The ecstatic symphonist

As a Villa-Lobos fanatic I've always paid fairly close attention to the music of Kurt Atterberg. Both composers were born in the same year, 1887, and both composers only found true appreciation outside of their homeland, Villa in Paris and Atterberg in Berlin. And yet each was connected, in an almost mystical way, to his own country, and the landscapes of the Amazon and Sweden's Western Islands are reflected in the music in a very basic, and not merely a programmatic, way.

Though both were masters of the large orchestra, Atterberg was by far the better symphonist.  In spite of its genesis as three separate orchestral sketches his 3rd Symphony, written in 1916, has a truly symphonic structure. Meanwhile, the 3rd Symphony of Villa-Lobos, from 1919, is a interesting assemblage of themes loosely assembled around a theme ('War', and specifically the recent Great War), orchestrated with great skill but lacking the greatness of his tone-poems of 1917, Amazonas and Uirapuru.

In the promotional material BIS sends out for this disc they make reference to the "warm and tuneful" music of Kurt Atterberg. This may be a reasonable characterization, since there is a genial flow to much of his music. But listening to the 3rd movement of Symphony no. 3, I was reminded of this passage from Emerson's Nature:

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.

It's this ecstatic connection with the universe that Atterberg, I believe, is communicating in this great passage. Stig Jacobssen, in his beautiful liner notes to this disc, describes Atterberg's reaction to the landscape surrounding a cottage he rented with his family.

The glowing colours of the evening sky in summer soften towards midnight. The air is absolutely still. In the North East, the sky begins to glow again, the breeze rises, the sun climbs majestically over the mountains, at first in cold colours, then warmer and warmer. It is at this moment in the introductory Adagio of the third Picture that the listener has one of the very rare opportunities to hear the alto flute. The dawn becomes a swelling hymn, but the Picture, and the Third Symphony, ends pianissimo.

When the 3rd Symphony finally found its admirers in Berlin, Atterberg was hailed as the greatest writer of orchestral music in Europe other than Richard Strauss. But though I hear parallels with Strauss's music, it's rather Hans Pfitzner's music that comes to mind. The Preludes to Palestrina share the ecstatic feeling that Atterberg attains in the 3rd Symphony. There is a common sound-world, it seems, between Pfitzner and Atterberg, and it's evident as well in the 3 Nocturnes from Atterberg's opera Fanal. These three scene-setting pieces obviously have dramatic as well as musical functions, and there's a strong sense of pageantry and story-telling here.

Atterberg ended up outliving Villa-Lobos by 15 years. When he came to write his 7th Symphony he realized its fourth movement was surplus to the work's requirements, so he worked it up as a separate orchestral piece, Vittorioso, in 1962. As it happens, it shares themes with the music from the opera Fanal, so it can double as a fourth Nocturne.

I wondered at first if we needed another set of Atterberg symphonies on CD, with the excellent CPO set from Germany conducted by Ari Rasilainen still fairly new. But this fourth disc in the BIS series demonstrates different sides to Atterberg's music. The new symphonies aren't always better than those in the CPO set, but there is always something new in Jarvi's interpretations and the excellent (and authentic!) playing by his Swedish orchestra, the bonus works (some premieres on disc) and fine sound makes the new discs the top choice by a hair.

And here we go with another Villa-Lobos parallel, and this one is quite bizarre. I can re-write the above paragraph like this:

I wondered at first if we needed another set of Villa-Lobos symphonies on CD, with the excellent CPO set from Germany conducted by Carl St. Clair still fairly new. But each disc in the Naxos series demonstrates different sides to Villa's music. The new symphonies aren't always better than those in the CPO set, but there is always something new in Karabtchevsky's interpretations and the excellent (and authentic!) playing by his Brazilian orchestra, the bonus works (some premieres on disc) and fine sound makes the new discs the top choice by a hair.

Spooky!

