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.

Stravinsky with a distinctive British sound

This is the second new Stravinsky choral disc I've come across this summer; it's due for release on August 26, 2016. When the music is as beautifully played and sung as it is here, by the Choir of St. Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Duncan Ferguson, and in Philippe Herreweghe's disc with the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, you can only sit in wonder at the genius of the great composer, and listen gratefully to such artful construction and spiritual depth.

The works on this Delphian disc are in most cases earlier and less austere. The writing is easier on the ear, though always Stravinskyan. Since the high voices are sung by trebles there is an English (whoops, better say British) sound to the music which I often found quite appealing. Incidentally, St. Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh was the first cathedral in Britain to use girls as well as boys in its choir. They sound fabulous:

There's only one short piece that the two new discs have in common: the first of the Gesualdo motets that Stravinsky edited, Da Pacem Domine. Again, there's a distinctive sound from the Scottish choir, though I think the Belgian singers come out just ahead in this instance. Nevertheless, this is a fine recording, and one I'm sure I will listen to often in the future.

Exquisite, uncompromising late music by Stravinsky

I recently read Edward Said's insightful book On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain, and now I keep coming across examples of late works unexpectedly. This new disc from Phi brings together a group of choral works from Stravinsky's final years. It includes two major works, Threni and the Requiem Canticles, that are relatively under-performed and under-recorded, for such important pieces and such a popular composer. Said brings up examples of "...artistic lateness not as harmony and resolution, but as intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction", and there is an aspect of this in some of the works on this superb new album from Philippe Herreweghe, with the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. It's true, for example, of the great Threni, the first of Stravinsky's works to use dodecaphony throughout. The "intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction" here is by no means an indication of any problems the composer had with a new system of composition, since the 12-tone regime is completely integrated into the Stravinsky sound. Rather, the whole project, from text (taken from the Book of Lamentations) to the textures of voices and instruments and its odd structure, with canons and pitch-less chanting, is an expression of Stravinsky's own contradictory personality and religious/spiritual life.

Not that there is a complete lack of consonance or surface beauty. Even within the uncompromising scheme in Threni there are fine moments of consolation, and there are even more in the Requiem Canticles. Stravinsky scrupulously avoids sentimentality, and Herreweghe does the same, but there is a fine feeling one might call human welling up in this music. Here is the exquisite (and exquisitely sung) Exaudi from the Requiem Canticles:

The disc ends with a short motet by Gesualdo, Da Pacem Domine, which is 3 minutes and 20 seconds of pure beauty. It retains the style of the Mantuan master but sounds completely modern. Perhaps this says more about Gesualdo's time travelling magic than Stravinsky's editing, which consisted of the addition of a missing bass line only. In any case, it's a fitting close to an outstanding album, one of the best choral discs of the year.

Suzuki's Stravinsky

This is a disc I was so excited to see. I've been a huge fan of the epic Bach project on BIS by Masaaki Suzuki with his amazing Bach Collegium of Japan. I had heard that Suzuki was beginning to conduct new repertoire with various orchestras, and this project, with the Tapiola Sinfonietta, is the first to show up on CD. It's due to be released on June 10, 2016, though you can buy it now in FLAC or MP3 at eClassical now.

My favourite Pulcinella on disc is Pierre Boulez's recording of the full ballet on CSO Resound; my 2010 review is here. Suzuki has only recorded the suite, but his version is very fine. He takes, not surprisingly, a much warmer view of this music than Boulez, who admits to disliking Stravinsky's neo-classical music but making a exception for Pulcinella. There is nothing but love in Suzuki's version; he's always been one to wear his learning lightly, so it's no surprise that this music swings so beautifully while keeping true to Stravinsky's oddly time-warped version of 18th century music. This music is great fun in Suzuki's hands, but also heart-warming, and sometimes even moving.

I don't believe Boulez conducted either Apollon Musagete or the Concerto in D, so we can't compare his drier approach to Suzuki's. This mordant music works well with a more lyrical approach, though, and I could listen to both of these works often, as I have already. The Tapiola Sinfonietta is in excellent form, and though I haven't yet experienced the surround-sound version on the SACD, the stereo sound is full and rich and pleasant to listen to. All of those times, and many more in the future!

