Moving homages to Brahms

Brahms-Schoenberg: Piano Quartet in G minor; Hubert Parry: Elegy for Brahms

How do we see Arnold Schoenberg? Has he been forever obscured, overtaken, by his twelve-tone system? Is there a human being under that forbidding mask of theory? There certainly is one here in the "Blue Self-Portrait"; apparently his missing left ear is an homage to Vincent Van Gogh, who he admired immensely.

'Blue Self Portrait' by Arnold Schoenberg

Do we need a musical gateway to humanize the great composer, and bring him out from under the weight of his mighty theories? I'm not sure we still do, for I feel his music sounds different, much more accessible, in the 21st century than it did in the 20th; but if we do then his clever arrangement of Brahms's G minor Piano Quartet is just the ticket. Schoenberg takes apart the gorgeous and rich but somewhat murky chamber work, like an intricate pocket watch, polishing each tiny piece and rebuilding the whole thing as a beautiful grandfather clock. There's probably more Schoenberg here than there is Brahms, just as there's more Villa-Lobos than Bach in the Bachianas Brasileiras, but it's a surprisingly playful Schoenberg, and certainly a more human Schoenberg, than one would expect from listening to most of his music.

The resulting work is an orchestral showpiece, to be sure, but to play it only as such is to miss many felicities in the scoring. The conductor must be careful not to be too prodigal with Schoenberg's flourishes, holding something back for the climaxes and paying attention to the unfolding of Brahms's musical arguments. The players of the Gavle Symphony Orchestra are having fun here, and I think Jaime Martin does a more than passable job in reigning everything in. It becomes a moving homage from one composer to another, each of them on a different side of a historical and a musical abyss.

When Hubert Parry heard that Johannes Brahms had died in 1897 he stopped everything and began work on his Elegy for Brahms, a 12-minute symphonic movement. It's an appealing tribute, partly because of its quotations from Brahms' music, but mainly because it eschews the lugubrious. This is more like a eulogy with light-hearted anecdotes about the loved one that has the funeral crowd smiling and chuckling. There's an added layer of melancholy, though, that comes when you learn that the Elegy wasn't performed until it was played at Parry's own memorial service in 1918. Sir Adrian Boult made a lovely recording of this piece in December 1966. "Boult makes this Elegy shine in a golden aureole which celebrates Brahms rather than laments him," according to Rob Barnett. While the final sheen of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the gravitas of the great old conductor is missing from this performance, the Swedish players and their young Spanish conductor do a creditable job here. This is a highly recommended

This album will be released on February 8, 2019.

À la recherche du temps perdu

Brahms: Piano pieces op. 76, 79, 116, 117, 118, 119

The thing about Proust is his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity.  He searches out these butterfly shades to the last grain.  He is as tough as catgut and as evanescent as a butterfly’s bloom.
- Virginia Woolf

Woolf's reference to Proust is relevant to Brahms's late piano music not only in its synthesis of sensibility and tenacity, but also as an extended contemplation of the composer's past music and life. As Proust himself wrote, "Our passions shape our books, repose writes them in the intervals." Brahms's passions - music, friendship and love of a lifetime - are written in this music in such a vital way.

The eight Klavierstücke Op.76, from the 1870s, look backward to Schumann, and farther back, to Schubert. In pianist Charles Owen's words, "I feel that the spirit of Schumann dominates these Op.76 pieces more strongly than in anything else that I know by Brahms." Owen plays this music with the vigour of the young Brahms exploring new worlds with his friend Schumann, saving his more muted tones for the wistful music to come.

With the two Rhapsodies, Op. 79 from 1879, we move to a sadness that's still too intense for the nostalgia of his last works. But this is sadness drained of all anger, and played by Owen with a concentrated severity. In Owen's words, "If people say that late Brahms is ‘autumnal’, the G minor Rhapsody is much more of a winter piece reminding me of a bleak Caspar David Friedrich painting of a ruined abbey and graveyard surrounded by skeletal trees with their leaves all fallen."

Caspar David Friedrich, Monastery Graveyard in the Snow, 1810

With the Op. 116 Fantasien from 1892 we enter the true Proustian world of Brahms's final period. So many of the last 20 pieces he wrote for piano are heartbreakingly sad, and it's only natural that one think here of Clara Schumann, his muse and constant friend and lost love. "I think Op.118 is about reminiscence", says Owen. "Possibly it’s the recollection of a whole life. There’s passion, there’s love, and autobiography." Owen saves his best playing for these pieces, and especially the last 4 Intermezzi, Op. 119. Proust spoke of "that translucent alabaster of our memories," and I've convinced myself that I can hear a translucence in Owen's performance: colours overlaid with colours, tones with overtones, memories with remembered dreams. Such a moving album!

