Music of passion, passionately played

Sturm Und Drang 4: music by Benda, Mozart, Kraus, Traetta & Haydn

Let's start with that awesome painting on the cover: it's Fire on the Tiber, painted by Claude Joseph Vernet, in the collection of MUŻA, the National Community Art Museum of Malta. Lots of storm and stress going on here!

I love music that's often categorized as Sturm und Drang: the minor key orchestral and chamber works and fraught opera arias of Haydn, Mozart and their colleagues working in the Galant International Style of the 1760s and 70s. But is it a true contemporary movement of composers and their patrons, or rather a modern marketing strategy of concert promoters and record companies? Robert O. Gjerdingen is skeptical; this is from his book Music in the Galant Style (Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 439):

"Frequently invoked terms like Sturm und Drang ('storm and stress') or 'the learned style'... may partly reflect the modern tendency to attribute acts of personal artistic expression to what in many cases were merely musical behaviors typical of the church or theater making an appearance in music for the chamber."

As so often happens in musical discourse, category discussions often become tedious and circular, so I'll stop being tedious and circular, but I will push back against Gjerdingen's "merely musical behavior". There's no reason to think that "personal artistic expression" didn't take place in the 18th century. It was just hidden by the social structures of the ancien regime. Haydn and Mozart, we know from the full documentation of their lives, were artistically on the same plane as the great intellectuals of the Enlightenment: Schiller, Goethe, Thomas Jefferson. Judging by the music they left, Kraus or Benda must have been more than mere craftsmen using the galant schemata as if it were a saw or a plane.

Ian Page makes the best case for Sturm und Drang as a proper musical movement by including two outstanding minor key symphonies (indeed, two of the greatest symphonies of the century): Joseph Martin Kraus's C minor Symphony and Joseph Haydn's Symphony no. 45, "Farewell". Just as important, though, are the three operatic arias/scenes Page has included here, especially the fantastically dramatic scene from Georg Benda's Medea. After all, Sturm und Drang as a term originally came from German drama, specifically Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's play of the same name.

I have no German, but I was blown away by Alexandra Lowe as Medea. "Peitscht ihn her! Peitscht ihn her!" ("Whip him here!"), she cries, having Jason whipped and brought to her to complete her revenge. Again, the storm of Medea's anger is clear, and the whips bring the stress.

The passion in the scores of these composers requires passionate playing, and we have that here in spades. The Mozartists is a tight band; they're bold, stylish and exciting. Ian Page has curated a wonderful programme for us; wrapping the dramatic core of Sturm und Drang opera with the C minor and F sharp minor masterworks gives us the essence of the movement in an hour of music.

Staring at the future of the past

Almeida Prado: Piano Trios; Cello Sonata, Balada

The Music of Brazil series from Naxos has been so important for the dissemination of the wonderful world of Brazilian classical music throughout the world. Here's another first class album, from one of the country's greatest composers since Heitor Villa-Lobos, played by three excellent instrumentalists.

Though José Antônio de Almeida Prado began his composing career in a Villa-Lobosian nationalist mode under the tutelage of Camargo Guarnieri, he soon latched on to the more progressive musical events in Europe. He studied with Gilberto Mendes, who had just returned to Brazil from Darmstadt, and was strongly influenced by the Polish composers Witold Lutosławski and Krzysztof Penderecki. In 1969 Almeida Prado moved to Europe, studying at Darmstadt under György Ligeti and Lukas Foss, and then in Paris as a pupil of Villa-Lobos's close friend Olivier Messiaen. At the same time, he worked with every modernist's favourite Parisian teacher, Nadia Boulanger.

It was while he was working with Boulanger during the summer of 1970 at the Château de Fontainebleau that Almeida Prado wrote his Trio de Fontainebleau, a wonderful work for piano, violin & cello. Almeida Prado would have known Villa-Lobos's Third Piano Trio, written in 1918, and one of the stars of Brazil's modernist coming out party, the Semana de Arte Moderna of 1922. Both Villa's and Almeida Prado's trios can trace their lineage to Maurice Ravel's landmark Piano Trio of 1914, with its rich textures and colouristic effects. By the way, the cover of the album shows a watercolour painting entitled "Nadia Boulanger", by Almeida Prado himself!