A bassoon in Stockholm

The story behind this new BIS album began in the mid-1980s, when Donna Agrell acquired a beautiful bassoon made in Dresden in 1820. It turned out that the instrument had been used in Sweden in the early part of the 19th century, and Agrell and a group of musician friends came up with this program of music which might have been played in Sweden by this very instrument. In the first and most important work on the disc the bassoon doesn't feature that prominently, though it's still an important part of the texture. The Septet for winds and strings by Franz Berwald is a great work by a great, though under-appreciated, composer. It's played in the most sympathetic and lucid way possible by a group of chamber musicians in tune with the music and with each other.

The final work is also by Berwald, and it's another winner. Written for piano, clarinet, horn and bassoon, there is the same feeling of cohesion that's not without freedom of expression. Fortepianist Ronald Brautigam, who we know so well from his many solo and concertante recordings for BIS, is outstanding, as are all of his colleagues.

In the two Berwald works the bassoon occasionally emerges from its support role, but it's in the middle work, the Quintet for bassoon and strings by Edouard Du Puy, that it has its own time in the sun. This piece has a great, dramatic beginning, but it's clear after a while that this music isn't close to the level of the Berwald works. It's pleasant enough, and I feel like it's being presented to its best advantage by the musicians who are zeroed in on just the right 1820s vibe, but it's definitely thrown into the shade by the nearly Schubert-level music of Berwald.  This shouldn't keep you from acquiring this disc or streaming the music, with its two first-rate works by an early Romantic master, beautifully played.

Dynamism and variety

The new ATMA disc of Vivaldi concertos, to be released on Amazon on March 11, 2016, reminds us what an amazing composer Vivaldi was. I've been exploring the composer's operas and sacred music lately, and it was nice to get back to this well-chosen disc of orchestral music, with all of its dynamism and variety. There's often something dumb about a clever aphorism, and there's no dumber aphorism than Stravinsky's line (or was it Dallapiccola's?), that Vivaldi didn't write 500 concertos, but one concerto 500 times. "Very interesting," you say, like Arte Johnson in Laugh-In, "but stupid."

Some of the concertos chosen by associate conductor Mathieu Lussier are very familiar, and listening to the two concertos from the great series L'Estro Armonico, op. 3 you can see why these have been "greatest hit" material since Vivaldi's time. Indeed, I've known and loved these pieces since I first heard them on an Archiv LP in the late 60s. Mixing in more obscure pieces like the Sinfonia from the opera La Verità in Cimento brings in the opera-house excitement and anticipation of a great overture. And there are plenty of opportunities for excellent solos: oboes, bassoon, trumpets, horns and violins all have their chance to shine.

This is Mathieu Lussier's second disc in charge during the convalescence of founding conductor Bernard Labadie following his extended cancer treatment. I know Lussier best as a bassoonist and composer, and he brings soloist and compositional skills to bear in these controlled but exciting, inventive readings with the excellent Quebec musicians. I look forward to more discs from this group under Lussier and Labadie, and trust that the repertoire will be as well-chosen. And, of course, we're all pulling for a complete recovery for Maestro Labadie. 

This is fun: video from the recording session:

Here's my old LP, which was released in 1967. Archiv LPs were expensive! I treasured this disc.

Fireworks

Back in September 1999 six musicians from the Kuijken family and a harpist friend took a break from their Baroque and Classical musical diet and recorded most of the important works that Debussy wrote for chamber ensembles: the string quartet of 1893, Syrinx for solo flute from 1913, and the three late sonatas (for cello & piano, violin & piano, and flute, viola & harp). It's just now been released (or re-released) on the Arcana label with a cover that features the amazing Whistler painting Nocturne in Black and Gold - the Falling Rocket, in the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Tom Service wrote a short article in the Guardian back in 2012 which resonates with me today. He warns against the idea of reducing Debussy's music to a pretty "impressionism". Looking back on this music a century later we maybe miss out on how new it was, how revolutionary. From today it perhaps seems easier to see the radical nature of Wagner before Debussy, Stravinsky at the same time, and Schoenberg after him. For Debussy, and this is where there is a real connection with the art-for-art's-sake advocate Whistler, his music was radically about one thing: the music itself. As Service says:

The basic point is that Debussy uses music as thing-in-itself. It's not a metaphor for something else, but an experience in its own right. And with Debussy, those are experiences that music hadn't created before, and are, therefore, experiences that the human imagination hadn't had before.