James Jolly recently talked with Charles Owen about Brahms's late piano music on the Gramophone Podcast.

Salt-pepper-chromatic sidesteps

Brahms: Symphony no. 3, Segerstam: Symphony no. 294

getting ahaa extasy moments from shiverings in an octavepusspasm in either major or minor directions into complextonal myceliums taking salt-pepper-chromatic sidesteps allowed in between... in the wonders of experiencephenomenologic dualisms: Love-Hate, Life-Death, richness-poorness, lightness-darkness, humidity-dryness, warmth-coldness, quicknessslowness, acceleration- retardation, fractalic straightlines-aerodynamic parables etc.

This is a small bit of the liner notes essay written by Leif Segerstam for the third episode in the Brahms/Segerstam Symphonies series from Alba. I like to think of it as just a thousand or so words plucked at random from a multi-volume Finnegans Wake-style tome explaining Segerstam's odd, and oddly appealing, musical world. So much can be divined by carefully parsing Segerstam's interpretation of the four great orchestral works by Johannes Brahms, and there is more information imbedded in the symphonies from Segerstam's own late works. But there are plenty of blank areas left on the map to puzzle over.

The first album exploring the musical worlds of what Segerstam calls "the beardy brothers" matched Brahms' First Symphony with Segerstam's Symphony 288. The second had the Second Symphony and the 289th. This release has the sunny Third Symphony to go with Segerstam's 294. Not that the Finnish composer is using Brahms as a model. Rather, it's Sibelius's 7th Symphony that provides the scope and structure, while the musical language is rather more like Penderecki or Rautavaara. As to the Brahms, we once again have things slowed down to a surprising extent. It's like Segerstam has stopped everything, and he's picked up the Symphony and is turning it around in his hands, examining it closely. The orchestral playing is gorgeous, but all the tension and life is gone; it's like we're driving a car with most of the air let out of the tires.

I can't help thinking that Segerstam is up to something other than just recording a well-known and well-loved symphony. Is this a case of everyone else playing checkers while Segerstam is playing chess? Let me ponder that for a while...

Re-saddling the warhorse

Mozart Symphony 25; Beethoven Symphony 5; Brahms German Requiem

Musical warhorses have a big advantage over similar works in the visual arts. What can you do with the Mona Lisa, except draw a moustache on it? But an inspired performance has the potential to completely change the way one thinks about the works you know are great, but have heard too many times. Listening to Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra in the third movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in this recording from the Edinburgh Festival in 1958 is like seeing a scene from an ordinary Hollywood mystery, but re-shot by Alfred Hitchcock. The suspense is intense, and the transition to the Finale is breath-taking. And then things really take off! In the words of Richard Osborne, from the fine liner notes, "From the entry of the trombones in the finale to the work’s incandescent close, this is a performance that genuinely gathers itself to greatness."

Marcel Duchamp, Mona Lisa parody "LHOOQ", 1919

Something similar happens in this recording of the Brahms German Requiem with Klemperer conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a recording from London in 1955. With two very fine soloists - soprano Elfride Trötschel and baritone Hans Wilbrink - and the superb BBC Chorus led by Leslie Woodgate, this version approaches or even surpasses Klemperer's landmark 1961 recording with the Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Though Klemperer's Beethoven and Brahms LPs were at the front of the LP bins when I was first buying classical music in the early 1970s, it wasn't until the CD era that I began to really pay attention to him. So my admiration for him as perhaps the greatest of all conductors feels unmixed with too much nostalgia for the glory days of my youth. It seems only natural and obvious, and this new release from the wonderful ICA Classics label is just one more piece of evidence.

This two-disc set will be released on October 5, 2018.

Defying the darkness of the unknown

Schubert: Symphony no. 5; Brahms: Serenade no. 2

In his Book of Friends Hugo von Hofmannsthal says "Joy requires more devotion, more courage than sorrow. Joy enjoins one to submit, precisely so far as to defy the darkness of the unknown." It's this joy that we hear over and over again in John Eliot Gardner's great recordings of Bach. He talks in his great book Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven about "the festive joy and zest of this dance-impregnated music," and it's this zest that comes out in this new Schubert/Brahms disc recorded at a concert in The Concertgebouw on November 12, 2016.

