(++++) A SENSE OF THE ALL-ENCOMPASSING

Mahler: Symphony No. 3. Catriona Morison, mezzo-soprano; Prague Philharmonic Choir, Pueri gaudentes and Czech Philharmonic conducted by Semyon Bychkov. Pentatone. $26.99 (2 CDs).

     The famous exchange of opinions about symphonies between Jean Sibelius and Gustav Mahler is often misunderstood. It is known only from Sibelius’ recollection of it, in which he remembers Mahler saying, Die Symphonie muss sein wie der Welt – es muss alles umfassen. If Sibelius' memory is accurate, the last word is crucial and often mistranslated. “The symphony must be like the world – it must encompass everything” is the English version: not so much “contain” or “embrace” or “consist of,” as translations often state, but, at least in this case, “include.” Yet that does not mean that a symphony’s musically massed contents must be metaphorically thrown at listeners’ ears in the hope that some will penetrate and stick. Sibelius says Mahler made his comment after he himself “said that I admired [the symphony’s] strictness and style and deep logic, which requires that all its motifs must be linked to each other.” But “deep logic” and linked motifs are precisely the most integral building blocks of Mahler’s symphonies – notably his Symphony No. 8, written just a year before he and Sibelius had their discussion in 1907. Indeed, the merger of “deep logic” and linked motifs dates back to the very start of Mahler’s symphonic production – and is combined with the notion of es muss alles imfassen in his Symphony No. 3, completed more than a decade earlier (1896). Mahler’s Third, his longest symphony and the one conceived on the grandest scale, opens with a horn fanfare whose notes and patterning pervade all six movements: this work of operatic length (more than 100 minutes) all flows and grows from its first minute or two. This is motivic linkage taken to an extreme – but combined with a scale and scope that do indeed include pretty much everything in the world, from the changing seasons to elements of nature (notably, birdsong) to quotidian human concerns (the posthorn) to human despair and striving (Nietzsche) to an all-embracing love that exists so far beyond words that it can be communicated only orchestrally (the finale).

     It is the sheer vastness of Mahler’s Third that Semyon Bychkov explores thoroughly convincingly in a new Pentatone recording that is the fifth in Bychkov’s Mahler cycle: Symphonies Nos. 1-5 have now been released. Bychkov’s understanding of Mahler is at the highest level in Symphony No. 3: he beautifully grasps the solo-vs.-ensemble elements of the score, its individualism paired with gigantism, its extended pauses (notably amid the sections of the first movement and at key points in the finale) contrasted with its headlong forward progress. The brass and percussion sections of the Czech Philharmonic are simply wonderful here, abetted by a recording that picks out individual instruments to perfection while allowing full-orchestra massed sound to flower unimpeded. Bychkov has no fear of Mahler’s Third fragmenting into a series of disconnected episodes, as it can in less-thought-through performances: he does allow individual portions to emerge, flourish and disappear – again, this is especially notable in the first movement – but he keeps everything within an overall vision, an overarching structure, that does indeed include everything Mahler perceived and imagined, presenting it all with a foundational understanding through which the pervasive material from the opening fanfare makes perfect sense as a transcendent conclusion more than an hour and a half later.

     This is not to say that Mahler’s Third is not discursive. Bychkov embraces this element of the music, too: no matter how far things seem to diverge from the path set forth in the first movement – which Mahler wrote last, knowing by the time he created it exactly how it would set the scene for all that would follow – Bychkov remains aware of how the puzzle pieces will eventually coalesce into a fully realized whole that is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Thus, the graceful woodwinds and strings of the second movement, and its gentle Tempo di minuetto pacing, are all the more affecting because of the way they contrast with the rhythmically pounding, brass-heavy march that pervades the first movement and eventually crowns it. The second movement sounds as if it is always airborne or about to take flight, gliding gently along with a beauty of simplicity that brings a pervasive calm that lays to rest the turmoil of the first movement – which, however (and Bychkov clearly understands this) has been necessary to set the scene for this island of tranquility. Then, in the third movement, birdsong-reflecting elements conceal, or at least dress up, something more complex: Mahler starts the movement by quoting his own setting of Ablösung im Sommer, a “changing of the guard for the new season” song in which the death at the end of spring of the simple-sounding cuckoo (symbol of lovers’ infidelity) paves the way for the nightingale’s extended, florid song anticipating new love and a flowering of nature that recalls Pan from the first movement but provides an entirely different context, now expanded into the human realm – even though the distant sound of the posthorn and the human existence it represents are, for the time being, largely ignored by the natural world.

