Splendid, authentic, joyful chamber music

Septets by Beethoven and Berwald

In the world of Charles Schulz's Peanuts, it's not Schroeder who's most like Beethoven, but the fussbudget Lucy. Beethoven had a lot to moan about in his difficult life, but even when things went well, there was always something to complain about. 

His Septet of 1799, scored for clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello and double bass, was a big hit, a very big hit. This irked the composer, since he felt that the serenade-like work was far eclipsed by his more important works, which at the time included his First Symphony, his first two Piano Concertos, his op. 18 String Quartets and a fair number of Piano Sonatas, including the Pathétique. I think what upset him most about the success of the Septet, a work of great charm and considerable ingenuity, was that it represented what he considered an obsolete role for the composer. Even today we connect the serenade with musicians playing on demand, often in the open air, for aristocrats. In this ancien regime scenario the be-wigged composer beating time is little more than a servant providing entertainment for courtiers.

In a controversial essay in the New York Times, Martin Scorsese posited that "cinema is an art form that brings you the unexpected. In superhero movies, nothing is at risk." Beethoven's Septet was a kind of Marvel Movie for the musical consumer of the turn of the 19th century, a safe source of entertainment that didn't tax the brain or emotions too much. Everything that Beethoven truly valued in his own music, as well as the music of others, was based on a much more radical and unsafe point of view. 

I know the Wigmore Soloists from their very fine 2021 recording of an undisputed masterpiece, Schubert's Octet. Here they navigate the tricky line between popular and erudite music, and come up with the perfect compromise. Their Septet is, quite properly, not treated as the Eroica, but neither is it tossed off with little regard for its true merits. The result is, I think, as fine a Beethoven Septet as I've heard.

Franz Berwald's Septet seems like the perfect pairing for Beethoven's Septet, since it was written in 1828, the year after Beethoven's death. But this is, I believe, only the second time the two works have appeared together on one disc; the other was in a 2017 CD from the Uppsala Chamber Soloists. That was a well-played recording, especially the Berwald, but it's completely outmatched by the new Wigmore Soloists disc. Everything about this new BIS recording is perfectly judged, from the splendid, authentic, joyful performance to the always impeccable BIS engineering, and the fine liner notes by  Philip Borg-Wheeler. Very highly recommended.

Music of light and dark

Missy Mazzoli: Dark With Excessive Bright & other works

Though John Milton was blind when he wrote Paradise Lost, his description of God in Book 3 makes use of visual - indeed painterly - images:

Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sit'st
Thron'd inaccessible, but when thou shad'st
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
Drawn round about thee like a radiant Shrine,
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appeer

It's that chiaroscuro effect of Milton's that Missy Mazzoli took as her theme in 2018 when she wrote Dark With Excessive Bright, a concerto for contrabass and string orchestra.

"'Dark with excessive bright', a phrase from Milton’s Paradise Lost, is a surreal and evocative description of God’s robes, written by a blind man. I love the impossibility of this phrase and how perfectly it describes the ghostly, heart-rending sound of strings."

When Mazzoli adapted her original version for violinist Peter Herresthal, she replaced the contrabass with a violin, "... essentially flipping the original work upside-down." It's instructive to compare the two versions; in a way, this new version for violin is almost like a negative image of a photograph. The clever synaesthetic effects, mixing light and dark with high and low sounds and contrasting musical textures, still remain, with this new variation only deepening the total effect of this music. Here is Mazzoli's version for contrabass, as recorded by Maxime Bibeau and the Australian Chamber Orchestra under Richard Tognetti:

There's an additional chapter to this, though. Mazzoli also wrote a version of her original work for contrabass and string quintet, and likewise, then, for this new version for violin and string quintet. This underlies the contrasts between the concertante and ripieno parts, and makes all the string textures more transparent. Both orchestra and quintet versions are included here, and it's fascinating to compare the two. Herresthal is a wonderful violinist, and a fine musician; the shift from virtuoso concerto to more of a chamber music sound is subtle, but finely judged. Likewise with the orchestral players: Jim Gaffigan conducts the Bergen Philharmonic's string forces in the full version, and Tim Weiss conducts players from the Arctic Philharmonic in the chamber work. It's all beautifully played. The BIS engineers provide suitable open and natural acoustic spaces for each version, highlighting all of Missy Mazzoli's subtle effects of texture and sound. This is fascinating music!