It's perhaps easy enough to bring out the joyful side of Schubert's lovely 5th Symphony, which contains more beautiful melodies than some composers produce in a lifetime. Gardiner treats this very much as a classical work, which makes sense considering how much Schubert was in the thrall of Mozart at the time. That both Schubert and Mozart suffered in their lives more than the average composer makes this music even more miraculous; it truly does "defy the darkness of the unknown."

The two Brahms Serenades also come from a dark time, just following the death of Robert Schumann. As much as I love Brahms, I've never really taken to either of these works, but not because of any life circumstances. Rather, they both suffer a bit from being preparatory works for Brahms's symphonies to come. It's too calculated a move, I think, for such slight material. Gardiner gives it his best shot, as do his marvellous musicians, but the music doesn't really take off like the Schubert does, and furthermore it suffers from coming right after such a perfect piece. At the concert at The Concertgebouw the Brahms led off the evening, and the Schubert was the last work, following Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto with Kristian Bezuidenhout. Still, serviceable Brahms and perfect Schubert still make for an entertaining and joyful hour of music.

This disc will be released on August 31, 2018.

Profound music from a teenage prodigy

Martha Argerich: The Successful Beginning: Ravel, Bartok, Chopin, Liszt, Prokoviev, Brahms, Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart

A new bunch of important historic recordings is being released by Profil's Edition Günter Hänssler on August 19, 2018, including a promising David Barenboim release, which I'll be reviewing soon. But I'm most excited about this 4-CD set of music by a talented teenager from Buenos Aires, Martha Argerich. Argerich shot to worldwide fame when she won the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1965, at age 24. But she was already a star-in-the-making when most of these recordings were made in 1960 and 1961, having won both the Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition in 1957, at 16 years of age.

As a pupil of Friedrich Gulda - Argerich went to Vienna in 1955 to study with him - one would expect something special from her Mozart, but the performances of two great middle-period sonatas are quite astounding. The first movement of the A minor sonata K. 310 begins briskly, but Argerich soon draws back a curtain to show the composer working out dramatic themes that will soon blossom into The Abduction from the Seraglio and then his other great stage works. Argerich's control here is exemplary; she doesn't tip her hand too early, but she's ready to turn up the temperature when required. And the final section of the slow movement is played with a delicacy that rivals her teacher. The B-flat major sonata K. 333 has the same calm surfaces with hidden depths, but at a higher pitch. The slow movement of this work is a miracle: like a Watteau painting it seems at first to be something of exquisite prettiness, but it is soon exposed as something so much greater: the most perfect and awesome beauty.

Of the two concertos included, it's again the Mozart that impresses, and luckily Argerich here has the stronger support of the two, from the Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester under Peter Maag, a favourite conductor of mine who showed up a lot on disc in those days. This is also from 1960, so Argerich is still a teenager, but she sparkles throughout, and makes this great concerto about so much more than glittering runs and soft-focus pastoral scenes from Elvira Madigan.

Argerich has the huge advantage of being teamed up with the great Ruggiero Ricci, the Centennial of whose birth we've celebrated this month. Ricci was in his prime when these Bartok, Sarasate and Beethoven works were recorded (which made him 41 or 42, if my calculations are correct). While the violinist has the spotlight on himself in the Sarasate, the other two works are more balanced, and Argerich definitely doesn't let down her partner. This is the beginning of a great career as a chamber music player, to go along with an equally great one as a soloist.

Naturally the last disc in the set is largely Chopin, and everything we've heard from her Chopin in later years is present in embryo at least. A 1955 Buenos Aires Etude has dreadful sound - the only really bad sonics on the disc - but even there you can hear Argerich's power and control and delicacy. What a great opportunity to be in at the beginning of this marvellous pianist's Odyssey!

Measured and precise Brahms

Johannes Brahms: String Quartets, Quintets, Sextets

Hanssler has re-packaged the Verdi Quartett's Brahms chamber music, released on four individual CDs in the first decade of the 2000s, into a set that represents excellent value. The performances are for the most part at a very high level, with admirable intonation and coherence. If I had a quibble, it would be that the more controlled, classical approach of the group occasionally results in a loss of emotional content. The lower temperature actually worked out well in the current case, though, since I don't think I could have listened to five hours of Brahms played by musicians wearing their hearts on their sleeves. And turning things up to 11 in this music presents the very real danger of moving into sentimentality and kitsch. That's not the case here; everything is measured and sometimes the tiniest bit careful.

The guests are as excellent as the group itself: in the String Quintets we have violist Hermann Voss, with cellist Peter Buck added for the Sextets. Finally, there's Francois Benda playing beautifully in the Clarinet Quintet. The recording is bright and clear, which only emphasizes the precision of the playing.

