Two charming string quartets

Friedrich Gulda, Glenn Gould: String Quartets

What is rather shocking about this album made up of String Quartets written by Friedrich Gulda & Glenn Gould - the bad boy twin pianists of the 20th century - is how normal both works sound. That both works are actually very appealing to anyone who knows late Romantic music and isn't allergic to a tasteful bit of the Second Vienna School, is not at all surprising, considering the immense personal charm of both musicians. Gould wrote his Opus 1 String Quartet between 1953 and 1955, just before Fame hit him with his recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations. Gulda wrote his String Quartet in F sharp minor in 1950-51, after his 1946 Gold Medal win at the Geneva Competition, and around the time of his Carnegie Hall debut in 1950. Both perhaps had to leave behind composition dreams for careers in piano performance (Gould more so than Gulda, who kept his hand in with composing rather more than his Canadian colleague), and on the evidence of these two works there was perhaps something lost because of that. As slight as both works are in the context of the careers of two of the most interesting pianists of the 20th century, I'm really appreciative of the efforts of Gramola and the Acies Quartett to bring this music to our attention. It makes a nice change from hearing yet again about the (non-musical) antics of a couple of tricksters.

This album will be released on January 10, 2010.

Early Beethoven with the right touch

I really enjoyed the third volume in TrioVanBeethoven's complete Piano Trios series from Gramola, which came out just last summer.  Here we have the fourth disc, in a format similar to the first and third releases: a Trio from Beethoven's ground-breaking Opus 1, another Trio from later in his career, and a filler to round things out. This program has a major plus: the C minor is my favourite, and probably the best, of the three op. 1 trios written in 1793. On the other hand, we've run out of mature works (one of each of the two op. 70 works and the Archduke, op. 97 highlighted the first three discs), so we have to make do with the piano trio version of op. 11, written in 1797. This is a pleasant piece written in an unusually accessible style, but it's hardly a great work. And finally, the Variations op. 44, in spite of the late opus number, are from earlier in Beethoven's career, probably written before his op. 1. "It is not the desire for fame", says Marcel Proust, "but the habit for work that allows us to produce a masterpiece." Fame came to Beethoven with op. 1, and that was something that he dearly sought. But it would be a few years before the true masterpieces came. Luckily for us, Beethoven was his era's version of "the world's hardest working band."

The thing I liked best about TrioVanBeethoven's previous releases is their light touch when it comes to the op. 1 trios. One cannot take the drama in these works entirely at face value; a musical grin here and there keeps things from getting too fraught. Here we have a composer whose reach exceeds his grasp. As Browning says, "that's what heaven's for," and heaven was to come soon enough for Beethoven. But the musical experience improves when there's some (but not too much) detachment from the players. Oddly, things are reversed in op. 11, in which Beethoven writes down a bit to his audience, or to his publisher's idea of what his audience wanted. This is rarely a good idea for any artist, and it's a rare occurrence for Beethoven, but there's no harm done. We have pleasant tunes and a certain amount of charm, and again the three young musicians of TrioVanBeethoven have judged their playing just right. Incidentally, as much as I love the clarinet, I've always preferred the piano and strings version of op. 11, perhaps because one is less likely to compare it with Mozart.

So the series comes to an end. TrioVanBeethoven and Gramola should be proud of their accomplishment: a beautifully played four and a half hours of music that shows a distinctive sound, and presents Beethoven in all stages of his career at his very best.

Fresh Beethoven

The challenge in presenting music from Beethoven's early period isn't necessarily to bring to bear all of one's musical capabilities as one would when playing a mature or even a transitional work. Beethoven was in his early twenties when he wrote the three piano trios that he published as his Opus 1, and he put everything he had into this music, which was sometimes a bit more than the music could bear. Put everything you have into playing them, and things might come crashing down. There has to be some slight distance, a musical smile when things get too fraught, a bit of ironic detachment: more Seinfeld than Breaking Bad. My ideal for this music is the wondrously joyful, and obviously fun music making of Daniel Barenboim, Jacqueline du Prez and Pinchas Zuckerman (those were happy days!):



You can guess that the vital TrioVanBeethoven are probably going to do fine when you see the wide smiles on their faces on the cover of this album, volume 3 in their Piano Trio series for Gramola, due to be released on August 12, 2016. And they do a really marvellous job with this trio (as they did with number 1 in volume 1; I'm assuming number 3 will be part of volume 4, to come). I especially liked the Rossinian gallop of the splendid Presto Finale. Likewise, they play the slight Allegretto WoO 39 with real grace and the tiniest bit of mock heroism, which I believe Beethoven wrote into the piece himself; he was 42 at the time.

We move into a different world entirely with the E-flat major Trio, the second the two trios of op. 70, written in 1809, when Beethoven was approaching the end of his thirties. There are dark clouds overhead that the musicians should take note of, but not to the detriment of the nostalgic beauty in the lovely third movement, or the determined almost-optimistic mood of the Finale. If the final degree of gravitas is missing in this, a favourite, under-rated work, these fine musicians make up for it with their fresh approach to all of this music. 5 stars!

Here they are, playing the op. 1 no. 2 trio at King's Place in 2015:

The Evans Feeling

The great pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli once said "Bill Evans would be an ideal interpreter of the music of Gabriel Fauré." Evans had a solid classical education in his early years, and it would have been exciting to hear what the mature artist would have done with Debussy, Chopin, Bach. Glenn Gould called Evans "the Scriabin of jazz." There's something exciting about a great jazz artist bringing skills from outside the classical box without going as far as "jazzing things up", as when Keith Jarrett plays (so beautifully) Shostakovich or Bach.

Apparently Evans admired Michelangeli in return, and perhaps even more than hearing Evans play classical music, I'd love to hear the Italian master riff on some Evans tunes. It's coming up to 35 years since Bill Evans died, and he's attained his own master status. It's only natural for today's musicians, jazz or classical, to re-interpret the classics; they're expressing their love and perhaps hoping to catch some of the magic. It's one thing when there are new textures and sounds - the Kronos Quartet's 1985 album Music of Bill Evans added those, while benefitting from the solid jazz anchors of bassist Eddie Gomez or guitarist Jim Hall. But when it's a solo piano or a piano-bass-drums trio, you have to ask yourself, to be crass, what value is being added, especially on disc rather than in live performance. Why am I listening to this rather than to the many albums of Bill Evans himself, or his Trio?

In Monika Lang's case, it begins with her own classical training. It also involves bringing what she called "the Evans feeling" to her own compositions, four of which are included on this album. Then she works with drummer Wolfgang Reisinger and bassist Uli Langthaler in the style of the classical analogue of the jazz ensemble, the chamber group. As to the Bill Evans pieces, they've been chosen to represent different periods in his career, in a kind of musical biography. They're played more or less straight, and rather carefully, maybe too reverentially, while the group seems to have more fun in the Lang compositions. It's a bit of a disappointment to realize that there's more of "the Evans feeling" in the Lang numbers than the Evans ones. This disc is a creditable effort, but not up to the standard Eliane Elias set in 2008 with her lovely disc Something for You: Eliane Elias sings and plays Bill Evans.