Mazzoli's Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) has as one of its themes the Pythagorean concept of the "music of the spheres". This concept, popular in the Renaissance, appears often in Paradise Lost, where Milton, whose father was a composer, can indulge in something closer to his own experience than the visual imagery that relied upon his imagination and memory. But Mazzoli adds another spin here (pun intended), for Sinfonia also refers to the old Italian name for the hurdy gurdy; the "orbiting sphere" becomes more homespun: the hand-cranked rosin wheel of the instrument juxtaposed with the planetary orbits of the neo-Platonists.

These Worlds in Us, from 2006, takes its title from James Tate's poem "The Lost Pilot", about his father's death in World War II, and is dedicated to Missy Mazzoli's own father, who served in the Vietnam War. This is no Spitfire Prelude & Fugue by William Walton; this music is more contemplative than stirring, more about fatherhood than patriotism.

The two-part suite for orchestra Orpheus Undone has a serious program; it's about the moment when Orpheus loses Eurydice. "I have used the Orpheus myth as a way to explore the ways traumatic events disrupt the linearity and unity of our experience of time." This serious concept might have swamped a 16-minute piece for orchestra, but Mazzoli balances a heavy weight with finely drawn themes and slender orchestral effects. In the past few years I've had first-hand experience of how time is bent and tortured during the grieving process, and I found this music both understandable and somehow consoling.

Vespers for Violin, from 2014, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Composition in 2019. It's played here with panache by Peter Herresthal. This is such an evocative piece; in only six minutes it builds an impressive architecture of yearning and hopefulness. This is one of the finest albums of new classical music I've heard in a long time!

I must mention the wonderful essay by novelist and poet Garth Greenwell included in the liner notes. "This is music of intense drama, pungently gestural," he says, "but Mazzoli’s gestures are never orphaned, leading nowhere, as in so much contemporary music (and contemporary writing, too) that aims for drama." Greenwell praises Mazzoli for "using every resource at her command to think her life and her world at the highest intensity." There's so much here: from a blind poet's imagining of light and shade on a canvas to the entire range of sound available to the 21st century composer, and Missy Mazzoli brings it all to life with such grace and imagination.

The great cover photo is by Mats Bäcker.

This album will be released on March 3, 2023.

An outstanding contribution to the Weill discography

Kurt Weill: Two Symphonies, Der Silbersee excerpts

Der Silbersee was Kurt Weill's European swan-song; premiered in Berlin in February 1933, it was banned by the Nazis in March, and Weill was forced to flee, first to Paris, and then to New York. The text, by Georg Kaiser, is as strongly satirical as anything by Bertolt Brecht:

Raise a tower with walls of stone around you,
You won’t hear the wretched cries outside.
Be blind, be deaf, never write off a debt,
You’d lose your money and the gains from it.
Don’t ever deny the greatest of all profit:
Interest and compound interest.

Weill's music for Der Silbersee reminds me of his great musical theatre works with Brecht: The Threepenny Opera (1928), Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930), and The Seven Deadly Sins (1933). "The Song of the Lottery Ticket Seller" from the first act, "Was zahlen Sie für einen Rat?", uses the same tango rhythms we know from those works. There's a jarring contrast between the pungent text (beautifully projected here by HK Gruber) and the lovely orchestral accompaniment that perfectly sums up Weill's best music. There are only a few excerpts from the score, but they're choice.

When Kurt Weill made his way to Paris in 1933 he began work with Brecht on The Seven Deadly Sins, and you can hear echoes of this work in his Symphony no. 2, which was completed in 1934. This marvellous Symphony is close to the top of my list of obscure orchestral works that deserve to be programmed and recorded much more frequently. He's taken the accessible theatre music which had become his hallmark, and neatly slotted it within the classical symphony form of Haydn and Mozart. What a shame that the critical pans that followed its premiere at the Concertgebouw under Bruno Walter pushed Weill to swear off concert music for the rest of his career. 

Before any of these works mentioned, back in 1921, Kurt Weill had written his Symphony in One Movement (his First). His characterization of it: "By Mahler, out of Strauss, trained by Schoenberg." Weill cleverly melds the neo-romantic tradition with leading edge serialism. This is more than juvenilia; it's an accomplished work in its own right. Weill has the compositional skill this early in his composing career to produce music that has value a century later.