Almeida Prado's second piano trio, the Trio Marítimo, was written in 1983, and dedicated to the memory of the great Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa. Each section of the work illustrates a poem from Pessoa's cycle Mensagem (Message), a conversation with Luís de Camões’ epic poem Os Lusíadas, which celebrated the voyages of discovery by Portuguese sailors (including, of course, Brazil).

1. The Fields

First / The Castles

Europe is lying propped upon her elbows:
From East to West she lies, staring
Out, reminiscent, – Greek eyes from the shelter
Of romantic hair.

Behind her back the left elbow is cast;
The right has the angle place.
That one says Italy in its repose;
This one says England where, gathered apart,
It holds the hand up to support the face.

She stares, her gaze doom-heavy, sphingical,
Out at the West, the future of the past.

The face with which she stares is Portugal.

(trans. Jonathan Griffin)

Almeida Prado's Cello Sonata was commissioned in 2003 by Sonia Rubinsky & Antonio Meneses, two of Brazil's greatest instrumentalists. It's played here, beautifully, by Rubinsky and Rafael Cesario. In this work Almeida Prado acknowledges his debt to Johannes Brahms, evident in its dense musical textures and formal architecture. The Balada for cello & piano which opens the recording is from 1985. The composer notes that it forms "a chromatic spiral where the accumulation of resonances creates a mystical aura," which connects it to much of Almeida Prado's oeuvre, especially his towering master work, the Cartas celestes for piano.

Three neoclassical symphonies

Simone Menezes: Music by Prokofiev, Villa-Lobos & Poulenc

The up-and-coming Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes has matched three symphonic works in an album about neoclassicism, one of the most interesting and important components of the modernist revolution in the music of the first half of twentieth century. As a musical lens neoclassicism offered a new way to look at the past, sharpening and bringing into focus at times, distorting at others. But more important is what it illuminates about the modern world and the composers that lived in it.

The revolution of the new, modern music of Stravinsky, Debussy & Ravel was just as frightening as the fractured visual arts ushered in by Picasso & Braque. It's no wonder that in 1917 both Sergei Prokofiev and Heitor Villa-Lobos should throw a lifeline back to 18th century Vienna to help keep their bearings as they wrote their music of the future. Prokofiev's model was Haydn's symphonies, while Villa-Lobos looked to Mozart's operatic music. The former created a masterwork in his "Classical" Symphony, while Villa's First Sinfonietta, "In Memory of Mozart" has made much less of a stir in the century since. It's a nice little piece, a clever piece, which shows how quickly the Brazilian composer could pick up an entirely new musical vocabulary thousands of miles away from its Parisian epicentre. Villa-Lobos spent years playing the cello in the pit of the Rio de Janeiro opera house, and his Sinfonietta is a deconstruction of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and the Magic Flute. But Villa had a different European forebear; his true personal voice didn't emerge until he came to terms with the music of Bach.

Simone Menezes has been pondering the similarities between the Classical Symphony and the Sinfonietta #1 for quite a while. Here's a video from back in 2018 where she explains how similar the two works are, though one was written in Rio, the other in St. Petersburg/Petrograd:

The Sinfonietta of Francis Poulenc, meanwhile, was written thirty years later, in 1947. A decade younger than Villa-Lobos & Prokofiev, Poulenc was actually more closely aligned with the musical avant garde, writing modernist works beginning in the late 1910s. As the post-WWII era began, his own neoclassical symphony adds a second layer of looking back: to the 18th century Viennese masters, but also to the younger Poulenc himself, writing such works as the Concert champêtre for harpsichord & orchestra in 1928. His Sinfonietta is suffused with nostalgia, but unsentimental in nature. Earlier I called neoclassicism a lens; in this work Poulenc is using it as a kaleidoscope. Scenes shift, and the ostensibly trivial work becomes a sophisticated compendium of earlier times. As Simone Menezes says in her excellent liner note essay, "... the work transcends its apparent lightness, approaching a symphonic dimension not through development, but through accumulation and contrast."

