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.

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!

A recital with style and personality

It's great to see a new Chandos series of piano music of Gabriel Fauré, played by Louis Lortie. This first disc in the series, to be released September 30, 2016, is organized as a recital, and a well-planned one it is. It includes a couple of the Nocturnes, three Barcarolles, the 9 Preludes op. 109, the Pelleas and Melisande suite, and two arrangements of beloved songs. Not many other composers could compare with Fauré for the surprising or subtle differences in mood and the different colours, harmonies and rhythms on display in an hour of short piano pieces. 

In preparing the orchestral suite from Pelleas and Melisande Fauré was actually helped by his student Charles Koechlin, but it was the composer himself who prepared this transcription back to piano. These are wonderfully atmospheric works, and it reminds us how much music lovers should thank Maurice Maeterlinck for his play that called forth such amazing music from Sibelius, Debussy, Schoenberg and Fauré. This music fits well with Lortie's strengths: a strong feeling for the underlying structure of the piece, and the ability to communicate sentiment while eschewing cheap effects. The late Preludes are, in the words of Michael Oliver, "among the subtlest and most elusive piano pieces in existence." Lortie's interpretation is much solider and substantial than the lighter, even ethereal version of Paul Crossley on EMI. Too much wispier and I think this music would disappear altogether, but there's definitely more poetry from Crossley. Not that Lortie misses all the good stuff; there's a backbone in these little songs of loss that needs bringing out as well. 

As it happens my reference recording of the Fauré Nocturnes and Barcarolles is by another Canadian, the 2014 2-disc set on ATMA Classique by Stephane Lemelin. Comparing the overlapping five works is an interesting exercise not in deciding which is best, for these are two very fine pianists working at the highest level, but rather in demonstrating how differences in temperament and style can affect how this music makes it from the score to the MP3.

The Fourth Nocturne is such a beautiful work, which takes us to some interesting places before it returns to the serene place where it began. Though Lortie is a bit brisker than the more laid-back Lemelin at the beginning, the journey is just as appealing. The Fifth Barcarolle begins with a slow burn that catches on fire, and burns pretty hot at times, flaring up now and again. I like Lortie's control here; I feel like Lemelin is running a bit hot throughout. The slighter Sixth Barcarolle, though, seems softer and more Romantic as played by Lemelin, whereas it seems little more than a filler in Lortie's recital. The Seventh Barcarolle is a spiky miniature, which Lortie plays as a short and sad story, while Lemelin is more detached. Lortie's is more like Chopin, and Lemelin's more like Satie. The most substantial piece on Lortie's disc is the 6th Nocturne, but this time he's the one who's more reflective and thoughtful, while Lemelin milks the drama a bit.

Lortie plays Percy Grainger's piano version of the song Après un rêve, and his own arrangement of the Pavane that Fauré wrote originally for piano and chorus, and then adapted as an orchestral piece. Fauré himself played what I assume is his own piano version in 1913 in Paris, that was transcribed as a piano roll. The most interesting thing here is how quickly he zips through this:

I think the composer was making a point about how sloppily sentimental the orchestral versions were being played. You'll notice that next time you hear it played in an elevator. Lortie is actually rather wistful here, and much less jaunty. Lortie's middle ground suits the Pavane very well, I think.

Over all this is definitely not a middle-ground kind of recital, however, since Lortie has a definite style and personality. It's rewarding to listen to this music closely, and I very much look forward to doing to the same with volume 2.