Skeletal charm

 

Puccini, Strauss & Tchaikovsky: Opera Suites for Nonet, Act II

This is the second disc of Stefan Potzmann's clever arrangements of opera excerpts for a chamber ensemble of strings and winds. Puccini, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss are the perfect composers for this type of project, since they're all brilliant melodists, and the operas chosen - La Bohème, Elektra and Eugene Onegin - all have enough diverse elements to build dramatic suites of instrumental music. Of course there's much lost when the voices are tossed, but the musical bones that remain have their own skeletal charm. The committed performances of the nine members of Ensemble Minui makes this release a real treat - perhaps even better than the first in the series.

This album isn't yet available on Spotify, so I'll add a link to Ensemble Minui's Act I, released in 2020. Music by Puccini, Richard Strauss and Dvorak.

Quirky joy from a revolutionary pianist

Friedrich Gulda: Piano Concertos by Mozart, Beethoven & Strauss

In October 1950 the 20-year-old Friedrich Gulda made his Carnegie Hall debut, to significant acclaim. Six years later he was playing at another iconic New York venue, The Birdland, with a high-powered sextet put together especially for Gulda by producer John Hammond. I'm especially interested in how Gulda managed his two parallel music strands - classical and jazz - throughout his career. I'm listening, then, for any jazz influences in these piano concertos by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Richard Strauss, recorded by Südwestrundfunk from 1959-63.

Gulda has sympathetic conductors with fine orchestras here. Joseph Keilberth conducts the Stuttgart RSO in Mozart's great K. 491 Concerto. Hans Muller-Kray leads the same orchestra in one of Gulda's signature pieces, the Beethoven 4th Concerto. Muller-Kray conducts the same orchestra in the Haydn and Richard Strauss works. Finally, Hans Rosbaud conducts the South West German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Baden-Baden in Mozart's K. 449 and 488 Concertos, two of my favourites. SWR's remastering of their original tapes is exemplary; these are very lifelike recordings.

And the influence of jazz on Gulda's classical music? It's a cool coincidence that I recently reviewed another 1959 recording by Gulda: his Beethoven Cello Sonatas with Pierre Fournier. I note in my review that Gulda largely plays it more or less straight, even more so than Wilhelm Kempff, who also recorded Beethoven with Fournier. Gulda is rather more relaxed in some of the concertos here, but he's still paying these great composers the compliment of respecting their scores. Remember that this was a time when Mozart concertos were sometimes played with sickly sentimentality and dubious ritardandos. But it's Gulda's surprising cadenzas that stand out as great examples of dramatic improv. It's instructive that some of the most interesting Mozart piano concertos of today are played by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, who often plays Gulda's cadenzas. In a review of a recent release from Bavouzet's great Manchester series I say "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." It's not jazz harmonies or rhythms, or anything more than a certain "swinging" feeling now and then, that informs Gulda's playing here, but a perpetual feeling that he is discovering something new in the music that surprises him as much as it does us. This happens in Gulda's classical music recordings as much, or even more, than in his jazz.

I'm a big fan of SWRmusic's historic re-issues, based on the really interesting musicians they've recorded, their meticulous re-mastering, and their excellent documentation. Classical music on the radio has a grand tradition, and German regional radio has been a real leader over the years. I look forward to more like this.

This album will be released on February 14, 2020.

Another winner from the Emerald City

Langgaard: Prelude to Antichrist; Strauss: An Alpine Symphony

"When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself," says Nietzsche in The Antichrist, "but in 'the beyond'—in nothingness—then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether." Both Richard Strauss, whose Alpine Symphony, written in 1915, was a musical gloss on Nietzsche's work, following the similar Also Sprach Zarathustra of 1898, and Rued Langgaard, whose opera Antichrist was written in 1920-21, built their works on the idea of a more elemental life force, though Langgaard's own connection to the Antichrist was as much a musical attraction to Richard Strauss and Carl Nielsen as it was a philosophical one to Nietzsche.

