Legendary audiophile Beethoven from Minnesota

Beethoven: Leonore Overtures, Fidelio Overture, The Ruins of Athens

Terry Pratchett, whose aphorisms are on the same level as those of Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde, once said, "Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong." Beethoven's orchestral music is so dramatic, but he only managed to write a single opera, and for that he came up with four different overtures, in a remarkable display of compositional dithering. What failed to fail to go wrong in Beethoven's operatic career?

First of all, Fidelio is a remarkable work, though Beethoven laboured mightily to complete it in a version he felt good about, creating lots of hard feelings along the way. It's not as if Beethoven's compositional career has any dead spots in it. If he didn't write a great deal of vocal music, he obviously made up for that with instrumental, chamber, orchestral and sacred music at the highest level. So here's the first answer: he was busy writing other kinds of music.

Secondly, there's a difference between dramatic music and theatrical music. Opera is a collaborative art, and Beethoven is the least likely person to succeed in working with others. It's maybe only because we have Mozart's example at hand that we think Beethoven should have produced other operas besides Fidelio. It wouldn't be until Wagner that someone as self-centered as Beethoven succeeded in creating both quantity and quality in his operas. But Wagner is perhaps sui generis, and besides, he had Beethoven as a musical model.

Listening to the three Overtures to Leonore, I thought about those DVD "deleted scenes" commentaries, where movie directors explain why scenes were cut. When he moves from the 2nd to the 3rd Overture, Beethoven tightens up his material and jettisons everything that doesn't move things along. This isn't to save time, but to allow him to introduce a very dramatic recapitulation (the two pieces are virtually the same length - around 14:20 - on this recording). In any case, with the Leonore Overtures we have three splendid concert works that refer to the dramatic feeling of Fidelio, without in any way becoming a potpourri of themes or "opera without words".

In 1980 Vox released a 3 LP VoxBox set of Beethoven's orchestral music for the stage played by the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. This was one of the projects produced and engineered by Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz of Elite Recordings, who made some of the most impressive sounding classical discs ever. We finally have one of those LPs - comprising the 3 Leonore Overtures, the Fidelio Overture, and the Overture and some incidental pieces from The Ruins of Athens - available on CD, transferred in 192 kHz, 24 bit High Definition sound, from the original analogue tapes.

Though I don't call myself an audiophile, I certainly appreciate the lifelike orchestral sound presented in this project. And I definitely think that this is Beethoven playing of the highest order. In Leonore 2 and 3, Skrowaczewski has his musicians hitting on all cylinders; he takes things at a feverish pace at times, sure that his fine musicians can follow. I've focused on those two works, but the others on this disc are wonderful as well. There are a couple of bonus tracks that are really fun: the Turkish March and March and Chorus "Schmückt die Altäre" from The Ruins of Athens. The latter features the choir of the Bach Society of Minnesota.

This is orchestral virtuosity of the highest order. I look forward to more of these splendid Vox Audiophile recordings in the near future.

This album will be released on March 24, 2023. 

Music that we breathe

This is a heart-warming release all around. It's great to see the Minnesota Orchestra back in business and as good as they were before their recent labour difficulties. Osmo Vanska has his players delivering what must be pretty darn close to the perfect Sibelius sound I imagine is in the head of every Finnish conductor, helped along by the special appearance of the superb YL Male Voice Choir from Helsinki. We also have soloists whose voices are well-suited for this work: mezzo Lilli Paasikivi and baritone Tommi Hakala. This is authenticity in action.

It's heart-warming as well to listen to this stirring music in the middle of a long cold winter; even in normally sunny and mild Victoria BC we've been hit hard by cold and snow, snow, and more snow. This calls for the heroes of the sagas to bring out their horns and do their mighty deeds, as seen in the painting on the front cover of the disc by Axel Gallén (his Kullervo Goes to War from 1901), and for the listeners to thrill to the exciting tale told by Sibelius. The composer provides memorable melodies, martial rhythms and plenty of drama, which Vanska calibrates carefully to avoid sentimentality or bombast. There's an electricity in the air throughout in this recording, made during three public concerts during February 2016. It comes to a head with a spectacular recording of everyone's favourite national hymn, Finlandia.

In between, though, is another work, by the Finnish composer Olli Kortekangas, which takes advantage of the forces assembled for the Sibelius. Migrations is based on poetry by the Minnesotan (of Finnish descent) Sheila Packa, which takes as its theme something that's relevant to the history of Finland and Minnesota, and to the sad stories of todays migrants.

in a cascade of notes
which is not endless
but aching and sweet
like iridescent feathers
of wings that rise and fall
in the circle of migration
in each flight
music that we breathe 

Poems by Sheila Packa, from the books ‘Cloud Birds’ and ‘Echo & Lightning’ published by Wildwood River Press.

This BIS release is something special; I expect it'll end up in my 2017 Top 10 list for sure.