Superb Stravinsky, with a light touch

From February 3, 2015:

After loving the dazzling recordings that Chandos released of Prokofiev and Haydn Piano Concertos with British orchestras, I wondered what the French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet would be up to next. I was so pleased to see the announcement by the same record company of this excellent program of Stravinsky works for piano and orchestra. This was clearly music to which Bavouzet was well suited, and in which he could provide his usual blend of élan, wit and solid musicianship. His light touch might temper the tendency which still exists to take the often stern Stravinsky too seriously. This time Bavouzet would be reunited with the conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier, with whom he recorded a Gramophone Award winning disc of concerted works by Ravel, Debussy and Massenet in 2011. And the two were off in May 2014 to Sao Paulo to record there with Tortelier’s former orchestra.

Up until now I’ve known the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (Osesp, as it’s known in Brazil) exclusively playing music of Brazilian composers, and especially Villa-Lobos. In this repertoire they’ve recorded quite a bit, for BIS and Naxos especially, and they pretty much rule. I’ve heard about their trips to Europe, and the strong notices they’ve received for concerts and recordings in a wide range of repertoire with Yan Pascal Tortelier and their new musical director Marin Alsop. Osesp, which is now the best South American orchestra, seems to be making its way into the top tier of orchestras internationally.

The orchestral players, often equal partners in Stravinsky’s scores, excel in this music as much as the soloist. This is especially true of the wind players, and is most especially evident in the strongest work on the disc, the early 1920s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments. In all four works Tortelier keeps everything in balance and in forward motion. He ensures that the broad range of varied textures, from the pianist’s immersion within the densest, loudest orchestral sounds of Petrouchka to the spare, brittle sounds of the serial Movements, always make musical sense. The Chandos engineers are, I’m sure sometimes breathlessly, swept along while providing really excellent, lifelike Super Audio CD sound.

A special man in a special time and place

September 17, 2014:

Stravinsky may have been a towering genius and the greatest 20th century composer, but he was also an odd duck. The time Stravinsky spent in Hollywood in the 40s, 50s and 60s was considerable, and the artistic journey he took there was profound, in spite of his eccentricities. The stories told by the filmmaker Marco Capalbo in this film present both the music and the personality of a special man in a special place and time.

Some have complained about the re-enactments with actors portraying the Stravinskys and Robert Craft, but I enjoyed the performances enough to forgive the ingenuousness of the presentation. (With the focus on archival film, it’s not made clear in the DVD/Bluray packaging that these reenactments are part of the project at all. I’ve read reviews that talk about ‘home movies’, but there’s no mention of the actors.) Eric Gorlow, who plays Craft, has a Tony Perkins vibe, which is entirely appropriate for this charming but slightly sinister character. And Giovanni Ombra channels Stravinsky as Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson: bald, smoking cigarettes with a holder, and walking completely self-absorbed a few steps ahead of both Craft and Mrs. Stravinsky.

Stravinsky’s Hollywood hopes, like so many others (Heitor Villa-Lobos, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner to name a few) didn’t pan out, either in terms of his artistic or his pecuniary dreams. Neither composers nor writers were particularly valued by the system at the time. In one of the most striking sections of the film, Capalbo matches music Stravinsky originally planned with the scenes of classic movies he worked on, including Jane Eyre and The Song of Bernadette. What might have been!

The Bluray of the film looks and sounds splendid. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole project.

Have fun with this toy at home

From February 25, 2010:

I found Phillip Huscher's interview with conductor Pierre Boulez, included in the booklet of this new CD on the Chicago Symphony's CSO Resound label, to be very illuminating. Boulez isn't at all shy about expressing his dislike for Stravinsky's neo-classical music, but he makes an exception for a work written in 1919. "Pulcinella is a different matter," he says, "because Pulcinella is a game." If so, this is a game that Boulez and his outstanding musicians play better than anyone. Recorded live at Chicago's Symphony Center exactly one year ago (February & March, 2009), this music just about jumps off the disc, it's so alive, so life-like, so real. Boulez and his crew have a number of advantages. First of all, they're recording the complete score of the ballet, rather than the better-known suite. Secondly, the music is recorded live over a number of performances, so we have the best combination of being-at-the-concert excitement and technical perfection. And thirdly, the producer, engineer, and post-production staff have assembled an amazingly life-like sound world on the hybrid SACD disc. "Pulcinella is a work I like to conduct, because it's like a toy within your hands" says Boulez. Listening to this disc in a good surround-sound setup is like playing with that toy at home. [Figures sold separately].

I've focused on Pulcinella, which I love, and which takes up the bulk of this disc. But I'm just as impressed with the 1945 Symphony in Three Movements and the 1929 orchestral arrangement of the Four Etudes. This is very highly recommended!