"Did we notice how much music can free the spirit? Give wings to thoughts?", Nietzsche wrote in The Case of Wagner, "That, the more a musician we are, the more a philosopher we become?" At one time Nietzsche's idol was Wagner, but in Nietzsche Contra Wagner, his last work before his final madness, he rejects Wagner's music because of what he saw as a move towards Christianity by the composer. He called it "A Music Without A Future". So it makes a certain amount of sense to take the idea of the Antichrist, and using a post-Wagnerian, neo-Romantic musical style that rejects the modernism that both Strauss and Langgaard initially espoused, express Nietzsche's ideas in musical form. You don't need to agree with, or even try to understand, Nietzsche's concepts to appreciate this music. Both works are completely, ravishingly, beautiful, and ravishingly played by the great Seattle Symphony under Thomas Dausgaard. Elemental life forces are as well portrayed by the great orchestral works of Richard Strauss as they are by anyone or anything. Meanwhile, Rued Langgaard's strikingly original music, forged between his twin influences of Strauss and Nielsen, creates music of enormous power and beauty.

Thomas Dausgaard performed the premiere of Antichrist in Copenhagen in 2002. Besides Strauss and Nielsen, this Prelude also reminds me of Hans Pfitzner's three preludes to Palestrina, written in the same year, 1915, as An Alpine Symphony. By the way, this performance of the Antichrist Prelude is a world premiere of the original version of the piece. At more than 12 minutes, it's more compelling as a stand-alone concert piece than the six-minute operatic prelude Dausgaard performed as part of his 2006 recording of the complete opera from Copenhagen.

This is music that plays to the strengths of the Seattle Symphony: rich and powerful brass, sumptuous strings, lithe and subtle woodwinds, everything ready for Dausgaard to put together into a rich orchestral tapestry. The recordings were made from live concerts in 2017 (Strauss) and April, 2019 (Langgaard), and the sound is of the highest quality, which we've come to expect from these Seattle Symphony Media recordings. Another absolute winner from the Emerald City.

This album will be released on September 13, 2019

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.

A mixed bag: from oddness to greatness

This is the second 6-CD set from Profil of recordings made by Yevgeny Mravinsky with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, largely live recordings from the 1940s and 50s. It's very much a mixed bag, with some oddly shaped and accented Mozart, Berlioz and Bizet, thin sounding in the bargain. A bit better is the Richard Strauss Alpensymphonie, though one cannot put it in the top class. But the high end is high indeed.The standouts are, naturally, music by Russian composers.

The Stravinsky ballets on the third disc, Petrushka and The Firebird, are completely alive, fresh and airy but also cruel and barbaric. Remastering has delivered impressive sound considering the vintage and recording sources, though of course there isn't quite the presence of the best new recordings. The Prokofiev works, the 2nd Romeo & Juliet Suite and the 6th Symphony, sound even better, in performances of style and again some considerable violence. Romeo & Juliet has a paranoid edge; after all, orchestral musicians as well as composers must have worried about official disapproval of "degenerate modernism". The same is true of the 6th Symphony. "Now we are rejoicing in our great victory, but each of us has wounds that cannot be healed," the composer said when he wrote this music in 1947. The pain and loss in this music comes from a sharing of those wounds, with many personal losses I'm sure. This is an affecting document as well as an artistic statement of considerable merit. I've only rarely heard as impressive a Pathetique Symphony as Mravinsky delivers here, taut with menace but finely and delicately balanced, and in the end heartbreakingly sad. This is Tchaikovsky laid bare, stripped of false sentimentality. Mravinsky and his wonderful musicians demonstrate that this is indeed one of the greatest of all 19th century works of art.

Elektra demands revenge!

Jean Berain pour le char du Soleil, à la dernière scène de Phaéton (livret de Quinault; musique de Lully)

From its beginning at the end of the 16th century, the spectacle has been an important part of the multi-media genre of opera. In the above drawing, Jean Berain sketches a machine representing Phaéton's chariot in the Lully opera presented at Versailles in 1683. Audiences always wanted something bigger than the last opera, going back all the way to Peri's Dafne in 1598. Lully had the latest theatrical technology available to him, and he wowed his audience and his King with special musical and theatrical effects; in other words, a spectacle.

Between then and today we've seen spectacle's role in opera rise and fall as fashions for naturalism or surrealism or minimalism or magic realism come and go. The complete takeover of the movies by CGI, 3D and other technology-enhanced goodies has raised the bar in terms of what audiences expect. Nowadays we feel it's our right to be amazed, and more amazed than we were last time. It's also led to a bit of a backlash where practical effects (live, non-digital special effects) become more important, re-balancing the mix with those effects  added in post-production (as in the amazing Mad Max: Fury Road). And of course live special effects are pretty much the only thing available in a live medium like opera.

