A great musical partnership

The Complete Beethoven Sonatas for Violin & Piano; Sonatas by Fauré, Franck & Debussy

Here are more classic Beethoven recordings to lead us into the Big Beethoven Year of 2020, the 250th Anniversary of his birthday, on December 17, 1770. The Beethoven sonatas are studio recordings from 1958 and 1961, and it would be hard to find a better-matched duo for this repertoire. When Zino Francescatti and Robert Casadesus swap the lead and support roles at the beginning of the Spring Sonata, op. 24, you're hearing a marvellous musical partnership unfold.



The keynote here is freshness. Though the temperature is rather low, as likely to be measured as fiery, the two musicians always sound spontaneous, and even, when the music allows, joyous.  I was always convinced by their decisions, and swept along by the music. And what lovely music this is! Perhaps the violin sonatas aren't as serious and profound as the string quartet cycle, but my goodness, there are so many felicities in melody and rhythm, and such inventive conversations between the instruments. When you have two such impressive musicians as Francescatti and Casadesus, so intelligent, so sensitive, so lively, you can be sure you're hearing this music as the composer intended.

The three Beethoven CDs sound exceptional, as one would expect, since Holger Siedler, who did the remastering, had fine source tapes to work with. The fourth disc is much more of a mixed bag, sound-wise, though the music and the performances are wonderful. These sonatas by Fauré, Franck and Debussy are live recordings from 1947 to 1956. The bonus disc is much more than just an encore; it makes a perfect album even more impressive!

Pleasing, infectious Haydn

Joseph Haydn: Symphonies no. 90, 91 and 92 (Wallerstein Symphonies)

Joseph Haydn was an important figure in the evolution of the composer's status from court lackey to free-lance entrepreneur, and I've always really admired how well he managed that process. Along the way, though, he wasn't above a little sharp dealing. Haydn in fact came very close to perpetrating a fraud; maybe let's say that the composer finessed the commission from Prince Kraft Ernst for three new symphonies for his Court Orchestra at Wallerstein Castle in Bavaria. The Prince was under the impression he had exclusive rights to the new music, but Haydn sold them at the same time to the Concert de la loge olympique in Paris. From our vantage point it's easy to see why everyone was clamouring for this music, and that Haydn, after years of loyal service at the Esterhazy court, was ready to cash in on his new Europe-wide fame. This is pleasing music, even infectious, but at the same time it has a serious side and, for me at least, a surprisingly strong, and cumulative, emotional impact.

Back in 2016 I gave a positive review to another disc of music from Wallerstein, played by the same orchestra, the Bayerisches Kammerorchester Bad Brückenau, also conducted by Johannes Moesus. But Ignaz von Beecke, who wrote the piano concertos I quite enjoyed, is no Haydn. Indeed, in my review I stated that "Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ... both elevate the standard, stereotypical forms of the day to the highest level of art." In this new disc, then, the stakes are considerably higher. This is vibrant playing, alive to Haydn's often thrilling pulse, and Johannes Moesus's choice to opt out of Haydn's trumpets and timpani added after the original performances gives an open, chamber-like sound to these symphonies. But in the end this disc is not in the top echelon of performances for this special repertoire, a place where I'd put, for example, The Orchestra of the 18th Century under Frans Brüggen, and the Austro-Hungarian Orchestra under Adam Fischer. But there is much pleasure to be received from this album.

This album will be released on September 13, 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!

Greatness in musical partnership

Mravinsky Edition, volume 3: works by Tchaikovsky, Bach, Weber, Wagner, Scriabin, Kalinnikov, Bruckner, Shostakovich

I've come to historic recordings fairly late, but I've had such good luck with recent releases that I'm beginning to search them out. This 6 CD set, the 3rd volume in Profil's Mravinsky Edition, is a superb example of well-documented remastered recordings of special significance. It's easy enough to filter out sonic shortcomings when the performances are so vital. Mravinsky had a lifelong relationship with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, and it's fascinating to hear the development of their musical partnership from 1938 to 1961. The obvious highlights in this package are the Tchaikovsky Symphonies #4 and (especially) #5 and a blistering performance of the Shostakovich 8th Symphony. But I was completely bowled over by Mravinsky's take on Bruckner's 8th Symphony, which I've been listening to a lot lately. In my review of Mariss Jansson's recent recording, I talked about the balance in Bruckner 8 between what Vincent Van Gogh referred to as "Tranquility of Touch" and "Intensity of Thought". It's no surprise that Mravinsky comes down on the intense side. Shostakovich biographer David Fanning describes just this intensity:

The Leningrad Philharmonic play like a wild stallion, only just held in check by the willpower of its master. Every smallest movement is placed with fierce pride; at any moment it may break into such a frenzied gallop that you hardly know whether to feel exhilarated or terrified.

