Miraculous recordings from a great master

 Wilhelm Kempff: Bach, Mozart, Schubert & Schumann

This welcome historic release from APR Recordings includes Wilhelm Kempff's complete recordings for Polydor of music by Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Schumann, made in the period 1927 to 1936. We have here nearly 75 minutes of music, which together make for an appealing recital.

Indeed, though I know Kempff primarily through his recordings of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, I would find almost anything the great pianist plays to be appealing. But there's something special about these recordings, something quite miraculous. In spite of the relatively primitive technology involved in these early electrical recordings, I had no trouble at all forgetting sonic imperfections, and zeroing in on a great master channeling great composers. The French Suite no. 5 of Bach, recorded in 1935, is the highlight of the disc; it's a masterful interpretation. I was in awe of this from the first time I heard it, since I had the strong feeling that Kempff was communicating his own awe, as he so often does with Beethoven, before a great masterwork.

I was quite surprised by Kempff's interpretation of Mozart's Piano Sonata in A major, K. 331, recorded in 1935. It seems much more modern than I would have expected, with crisp, carefully delineated lines, and no hint of the romanticizing prettiness that plagued Mozart music of the period. While not completely Historically Informed, this performance once again demonstrates a real, personal connection between pianist and composer.

There are a number of Kempff transcriptions here, including some Bach pieces that have entered the repertoire of many pianists, and a very clever reworking of Liszt's version of Schubert's "Hark, Hark, the Lark!". The disc ends with a beautiful dream: Schumann's Träumerie, recorded in 1936.

I've characterized the piano playing of Wilhelm Kempff as a miracle, but there's another, albeit smaller, miracle involved in this release. It's quite amazing that one can listen to all of this music with little acoustic worries. That's a testament to the state-of-the-art German engineering behind the recordings themselves, but also, of course to work since then by the Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer for this project, Mark Obert-Thorn. The many years between recording and listening seem simply to vanish.

Stephen Siek's liner essay is first-rate, mixing in technical details, but making sure that storytelling prevails. Learning about Kempff's 1934 trip to Buenos Aires on the Graf Zeppelin adds a great deal to the charm of the entire project.

This disc will be released March 4, 2022.

Another brilliant musical document from post-war Berlin

Quartetto Italiano: The Complete RIAS Recordings

The Quartetto Italiano was the first of the new post-war groups that inaugurated a new golden age of String Quartets: the Quartetto Italiano was formed in 1945, the Juilliard String Quartet and LaSalle Quartet in 1946, and the Janáček and Amadeus quartets in 1947. Audite here brings us three CDs worth of fabulous recordings for RIAS ("Radio in the American Sector" of Berlin). The RIAS studios were excellent, and their engineers highly accomplished, so we have (as with the Amadeus Quartet album I reviewed late last year) an excellent idea of how these musicians sounded, in this case between 1951 to 1963. The group's repertoire is interesting, especially considering the period: Donizetti, Malipiero and Cherubini provide an Italian antipasto, if I may be permitted a metaphor (pun!) in questionable taste (taste!). Their 1959 Ravel interpretation is searching, and sometimes fierce; maybe even more so than their late recordings of core repertoire. This is a standout performance, though it's perhaps less than Gallic. The early String Quartet no. 8 by Schubert, from 1963, has the characteristic QI sound of their studio recordings of the Viennese masters: it's taut and tight and intense, eschewing sentimentality and emphasizing structure over story-telling. The first of the Haydn String Quartets op. 77 is the earliest recording here, from 1951. It's sunnier and more fun (to listen to, and I expect, to play) than the more disciplined Haydn the Quartetto Italiano developed later in their recording career. These recordings are at a higher level in both sonics and interpretation than your average historic releases, and the excellent documentation and the fact that a number of the works have never been released, make this a must-listen for chamber music fans.

This album will be released on May 3, 2019.

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!

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.

A fascinating programme, beautifully performed

The Great Fugue: music for two pianos & one piano four hands, by Schumann, Schubert, Mozart & Beethoven

Pianists Izabella Simon and Denes Varjon have built a really interesting program from a very solid base, a convincing and accomplished performance of Beethoven's own four hand transcription of the Great Fugue, originally the finale to his op. 130 String Quartet. Each of the pieces that precede the Beethoven is original and well worth listening to in its own right, and not just as a build-up to the main event. I had never heard Robert Schumann's Six Canonic Etudes, Op. 56, in Debussy's version for two pianos, but these are really delightful character pieces with plenty of charm and, well, character. Schubert packs a lot into the Allegro in A minor he wrote late in life: a poignant, sentimental soft centre surrounded by a crunchy, mock-serious coating. More delightful music, and played with especially apt energy, subtlety and style by these two fine pianists. The Mozart Fugue, K. 401, is one of the works that the composers wrote in response to his serious encounter with the contrapuntal music of J.S. Bach, and as it proceeds in its sombre way it's clear that Mozart has struck a deeply personal vein that he would go on to explore in his last decade, in his Great Mass and Requiem, and the most serious passages in his mature operas. This is a highly recommended release, both for its original repertoire and for the fine, assured playing.

