Reviews and occasional notes on classical music "Music, both vocall and instrumental, so good, so delectable, so rare, so admirable, so super excellent, that it did even ravish and stupifie all those strangers that never heard the like." - Thomas Coryat, after hearing 3 hours of music at the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, 1608.
Schoenberg: Klavierstucke, op. 11, 23 & 33; 17 Fragments
In the liner notes for a 1959 LP that included Arnold Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces, op. 11, Glenn Gould says "Few composers possess the discipline to express themselves freely and joyously within the confines of twelve-tone writing." His further assertion, that "With respect to all the ingenuity that can be plotted in advance, the moment of doing still issues its supreme challenge of inspiration," is a profound truth about systems and art. He is speaking as much about performance, of course, as about composition, and the proof is in his Schoenberg recordings, which are inspired and inspiring documents of freedom and joy.
Yoko Hirota, who today teaches at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, recorded these Schoenberg pieces for Phoenix Records in 2006. Included are three of the five major works that normally show up in complete Schoenberg piano recordings: besides Op. 11, there are the five Klavierstücke, Op. 23 and the two Klavierstück, Op. 33. Hirota's versions don't have Gould's swinging freedom and his arresting tiger-about-to-spring feel, but their calmness and cool reserve has its own appeal.
Yoko Hirota's inclusion of Schoenberg's 17 Fragments, works that he never completed, open a window into the composer's development of his compositional style and his way of writing for the piano. In 25 minutes we see a progression from the earliest Brahmsian works to stripped down, concentrated bits of serial writing, some of which anticipate (or are themselves influenced by) Alban Berg and Anton Webern. These fascinating segments are as interesting in their own way as the more polished masterworks from earlier in the programme. Hirota uses them to paint a bright and colourful pianistic kaleidoscope.
40 Years of Contemporary Music: Chamber works by Villa-Lobos, Ginastera, Webern, Terzian, Berio, Boulez, Schreker Alicia Terzian begins a fascinating program of contemporary chamber music with one of the great works of Brazilian modernism, the Seventh Choros of Heitor Villa-Lobos, written in 1924. The 37-year-old composer spent most of that year in Paris, rubbing shoulders with Ravel, Cocteau, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and others, though he also brought with him his own strongly modernist works he'd written in Brazil. 1924 was a banner year for modernism on both sides of the Atlantic, by the way, with the publication of both Oswald de Andrade's Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil and André Breton's Manifeste du surréalisme (though as Desmond Morris notes in his recent Lives of the Surrealists, the tone-deaf Breton wasn't interested in adding musicians to his group). It's refreshing to see Villa-Lobos in this modernist company, rather than the parrots-and-jungle exoticism that usually surrounds him. This is a marvellous version of this work, as well. It's subtitled "Settimino" (which means "Septet"), and it's written for flute, oboe, cello, clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon, tam-tam and violin. I counted twice, and both times I got 8 instead of 7. I figure the tam-tam isn't counted, like when Ringo plays the tambourine. They're still the Fab Four.
Alberto Ginastera's Pampeana no. 2 for cello & piano comes from 1950, and thus is written in what he called his Subjective Nationalism style, a transition between with folkloric Objective Nationalism of his early years and the avant-garde Neo-Expressionism he worked in after 1958. This is an appealing piece, with Latin rhythms becoming insistently astringent and abstract. It's a fine bridge between the Latin American works and those of the Europeans later in the program.
The 8 Early Songs, a work without opus number by Anton Webern, is the earliest on this program. It's from 1901-04, and shows the strong influence of Wagner, Mahler, Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf. Soprano Marta Blanco and pianist Claudio Espector are effective advocates for these marvellous, slightly naive but always characterful songs. I hadn't heard this music before, and I'm so grateful that it was included on this disc.
Marta Blanco is also featured in the version for voice and five instruments of Luciano Berio's O King, written in response to Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. I recently reviewed a fine recording from Seattle of O King in its extended version for eight voices and orchestra, and it's fascinating to hear a kind of essential distillation of this landmark work, which is all kinds of bleak, but ultimately somewhat hopeful.
Dérive by Pierre Boulez is the same kind of puzzle music that Bach and Mozart delighted in. He shifts and shuffles around a six-note chord among six instruments, and by changing the intervals derives new chords (hence the name). After five derivations, the original chord returns, and then fades into silence. At the highest level of sophistication one can hear and follow along these changes; if not one can puzzle them out while following along with the score. The rest of us might be content with the general idea that there are basic transformations happening, while enjoying the ornate decorations
Alicia Terzian contributes two works to the program. Yagua Ya Yuca for percussion is five minutes of ingenious sounds, alternately wistful and intense. Les Yeux Fertiles for voice and five instruments, is a setting of fragments of poems by Paul Eluard, serious mood pieces all.
Franz Schreker's Der Wind was written in 1909 as a ballet, though it was never performed in his lifetime. It's an occasionally jolly but ultimately sadly nostalgic piece, untroubled by the more experimental modernism of his contemporary Arnold Schoenberg. This work is a fine ending to a fascinating concert of twentieth century masterworks.
The Cleveland-based ensemble Les Delices was founded by oboist Debra Nagy in 2009. This collection of pieces from the French Baroque has been put together to highlight the high quality and variety of the music from that period, and the style and musicianship of these fine players. There are some fairly obscure composers here; Duphly, Philidor and Guignon won't be showing up on many classical music favourites lists. But all of this music makes pleasurable listening. This is mainly music from the late Baroque, with an appealingly mannered way of spinning earlier tropes through unexpected textures and harmonies, leaving some traces of Italian instrumental virtuosity but with an unmistakable French style and grace. Then there are a few pieces of true genius that pop up, like the sublime Entrée de Polymnie from Rameau's Les Boréades, and this Tambourins from his Dardanus. It all comes together to make a truly delightful album.