This recording is greater than the sum of its three parts; each symphonic work is enhanced by its relationship with the others, and the place of each in musical history makes listening as instructive as it is enjoyable.

The cover design is by Jimena Estíbaliz.

Instrumental music from Meredith Monk

 Meredith Monk - Realms

This valuable album includes Meredith Monk's only string quartet, Stringsongs, a work written in 2004; Backlight, written in 1999 & revised in 2015 for a small ensemble of piano, winds and strings; and the title piece, Realms for six voices & a small group of instruments, from 2012. In the conversation Monk has with Phillip Granell in the liner notes,  she talks about how these three pieces are related: "... all the pieces are sonic landscapes, each a different one. Each piece explores new colours and textures." Together they make a substantial, challenging and appealing hour of music.

An almost completely instrumental album is a first for Monk, who has always worked primarily with the human voice. For the "Phantom Strings" movement of Stringsongs, "I actually wrote it by laying tracks with my voice. I even sang the cello part!" It's perhaps for this reason that the work doesn't have the String Quartet Common Denominator sound, with Joseph Haydn still lurking in the background of so many works in that form. As well, we should note that the string players - violinists Phillip Granell & Chihiro Ono, violist Richard Jones and cellist Sergio Serra - provide the rich and full sound of a superb madrigal ensemble, recorded in a churchlike acoustic.

Backlight, scored for five woodwinds, piano, violin and cello, was conceived by Meredith Monk to evoke nighttime in New York City. It's a noir piece that's built on a modernist chamber music sound rather than the romantic Hollywood orchestral scores of the great film noir composers Miklós Rózsa, David Raksin and Bernard Herrmann. The cinematic nature of the work is especially evident in the third & final movement, where the city awakes. It reminded me of a comment Debussy made about Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben: "He definitely thinks in colored images. Ein Heldenleben is a book of images, cinematography even." Backlight is the noir version of this.

Realm Variations brings back the human voice, but as Monk notes, "In Realm Variations, while there are voices, I think of them as instruments and the instruments as voices." This is an important work, from one of the most important musical voices of this century.

The cover image is by Kyungwon Yi.

Futurism without tears

Francesco Balilla Pratella & Marco Anzoletti - Music for Viola & Piano

In February 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his Manifesto of Futurism. Futurist ideas flourished in poetry and the visual arts, but they were also taken up early by the Italian composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. Pratella wrote his own Manifesto of Futurist Musicians in 1910, with more polemic work to follow.

Martinelli had said that "Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty, and injustice", but there's little evidence of those futurist traits in Pratella's Viola Sonata, written in 1917. This work seems to toe the standard modernist line; if anything, it's romantic and often pretty. A lovely work, in fact, but hardly violent or cruel. Other works by Pratella seem to veer more towards the savage side, but it seems that the true music of futurism would have to wait for Luigi Russolo and his acoustic noise generators, which he called intonarumori.

This album, performed by violist Federica Cardinali & pianist Lisa Redorici, also includes the 7 Compositions for Viola & Piano by the Italian composer Marco Anzoletti (1867-1929). These undated character pieces are short passages with varying moods: march-like, passionate, pastoral, mock heroic, antique, rustic and satiric. The final piece, the "Serenata Maligna", is a wonderful scary trifle that features the viola pizzicato; it fits the upcoming season well. I listened to it again & again, and thought it would be perfect in Wes Anderson's next movie. It makes for a wonderful encore for this slightly puzzling but hugely entertaining recital.

The cover features a painting by the Italian abstract painter Osvaldo Licini.

This album will be released on November 6, 2026.

 

Baroque music from Leicester

Robert Valentine: 12 Sonatas for Recorder and Basso Continuo

When you think of music from Leicester, does the post-punk group The Apollinaires come to mind?