This album will be released on April 20, 2018.

With Love from Stewart Goodyear

Stewart Goodyear: piano works by Gibbons, Sweelinck, Bach, Brahms, Berg

On January 11, 1955 Glenn Gould made his New York debut (what he called his "Debutown") at Town Hall, and on the following day he signed a recording contract with Columbia Records. His 27 years in the recording studio before his untimely death in 1982 made him a legend around the world, but here in Canada he is especially admired and loved. One of those hero-worshippers is Stewart Goodyear, born and raised in Toronto, and an alumnus, like Gould, of the Royal Conservatory of Music. Goodyear has recently been playing in concert many of the works from Gould's audacious programme in New York, and in his American debut earlier that year in Washington DC.

Glenn Gould's debut concert at Town Hall, January 11, 1955. Library & Archives Canada

Now we have this new Sono Luminus disc with many of those pieces: music by Gibbons, Bach (Sinfonias from the 3-Part Inventions and the 5th Partita) and Berg (his Piano Sonata op.1). He's also included two Brahms Intermezzi and to close, the ultimate Gould tribute, the Aria from The Goldberg Variations. I love Gould's Brahms; those who think of him as a capricious and detached artist should listen to his 1961 recording of 10 Intermezzi, which he referred to as "the sexiest interpretation of Brahms’s Intermezzi you’ve ever heard". He also said it was "perhaps the best piano playing I have done." Goodyear's own Intermezzo in A major, op. 118 no. 2 is as rapturous and full-blooded as Gould's, full of a deep understanding of Brahms and a fitting tribute to Gould in the bargain.



It was surprising to notice how slow some of Glenn Gould's tempi were in his recordings of the early English masters. His 1971 recording of Orlando Gibbons' "Lord of Salisbury" Pavan and Galliard runs about the same length as Goodyear's in spite of the fact that the latter includes repeats that Gould doesn't. Goodyear's zippier version makes more musical sense, I think. Though I do love Gould's whole album A Consort of Musicke bye William Byrde and Orlando Gibbons, it's a bit out in left field even by the standards of its day, much less when looked at through any modern historically informed practice lens. 

Thank goodness we're finally beyond looking at Glenn Gould as the mere sum of his eccentricities. We have a much better idea of the whole person: his emotional responses to people as well as pianos, and the full measure of his mastery in so many dimensions of great artists like Bach and Brahms. It's this response to the complete artist that makes Goodyear's tribute so important; it's based on a study of the deep roots of Gould's art, and not the externalities. As well, it's obviously heartfelt. The best expression of this love is the last piece on the disc, the Aria from the Goldberg Variations. Goodyear's moving performance takes the middle ground between the bright, almost coltish first version Gould made at the beginning of his recording journey, and the solemn, heart-breaking one he made close to the end. What a marvellous way to celebrate our Glenn!

This disc will be released on March 23, 2018.

A picture of greatness

Otto Klemperer: live recordings from the BBC

Here's another release from the great Itter Broadcast Collection, recordings to tape and acetate disc made by Lyrita's Richard Itter from BBC FM transmissions beginning in the mid-1950s. These recording premieres on four CDs show Otto Klemperer, my favourite 20th century conductor, at the peak of his powers. His Mozart should win over all but the most doctrinaire HIPsters. The middle-period A major Symphony K.201 is relaxed and winning, while the late, great G minor Symphony K. 441 is wound up considerably tighter. "Mozart's in the closet," the last movement begins, "Let him out, let him out, let him out!" Klemperer has us worried about the composer's release, and his fine musicians keep up the pressure throughout. Violinist Bronislav Gimpel provides a lovely tone in Mozart's final Violin Concerto, K. 219, weaving through the most perfectly constructed accompaniment. This is the happiest I've felt after listening to a Mozart disc in a long time. Beethoven (no. 2), Schumann (no. 4) and Brahms (no. 2) symphonies are so impressive, but it's the Bruckner 7th that's the real standout here. This is a performance for the ages, from the quiet by-ways to the blazing glory of the slowly building climaxes. This is a picture of greatness, and I couldn't possibly recommend it more highly.