HK Gruber is a fascinating person: a one-time child chorister with the Vienna Boys Choir, he became a virtuoso of the double-bass, a composer and conductor. He's also an outstanding singer and actor, and a great advocate for the music of Kurt Weill. Gruber's own view of Weill:

"He brought complexity and popular music under one hat. It makes no difference between light music and serious music — just a kind of music which is simply honest."

This project is a perfect example of honest performance of great music; with stellar support from the musicians of the Swedish Chamber Choir, we have here an outstanding contribution to the Weill discography.

The wonderful cover photo of The Lichtburg cinema in Berlin is by Martin Höhlig, from 1929.

This album was released on February 3, 2023.

Stylish and characterful Bach concertos from Japan

 J. S. Bach: Harpsichord Concertos 3, 4, 6 & 7

This is the second release from BIS of Bach Harpsichord Concertos by Masato Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan - the first was released in 2020. I've long been a lover of the recordings of this orchestra, especially the landmark series of Bach Cantatas under Masato's father, and the group's founder, Mazaaki Suzuki. Though this is a very small subset of musicians - only two violins and a single viola, cello and bass - there is the same nuance and character here as in the Cantatas and Passions. There's also the same warm sound envelope provided by the BIS engineers, producers and editors, and the marvellous, innovative BIS design and marketing, developed over years of collaboration between Japan and Sweden.

Like his father, Masato Suzuki is a very fine harpsichordist, and is fast becoming known around the world as a conductor. He's made the move from the continuo section - Baroque's Special Teams unit - to the podium with style; he's now the Principal Conductor of Bach Collegium Japan. I look forward to more recordings, of Bach, other Baroque composers and beyond, from this excellent musician.

An intense ending to a wonderful series

 Allan Pettersson: Symphony 15; Viola Concerto

This is the final release in the BIS series of Allan Pettersson's Symphonies, with Christian Lindberg conducting the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra. It's been such a fascinating and revealing journey, shining a light on one of the most remarkable series of works by any 20th century artist. This is now the undisputed champion of Pettersson Symphony cycles on disc, though the recordings by Sergiu Comissiona and Alun Francis have their positive qualities as well. 

The 15th Symphony, from 1978, is a late work; only one more remained before the composer died in 1980 (there were fragments of the 17th Symphony as well, which is included in this series). Symphony 15 exhibits Pettersson's usual dense textures, intense emotions and carefully contrived segments put together into an impressive architecture. This is by now second nature to Lindberg and his fine musicians, though there is no hint of routine; this is a fresh sounding performance that is well served by the always accomplished BIS engineers.

Pettersson's Viola Concerto came at the very end of his life, and wasn't performed until 1988. Like the 2nd Violin Concerto and the 16th Symphony, written in the same period, this work has very much of an orchestral rather than a concerto texture, with little attention paid to the usual solo pyrotechnics. Pettersson referred to the Violin Concerto as a Symphony, and the Symphony as a Saxophone Concerto, while his widow Gudrun called this work a "Viola Symphony". As with the 2nd Violin Concerto, it's tempting to think of the solo instrument here as a representation of the composer himself, commenting as an individual estranged from but deeply connected to the world of the orchestra. The viola was Pettersson's instrument, so I don't think it's too far-fetched. If that's the case, it's perhaps ironic that the composer should represent his own alienation from the world, a result of both his temperament and his severe, chronic rheumatoid arthritis, by integrating the solo part so closely with the whole orchestra.

Violist Ellen Nisbeth gets a beautiful sound from her Nicolò Amati instrument, from 1714. This is a great way to cap off a wonderful series.

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.

Celebrating a reunion

Handel: Six Concerti Grossi, op. 3

Handel may not have planned this grouping of concertos himself, but the collection we know as Opus 3 is so appealing, so full of invention, so stylish, that it's hard to be too harsh about this result of the oddities of 18th century norms of Intellectual Property. Handel had a most wonderful model for these works - Arcangelo Corelli - and if he borrowed a few melodies, rhythms and harmonies along the way, that's fine, considering the fluidity of authorship at the time. A publisher may have rounded up Handel works willy-nilly into a publishable state, but in spite of this the results are surprising, full of depth and meaning. Umberto Eco's great essay on the movie Casablanca is, I think, relevant:

When all the archetypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homeric depths. Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.