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.

Less is more

During a career filled with as many failures as triumphs, and a life with an equal measure of pain and delight, Robert Schumann often seemed to be swimming against the flow. While the great virtuoso composers like Liszt and Paganini were creating a new concerto paradigm of the hero (soloist) fighting against the world (orchestra), Schumann in 1850 wrote his cello concerto as a "Concert piece for cello with orchestral accompaniment." This more organic, integrated music never caught on during his lifetime, and it wasn't until well into the 20th century that it became part of the standard cello concerto repertoire. Schumann himself suggested a chamber version of the piece, though he never had a chance to make it happen.

The idea of illuminating the inner structures and meaning and the outer textures of an orchestral work by subtraction has a long and honourable tradition. Liszt's own transcriptions of Beethoven's Symphonies for solo piano were like virtuoso x-rays. Meanwhile, Hummel's chamber reductions of Mozart's Piano Concertos were designed to bring the music from the concert hall to the middle class music rooms of Germany.  In those days such reductions were often a strategy to build markets and sell sheet music.



In his own reduction Schumann would have been mainly interested, I think, in exploring interesting musical issues relating to orchestral vs. chamber music textures and colours. In their outstanding version on this new Sono Luminus disc (to be released August 26, 2016), Zuill Bailey, the Ying Quartet and Julliard composer Philip Lasser, do just that. This outstanding collaboration seems to have been similar to a big band jazz arrangement: Lasser provided the basic charts, and the performers worked out a final performing version following significant give-and-take, and, I'm sure, some improvisation. This is an completely successful project: I've listened to this piece often in the past week or so, and it convinces me completely. It doesn't make one forget the orchestral version, but I rate it very close as a separate work.

Meanwhile, the Beethoven arrangement (an anonymous one from not too long after Beethoven's death) opens up the Kreutzer Sonata to emphasize its implicit concertante nature. This is a very interesting experiment, but it's not at the level of the Schumann. Still, there's no denying the fun in listening, which comes partially, I think, from the obvious fun these musicians are having as they play with each other.

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 Canadian genius

Everyone raves about the Toronto-born violinist who gained fame as the 'King of Concertmasters', but whose solo career never reached the highest level his talent deserved. Steven Staryk is retired now, still teaching but mainly managing the release of a lifetime of music on disc, first with the 30-CD Staryk Anthology, and now with Steven Staryk: A Retrospective. The reviews for both have been phenomenal, and this seventh release in the latter series is a fine one with which to begin an examination of the Staryk Revival.

The Schumann Violin Concerto had an odd early history involving the composer's mental illness, the love triangle between Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, clairvoyance, Nazis, and all sorts of other shenanigans. Check out the Wikipedia article, or better yet read about Jessica Duchen's novel Ghost Variations, to be published this summer. Steven Staryk's live 1983 performance with an excellent Toronto Festival Orchestra under Pierre Hetu is outstanding in every way except its sound, which is somewhat muffled, but serviceable. Staryk's performance is intense, electric. Perhaps if more people had heard it the current rehabilitation of the Schumann Violin Concerto might have happened sooner. I remember Pierre Hetu well, by the way, as the Music Director of the Edmonton Symphony beginning in 1973. I have a recollection of Staryk playing with the ESO at the Jubilee Auditorium during that period - I want to say the Mendelssohn, but can't be sure.

Next is another superb live performance, this time with the National Arts Centre Orchestra under Mario Bernardi in a concert from 1981. The Walton Concerto is romantic and melodic, but the solo part (the composer wrote it for Heifetz) is fiendishly difficult. This concerto has somewhat better sound than the Schumann; all to the good.

The final work on this disc is very, very cool; a 1973 live recording of the Mendelssohn Concerto from my new home town, Victoria BC.  The mono sound from the outdoor (!) concert with the University of Victoria Symphony under George Corwin is again serviceable. Kudos to the student players from UVic, by the way. They must have been thrilled to play with such an accomplished soloist, and they acquitted themselves very well. Staryk zips through the work at a furious pace with hardly a note out of place. It's really quite remarkable.

A final note about Staryk. While reading more about him on the web I learned about the Symphony Six, a little known Canadian story from the black-list period. Read about it on Wikipedia. While these shameful events put a temporary crimp on Staryk's career, he was soon working again as concert-master with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony. Finally he was back as concert-master at the TSO, where all was apparently forgiven. Did Staryk's brush with McCarthy play a role in the unfortunate cap on his solo career? Was it his success running orchestral strings as concert-master? Or did Fame just randomly slip on by when no one was looking? In any case we have this disc (and many others in these two series) to show us the true value of a Canadian artistic genius at the highest level.