Disruptive music by Boccherini

Luigi Boccherini: Six Symphonies à Quatro, op. 35

Earlier today, I was listening to a symphony by Muzio Clementi that impressed me by its complete blandness, and I thought how wonderful it is that at one point in the late 18th Century there were three absolute geniuses writing music at the same time: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. The gap between these composers and Clementi seems too large to bridge. But luckily, there's a second tier of composers in between, including Bach's sons, the Bohemians Franz Benda, Carl Stamitz & Christoph Willibald Gluck, and an Italian who spent most of his life in Spain: Luigi Boccherini.

These Six Symphonies are billed as being in four parts, but they're actually in five: two violins, viola, cello and bass. They could be played one to a part, but here, with the wonderful Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, we have a small chamber orchestra: five first and four second violins, three violas and cellos, and a double bass and harpsichord. Boccherini was of course a master of chamber music, but this music sounds exactly right in this orchestral guise.

The two discs begin with the Fourth Symphony in F major, which in its first movement takes off immediately in an exciting gallop. Clearly, unlike Clementi Boccherini has something positive to say, and an exhilarating and original way of saying it. In his fine liner notes, Emilio Moreno compares Boccherini's op. 35 Symphonies with Mozart's Haffner Symphony, K. 385 and Haydn's Symphonies 76-78, all of which were written in 1782. (Beethoven, meanwhile, was only 12 years old; his first orchestral music was well in the future). Moreno doesn't hear much Haydn or Mozart in this music:

"Boccherini conceives of a discourse very close to that of the divertimento in which the unconventionally emotional goes beyond the structural and the Dionysian goes beyond the Apollonian, without its formal and harmonic ease of construction corresponding to predetermined models and schemes."

Boccherini disrupts the galant schemas, whereas Haydn, and especially Mozart, work their special magic largely within the structures that have come to be called classical. Boccherini worked, at least in 1782, in what Friedrich Schlegel called the 'poetry of the frenzied', as opposed to the 'poetry of the sober.'

The slow movement of the Sixth Symphony is quite wonderful, and it's played here with grace and style, with passion occasionally bubbling up from beneath the surface. This movement brings to mind the wonderful music Geoffrey Burgon wrote for the 1981 TV version of Brideshead Revisited; I don't know if Burgon knew Boccherini, but I hear in both a nostalgic sadness: Charles Ryder's for Sebastian and the Brideshead of the past; Luigi Boccherini's, perhaps, for his Italian homeland to which he would never return.

A masterpiece of emotional intimacy

Boccherini: Stabat Mater

The original 1781 version of Boccherini's Stabat Mater, in which a soprano voice is accompanied by a string quintet, is a masterpiece of emotional intimacy. In a new disc from Spain, the fine soprano Anaïs Oliveras and five talented string players have the measure of the dramatic story of grief Boccherini crafts from his very personal adaptation of the 13th/14th Century poem by Jacopone da Todi. Boccherini's own model is Pergolesi's great version of the Stabat Mater, from 1736; I wonder if he also knew Bach's transcription, set to the words of Psalm 51. Pergolesi's intense pathos shifts slightly in Bach's version, which often emphasizes the mystery of the Crucifixion. Boccherini includes both in his version; his version of the section which I find most affecting:

Vidit suum dulcem natum
Morientem desolatum
Dum emisit spiritum.

She sees her dear Son
dying in anguish,
as he gives up the ghost.

seems naïvely simple at first, but Boccherini twists the knife each time the soprano repeats the last line. The effect is devastating, and it's more effective since it isn't overplayed by the musicians.

This is as good a version as I've heard of this great piece (which I vastly prefer to the more complex version with two singers that Boccherini adapted in 1800), though there's a minor issue here that might cause some to look to other versions. Unlike most (but not all) other recordings, there is no additional music beyond the Stabat Mater, which lasts less than 40 minutes here. A Boccherini String Quartet or Quintet, even a Symphony, is included in some; sacred works by other composers are added in others. This is a question, though, of quantity only; quality is not in question.

A fluid fusion of melody and dance

Dance: Music for guitar and string quartet by Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Aaron Jay Kernis and Luigi Boccherini

When I listened to this new CD from guitarist Jason Vieaux and the Escher Quartet, I was reminded of a phrase of John Eliot Gardiner, who said of the Baroque music of Bach and Rameau that it had "the fluidity of gesture and step and the fusion of melody and dance". Though the music of Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Luigi Boccherini and Aaron Jay Kernis is a bit later (disco was after the Baroque, right?), this is definitely what's happening on this album, from the first habanera to the last fandango.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Quintet for Guitar & Strings earns its place on this dance-card with the tarantella & habanera in the finale, but the entire work is delightful. It has that perfect balance of folkloric and erudite music of the best chamber works of Villa-Lobos, for example, or Bartok. Vieaux and the Eschers judge everything just right.