Handel's op. 3 collection is a test for any group: staying true to the letter & spirit of the score, while keeping the music sounding fresh and alive. Martin Gester and his Tasmanian group Van Diemen's Band have done exactly that, in this wonderful new album from BIS. There's plenty of fire burning here, but it's within the context of impressive musical discipline and lightly-worn Historically Informed Performance scholarship. BIS provides the kind of direct and transparent sound that allows Early Instruments to flourish. This is a highly recommended release!

Perfectly judged performances

Beethoven: Piano Trios op. 1 no. 3 and op. 70 no. 2

The three piano trios that Beethoven published as opus 1, and especially the third in C minor, constituted an announcement to the wide world that a new composer was about to enter into the top echelon in Vienna, the musical centre of Europe at the time. It's astounding that this obscure young man from Bonn, without connections, should be interacting with Joseph Haydn, the world's most famous composer, and having his new music premiered two years later at the home of Prince Lichnowsky. I'm not sure which disparity was more pronounced: the social distance between this impoverished newcomer and the one-percent Viennese aristocracy, or the professional gap between a freelancer with barely any gigs on his resumé and Europe's top musical superstar at the peak of his powers. Perhaps this social mobility came about because of the recent revolutionary events in France, though I'm sure at least as much was due to Beethoven's outsize talent and his pure strength of will - chutzpah in a word.

When Haydn, shocked by the new sounds of the C minor Piano Trio, advised Beethoven to abandon the work, the young composer was devastated. His pride hurt, he put the criticism down to Haydn's jealousy. Thus did Beethoven's relationship with his true musical father enter its full Oedipal stage. Haydn's relationship with his other protégé, Mozart, had always been cordial, though Mozart, of course, had his own fraught relationship with his own musical, and actual, father. So from now on it would be this: Beethoven against the world!

I'm impressed with the way the London-based Sitkovetsky Trio give us some idea of just how new the C minor trio might have sounded to those who heard it for the first time at Prince Lichnowsky's musical gathering, without leaning in too hard towards the revolutionary, after the fact as it were. I've heard some groups anachronistically make too much of a meal of this work. While Haydn and Mozart had recently overhauled the piano trio, freeing it from its salon music roots, this was still within a rather narrow, civilized band. If one considers this relatively sedate landscape, then Beethoven's dramatic effects and new harmonic and rhythmic devices can sound a bit disconcerting, even considering the two centuries of musical innovation to come.




The Sitkovetsky Trio usher us into a completely different soundscape with their performance of the second Piano Trio of Beethoven's op. 70 set, from 1809, the period of the Second Symphony. Gone is the chip on his shoulder. We know that life was no easier for the composer, in spite of some significant successes, but the quiet confidence and grace of the first movement is perhaps a sign of maturity.  Haydn died on May 31st of that year; perhaps this work, in a genre that Franz Joseph had truly made his own, is a tribute to Beethoven's true musical father.

Tucked away between these two works is a little gem that Beethoven wrote in 1812, the Allegretto, WoO. 39. This may be a simple piece, designed for the ten-year-old Maximiliane Brentano, the daughter of a friend of Beethoven's, but the degree of difficulty to bring about such a perfect result is very, very high. Here again is evidence of the sensitivity and musicality of the Sitkovetsky Trio. This entire program is remarkable, and bodes well for future volumes.

A prayerful Passion

Bach: St. Matthew Passion

A new decade is a time for new beginnings, so this release is well-timed: it's a second recording of the St. Matthew Passion from Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan. The first version, from 2000, was generally well received. Robin Tuttle's Classical Net review pretty well sums up the critical consensus: "Suzuki takes us gently by the hand and shows us Bach not at his most imposing, but at his most humane."

The new album needs only 2 CDs instead of 3, but this isn't because of any speeding up; the new recording is actually a couple of minutes longer. This time around BIS jams everything into two 80-minute plus CDs. The main difference between the two recordings is in the vocal soloists. Gerd Türk followed Suzuki's meditative approach as the Evangelist in the first version, while the equally strong Benjamin Bruns is somewhat, but not a lot, less dramatic this time around. I was especially impressed with the great Nancy Argenta in the first recording; this time around I loved Carolyn Sampson. Suzuki has doubled down in the new recording, with more even more gentle arias and prayerful chorales; the keyword here is definitely "devotional". This might seem to be a small change, but the cumulative effect is awesome, almost breathtaking. 