So how do the Kuijkens present this important subset of Debussy's music? Very well, I'd say, though it doesn't always sound like the Debussy we're used to. The string quartet, which of course has a list of rival recordings a mile long, may not sound as polished or as tightly controlled as some versions, but it has a relaxed charm that escapes even highly-rated performances by other groups. Not that they're using gut strings and cutting back on vibrato, by any means, but the Kuijkens come to this music as something new, and that counts for something. The late sonatas were all written during Debussy's significant health problems which began with his first diagnosis with rectal cancer in 1908. Though there is no decline in quality, this music is stripped down, serious without being morbid. It looks, perhaps, to places Debussy hadn't explored in his life before. This seriousness is well communicated by the musicians. I was especially impressed with the contributions of Piet Kuijken in the two pieces featuring the piano, and his cellist uncle (I believe) Wieland.

Chamber music is a quiet art form, well suited to the family circle. But within its circumscribed limits it can still pack a wallop and and set off rockets. Here is Whistler's entire painting; I think it was well chosen to go with this music.

Special intersections of art and belief

I've been listening to more than a few CDs for review, but this new one from Harry Christophers and The Sixteen has knocked me for a loop. The title track, "The Deer's Cry", is written by Arvo Pärt. The text is an amazing poem (which Pärt sets in English), written by St. Patrick (372-466):

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in me, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me,
Christ with me.

Though I'm not a believer, I was raised in the Christian tradition and often feel myself stirred by special intersections of art and belief: the great Medieval cathedrals of Europe, Bach's St. Matthew Passion, the Eisenheim Altarpiece of Grünewald. This intimate piece sounds so personal, almost like a confession. But behind it is the long, vital stream of faith and tradition going back to St. Patrick and the early church. And surrounding it is the darkness of Pärt's world in communist Estonia, and of all faith under the threat of intolerance. This is such beautiful, moving music, and it affected me deeply.

These themes of tradition and faith under fire are two of three that tie together the music of Pärt, who was born in 1935, with the two Tudor composers who share the disc, Thomas Tallis (1503-1585) and William Byrd (1539-1623). Like Pärt, Tallis and Byrd (both 'unreformed Roman Catholics') were at times unable to openly practice their religion. Also like Pärt the two earlier composers built on the music of their English and continental precursors. Indeed, there is literal building going on in the amazing Miserere nostri, where the pupil Byrd writes a four-part piece upon which his master Tallis, in a technical tour de force, adds three more voices. And it's all astonishingly beautiful:



That's the third theme Harry Christophers brings to this music: craftsmanship. Canons, crab-canons, inversions, and all sorts of ingenious musical tricks are in play.  Here's how the low-voice singers treat the portion of the Miserere nostri that Byrd wrote:

The first sings the line exactly as written. The second doubles all the durations of the notes (x2), and turns all the intervals upside down. The third singer quadruples the durations (x4) and resorts the intervals. The fourth octuples the durations (x8) and re-inverts the intervals. Thus four different versions of the same melody sound simultaneously, in various states of augmentation and inversion - a conceit that is utterly impossible to follow in sound.

For someone who can just barely get through Row, row, row your boat, this is heady stuff. I'm not sure if the singers were expected to do this all in real time, or if they went away and practiced their part for a very long time. As John Milsom says in his informative liner essay, these complex puzzles aren't necessarily designed to be heard in performance, but appreciated by the singers.

One of the coolest of these begins the album. In Diliges Dominum William Byrd has written a musical palindrome. It's an eight-part motet that sounds the same sung backwards as it does forwards. As Milsom suggests in his essay, I tested this out. I loaded the MP3 into Audacity, clicked on Effects, and Reverse, and it indeed sounded the same backwards. Well, not quite the same. There's an odd, other-wordly feel to this track when it's played backwards. Besides the fact that the words are backwards as well, the reverb in the church where it was recorded comes before a phrase rather than after, and there's immediate silence after instead. It comes out a bit like this:




In any case, I recommend this disc very highly. The Sixteen have made this repertoire the basis of this year's Choral Pilgrimage. They'll be taking this repertoire to 33 sites in Britain, including the great college chapels and cathedrals, beginning in April 2016. The disc is available for pre-order now at Amazon.com; its release date is April 1st.