The right amount of curtain in the frame

Brahms: Complete works for solo piano

Brahms lived at the keyboard; from his early virtuoso days until just before he died his music for solo piano was always front and centre, and six CDs of this music will provide a three dimensional picture of what makes Brahms tick. I caught only a couple of Barry Douglas's six individual releases from Chandos over the past five years, so my immersion in this music during the last week has given me a pretty fresh idea of Douglas's point of view as he guides us through more than seven hours of music. I really like his idea of mixing things up and presenting six separate stand-alone mixed recitals made up of different periods, contrasting formats and pieces in keys that make musical sense. Each disc is a delight, though I must admit I powered through more than a few discs at a time when I got some serious Brahms momentum going.

I've been reading Annie Leibovitz at Work, where the great photographer says "I love [Richard] Avedon's stripped-down portraits, but I'm very uncomfortable coming in close like that. Avedon trusted the face to take the picture. He didn't claim that his portraits were 'true', but they looked like reality." Barry Douglas abjures any close-in focus on the emotional core of any piece; he tends to have a more nuanced, a 'truer', in Leibovitz's sense, point of view. Leibovitz continues: "I usually pull back from the subjects of a portrait and include things around them in the picture. That's one of the reasons I love Diane Arbus. I used to study her pictures and try to figure out how she got just the right amount of curtain in a frame. Just a little piece of it, but just the right amount for the room she was working in." Listen to how Douglas includes just the right amount of curtain in this lovely version of Brahms' Intermezzo, op. 118 no. 2:



This isn't a cool approach, exactly (though maybe it's cool in Marshall McLuhan's sense), but it does eschew some of the effects I've heard from other pianists. To me it seems measured and classical, but in the end I'm just as moved by this performance as I am by those of Arthur Rubinstein or Glenn Gould. Composers more than writers or, especially, visual artists, tend to expose their emotional lives in their art, and so we often seem to know a composer more fully, even without letters or diaries or the testimony of contemporaries. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, "In music the passions enjoy themselves." The case of Johannes Brahms is instructive; we can hear in his early music a vigorous young man, well aware of his gifts but still holding back some of his strongest feelings and impulses. His own works are then charged with some romantic tumult as he encounters the music of Chopin and Liszt and Robert and Clara Schumann, while at the same time his more serene nature deepens as he studies Mozart, Bach and Handel. Finally, in the works of his final years, we hear call-backs to a lifetime of music, tinged with the dark colours of regret for lost love and missed opportunities, and nostalgia for former happy times. Ultimately his classical nature reasserts itself in more austere constructions which are never quite placid. All of these ebbs and flows are chronicled in this masterful survey by a pianist at the height of his powers.

Every once in a while I come across a musical project that I realize will become something important in my life; recent ones include Haydn 2032 from Giovanni Antonini, and the Peterhouse Partbooks by Blue Heron. Barry Douglas's Brahms will, I'm sure, be another.

The box set of the Complete Music for Solo Piano will be released on January 5, 2018, though each individual disc is for sale right now.

Great 20th Century Canadian music making

Brahms: Piano Quartet no. 1, op. 25; Richard Strauss: Piano Quartet, op. 13

Steven Staryk's skill-set as a solo violinist is obvious: his virtuosity and musicianship are in the top class, and he brings a Heifetz-like tone from the amazing violins he plays. There's a list on his website of 28 great instruments by Amati, Del Gesu, Stradivarius and others that he's played in his 50-year career. As the "King of Concertmasters" at orchestras in Amsterdam, London, Chicago and Toronto, you can add leadership and collaboration skills. Chamber music is a different environment, though, and I was pleased to see this disc with two works Staryk recorded with Quartet Canada, which was in residence at the University of Western Ontario in London from 1968 to 1971. The other members of the group were pianist Ronald Turini, violist Gerald Stanick and cellist Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi. The results are not really surprising: there is both passion and control in the Brahms and the Richard Strauss, and no group-think in evidence in either, but rather strongly characterized playing in the violin as well the other three parts. The group expertly walks the tight-rope between bland uniformity on the one side and over-sentimentality on the other, and the energy in these two works never fades.This is a high point in 20th century Canadian music-making.

The disc will be released on November 3, 2017.

Gems of the recorded legacy

Carl Schuricht: Mozart Piano Concerto K. 595 & Brahms Symphony no. 2

Carl Schuricht was working nearly until the end of his long life, in spite of various infirmities. In the excellent liner notes to this Audite Historic Performances disc there's a story from Seiji Ozawa about seeing Schuricht conduct in Japan:

"When he appeared on stage, it took him nearly five minutes to reach his podium. During that time, the audience applauded, their hands becoming quite hot by the end."

Perhaps to compensate, he became known for his swift tempi. Certainly his Brahms Second Symphony here, recorded with the Vienna Symphony at a concert in Lucerne in 1962, is anything but stuffy; neither is it plush and sentimental. Briskness is not what one notices, but rather the freedom with which Schuricht manipulates this music; it's the kind of swinging, playfully passionate re-creation that's rare in classical music. I don't know when I've ever been more impressed with the first movement of this piece, which Brahms called "the sunny symphony of a heavily melancholy person." As to the Mozart, Schuricht actually slows things down, perhaps slower than might have been heard by other conductors of the time, and much, much slower than we're likely to hear today. There's no feeling of dawdling, though, but just an opening up of Mozart's gorgeous music to let us hear - and feel - every phrase, and the exquisite piano playing of Robert Casadesus. These two pieces are gems of the recorded legacy, expertly remastered by the Audite engineers, and beautifully presented.

A marathon of great music and great performance

The great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich was in his prime, about to turn 40, when he arrived in New York with the London Symphony Orchestra for eight concerts at Carnegie Hall between February 23 and March 12, 1967. The excitement surrounding this project is easy to hear; there's a real sense of occasion in this music, and though the applause for each piece is cut quite short, what's left is (rightly) very enthusiastic. For this six-CD set Doremi has chosen 22 concertos from the 30 performed. It seems a bit churlish to complain, with all the amazing riches included, about what isn't here. But what a shame to have the greatest of 20th century cello concertos, the Elgar, to lead off the set, without the greatest 19th century concerto, the Dvorak, to go with it. I also regret not having the Schumann concerto, and the two Haydn concertos. But let's accentuate the positive, beginning with the Elgar Cello Concerto. Comparing it with the classic performance by Jacqueline du Pre (with the same LSO), it seems much cooler at first than du Pre's more emotional attack, but Rostropovich soon turns on the afterburners, and provides just as satisfying an experience when the piece is over. Other highlights include Prokofiev's Concertino, a work that is much more substantial and interesting than the diminutive title would suggest, and the Britten Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, which was written for Rostropovich in 1964. I also much enjoyed the Hindemith Concerto, and the two American world premieres, by Foss and Piston. Ottorino Respighi's Adagio con variazioni is a really remarkable piece of music, which Rostropovich sinks his teeth into. It's marvellous to have it available in such a strong performance.



Unfortunately, my enjoyment in this music is not completely unalloyed. The baroque music, concertos by Vivaldi and Tartini, does not match the level of the rest of the program. I was perfectly willing to put aside my love for the historically informed style in vogue today, even indulging in a bit of guilty pleasure. But I got no pleasure from these lumpish, unformed performances. There was precious little charm here, and no real feeling that Rostropovich was engaged in this music. These are the exceptions, though, rather than the rule, and I can enthusiastically recommend this marathon of great music and great performance.

Warm music from the Cold War

The latest edition in Audite's excellent series of The RIAS Amadeus Quartet Recordings is volume V, entitled Romanticism.  It's a six-CD set containing music by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Verdi, Bruckner, Dvorak and Grieg. About a third of the works have never appeared on CD by this distinguished group, so it's a welcome release indeed.

RIAS stands for Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor (Broadcasting in the American Sector), a radio (and later TV) station set up in 1946, which broadcast from West Berlin throughout the Cold War. I listened to RIAS on shortwave (on the 49 Meter Band) back in the late 1960s and early 70s, though probably not to The Amadeus Quartet. I remember receiving a QSL card like this one, which shows the former IG Farben branch office on Kufsteiner Straße, RIAS broadcasting centre from 1948, and now headquarters of Deutschlandradio Kultur.  Our recordings were made in this building.

The Quartet itself is from this period; the group was created in 1947 and played with its original founding members until 1987, when the Berlin Wall was still up. And child of that period that I am, "Amadeus" sounds like "String Quartet" to my brain. I wore out the Deutsche Grammophon LPs of the Beethoven Quartets, and later their Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn. So this music seems natural and authentic to me; I love their close ensemble and polished sound. To me this sophisticated approach is intuitively the proper style for chamber music of the 19th century, though I've also come to appreciate other more individual, less genteel ways of playing.

These recordings come from the 1950s and 60s. They represent the useful compromise of the broadcast studio rather than the recording studio, with a controlled acoustic environment, a comfortable and increasingly familiar space for musicians and technicians, but with less focus on technical perfection and more of the excitement of a live performance. And speaking of familiarity, the guest artists who appear here, violist Cecil Aronowitz, pianist Conrad Hansen, and clarinettist Heinrich Geuser, are all well used to playing with the Amadeus Quartet. They all shine here as brightly as these four great string players: violinists Norbert Brainin and Siegfmund Nissel, violist Peter Schidlof and cellist Martin Lovett.

Recollected in Tranquillity

In the Preface to his Lyrical Ballads William Wordsworth wrote a famous passage that defines Romantic art:

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.

I've been thinking about this a lot in the past few weeks, while listening to this recording by the Trio Shaham Erez Wallfisch over and over - way more than I normally do when reviewing a disc. That's partly because I love this music so much, but perhaps I was waiting for my own tranquillity in the face of such passionate music to gradually disappear, resulting in the sublimity everyone has come to expect from Dean's reviews.

As it happens I was recently watching episode 11 of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, "The Worship of Nature", on YouTube. There was Clark quoting Wordsworth in front of Tintern Abbey, and, at about 21:00, the second movement of Brahms' Double Concerto played over scenes of the beautiful English countryside.



Watching this on TV back in 1970 or 71, I was struck by the beauty of the music, and its perfect match with the landscape and Wordsworth's poetry. It's stayed with me ever since. I hadn't noted then Clark's odd anachronism of pairing the 1798 poem with a piece written in 1887, but it still seems to fit perfectly. It's also odd that a piece characterized at the time as "unapproachable and joyless, ... obstinate and mechanical, ... cold and rigid..." should have become a by-word for the perfection of romantic feeling expressed in Wordsworth's poetry.

Perfection of romantic feeling is indeed a phrase I would use for this performance by cellist Raphael Wallfisch, violinist Hagai Shaham and the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie under conductor Daniel Raiskin. Eschewing the larger-than-life heroics of the famous (I almost said infamous, but didn't) Ma/Perlman/Barenboim version, this is integrated and controlled but not careful, with obvious love for Brahms and his music from everyone involved.

As to the piano trios, I very much agree with Jessica Duchen, who in an ArtsDesk review of a January 2016 Wigmore Hall concert praised the Trio SEW's classic musicianship: "These performers evoke musical values that today are beginning to seem 'old school', yet are as sterling solid as ever." I know I should let that sentence stand by itself, but this whole paragraph by Jessica, with its emotional response in whatever tranquility might exist while writing to deadline, is very apt for my own review:

After the interval Rachmaninov's very early, one-movement Trio élégiaque No 1 offered a powerful dose of exquisite melancholy before the trio let rip with the magnificence of Brahms's C major Trio Op 87. It’s a piece that suits this group down to the last semiquaver, matching maturity, assurance, technique and good nature throughout its journey. Notable qualities that leapt out of this performance included the choice of contrasting palettes in the scherzo, the long lines of violin and cello offsetting the whirling interjections of the piano, and a breathtaking episode in the finale in which Erez’s piano tone turned utterly luminous, as if by magic.

Looking backwards from the Double Concerto of 1887 to the three Trios (op. 101 of 1886, op. 87 of 1880-82, and op. 8 of 1854) we see layers of nostalgia and regret peeled back until we have the relatively raw longing of the first Trio, written soon after Brahms met Clara Schumann. Shaham, Erez and Wallfisch don't oversell this; they recognize and communicate a guarded response by Brahms to these powerful emotions. Even here, though, we have another layer, since the version we all know of this marvellous piece is Brahms' revision of 1886. In this veiled Romanticism the layers add up!

So we end at the beginning. Here is a marvellous video of a live performance of the op. 8 Trio, from Rotterdam in 2014.

Longing eased

The songs of Brahms are much less known than his orchestral, piano or chamber music, and I think also much less known than the lieder of comparable quality from Schumann, or even Beethoven and Mozart, not to mention Schubert. This is a shame, but of course it's easily remedied. There are many beautiful recordings of Brahms lieder out there, which I plan on investigating when I've had my fill of this one, which is to say after a good long time.

This new disc from Skylark has many advantages. The songs chosen include some of Brahms' best. Individual songs are chosen from collections, and this allows some quality skimming as well as the building of a varied programme in terms of key, stories and mood. Additional variety comes from the solo works provided by pianist Jane Coop. This seems to be a trend in art song recordings, and I hope it continues. The piano is after all an equal partner with the vocalist in Brahms' songs, and the op. 117 Intermezzo are some of the greatest pieces in the piano literature. Finally, there's more tonal variety in the two op. 91 songs, with the addition of a beautiful viola line. The first of these, "Longing Eased", helps to give this CD its title. It is so beautiful, and a great example of the great team Coop and Soprano Donna Brown make, with able support here from violist Yariv Aloni.


I'm unilingual, which is my shame many times over, as a Canadian who should be up on both of our Official Languages, and as a classical music fan, who should know at least German, French, and (in my particular case) Brazilian Portuguese. But it's easy enough when listening to these songs to take one's cue from the title and the musical sense of each song. That's because of the sheer beauty of Donna Brown's voice, and the sensitive accompaniment of Coop and Aloni. This 2014 recital, recorded in Vancouver's Pyatt Hall, is one I'll be listening to often.

The pain of unending longing

Just as Orpheus’ lyre opened the gates of the underworld, music unlocks for mankind an unknown realm—a world with nothing in common with the surrounding outer world of the senses. Here we abandon definite feelings and surrender to an inexpressible longing....

Only a week ago I was quoting E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1813 essay "Beethoven’s Instrumental
Music", in a review of a fine recording of Hoffmann's Symphony. But E.T.A. is at best only a minor composer; it's really in literature that he made his mark. The Beethoven essay is a landmark of music journalism because of its timing; it was an early appreciation of the cosmic significance of the Fifth Symphony. But the master of fantasy Hoffmann paints such a fantastic picture of why instrumental music is so romantic. Here's where he turns on the big guns:

Glowing rays shoot through the deep night of this realm, and we sense giant shadows surging to and fro, closing in on us until they destroy us, but not the pain of unending longing in which every desire that has risen quickly in joyful tones sinks and expires. 

Fifteen years ago Jane Coop rounded up a first group of especially romantic piano pieces, and CBC Records published it in their Musica Viva series. It's been a popular album since then (as was volume 2), and you can still order it from Amazon as a CD-R or on MP3. But on April 29, 2016, Skylark Music is re-releasing this disc, which is excellent news.

The music Coop has chosen comes from the gods of High Romanticism, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Brahms; the special god who perfectly distilled Romanticism, Debussy; and a late master who turned Romanticism up to 11, Rachmaninoff. Is there a more perfect piece to express "the pain of unending longing" than Brahms' A major Intermezzo, op. 118, no. 2? Nope; it always breaks my heart!



And is there a more perfect final quote from E.T.A. Hoffmann to end this review by letting everyone know how touched I am by Coop's playing? No, there isn't.

Romantic taste is rare, romantic talent even rarer, and perhaps for this reason there are so few who are able to sweep the lyre with tones that unveil the wonderful realm of the romantic.

A special live German Requiem

From October 1, 2015:

The RCO Live label once again delivers an outstanding Super Audio CD, this time with Mariss Jansons conducting the best of two live performances of the Brahms German Requiem in September 2012. The multi-channel audio is outstanding, recreating the life-like sound and atmosphere of an eventful evening in the great Amsterdam hall. There’s a special feeling in these performances, dedicated to the great conductor Kurt Sanderling, who had died the previous September, and whose centennial was only a few days past. Every requiem performance gains from personal remembrances of those who are gone, especially Brahms’, which is especially concerned with consolation. There is a special focus that comes with all the participants remembering a well-loved conductor who many would have worked with. Mariss Jansons provides the necessary forward movement and pulse, which keeps the music from straying into the maudlin. The chorus and soloists are exemplary, as, of course, are the players of this great orchestra.

An Outstanding Brahms Program,

From June 28, 2011:

Every competent performance of a Brahms violin sonata will have in it something of interest: each phrase is perfect and inevitable, but somehow at the same time constantly surprising and evocative. Great performances will always be emotional but not sentimental, and classically balanced but not dry or academic.

There's an old Gaelic proverb that says "When the cup is fullest it is most difficult to carry." Brahms has filled the cups to the very brim in his three violin sonatas, and the challenge to violin and piano partners who would carry them is daunting. This new disc from Arabella Steinbacher and Robert Kulek is as accomplished as any recent CD in this repertoire.

I'm a big fan of Steinbacher's tone, and her technical capabilities are obvious. Kulek provides more than simple accompaniment; he's an equal partner in this challenging music. This is outstanding musicianship, with the artists' egos subjugated to the logic of the music. Pentatone has provided stunning sound in this 2010 Dutch recording. The multi-channel super audio format is perfect for presenting both the drama and the intimacy of Brahms' chamber music.

Not every disc of the Violin Sonatas finds room for the Scherzo that Brahms contributed to the FAE Sonata, along with Albert Dietrich and Robert Schumann. This is no mere filler, but an accomplished work by the 20-year-old composer. It's a splendid encore to an outstanding program of masterpieces for violin and piano.