The new year is fraught with danger and portents of doom; we need the consolation of Johann Sebastian Bach more than ever. The most reliable purveyors of this are, in my opinion, Masaaki Suzuki and the musicians of Bach Collegium Japan.

This album will be released February 7, 2020.

A spiritual performance without sentimentality

Beethoven: Symphony no. 9

Those of you who follow my reviews know that my favourite large recording project is BIS's series of Bach Cantatas with the Bach Collegium Japan, under Masaaki Suzuki. With this great enterprise all wrapped up, it's been fascinating to follow these fine musicians as they move on to other composers. A recent recording of the Missa Solemnis showed us that Suzuki was a very fine Beethoven interpreter. It's been exciting to listen closely to this new recording of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

In 2015 Maestro Suzuki conducted the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Beethoven's 9th Symphony. This is an impressive performance indeed, but on his home ground, with his own instrumental and choral forces, he has turned up the energy, without sacrificing any nuance. I see that the Bergen performance featured the same very fine soprano from the Japanese recording, Ann-Helen Moen. The rest of the vocal soloists, from both Bergen and Japan, are outstanding.  As well, I sense some subtle interpretation differences in the four years between these performance. Suzuki has a more reverent attitude in the slow movement, while Beethoven's more boisterous passages are almost completely unbridled. This is, as I would expect, a 9th Symphony full of spiritual feeling, but completely without sentimentality.

Symfoni nr. 9 (Beethoven) - Bergen Filharmoniske Orkester from Bergen Filharmoniske Orkester on Vimeo.

Authentic Holst & Elgar from Bergen

Holst: The Planets; Elgar: Enigma Variations

The presentation of Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations in 1899 single-handedly destroyed a stereotype about Un-Musical Britain. It was a new masterwork of orchestral music for the 20th Century, and it was followed in 1916 by another: Gustav Holst's The Planets. Both are now staples of the orchestral repertoire around the world, though perhaps not as totally beloved as in Britain, with its flag-waving Proms audiences. It's instructive, then, to see how many great recorded performances come from outside of the UK: Montreal, Chicago, Berlin, Vienna, to name a few. Andrew Litton, who has made memorable recordings of the Holst from Dallas, and the Elgar from London, provides a musically flawless and authentic performance of both from Norway, with the very fine Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. So often used as demonstrations of high-end audio, these two works both sound very good, partly because of the BIS engineers, but let's face it, both composers wrote this music to sound good! I should mention that I listened to the stereo version, but I'm sure the surround-sound one is awesome.

Both timeless and completely in the moment

Francisco de Peñalosa: Lamentationes; works by Francisco Guerrero & Pedro de Escobar

Francisco de Peñalosa is the link between the great Flemish composer Josquin des Prez (his senior by 15 or 20 years) and the full flowering of Spanish Renaissance music, represented by Alonso Lobo, Tomás Luís de Victoria and Francisco Guerrero. This new disc from New York Polyphony presents two Lamentationes by Peñalosa, along with a number of his Mass segments. As well, we have a short Stabat Mater by his contemporary Pedro de Escobar, and two pieces by Francisco Guerrero, who was born the same year (1528) that Peñalosa died.

Peñalosa's music can sound strikingly modern while retaining its antique patina. In his fine liner notes, Ivan Moody quotes Ken Kreitner's praise of the 'kaleidoscope" effect of the Gloria of Peñalosa's Missa 'L'Homme Armé", whereby "... the tune is broken into little bits which are scattered everywhere and audible somewhere all the time in a rather dazzling display of wit and invention." The process, and its effect, is positively post-modern!

New York Polyphony recording in Princeton Abbey. Photo: Joanne Bouknight

The superb singing, impressive acoustic space (of the Princeton Abbey in the former site of the Saint Joseph's Seminary in Plainsboro NJ), and perfectly captured audio all come together to provide an experience that is both timeless and completely in the moment. Another impressive project from New York Polyphony!