Or perhaps you immediately think Baroque: Robert Valentine was born around 1674 in Leicester, moved to Rome, & died in 1747. He was one of the most prolific composers of music for the recorder in his time (his contemporaries include Henry Purcell in England, and the Italians Antonio Caldara, Francesco Durante & Alessandro Scarlatti). Valentine's twelve sonatas for recorder & basso continuo, op. 11, were published in Rome in the first half of the 18th century, as part of Antonio Parensi's Sinfonie dei varij autori. This new album from First Hand Records (FHR) includes all twelve of the op. 11 sonatas, on two discs.

The first page of one of Valentine's F major sonatas for recorder & continuo, from Sinfonie dei varij autori.

The ensemble on this album - Heidi Fardell on recorder, Lynda Sayce on lute & guitar, Poppy Walshaw on cello & Robin Bigwood on harpsichord - are able advocates for this music. Valentine does his part to keep things interesting, with different dance rhythms and contrasting musical textures. The musicians attack these pieces with energy and style. Some of the most interesting passages come from the continuo group, a tribute both to Valentine's composition and the ensemble work of the four musicians. Certainly listening to two discs worth of recorder sonatas at once might be fatiguing, but remember, musical ergonomics is important. Take a break, and enjoy this infectious music in moderation.

The album cover photo is by Emma Spellman. By the way, this album will be released Real Soon Now, on October 16, 2026.

And here it is:

Determined music from a high powered trio

 Michel Petrucciani Trio - Jazz Club Montmartre, 1988

The great Danish jazz label Storyville has released a wonderful album recorded at Copenhagen’s Jazzhus Montmartre on July 3rd, 1988, 37 years ago to the day, assuming I get this review done in time! 

The French pianist Michel Petrucciani is joined by bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Roy Haynes. The music this high-powered Trio performed is a mix of standards - "My Funny Valentine", "In a Sentimental Mood", "Autumn Leaves", "Someday My Prince Will Come" - and songs written by Petrucciani, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. There's plenty of energy here, communicated to the enthusiastic, but not intrusive, crowd. I've often commented on how ardent and seemingly knowledgeable Danish jazz audiences were back in the day; Copenhagen is clearly a great jazz town!

The sheer technique of the three players is what stands out, but each of them also seems to be listening to the other two. These are highly musical performances, for all the virtuosity.

In his article on Michel Petrucciani in the New Republic, "Keys to the Kingdom", David Haju quotes Michael Zwerin, who tells this wonderful story:

We were sitting there wondering what to play. It was kind of hot. And Michel said, ‘Anybody know “Giant Steps”?’ Neither Louis [Petrucciani] nor I wanted to admit we didn’t really know it. So there was this great silence. And Michel said, ‘Well, I do!’ And he pounded into a solo version of it at a very fast clip, and it was really amazing. That to me is Michel--’Well, I do!’ Man, a confidence you wouldn’t believe.

As it happens, Petrucciani, Peacock and Haynes play Coltrane's "Giant Steps" on this album, and it really is impressive. A "fast clip" is here in this performance, and the three masters gallop through this hugely influential composition, but there's no hesitation or stops and starts (as there apparently were for an underprepared Tommy Flanagan in Coltrane's original recording); all three are completely confident in this music. Speed is not the defining characteristic of this album, though. It's true that the Trio speeds up Joseph Kosma's ballad "Les feuilles mortes", aka "Autumn Leaves," but Petrucciani, like his hero Bill Evans, keeps the sadness and introspection in the foreground.

Michel Petrucciani's life story itself is so sad and so inspiring. He was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, the “glass bones” disease, and lived his entire 36 years in terrible pain. And yet he had a remarkable career as a jazz pianist, with a very large recording legacy. As Haju says, "He was as fragile as his art was robust, his life as tenuous as his music is durable." The design on the cover of this disc, by Finn Nygaard, shows the pianist, under three feet, and weighing around 50 pounds. In a wonderful conceit, Nygaard shows the pianist rising above the piano, as he rose above his terrible suffering to create wonderful sounds with remarkable colleagues.

I've just come across some photographs that were taken at a Jazzhus Montmartre concert in July 1993, by the great Danish jazz photographer Jan Persson. So great to see Petrucciani in action!