An outstanding production all around.

The Mravinsky Edition covers feature a monochrome detail of his portrait by Lev Russov. Here it is in colour:

A mixed bag: from oddness to greatness

This is the second 6-CD set from Profil of recordings made by Yevgeny Mravinsky with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, largely live recordings from the 1940s and 50s. It's very much a mixed bag, with some oddly shaped and accented Mozart, Berlioz and Bizet, thin sounding in the bargain. A bit better is the Richard Strauss Alpensymphonie, though one cannot put it in the top class. But the high end is high indeed.The standouts are, naturally, music by Russian composers.

The Stravinsky ballets on the third disc, Petrushka and The Firebird, are completely alive, fresh and airy but also cruel and barbaric. Remastering has delivered impressive sound considering the vintage and recording sources, though of course there isn't quite the presence of the best new recordings. The Prokofiev works, the 2nd Romeo & Juliet Suite and the 6th Symphony, sound even better, in performances of style and again some considerable violence. Romeo & Juliet has a paranoid edge; after all, orchestral musicians as well as composers must have worried about official disapproval of "degenerate modernism". The same is true of the 6th Symphony. "Now we are rejoicing in our great victory, but each of us has wounds that cannot be healed," the composer said when he wrote this music in 1947. The pain and loss in this music comes from a sharing of those wounds, with many personal losses I'm sure. This is an affecting document as well as an artistic statement of considerable merit. I've only rarely heard as impressive a Pathetique Symphony as Mravinsky delivers here, taut with menace but finely and delicately balanced, and in the end heartbreakingly sad. This is Tchaikovsky laid bare, stripped of false sentimentality. Mravinsky and his wonderful musicians demonstrate that this is indeed one of the greatest of all 19th century works of art.

Not HIP, but plenty musical

It's Canada Day, and I'm enjoying the fabulous singing of the great Canadian tenor Léopold Simoneau, in this CD re-issue of Carlo Maria Giulini's landmark 1952 Paris production of Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride. Simoneau is one of the glories of this project, along with more great singing by soprano Patricia Neway and the Ensemble Vocal de Paris, solid playing by Giulini's Orchestre de la Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire Paris, and, most importantly, the gorgeous melodies and dramatic set-pieces of Christoph Willibald Gluck. Giulini's calm control over the music squashes nearly all of the qualms one might have about inauthenticity. Certainly there are passages that sound very odd to those of us who spend the bulk of our 18th century opera time living in the world of Historically Informed Performances, but I'm swept away by musicianship and compositional genius.

Let's compare this 1985 recording, with a fairly large orchestra, playing modern instruments, but guided by HIP principles, with the Orchestre De L'Opera De Lyon and the Monteverdi Choir, under John Eliot Gardiner:



with the Giulini version:


O.K., when you do this A:B, the Giulini begins soupy and swoopy, while Gardiner is crisp and clear, though some of that clarity is lost in a cavernous acoustic. But Giulini brings excitement when Gluck gets stormy, and the singing is perhaps a draw. I prefer Gardiner's version in the long run, but don't regret the time I've spent with this version, recorded in my own birth year.

A postscript about Simoneau: born in Saint-Flavien, Quebec in 1916 (I missed his Centennial last May 3rd!), he and his wife, soprano Pierrette Alarie, moved to Victoria, BC, where I live now, in 1982. Here the two great singers founded Canada Opera Piccola, a training and production organization that had a significant impact on opera on the Island and throughout Canada. Both died here in Victoria - Simoneau in 2006 and Alarie in 2011 - but their musical legacy lives on.