This album will be released on September 6, 2019.

A thought-provoking & satisfying first album

Can Çakmur: piano music by Beethoven/Liszt, Haydn, Schubert, Say, Sasaki, Bartok

After the artificial rigours of the international piano competition world, Can Çakmur (who won in Glasgow in 2017, and in Hamamatsu in 2018) now has a chance to build an interesting, exciting programme for his first recording. His opener is an inspired choice: Franz Liszt's arrangement of Beethoven's song Adelaïde, an arresting piece that alternates between sentiment and all-out flash. Of course we want virtuosity in this situation, and it's here in spades, but in the long-term we're on the look-out for musical intelligence, style and staying power. On the evidence of this album we should be listening to the Ankara-born pianist for a very long time.

Çakmur plays Schubert's E-flat major Sonata D. 568, from 1817 when he was only 20, with wit and delicacy. He doesn't add any anachronistic darkness to the slow movement - the bulk of the composer's agonies are years ahead at this point - but lets the simple sad post-adolescent clouds drift through in their quiet way. The more sophisticated and brilliant F minor Variations by Haydn seem at first deceptively slight, but they are the centrepiece of the album; this is a profound work that Çakmur gives a suitable gravitas and quiet dignity. Fazil Say's Black Earth adapts a folk song by Turkish minstrel Aşık Veysel, complete with the sound of the lute-like instrument the bağlama, approximated by pressing on the piano strings while playing notes on the keyboard. This is an arresting piece that combines piano technique and folklore in an appealing way. Çakmur stays in the world of imitative folk music with Bartok's percussive Out of Doors, and brings his first album to a moving conclusion with Fuyuhiko Sasaki's Sacrifice. This is a complex work with references to Christian theology, to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, to Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and to Andrei Tarkovsky's final film, The Sacrifice, from 1986. What a thought-provoking and satisfying first album!

Into the abyss

Allan Pettersson: Violin Concerto no. 2, Symphony no. 17, fragment

Allan Pettersson wrote his Second Violin Concerto just after he completed his 13th Symphony, in 1976. He referred to it as a Symphony for Violin and Orchestra, but this is no Symphonie Concertante, where a solo instrument shares its virtuosity with orchestral players. Rather, it's a more modern, searching expression of a classic tale: the individual vs. the collective. It's easy to imagine why the semi-invalid Pettersson, shut up in his apartment suffering from his acute, chronic rheumatoid arthritis, would explore the lone voice struggling to be heard over the powerful sound of the orchestra/universe. This is a work that's all about this balance, and since the premiere performance with Ida Haendel in Stockholm on January 25, 1980, there has been much controversy concerning this key point. Was Pettersson unaware of how the violin would sound against the powerful writing of his orchestral forces? Did he design the work to be heard over the radio (as he heard it from his apartment) or on a recording rather than live in a concert hall? Things went back and forth between the critics, until the composer weighed in:

The solo violin is eliminated as regards audibility – something that the composer has consciously chosen – by letting the soloist often play in unison with the leading parts. The composer lets the soloist fill in passages totally inaudibly within the orchestral mass.

This, of course, is a challenge for today's recording producers and engineers: they're very good at allowing us to hear every detail in a score through technological means plus microphone choice and placement, as well as the choice of recording venue to find a proper acoustic to match the music. Luckily, in this case, we're dealing with BIS, whose default is rich and full rather than bright and exposed. And we have the Pettersson Dream Team in Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, who are completely at home in the music of the great composer, as they come to the end of their epic traversal of Allan Pettersson's complete works. Finally, the musicianship of violinist Ulf Wallin wins out, over, I might imagine, some of the more ego-driven soloists of his most ego-drenched instrument. In the end one hears the sad, even agonizing music as it was designed by Pettersson, and the touches of grace and redemption that occur, particularly toward the end, are all the sweeter for it.

The short fragment that might have become the 17th Symphony does not break new ground, nor show the way to any major turns on their way from the composer's music written before. It's the last music Pettersson wrote, so one goes in with the same feeling as with the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem or the unfinished final fugue in Bach's Art of the Fugue. Lindberg and his fine musicians give this often robust music a straight-forward, unsentimental reading, and they let the way it shuffles off at the end, into the silence, speak for itself. Let it echo in the silence for a while when you listen to it; this says as much about the abyss as whole symphonies.

This disc will be released on May 3, 2019.

Shiny new Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn: Piano Concertos 1 & 2; Works for Piano Concertante

I was excited when I saw that Ronald Brautigam was making a new recording of Mendelssohn's piano concertante music for BIS. I loved the recording he made in 1995 with Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam under Lev Markiz, also for BIS, but I knew that performance styles have changed in the past 25 years, and that Brautigam has been working long enough with Michael Alexander Willens and Die Kolner Akademie to create a special partnership. Their Mozart piano concertos series for BIS is really outstanding.

As it turns out there isn't as big an interpretation gap between the two versions as I presumed would be the case, which goes to show how far ahead of his time Brautigam was at the end of the last century. These are bright and light and bouncy, but also as passionate and romantic (rather, Romantic) as Mendelssohn's mature music should be, but we could hear this in the earlier recording as well. Rather, there's a new polish to this music; it shines just that bit brighter. I've always wondered why these two concertos weren't more popular, and this new BIS CD has me even more puzzled. Very highly recommended!

Into the sacred circle

Tan Dun: Fire Ritual, violin concertos

Tan Dun's Fire Ritual is a violin concerto which evokes the many victims of wars. Both as composer and conductor Tan Dun is acting as a shaman, making those spirits come to us in a life-like way, and providing at the end some sort of peace for both the spirits and for us as spectators. He wrote the work for violinist Eldbjorg Hemsing, and in this work she herself becomes a shaman, bringing the audience into the sacred circle of the orchestra.



Tan Dun's music has such a vitality; it seems to leap out at us, but in a very organic way. His intensity paired with a gift for prodigal, lush melodies make him a natural for the cinema, and I consider his music to be in the highest tier of music that crosses over between the movies and the concert hall. His 2018 Violin Concerto: Rhapsody and Fantasia shows this as well as Fire Ritual this dual character. Hemsing is a superb interpreter of this music, fearless in the face of its virtuoso requirements, and a full participant in Tan Dun's sacred mysteries.

This project makes:

• a fine introduction to the music of Tan Dun;
• an update for those who remember his music from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; or
• an exciting way to get up to speed on the latest and greatest music for violin and orchestra

This album will be released on February 1, 2019.

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J. S. Bach: Cantatas of contentment. Ich bin in wir vergnugt, BWV 204; Angelehmes Wiederau, BWV 30a

Series finales can leave one puzzled (Lost), nostalgic (Cheers), or intrigued (The Sopranos). One of the most bitter-sweet moments in my classical music life was when I realized that Masaaki Suzuki's fabulous Bach Sacred Cantata series with Bach Collegium Japan on BIS, recorded from 1995 to 2014, was finally complete. This is one of the greatest accomplishments of recorded music. But it didn't feel quite as sad as it could have been, since there were still the Secular Cantatas to come, and those have been quite eye-opening for me. But with this release even those Cantatas are finished.

What a great way to end, though, with two "Cantatas of contentment"! The first movement of Angenehmes Wiederau, BWV 30a, is the most joyous celebration you could imagine.


I commend to everyone reading this review John Eliot Gardner's book Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven, and particularly in this context, Chapter 8 "Cantatas or Coffee?"

To comprehend the social, liturgical and performance background for his public music-making in his Leipzig years, we need to explore these two parallel worlds of music, one sacred, one secular, and these two public meeting places, one over 500 years old, the other relatively new. 

Certainly one could listen to Gardner's own recordings of the Bach Cantatas while reading this - they're very fine, of course - but I found every point Gardner made be better understand the music Suzuki has been guiding me through since the mid-1990s. I'll be living with this music for the rest of my life, and - who knows? - even beyond.

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The best introduction into Pettersson's dark & serious world

Allan Pettersson: Symphonies 5, 7

Christian Lindberg continues on his way to a new complete Pettersson symphonies cycle for BIS, for The Allan Pettersson Project 2013-2019, a joint project with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra.  It was clear from the previous releases that this is now the set to get, though the symphonies by Sergiu Comissiona and Alun Francis both contain excellent work. The new disc underlines this, especially considering the outstanding 7th Symphony, probably the most popular in the series.