The title of Aaron Jay Kernis's 100 Greatest Dance Hits is a very funny reference to the K-Tel TV ads of the 1970s, but the music itself begins in a mainly serious mode. The elaborate percussive effects of the Introduction set the stage for a most interesting and unexpected 20 minutes of music. It might not remain serious, but it's always clever. The 3rd movement, "Middle Of The Road Easy Listening Slow Dance Ballad" contains absolutely gorgeous melodies, but Kernis keeps turning the screw, and the piece veers hilariously, and then perhaps seriously, off the rails. The laughs come fast and furious in the final movement, "Dance Party on the Disco Motorboat," with its slapstick coda. I was reminded throughout this music of the Brazilian composer Gilberto Mendes, whose Ulysses in Copacabana Surfing with James Joyce and Dorothy Lamour for orchestra is somewhat in the same vein. Successful classical music humour is rare indeed, so it's nice to have Mendes and Kernis to give us some comic relief every now and then. Vieaux and the Escher Quartet must have had a ball performing this - I expect if the musicians don't, everyone will notice.

Take a moment before moving on to the Boccherini Guitar Quintet, so that it doesn't sound fussy and old-fashioned after the Kernis. Because it isn't fussy, and the musicians play it with perfect sensitivity to its Enlightenment ethos, making it sound fresh and alive, but always civilized. Still, Boccherini really lets his inner Tony Manero out in the Fandango Finale, which has been a crowd pleaser, I'm sure, since the 18th century. It's introduced by a lovely little mock-serious movement that for a moment crosses over into Mozartian pathos. This Boccherini Quintet is a triumph for Jason Vieaux and the Escher Quartet; it brought me as much pleasure as many a more substantial chamber work by Haydn or Mozart or Beethoven.

The civilized smile

Boccherini: String Trios, op. 6

I wasn't planning on reviewing three Boccherini discs in the space of eight days, but here we are with another new disc following two lovely releases, of the Stabat Mater and the op. 34 String Trios. This recording from Brilliant Classics features the Lubotsky Trio in the less intense, more carefree op. 6 Trios for two violins and cello, written in 1769. It's still very appealing music, which one could listen to, and play, with a civilized smile in a well-appointed drawing room, among intelligent and attractive people. These pieces aren't as profound as the op. 34 trios, and nor are they as Spanish-sounding, but rather in the International Style as developed by Haydn. With beautiful playing like this, one hardly notices one is missing anything! The Enlightenment lives!

A courageous thing

Luigi Boccherini: String Trios op. 34

Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Something curious often happens when a composer removes an instrument from a string quartet. Though the lightening of texture sometimes results in less serious music, serenade-like, often folk-inspired, it's just as likely that a new gravity comes with the more austere form. Villa-Lobos's late String Trio, the ground-breaking Trio by Webern, and the astonishing, concentrated Schoenberg String Trio all come to mind. The best example is Mozart's Divertimento K. 563 of 1788, about which Alfred Einstein said "Each instrument is primus inter pares, every note is significant, every note is a contribution to spiritual and sensuous fulfillment in sound." These six trios for two violins and cello by Luigi Boccherini from 1781 show this same tendency, and it's no coincidence, I think, that they're from the same period as his intimate and deeply religious Stabat Mater for soprano and string quintet, a new recording of which I just reviewed last week. From listening a great deal to these two CDs, I'm inclined to place Boccherini just behind Haydn and Mozart as a composer of chamber music. This is inspired, and inspiring, music. This is not a brand new recording; it was made back in 2010, and was previously released on the Colmna Musica label in 2012. But the remastering by Glossa reveals fresh and lively performances by the original instruments group La Ritirata, who bring out the Spanish flavour of Boccherini's music in an appealing way.

Universal tragedy on a tiny dramatic stage

Luigi Boccherini: Stabat Mater

The 13th Century poem on which the Stabat Mater is based is really extraordinary. It's a sad and beautiful contemplation of Christ's crucifixion by Mary, probably written by Jacopone da Todi (1230-1306). Setting this solemn text to music provides emotional opportunities, though in a limited dramatic range due to its personal devotional character. This is a universal human tragedy with the most important themes, but in a tiny dramatic space. The great international fame of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater setting in the first half of the 1700s was due, I think, to this intensely personal character of both text and music. Boccherini's setting, from 1781, was written for soprano and a string quintet. The chamber quality and its highly emotional writing place it under Pergolesi's influence. Though the composer produced a new version with more complex scoring and additional material, the original one is my favourite, due to this intimacy and numinous character.

Here is the hopeful final verse of the Boccherini's, the Quando corpus.

Quando corpus morietur,
fac, ut animae donetur
paradisi gloria. Amen. 

While my body here decays,
may my soul Thy goodness praise,
safe in paradise with Thee. Amen.

The musicians on the present disc give an inspired performance of the work. Soprano Dorothee Mields has a warm and sweet sound that emerges in an open and unforced manner; she navigates the dramatic, virtuoso passages without undermining the intimate effect. The enhanced Salagon Quartett provide sensitive support. I actually preferred their playing in the Boccherini to their Mozart String Quartet K. 428, which I thought was a trifle under-characterized. The slight Salve Regina by the teen-aged Mendelssohn is a nice bonus; it's an accomplished piece, though without the emotional complexity of the other two works.