The healing and inspirational power of music

BBC Radio 3 has a great program called Through the Night which begins every day after midnight (12:30 on weekdays, 1 am on weekends), running, well, through the night. They play great music from recorded concerts, mainly from Europe, and for some reason the playlist nearly always includes music I enjoy listening to. The theme for the program is one that I've always loved; it's the hauntingly beautiful Madrigal Nocturne from Darius Milhaud's Cheminee du Roi suite. This CD isn't up yet on Spotify, so I'll post this version by the Athena Ensemble so you can listen while you read the rest of this review:



Isn't that lovely? And so sad. I always think of insomniacs and shut-ins being comforted by the music. It sets the stage so beautifully for the healing and inspirational power of music to follow, even here on Canada's west coast, where Through the Night begins at 4:30 in the afternoon.

The Warsaw-based Gruppo di Tempera is made up of a wind quintet (flute, clarinet, oboe, horn and bassoon) plus piano. They've put together a great program of French music that often partakes of the Madrigal Nocturne's nostalgically sad but hopeful sound, but then, in the French way, quickly changes in turn to satire, mock pomp and ceremony, and sheer nervous energy. This Dux CD, due to be released on Amazon on March 11, 2016, is recommended for its cleverly designed program, the ebullience of the playing and the clarity of the sound.

A Canadian genius

Everyone raves about the Toronto-born violinist who gained fame as the 'King of Concertmasters', but whose solo career never reached the highest level his talent deserved. Steven Staryk is retired now, still teaching but mainly managing the release of a lifetime of music on disc, first with the 30-CD Staryk Anthology, and now with Steven Staryk: A Retrospective. The reviews for both have been phenomenal, and this seventh release in the latter series is a fine one with which to begin an examination of the Staryk Revival.

The Schumann Violin Concerto had an odd early history involving the composer's mental illness, the love triangle between Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, clairvoyance, Nazis, and all sorts of other shenanigans. Check out the Wikipedia article, or better yet read about Jessica Duchen's novel Ghost Variations, to be published this summer. Steven Staryk's live 1983 performance with an excellent Toronto Festival Orchestra under Pierre Hetu is outstanding in every way except its sound, which is somewhat muffled, but serviceable. Staryk's performance is intense, electric. Perhaps if more people had heard it the current rehabilitation of the Schumann Violin Concerto might have happened sooner. I remember Pierre Hetu well, by the way, as the Music Director of the Edmonton Symphony beginning in 1973. I have a recollection of Staryk playing with the ESO at the Jubilee Auditorium during that period - I want to say the Mendelssohn, but can't be sure.

Next is another superb live performance, this time with the National Arts Centre Orchestra under Mario Bernardi in a concert from 1981. The Walton Concerto is romantic and melodic, but the solo part (the composer wrote it for Heifetz) is fiendishly difficult. This concerto has somewhat better sound than the Schumann; all to the good.

The final work on this disc is very, very cool; a 1973 live recording of the Mendelssohn Concerto from my new home town, Victoria BC.  The mono sound from the outdoor (!) concert with the University of Victoria Symphony under George Corwin is again serviceable. Kudos to the student players from UVic, by the way. They must have been thrilled to play with such an accomplished soloist, and they acquitted themselves very well. Staryk zips through the work at a furious pace with hardly a note out of place. It's really quite remarkable.

A final note about Staryk. While reading more about him on the web I learned about the Symphony Six, a little known Canadian story from the black-list period. Read about it on Wikipedia. While these shameful events put a temporary crimp on Staryk's career, he was soon working again as concert-master with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony. Finally he was back as concert-master at the TSO, where all was apparently forgiven. Did Staryk's brush with McCarthy play a role in the unfortunate cap on his solo career? Was it his success running orchestral strings as concert-master? Or did Fame just randomly slip on by when no one was looking? In any case we have this disc (and many others in these two series) to show us the true value of a Canadian artistic genius at the highest level.