corelli, Vivaldi, and especially Pietro Locatelli. It was Locatelli's presence in Amsterdam in 1743 that caused Leclair to travel to Holland. The two are almost exact contemporaries; the Italian composer was a year and a half older. I'm sure that there was a give and take in Amsterdam between these two virtuoso violinists and wonderful composers. By the way, both composers died in the same year: Locatelli in March of 1764, and Leclair in October. Unfortunately, the circumstances of the French composer's death are grim; he was murdered by an unknown assailant. 

Locatelli has long been one of my favourite Baroque composers. I only knew Leclair from his chamber music with violin, and didn't realize how appealing his violin concertos are. I don't think I could have been introduced to this music by a better violinist and orchestra. This is superb playing: stylish and sophisticated. I plan on listening to the first two releases in this series, and I'm definitely up for anything these fine musicians release in the future!

The wonderful album cover design for all three releases is by Rosa Tendero.

  

Leclair Concerto Per Violino vol. 2

Leclair Concerto Per Violino vol. 1

 

Spirited and tender Beethoven Concerti

Beethoven: Triple Concerto, Piano Concerto no. 0

In 1964, the writer George Plimpton wrote Paper Lion, about his time in the training camp of the Detroit Lions. His jersey bore the number "0". In his first time playing before a crowd, he quarterbacked the 1st-string Lions Offence against the 1st-string Defence. After three plays he was back on his own one yard-line, "just a yard away from the complete humiliation of having moved a team backward from the 20-yard line to a safety."

George Plimpton, #0, with Joe Schmidt, by Walter Iooss, Jr.

"I did not take my helmet off when I reached the bench. It was painful to do—wrenching it past my ears—and there was security in having it on. I was conscious of the big zero on my back facing the crowd when I sat down."

I was certainly conscious of the big zero in the title of the Beethoven Piano Concerto no. 0, WoO 4. The composer was only 14 when he wrote it, in 1784. But this is by no means an amateur piece; rather, it's a creditable effort in the galante style of the time. It's not badly constructed, though the themes are mainly pedestrian, it's flashily rather than organically virtuosic, & it runs a bit long. What it does have in common with George Plimpton's experience is the same against-all-appearances optimism and good humour. This isn't the grumpy composer of later years, but a youthful, exuberant Beethoven. Pianist Ekaterina Litvintseva is careful not to make too big a meal of this music, letting the odd flash of fast-forward felicity speak for itself rather than underlining it. Meanwhile, Vahan Mardirossian conducts with a properly light touch. The musicians make as good a case as possible for this work, giving us a glimpse of a great artist in his early days.

The Triple Concerto, for Violin, Viola and Cello, Op. 56, is from Beethoven's middle period; he wrote it in 1803. It's the least successful of Beethoven's mature concertos, partly because of balance issues and a too-long opening movement, but there are many nice touches. These include more than a few stirring passages for the three solo instruments, and Lusiné Harutyunyan on violin, Benedict Kloeckner on cello and Ekaterina Litvintseva on piano are each impressive as they take their turns to shine. The role of the orchestra was developed to a new extent by Beethoven in this work, much like his Third Piano Concerto which he had just completed, and the musicians of the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen work together as a virtuosic group, in music that's by turns spirited, tender, passionate and ironic.

A touchdown, with a two-point conversion.

Here's the first movement of the Piano Concerto no. 0: