Music from a mysterious centre

Mozart: Piano Concertos K.175, 238, 246, 271; Overtures

This is the fifth release in the "Mozart, made in Manchester" series from Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and the Manchester Camerata under Gábor Takács-Nagy, and we have a double helping of Mozart-y goodness here: two well-filled discs with four early piano concertos and five (!) overtures. This is becoming my favourite Mozart piano concerto series with a modern piano (Bavouzet plays a 9-foot Yamaha concert grand). Bavouzet and Takács-Nagy have great chemistry, and their easy, slightly swinging give-and-take continues here. It's a huge plus in this particular repertoire, since the charm of the four concertos Mozart wrote between December 1773 and January 1777 would be irreparably harmed by brusqueness on the one hand, or over-delicacy on the other. In the words of Karl Barth, "Knowing all, Mozart creates music from a mysterious centre, and so knows the limits to the right and the left, above and below. He maintains moderation."

I've always enjoyed concert programs and recordings that connect Mozart's piano concertos with the stage, whether it be concert arias or, as we have here, overtures to Mozart's operas. Some of these pieces are slight, but none of them is small, each making its dramatic points in Mozart's natural home, the operatic stage. With these four concertos (and a fifth from the same period, the triple concerto K. 242 from 1776) Mozart created a new genre, which brought the broad comedy, pathos and complex emotional power of opera to the concert stage. The big advantage of having these five overtures included is the chance to have the focus shifted to the very fine instrumentalists of the Manchester Camerata, who of course play brilliantly in the concertos as well. These works extend the range from two operas written in 1772 (Il sogno di Scipione and Lucio Silla) all the way to 1779-80 (Zaïde, written just before Mozart's great run of the 1780s).

These recordings were made at The Stoller Hall, Hunts Bank, Manchester, in May of 2019. It's been called "... the most acoustically advanced concert hall in the country." The sound here is definitely up to Chandos's high standard, and its clarity and depth certainly suits - and enhances - this music.

Mozart in concert at The Stoller Hall. Photo: Anthony Robling

What a great way to begin 2020!

This album will be released on March 6, 2020.

Some special music from Estonia

Artur Lemba: Piano Concerto no. 1; Artur Kapp: Symphony no. 4; Mihkel Lüdig:Orchestral Works

I've loved the First Piano Concerto of Artur Lemba ever since I first heard it, on a fine Finlandia disc of Estonian concertos recorded late in the last century. It was so nice to see it on this new disc, again with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, but this time conducted by the esteemed conductor Neeme Järvi. Lemba was trained at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and his music is solidly in the Russian Romantic tradition. His Concerto is from the same period as Rachmaninoff's 2nd and 3rd Piano Concertos, and it shares the lyrical feeling of those works, though one can hear as well the influence of Tchaikovsky's concerted music, not to mention Anton Rubinstein's once celebrated 4th Piano Concerto. Pianist Mihkel Poll provides all the virtuosity that Lemba puts into his music - he was as celebrated as a pianist as he was a composer - but the emphasis here is quite rightly on the music's lyrical content. Lemba really brings his own special sound to this music, as he does to the only other major piece of his I know, his Symphony in C Sharp Minor, also recorded by Järvi, and available on a special album from Chandos. Alas, that's largely it for this fine composer on disc.

Though none of the other music on this album quite matches Lemba's piece, it's all quite marvellous. Three short orchestral works by Mihkel Lüdig are lovely, though they perhaps don't stick in the memory for very long. I was quite impressed with Artur Kapp's Viimne piht (The Last Confession), in an arrangement for violin and orchestra that features the violinist Triin Ruubel. Kapp's Symphony no. 4 comes from 1948; its dedication to the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League made me think it might have a Shostakovich sound, but this is music from an earlier time. One of its subtitles is "Classical Symphony", but even Prokofiev's 1st Symphony, from 1916, has a more advanced sound. Kapp's Symphony harks all the way back, I think, to Tchaikovsky's Mozart-inspired orchestral works. The great symphonies of Edward Tubin, memorably recorded by Järvi, show a much richer and vital strain of Estonian music than this light fare, as pleasant as it might be.

As always, Neeme Järvi presents the music of his country in its best light. Authenticity is the keynote of this entire project. Chandos provides its usual full and warm sound, and excellent documentation of this unfamiliar music in a full multilingual liner booklet. Fine production values all around, from one of my favourite labels.

I love the album cover; the design is based on a photograph by Stanislav Rabunski taken in Tallin, Estonia. I managed to track down the original; what a special place!

This disc will be released on February 7, 2020

Transparent, pure and crystalline

Beethoven: Late String Quartets

Slowly, slowly, the melody unfolded itself. The archaic Lydian harmonies hung on the air. It was an unimpassioned music, transparent, pure and crystalline, like a tropical sea, an Alpine lake. Water on water, calm sliding over calm; the according of level horizons and waveless expanses, a counterpoint of serenities. And everything clear and bright; no mists, no vague twilights. It was the calm of still and rapturous contemplation, not of drowsiness or sleep. It was the serenity of a convalescent who wakes from fever and finds himself born again into a realm of beauty. But the fever was 'the fever called living' and the rebirth was not into this world; the beauty was unearthly, convalescent serenity was the peace of God. The interweaving of Lydian melodies was heaven.

 - Aldous Huxley, on the third movement of Beethoven's String Quartet op. 132, in his novel Point Counter Point

2020, the Beethoven Year commemorating the 250th anniversary of his birth, begins at the very apex of the composer's music, his late string quartets, played by the very fine Brodsky Quartet. This is a group that has often put together innovative programs on disc and in live performance, but here we have just the works themselves, albeit with a most substantial bonus, the 11th String Quartet, op. 95, from Beethoven's middle period. In a 1989 Gramophone review of Beethoven Quartet cycles, Robert Layton once talked about the late quartets as "the Alpine heights of the repertory which few traverse unscathed." He felt that technical finesse and superficial beauty that had pushed recordings of earlier Beethoven works forward might prove as impediments in the interpretation of these great works crafted within the composer's total deafness. Layton quotes Basil Lam, who said "in the last quartets Beethoven is as indifferent to communication as he is to self-expression." In space, no one can hear you scream.

These performances tread a middle ground between the more mystical interpretations of the Lindsay or Végh Quartets and the solid (but by no means stolid) German tradition of the Amadeus Quartet, whose early 1960s LPs were my first exposure (along with Huxley's novel) to this music. Though Beethoven had long left behind the musical tropes and attitudes of the 18th century Enlightenment, there is a residual classical feeling in much of this music, which the Brodsky performance often underlines. As Huxley says, "no mists, no vague twilights." There are no radical differences between the music on these three discs and a hypothetical average of the spectacular run of great recordings of late Beethoven quartets, from the early Busch and Hollywood sets to the Quartetto Italiano, the Cleveland and Melos Quartets. Paradoxically, this approach points most decidedly to the absolutely radical nature of Beethoven's music itself. In the rarefied air of Beethoven's music of the mid-1820s, everything has changed.

This album will be released on January 3, 2020.

Very fine American music played by superb British musicians

Erich Korngold: Symphony in F Sharp, Theme & Variations, Straussiana

"Out of the stuff of film music," said Alex Ross in a recent New Yorker article about Erich Wolfgang Korngold, "he fashions what may be the last great symphony in the German Romantic tradition." This new disc from John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London provides the most compelling version I've heard of Korngold's Symphony in F Sharp. I learn from the very fine liner notes by Brendan G. Carroll that Korngold worked on the Symphony during a holiday in Canada, but doesn't give any more details. I'll consult Carroll's 1997 biography The Last Prodigy to see if his Canadian itinerary is available, and report back here. In the meantime, I can fill in some plausible Canadian landscapes for a post-war holiday from Hollywood. Perhaps scenes from my neck of the woods: Victoria and Vancouver Island, and a train journey through British Columbia to beautiful Jasper National Park.

As it is, Korngold's usual movie-scene milieu is very much in evidence in the entire disc. Besides the usual Warner's back-lot, there are the Californian hills, forests and islands that stand in for Spanish, English and the Mediterranean adventure. One shouldn't have to apologize for film-score sourcing of "serious" classical music in the 21st Century, where very fine symphonic music is heard in every Multiplex, but alas, I've already read a number of reviews of this disc that are excessively patronizing. This is a Good Symphony by any standards (and a Very Good one in my view), and it's a serious error of categories to think it illegitimate because it comes from "the movies."

Besides the Symphony, there are two additional works on the disc. Both are appealing and accessible, and though they were written for the American School Orchestras Association, there's no lack of musical interest on the listening end. This new Korngold disc is something we've come to expect from John Wilson on Chandos: very fine American music played by superb British musicians in a completely authentic way.

What it's like to be human

Mozart: Piano Concertos K. 466, 467; Don Giovanni Overture

In 1946 photographer Arnold Newman was asked by Harper's Bazaar to provide a portrait of Igor Stravinsky:

I thought, how do I photograph this great composer? It hit me that the lid of a piano is like the shape of a musical flat symbol - strong, linear, and beautiful, just like Stravinsky's work.

The result is one of the greatest musician portraits ever made.

This new Chandos album is the fourth in their Mozart Piano Concerto series with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and the Manchester Camerata under the direction of Gabor Takacs-Nagy. And it features the fourth cover photo by the London-based photographer Benjamin Ealovega, some of which are variations on the Newman-Stravinsky model.  All four reflect perfectly the informal elegance and taste (such a Mozartian word!) of the music on the disc inside the album. In Newman's portrait Stravinsky might represent the severe formal properties of music which go back to Bach, and beyond him, back to ancient Greece. But Ealovega provides a much more humble, human scenario to represent Mozart and his music. Also, in the 21st century way, he deconstructs the piano itself, to see what makes it tick.

There's a famous quote by Douglas Adams that goes "Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe." In this schema, Newman's Stravinsky tells you what it's like to be the underlying shapes and contours of music, and thus of the universe. That's not Bach, but it's nothing to sneeze at! However, there are plenty of us who come down strongly on the side of Mozart, balancing the carnal and the spiritual in a charming tale of human relationships, made for the opera stage, but beautifully transferred into one of the greatest of all musical forms, Mozart's own piano concerto. And Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, with strong support from Takacs-Nagy and his Manchester musicians, puts together the pieces of this puzzle - all human relationship stories become puzzles soon enough - into a perfect picture of an 18th century - and 21st century - garden of delights.

Though there are many glories in Mozart's earlier piano concertos, it was in February and March of 1785 that he perfected this dynamic, theatrical musical form, with the D minor Concerto, K. 466 and the C major work, K. 467. As has been the case with their earlier Mozart releases. Bavouzet and Takacs-Nagy feel free to let the music fly, seemingly unconstrained by conventional views of Mozart. In the D minor Concerto Bavouzet chooses Beethoven's cadenzas, while he adapts Friedrich Gulda's jazzy ones in his performance of the C major work. Gulda lurks behind these, and other, Concertos in the Mozart series; there is the same spirit of quirky joy here. I couldn't possibly give much higher praise.

Gabor Takacs-Nagy and the Manchester Camerata squeeze in the Overture from Don Giovanni between the two Concertos. Though the work shares a key with K. 466, and it reminds us of all sorts of vital theatrical connections in the Piano Concertos, it's still a bit of a surprise to hear this dramatic tale of Judgement in this particular place in the program. Of course, it's played with wit and style, but I would have preferred it at the end of the program. Still, this is a minor peccadillo in a superb project; it's very highly recommended.

This album will be released on June 7, 2019.

The indomitability of the human spirit

Music for Violin & Piano by Clara Schumann, Ethel Smyth, Amy Beach

Tasmin Little brings her considerable technique and star power to the music of three women she admires a great deal, both as musicians and as human beings. If there's a theme for this disc, it's the indomitability of the human spirit in the face of systematic adversity and personal tragedy. This new disc helps to underline the rapidly rising reputations of both Clara Schumann and Amy Beach, and I hope it helps along a similar move to bring to the fore the music of Ethel Smyth.

Ethel Smyth's Violin Sonata, op. 7, is as full of character and spunk as its composer. Every new idea is more interesting than the one before, and it's all put together with technical skill and imagination. This piece, like the rest of the disc but to perhaps a higher degree, benefits from Little and Lenehan's strong advocacy. All their work was worth it, I think. The three Romanzen, op. 22, of Clara Schumann, are the same kind of character pieces that she and her husband Robert pretty much invented for solo piano. These are indeed romantic, soulful and melodic.

The most substantial, and the strongest, piece on the disc is the op. 34 Violin Sonata by Amy Beach. In her book Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian, Adrienne Fried Boch tells the story of violinist Eugène Ysaÿe and pianist Raoul Pugno coming across a violin sonata by "H. A. Beach", recognizing its quality, and putting it into their repertoire, not realizing it was by an American, or a woman. This is a strong, passionate performance, adding lustre to one of the greatest of American chamber works. Beach's Romance, op. 23, was written for the great American violin virtuoso Maud Powell; it's very much of its time (the 1890s), but no less lovely for that. The Invocation, op. 55, is from the new Century, but it's also beautifully melodic, and a beautiful ending for this thoughtfully designed programme.

In Little's recent violin sonata discs her partner was the excellent Piers Lane. This time around the pianist is John Lenehan, who provides strong support, though much of this repertoire is very much violin-focussed. We'll see if these two can eventually build the same close relationship that came to a peak in last year's Little-Lane disc of Brahms Violin Sonatas, a triumph of musical synergy.

This morning brings the news that Tasmin Little will be retiring from the concert stage. We wish her all the success in the world in all the great things she's planning for the future!

This disc will be released on February 1, 2019.

Masterworks from a marvellous month

Mozart: Piano Concertos K. 450 & K. 451; Quintet for Piano & Winds, K. 452

While I was listening to this new release from Chandos's great Mozart Piano Concertos series from Manchester, I happened to read an essay about Imposter Syndrome. The first recommended strategy for dealing with this issue, common in the arts, academia, and other competitive arenas, is "compare like to like," which is a blanket warning to stay away from comparing yourself to Mozart. As Tom Lehrer said in 1965: "It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years." This new Chandos disc from the marvellous pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, with superb support from the Manchester Camerata under Gabor Takacs-Nagy, is the best possible example of why Mozart is almost sui generis as a high achiever. In one month, March of 1784, Mozart wrote three masterpieces, breaking new ground in the piano concerto genre he helped to perfect, with dramatic, exciting new sonorities, especially relating to the interplay of piano and wind instruments. All three together on one disc really underlines this nearly incredible accomplishment.

Mozart is often hailed as a great child prodigy, but as a composer it's the huge musical strides he made in his mid- to late-20s that I find most miraculous. The beginnings of Mozart's wind instrument revolution is perhaps his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, from 1782. One almost feels the instruments moving on stage as they comment on the action and the characters' emotions, and with the twin works K. 450 and K. 451 Mozart brings this drama, this theatricality, even, to his favourite new genre for self-promotion, the piano concerto. As appealing as both works are, Mozart was nowhere near ready to rest on his laurels; the true flowering of the genre was to come two years later in 1786, with the great works written around the landmark opera The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492. The Manchester team shines in both piano concertos here; the martial D major work with its glitter and mock pomp and the B-flat major concerto more intimate, an engrossing, quietly domestic comedy of manners. Bavouzet's touch is perfect, and perfectly matched to his colleagues. It's been so exciting to hear his partnership with Takacs-Nagy develop in the past few years.

Rubens: Miraculous Fishing, c.1610, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne,
from the recent exhibition Rubens: Painter of Sketches, at the Museo Nacional del Prado 

At one point in that marvellous March, Mozart took time out to take a step back from the piano concerto to write his Quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet and bassoon, K. 452. It's like an oil sketch by a great master, to go with the large-scale oil paintings of K. 450 and 451. The talented leaders of the wind sections of the Manchester Camerata set to work with Bavouzet on an even more intimate stage, but it's still a stage. The Larghetto especially sets a very operatic confession scene that anticipates Figaro and Don Giovanni. It's great music making, and, like this entire album, a humbling experience for the listener.

Fine British concertos from a great team

Finzi: Cello Concerto, Eclogue, New Year Music, Grand Fantasia & Toccata

When Raphael Wallfisch called the Finzi Cello Concerto the greatest British cello concerto, it caught my interest, as I'm sure it did many others'. Beating out the Elgar Concerto would be like coming ahead of Leonardo, or Michael Jordan, or Greta Garbo. As I said in my review of his recording, Wallfisch makes a good argument, but I was "still inclined to consider his claim just a trifle hyperbolic." In the two years since then I haven't heard anything to change my mind, though I imagine I've listened to the Elgar Concerto at least three or four times as often as the Finzi (including Wallfisch himself beautifully playing the Elgar live right in my home town, with the Victoria Symphony). This is, of course, a silly discussion, but no less fun for being silly. The Finzi Concerto is a very fine work, and together with the Moeran, Bliss, Bax and Elgar concertos, the British Cello Team is clearly the best national side, and perhaps even a match for Michael Jordan and the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.

But seriously, it's always great to see an undervalued work gain some traction, and this fine new performance by Paul Watkins and the BBC Symphony under Sir Andrew Davis makes it clear what all this fuss is about. This is rather different from Wallfisch's version, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, under Vernon Handley. It's very dramatic, and in the outer movements more often brisk than pastoral. In the great slow movement Watkins and Davis keep things at a lower temperature to start, compared with the passionate Wallfisch/Handley version, which might just slip over into sentimentality at times. And as Wallfisch wears his heart a bit on his sleeve throughout, I don't know if he gets the full effect of the climax near the end, or of the terribly sad coda. This new recording seems just perfectly judged, and even more convincing in the end.

The fine Canadian pianist Louis Lortie has his turn to shine in two works. Eclogue, for piano and orchestra, is a perfect example of English pastoral music at its best; rhapsodic and stirring, with those great Gainsborough clouds and green fields rolling down into the mist, and short enough at under ten minutes to partake of the special English genius for the miniature.  Every note by Lortie is perfectly placed; this is as English as music can be. There's much more happening in the Grand Fantasia and Toccata, including some virtuoso passages, handled with aplomb by Lortie, but it never coheres into anything close to the quality of the two works we've discussed so far.

I've been listening to a lot of occasional music for orchestra lately, including two recent discs of music for the Leonard Bernstein Centennial that were filled with almost nothing but. I keep hoping to hear something great that began as something minor, planning on referring to the title of a work G. K. Chesterton wrote in 1909, "Tremendous Trifles". I thought Finzi's New Year Music might be just that, because it's undoubtably another great miniature, perhaps even at the same level as the Eclogue. But it turns out that's because Finzi planned it as something special, and carefully re-crafted it over the decades after his first version in 1926. So it's "tremendous", all right, just not a "trifle". Andrew Davis and his marvellous players provide the most sensitive and lovely sound for this piece; it's a luscious treat.



This disc will be released on October 5, 2018.

Masterworks from the Ginastera Year and beyond

Alberto Ginastera: Piano Concerto no. 1; Concierto argentino; Variaciones concertantes

The Ginastera Centennial of 2016 has to be counted a success, judging by a decent uptick in both recordings and live performances around the world. The reputation of the master from Buenos Aires is as high as it ever was, and I think it's clear that only Villa-Lobos and Chavez are in his league among the greatest of Latin American composers. The first two volumes of this Chandos series of Orchestral Works were highlights from the Centennial year, but the masterworks keep coming in this new disc, due June 1, 2018. Actually, two of the pieces were recorded in late 2016, so we have the Ginastera Year to thank for this release as well!

Ginastera is one of those composers who was careful to suppress his juvenilia, so we're lucky that the Concerto argentino of 1935, written when he was only 18, is still around. There's a grand, reckless abandon to this music, and the young composer's abundant melodic gifts are clear, even if the piece tends to occasionally slack off, and then move off in another direction in lieu of developing what's happened before, like a young hound who loses and then catches again what may (or may not!) be the scent. He could easily have been under the spell of Villa-Lobos's contemporary folkloric works, if not his more modernist piano works of the 1920s, though if there's an influence really apparent here, it's George Gershwin. This is slight music, but fun, and worth a listen.

We're in a different world with the Variaciones concertantes of 1953, both in terms of quality and of the first layer of abstraction that comes with Ginastera's move from "Objective" to "Subjective Nationalism" as a compositional style. I'm always uncomfortable with the term "orchestral showpiece", since there are musical reasons other than showing off compositional, and by extension instrumental, virtuosity, in this kind of brilliant concerto for orchestra. Look closely at a Velasquez painting and you'll see stupendous feats of virtuoso painting, but it's the overall effect of the work, and not the shiny bits, that really count. Kudos to the players of the BBC Philharmonic for their polished presentation of all the ingenious bright passages, but also to conductor Juanjo Mena for keeping them on task in the presentation of a vital and interesting musical journey.

The 1961 Piano Concerto no. 1 is the real masterwork on this disc, and it receives a stand-out performance from Xiayin Wang and the BBC Philharmonic under Juanjo Mena. It's the first of Ginastera's works from his third "Neo-Expressionist" phase, which began with his move from Argentina to Europe. While his new music shows a certain pulling away or abstraction from folkloric content, Ginastera uses the sophisticated compositional tools of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg to intensify his emotional responses to the same rhythms and landscapes of the pampas and the streetscapes of Buenos Aires that always drove his music. This is among the greatest of all American concerted works with piano, to go along with Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras no. 3 and his Choros no. 11 and a certain work called Rhapsody in Blue.

Beginnings, reconciliation and serenity

Albert Roussel Piano Trio, op. 2; Claude Debussy: Piano Trio no. 1; Gabriel Faure: Piano Trio, op. 120

Back in October 2016 I reviewed the debut Chandos disc from the Neave Trio, American Moments, and loved pretty much everything about it, though I did quibble a bit about the title. These are such talented musicians, and they've put together another fascinating CD program, but at a significantly higher musical level. And this time around the title is just right.

As with the first disc, there's an early work to begin: Albert Roussel's Piano Trio was only his second published work, but it's definitely assured and well-crafted. It may not have the swagger of the child prodigy Erich Wolfgang Korngold's op. 1 Trio, but its opening slow introduction is really quite extraordinary, a slow climb up a mountain through a misty forest. The rest of the work doesn't quite match this atmospheric beginning, but it gets a committed reading from the Trio. Roussel took his time becoming a composer; he was 33 when his op. 2 was published, so you can imagine him as Robert Redford the Rookie in The Natural. Claude Debussy's first Piano Trio is an actual work of juvenilia, though, as he was only 18 when he wrote it. It's rather slight and a bit slick, but it's certainly fun to listen to, and this version has just the right blend of naiveté and prescient irony.

Just like with their first disc, there's a very fine mature work to finish. Gabriel Faure's op. 120 was written only a year before his death, and during a period when he was not in very good health. But it has the reconciliation and serenity that Edward Said calls the "accepted notion" of late style, citing Sophocles, Shakespeare and Verdi. This is powerful, moving music, played with great sentiment but also grace and finesse.

Here's the official trailer video from Chandos.

The Dominion Strikes Back

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music; Oboe Concerto; Flos Campi; Piano Concerto

The world of Ralph Vaughan Williams seems still to be overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, British. The vast majority of recordings today hail from the British Isles, with very few from major American or Continental orchestras or conductors, much less those farther afield. The English Pastoral tradition, the music of the Tudors and the Anglican choral tradition, and the whole range of folk music of the British Isles, come together to build the engine that drives Vaughan Williams' reputation. Those of us who love Vaughan Williams, and I'm sure there are as many today around the world as there ever were, look to the English record companies to keep new albums coming in the Vaughan Williams pipeline.  Chandos in particular has a very deep and broad VW catalogue. It's great to see this superb new disc, to be released on June 1, 2018, coming from Toronto, played and sung by Canadian musicians, and one of the top Vaughan Williams discs in recent memory.

Toronto-born conductor Peter Oundjian, who will become the Toronto Symphony's Conductor Emeritus at the end of the current season, has put together a programme that shows off some of Vaughan Williams' many strengths. After 15 years with the orchestra, he has everything moving at the highest level, like clockwork, from strings to winds to brass and percussion. Two principals from the orchestra, oboist Sarah Jeffrey and violist Teng Li, provide star-soloist level work in the profoundly hopeful Oboe Concerto from 1944 and the sensuous, mystical Flos Campi from the mid-1920s. The latter work features one of the world's great choirs, the Elmer Iseler Singers, a Toronto fixture for nearly 40 years. The choir, along with a strong quartet of solo singers, also elevates the Serenade to Music, from 1938. This is a tour de force of orchestral, choral and solo vocal music, one of the composer's greatest works. The Toronto musicians come together here to provide the most impressive version I've heard on disc. The French-Canadian soloist Louis Lortie, whose own Chandos discography is also distinguished in both depth and breadth, has the virtuoso technique to handle the uncharacteristically hard-edged, blunt piano writing in the Piano Concerto, from 1932. This is a sparkling, brightly lit performance, accompanied by the same controlled fireworks from the orchestra. Both soloist and orchestra are meltingly romantic, of course, in the middle movement Romanza. More top-level Vaughan Williams!

This is a well-filled CD, but unfortunately there isn't room for two works that opened (Fantasia on Greensleeves) and closed (Wasps Overture) the two November 2017 concerts at Roy Thomson Hall recorded for this album. Perhaps Chandos or the TSO could provide one or both as audio or video bonuses on their websites. Fingers crossed!

More great Bacewicz from The Silesians, with Friends

Grazyna Bacewicz: Piano Quintets, Quartet for 4 Violins, Quartet for 4 Cellos

The Silesian Quartet follow their Gramophone Award-winning Bacewicz String Quartets release from Chandos with this excellent new chamber music disc. It's another marvellous CD, and one more reason to marvel at the compositions of Grazyna Bacewicz, and especially at her mastery in writing for strings. Matched with the superb Wojciech Switala on piano, the Silesians provide energy, excitement and drama in the two Piano Quintets. The first is a taut thriller from 1952, while the second, from 1965, is more expansive, but often as mysterious and fraught with emotion. It has a real sense of foreboding and danger that takes one a bit by surprise in the usually fairly safe and civilized environs of the chamber music recital. Two other works call attention to themselves by their odd instrumentation, but quickly show their craft and imagination. The Quartet for 4 Violins was originally written as a teaching piece, but Grazyna's compositional sleight of hand and skillful blend of folk themes keeps one so engaged that one hardly notices the relatively simplicity, and hardly misses the usual bass parts. As Terry Pratchett, who died three years ago today, says, "It's still magic even if you know how it's done." What a clever and magical work this is!

With the Quartet for 4 Cellos, written in 1964, Bacewicz moves to a much more experimental, uncompromisingly modern sound. She also eschews the broadly singing, cantilena sound that is so characteristic of such cello ensemble works as Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5. This short work makes a big impact; it resonates in the mind after it's complete. This performance by the Polish Cello Quartet is the first I've heard, and it's completely convincing. Perhaps a group like The Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic can take this work into their repertoire, and draw straws for which musicians get to play it.

January 17, 2019 will be the 50th anniversary of Grazyna Bacewicz's death. I hope that this fact might bring a new interest in this criminally under-recognized composer, with more concerts and recordings to follow. The Silesian Quartet, their accomplished Friends and Chandos are certainly doing their part to help to build up her reputation to something more like what her talents deserve.

This disc will be released on April 6, 2018.

Engaging and colourful music from Latin America

Villa-Lobos: Concerto Grosso, Fantasia em Tres Movimentos (en Forma de Choros); Chavez: Chapultepec; Rodrigo: Per la flor del lliri blau, Adagio

This is such a great release, with music we've needed on disc for such a long time. Of course, I'm most interested in the two Villa-Lobos works, both of which from his late period. Late Villa-Lobos is a bit of a hodgepodge; it includes a few less than inspired commissioned works, but also some of his greatest music: the last few String Quartets, the Magnificat Alleluia and Bendita sabedoria, and the operas Yerma and A Menina das Nuvens. The two pieces for wind orchestra are both standouts. The Concerto Grosso for Wind Quartet (flute, oboe, clarinet & bassoon) and Wind Orchestra is from Villa-Lobos's last year, 1959. There are a few recordings available, including a Latin Grammy-winner from Naxos with Jose Serebrier conducting "The President's Own" United States Marine Band. The 1958 Fantasia em Tres Movimentos (en Forma de Choros), a nostalgic final look back at a lifetime of music in the Choros form, has only a single recording, a world premiere available from the University of Pennsylvania Music Department. Both of the newly recorded pieces are beautifully played by the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra under conductors Clark Rundell and Mark Heron, and well presented by the Chandos producer engineers. 2017 was the Villa-Lobos Symphonies Year, thanks to the completion of the Naxos series from OSESP under Isaac Karabtchevsky. Even though it's only March, I'm quite sure 2018 will be the Villa-Lobos Wind Orchestra Year, based on this release.

On Twitter I referred to these two works as Villa-Lobos's NAFTA music, after Marcelo Rodolfo of the Museu Villa-Lobos tweeted that the Concerto Grosso was written in Mexico, and the Fantasia in Canada:

As you can see from the scores, both works were written for The American Wind Symphony in Pittsburgh, and both were dedicated to Mindinha.

(Thanks for these, Marcelo!)

The other works on this disc are really interesting. The two pieces by Joaquin Rodrigo are about what I expected, colourful music with Iberian touches. With the title Chapultepec, I expected something more folkloric from Carlos Chavez's piece, but it's more about the municipal band in the town square playing military marches and Italian opera tunes than anything approaching the revolutionary modernism we connect with Chavez. The entire disc is full of colour and engaging tunes; it's completely delightful.

This disc will be released on April 23, 2018. This review also appears at The Villa-Lobos Magazine.

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.

Stylish, spirited, sparkling Mozart

Mozart Piano Concertos, v. 2: K. 449 & K. 459, plus Divertimenti K. 136 & K. 138

The second volume in the new Chandos Mozart Piano Concertos series from Manchester, with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, is pretty much what we've come to expect from this combination of superb musicians: stylish, spirited, sparkling Mozart with a real feeling of freshness. Mozart spoke a fair amount in his letters of playing music with taste, but I'm afraid some musicians take that to mean a safe, middle-of-the-road approach that drains the life out of this mercurial music. The last thing one would say about Bavouzet and Takacs-Nagy's Mozart is that it is careful;  they take full advantage of the range of musical opportunities Mozart offers the performer, plus some the composer wouldn't have dreamt of, all on the positive side, I hasten to add. These two concertos come at a time when Mozart made a true leap from the delightfully prodigious master of the International Style of the time to a period where his emerging genius began to build rapidly towards the greatness of The Marriage of Figaro and the instrumental works which surround it. This was his Rubber Soul and Revolver period, to speak in the language of The Beatles. It's a time of surprises.

I can never listen to the Divertimentos Mozart wrote in Salzburg in 1772 without a smile on my face. This isn't profound music, but it's well-made and designed to do just that: make people feel good. The middle work, K. 137, was included in the first volume of the Chandos series; K. 136 and 138 are added here as fairly substantial bonuses. Takacs-Nagy and the Manchester Camerata absolutely nail this music; it's just like With the Beatles!

An appealing 20th century symphonic cycle

George Enescu: The Three Symphonies [Amazon.ca link]

The three Symphonies of George Enescu make up an important but curiously under-appreciated 20th century cycle, and this 3 disc re-release of late 1990s performances from the BBC Philharmonic under Gennady Rozhdestvensky is very welcome. Echos of Richard Strauss and even Tchaikovsky don't take away from the assured writing for orchestra and Enescu's own distinctive voice.The bonuses - the sparking Romanian Rhapsodies and the third of his superb Suites - make this an indispensable purchase, thanks to superb orchestral playing, admirable control and musical shaping by Rozhdestvensky, and fine, atmospheric sound from the Chandos engineers.

An instrument of grace

Nordic Voices sing Victoria: Motets [Amazon.ca link]

Unfortunately I wasn't able to listen to the SACD version of this disc, but the stereo one is stunning enough. It's amazing what a rich and full and immersive sound these three men and women create. Of course they need to share credit with the Chandos engineers, the venue (Ris kirke in Oslo, which provides a rich fullness but without an exaggerated acoustic), and the genius of Tomás Luis de Victoria, who makes the most of the six vocal lines in these Motets. But the blending of these voices is really extraordinary. This music sounds so gorgeous, but I don't believe that's the real goal in these performances. Rather, these find musicians seem to be searching for the emotional and spiritual depths of this super-charged music, and the surface beauty is only a side-effect. This disc will reward deep and careful listening, with pauses for reflection.

"Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help."

When May Sarton wrote this she was speaking about gardening which is, she said, "an instrument of grace." She might have been writing about these Motets.

Antheil's music, for a change

George Antheil, Symphony 4 & 5, Over the Plains

You don't have to go very far into most articles about George Antheil before you come across the phrase "bad boy of music". There you go, it's happened again! That's the first thing that comes to mind for many when the name comes up. Here are some of others that rise to the top nowadays, thanks to John Allison, that web comics chronicler of high culture (in Destroy History, a story about Hedy Lamarr in WWII Hollywood):

Antheil's reputation is, more than any composer I can think of, a victim of the non-musical components of his life. We seem to value his work with Lamarr in inventing frequency-hopping spread-spectrum communication more than his actual music. This would be fine if his music weren't so attractive and impressive. Chandos begins another orchestral music series with this new disc of Antheil Symphonies, and it's nice to finally zero in on the actual music for a change. Both symphonies are muscular, energetic mid-century symphonies with Russian finger-prints all over them, both via the movie-score milieu in which Antheil lived and direct from the latest works of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. But they also have tender moments and the kind of very fine details that are the sign of an original musician.

We used to make fun of how British actors sounded when they were playing Americans in the movies and on TV. Nowadays, of course, that's no longer the case; Ewan McGregor plays not one but two Minnesotans to perfection in Noah Hawley's Fargo. The hallmark of this Chandos release is authenticity, which of course is an important component of all music, not just Early Music. It's no special surprise that a British orchestra under a Finnish conductor can be so convincing in this music, since Antheil is writing in an International Style, where Berlin and Paris loom nearly as large as his later home, Hollywood. But getting the last nuance of the American side of the Trenton, New Jersey native Antheil is an impressive, McGregor-level, achievement. We can't tell for sure until the score makes its way to orchestras on this side of the Atlantic, but this world premiere recording of Antheil's Over the Plains has just the right Gary Cooper movie studio backlot feel that proves it's the real cowboy thing.

Chandos nails the authentic feel with the cover of their disc, taken from this vintage postcard of Hollywood Boulevard at Night, from Lake County Museum. Bring on the rest of Antheil's symphonies!

Two great works played with energy & drive

This Chandos CD is Andrew Davis's second recording of the coupling of Job and the 9th Symphony, which he recorded with the BBC Symphony in the early 1990s as part of his complete symphonies set for Teldec. In the new disc, Andrew Davis appears with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, pinch hitting for the late Richard Hickox to allow Chandos to finish off a complete Vaughan Williams series. These are both great works. The ballet Job has, according to Michael Kennedy, "the stature and cohesion of a symphony', its 1930 date of composition placing it between the three early symphonies and the three middle ones. The Ninth Symphony was completed just a few months before Vaughan Williams' death; I've always been baffled by the questions about its merits. Perhaps the critics were expecting something else when it was premiered in 1958, but this has always sounded to me just like what it is: a work of great power and complexity.

In February 2014 Jonathan Swain surveyed the available Vaughan Williams 9th Symphony recordings for BBC Radio3's CD Review; you can listen to that program here. Of course this was before the present disc was available, and Vernon Handley's version is Swain's top choice. He likes the first Andrew Davis recording, but wishes he could talk instead about Davis's performance with the BBC SO at the 2008 Proms, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of VW's death. Swain feels Davis's conception of the work has changed, and grown: "it was all gain," he says. I'm thinking he would like the new version very much; he thinks that "energy, drive and brilliance of tone" are vital in this music, and I agree. The Chandos recording, helped by amazing sound (I would have loved to hear the surround sound version), has that in abundance. Davis brings tons of energy to this performance, and the Bergen players come through with flying colours. Speaking of players, the saxophones & flugelhorn shine here. This goes for Job as well, whose incidents are as vivid and sharply described as an Annie Leibowitz photograph. The effect of the organ in the Sixth Scene "A Vision of Satan" (which is dubbed in from a recording of the Rieger organ in the Domkirken, Bergen) is astounding.

Here's Sir Andrew Davis re-conducting his own work, listening on headphones in the studio. You know you want to do the same thing: go for it!

British drama and pastorale beauty

I was pleased to see this new Chandos series from conductor Rumon Gamba and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Their two British Overtures discs from 2014 and 2016 were excellent, beautifully presented and played. They were made up of many solid, well-written pieces by late Victorian and Edwardian composers; the usual suspects, mainly, but with the odd gem by people like Ethel Smyth and John Ansell. Volume I in the new series, due to be released March 17, 2017, has mainly rather longer works, with the exception of William Alwyn's lovely little 5-minute piece Blackdown: a Tone Poem from the Surrey Hills. As you'd expect from a title like this, along with rhapsodies and an idyll, from Gloucestershire and Berkshire and The Solent, the focus is more on good old English Pastorale, one component of the Overtures discs, and less on the other component, the English Light Music tradition. The disc is well-filled - 76 minutes - and it shows how much I enjoy that English Pastorale style that my interest didn't flag at all. I've taken to listening to this music quite often; it's often soothing, yes, but the best Pastorale pieces - besides the Alwyn, Frederic Austin's Spring and Ivor Gurney's A Gloucestershire Rhapsody - are somehow almost bracing, with some of the objectivity of the naturalist to go along with the more sentimental artist. Sense and Sensibility.

My favourite piece on the disc, though, is a more dramatic piece that takes us away from the rich farmland of the English countryside. It's Sir Granville Bantock's setting of Shelley's The Witch of Atlas, and it's full of incident and pictures. You can see the scope of setting this poem from a sample stanza, which Bantock takes full advantage of.

VI.
And first the spotted cameleopard came,
And then the wise and fearless elephant;
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame
Of his own volumes intervolved; -- all gaunt
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
They drank before her at her sacred fount;
And every beast of beating heart grew bold,
Such gentleness and power even to behold.

Though he's a generation younger than the Pre-Raphaelite painters, this piece reminded me of the extravagant detail they so often included in their paintings. John William Waterhouse's The Magic Circle (Tate Britain, 1886), is a good example, with a witch protagonist, if not Shelley's.

Rumon Gamba and Chandos are doing great work in opening up British music of the 19th and early 20th centuries. I look forward to Volume 2 in this series.