In a lifetime of pain and suffering Allan Pettersson had the great solace of music, and at times he must have seen a road ahead that was less fraught. The premiere of his 5th Symphony in 1963 was quite a success, and contributed to his award of a lifetime minimum income from the Swedish government. His music began to be denigrated, though, not for its modern idiom, but for not being modern enough. Pettersson always seemed out of sync with the world in which he lived, though from today's vantage point this music seems to evoke all of the ambiguities of the post-war world, the echoes of past horrors along with a tentative groping for transcendence.

The 7th Symphony, which had its first performance with Antal Dorati and the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra fifty years ago this fall, in October 1968, was an even greater success, and propelled the work into the orchestral repertoire until today, at least in Sweden and Germany. This is a great work that perhaps provides the best introduction into the rather daunting, dark and serious world of Allan Pettersson.

Beethoven from the heart

Beethoven: Missa Solemnis

At the top of the autograph score of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis the composer wrote the motto "From the heart, may it return to the heart!" Conductor Masaaki Suzuki has made this the keynote of an impressive new recording of this late work, emphasizing the very personal, almost ecstatic spirituality Beethoven added to what might not have seemed at first a congenial musical project. Suzuki is a deeply religious man, whose faith infuses all the music he makes, and he begins by taking seriously Beethoven's setting in a liturgical context. Beethoven's Christianity may not have always been orthodox, but it was always sincere. Indeed, I don't think he had an insincere bone in his body! So there's indeed a Bachian (and Handelian) air about this music, and Suzuki also highlights the other older sources Beethoven brings in (which the composer referred to as "the monk's Church chorales". But Suzuki remains true to the score, and with some by now unsurprisingly perfect choral singing from his amazing choir, he brings true authenticity, but also a new freshness and immediacy to this sublime music. The soloists are also all first-class. I was especially impressed with tenor James Gilchrist, who made a strong impression as The Evangelist in John Eliot Gardner's recent St. Matthew Passion, and mezzo-soprano Roxana Constantinescu, so good in Stravinsky's Pulcinella under Boulez.

This album will be released on March 2, 2018. Here is the first part of the Gloria from a live Bach Collegium Japan performance in 2017.

The colour wheel turned up to 11

Respighi: Vetrate Di Chiesa, Il Tramonto, Trittico Botticelliano

As with earlier discs in this Respighi series from BIS,  John Neschling has the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege firing on all cylinders, which is such a plus for a composer who provides so many opportunities for the orchestra to show off. So it's quite a surprise to see that two of these three pieces didn't begin as rich and gaudy orchestral showpieces. Vetrate Di Chiesa (Church Windows) started out as Tre preludi sopra melodie gregoriane, three charming pieces written in 1919-21 for solo piano. In 1925 Respighi opened up and colourized these melodies, and added a fourth work as a bonus.  Listen to that opulent final piece, San Gregorio Magno:



This is wide-screen, Technicolor music, and it's not afraid of nudging up against effects some might find vulgar. It's great fun, so you might not notice at first how Neschling has his fine musicians playing with such determination and precision.

Il Tramanto (The Sunset) is a cantata based on a Shelley poem that Respighi wrote in 1914, for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. It's played here with a full complement of strings, and sung by the splendid soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci. Even without winds, brass, percussion and organ, everything I've said about colour in Church Windows is relevant here.  This is partly due to superb playing and singing, and partly because of the the 35-year-old composer's skillful blend of the styles of his compatriot Puccini and a couple of composers from the other side of the Alps: Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner. I'd never heard this music before, and my view of Respighi has gone up considerably now that I know it well.

The Trittico Botticelliano is my favourite Respighi work, and it receives a lavish recording here. Neschling translates Respighi's fine sense of both melody and orchestral colour, analogues of Botticelli's legendary line and colour, into a perfectly balanced performance. It's great to see this Brazilian conductor, who completely nailed the Villa-Lobos Choros series in his 2008 recordings with OSESP, also from BIS, doing the same on the other side of the Atlantic.

This is the second disc I've reviewed in 2018, and I'm pleased to be able to praise the cover design once again. I hope we can keep that streak going! It's based on a detail from the 1914 International Art Glass Catalogue by the National Ornamental Glass Manufacturers Association of the United States and Canada. You can download the entire catalogue in PDF format here at the Internet Archive; it's gorgeous!