There's a counter-balance to the bigger-is-better spectacle, even for an opera as blood-soaked as Elektra, the Freudian nightmare remix of ancient Greek myth put together by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss. This less-is-more idea has the enormous bottom-line advantage. Even with this amount of blood in the TV teaser, the Norrlands Operan 2014 production of Elektra might have led to a relatively subdued affair, in the style of Hitchcock's Psycho. But no, with the frightening vision of Director Carlus Padrissa and the help of the Spanish theatrical collective La Fura Dels Baus they went big.

Blood is gushing forth in the barrack square.
Elektra is biding her time.
Enormous steel giants are rising.
Elektra curses her mother.
A forest is set on fire at Umestan.
Elektra demands revenge! 

Just how big you'd only know if you were there in Umeå in August of 2014, in front of the largest opera stage in the world. But you'll also get a pretty good idea from this really special DVD/Blu-ray from Unitel Classics.

Spectacle by itself is pretty empty, but that is definitely not the case here. The singing and acting of the principal singers is absolutely outstanding, beginning with the electrifying performance of Ingela Brimberg in the title role. Put Brimberg on an empty stage with a black fright wig and an axe, and she would provide a good percentage of the sheer horror we get from this performance. She's that good. A great deal of credit must also go to Rumon Gamba who keeps what might have been a spectacularly chaotic project from spinning out of control. That it didn't is due to his steadfast reliance on the music of Strauss and the drama of von Hofmannsthal. That's the real bottom line.

An impressive debut

This is Marita Solberg's debut solo album, and it's a real winner. I know her only from two Grieg discs on BIS: the complete Peer Gynt from 2009, and Grieg Orchestral Songs from 2010. Listening to those again, it's clear to see that with such a strong, pure voice Solberg had a great future in opera. I'm actually a bit surprised that Solveig's Song isn't included in the this program; it seems to be a bit of a signature song:



Other than that omission, I'm impressed with the program, which shows off Solberg's voice and her range.

The aria by Catalani from La Wally, made famous in Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1981 film Diva, is a great opener. It shows off the powerful yet creamy quality of Solberg's voice while the more controlled Mozart arias that follow, the Countess's arias Dove sono and Porgi amor from The Marriage of Figaro, demonstrate her dramatic intelligence. Two other songs stand out: the drop-dead gorgeous Song to the moon from Dvorak's Rusalka, and an affecting Ave Maria from Verdi's Otello. The strong accompaniment from conductor John Fiore and the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra contributes to an outstanding disc, and they're given their own little encore near the end: the beautiful Interlude from Richard Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae.

An impressive, nearly perfect, debut!

Available for pre-order at Amazon; the release date is April 8, 2016.

New insights into a vital artist

From June 24, 2015:

In my favourite parts of this new Richard Strauss documentary director Eric Schulz lets his camera linger on the faces of the artists and scholars who have been interpreting the great composer’s life and music, as they watch, along with us, Strauss at the podium. This goes way beyond the ‘talking heads’ that are a cliche of cultural documentaries. We hear amazing insights from people like pianist Stefan Mickisch, musicologist Walter Werbeck, and soprano Brigitte Fassbaender. But more importantly Schulz catches their expressions as they make new connections, thinking about Strauss as a conductor, a composer and a human being.

Schulz did the same thing in his award winning 2011 documentary Carlos Kleiber: Traces to Nowhere, which is really a splendid film. In the Strauss film he introduces some very appealing young artists: actors Henning Hartmann and Sina Reiss, who read letters by Strauss and his strong-willed wife Pauline; and soprano Emma Moore and pianist Diana Al Hassani, who participate in an amazing lesson with the great singer Brigitte Fassbaender. In speeches and letters Strauss talks about German music and art and culture, and the hope that it might someday be reborn as artists come together in a vital way. Eric Schulz demonstrates in his excellent films just such a coming together of the best and most profound ideas and experiences, in a new Germany and a new Europe.

Thanks to Schulz and his diverse cast I feel that I know much more about Strauss than I did before. Schulz is building as fine a series of classical music documentaries as the amazing early 1960s films of Ken Russell. I hope they serve as a model for future work in this genre.