     The fourth movement then focuses matters firmly on human concerns, and Bychkov elegantly explores the major mood change associated with the introduction of the human voice and Nietzsche’s words, sung with appropriate depth of sound and dour expressiveness by Catriona Morison. The movement emerges from complete silence – the orchestra’s ability to play almost inaudibly is exceptional – and Morison gives the opening words a sense of both pleading and near-despair, a strong contrast to the delicacy and exuberance of what has come just before. By the time she reaches the words Die Welt is tief, the depth of troubled human expressiveness is abundantly clear – but Bychkov ensures that the instrumental elements, while sometimes reinforcing the words, at other times sound in contrast to them, recalling earlier and less-fraught moods while setting the stage for the uplift that the fifth movement will bring. That light and lovely children’s-choral movement is refreshingly brief, emerging almost as a kind of purgatory between the pain of the fourth movement and the still-to-come gorgeous beauty of the finale. (Interestingly, the only other Mahler symphonic movement as short as this one is in Symphony No. 10 and is labeled Purgatorio.) The fifth movement, as naïve in expression as it seems mostly to be, is not without darkness: Morison returns to sing of bitterness and ask for pity, and the bell sounds after her plea initially cast a pall over the uplifting choral message. But then the words Die himmlische Freud’ are sung three times, pointing to heavenly joy that will literally elevate human beings above all their turmoil and distress.

     And then the finale moves beyond words – a brilliant concept by Mahler, and one that allows Bychkov to call again upon the tremendous expressiveness of which the Czech Philharmonic seems to possess an unending supply. The gentle opening of the finale restores the quietude of the nonverbal second and third movements, but in a new context and almost at the length of the first movement. Placidity is what Bychkov emphasizes here, but this is not the simple acceptance of existence of the second movement: this is the fulfillment of the striving of the fourth movement and the promise of the fifth, turning this vast canvas from a natural-world-centered one into one with a distinctly human focus – until the very end, when Mahler shows that the two disparate portraits of the world are really one and the same, and Bychkov allows the first-movement-echoing music to burst forth in a resplendent D major with beauty and joy and an affirmation that everything, everything, is pervaded by love (if not always peace) that “passeth all understanding.” It is a wonderfully knowing and poised conclusion to an absolutely first-rate performance that displays tremendous understanding of Mahler’s messaging and of the way the composer not only includes the entire world in his Symphony No. 3 but also produces a work of pervasive “style and deep logic” subsumed within an emotional landscape of surpassing beauty, meaning and tenderness.

(+++) VOCALS WITH A PURPOSE

Benedict Sheehan: Ukrainian War Requiem. Axios Men’s Ensemble and tenors and basses of Pro Coro Canada conducted by Michael Zaugg. Cappella Records. $19.99 (SACD).

Vivaldi: Arsilda, regina di Ponto. Benedetta Mazzucato, Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, Nicolò Balducci, Marie Lys, Leonardo Cortellazzi, Shira Patchornik, José Coca Loza, and La Cetra Barockorchester & Vokalensemble Basel conducted by Andrea Marcon. Naïve. $19.99 (3 CDs).

     The assertion of Ukrainian culture and solidarity in light of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is the explicit motivating force for Benedict Sheehan (born 1980) in Ukrainian War Requiem. There is a lengthy history of occasional music intended to celebrate battles (Handel’s Dettingen Te Deum, Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, and many more); and music of wartime defiance and assertiveness has long has its place, too (Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, “Leningrad,” is just one example). The history of requiems for the dead is a longstanding one as well. The heartfelt nature of much of this music is not to be denied, even when the words are formulaic – in works using the traditional Latin mass for the dead, for example. Sheehan’s Ukrainian War Requiem draws on different but related traditions, notably that of a Ukrainian memorial service called panakhyda, upon which Sheehan builds a strictly a cappella work that draws mostly on Ukrainian prayers and also on some Latin texts and, for a sort of musical seasoning, Jewish melodies – a subtle reference to Russia’s claim that it invaded Ukraine to root out resurgent Nazism even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish. It is difficult to know what to make of this Ukrainian War Requiem on a strictly musical basis, because it is not really intended to be listened to strictly as music. The extent to which Handel, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and others succeeded in creating music that is still performed today, despite being written in what can be thought of as a war-related subgenre, relates directly to how well the music transcends the time and purpose for which it was conceived. There is no such transcendence in Sheehan’s work, which is very strictly of and for its time and is designed both to mourn the depredations inflicted on Ukraine and to celebrate the nation’s resilience. The music itself, listened to objectively, is very fine: sensitive to the words, which are set in ways that use voices effectively without over-straining them, and effectively emotive even for audiences that do not know the languages used – the expressiveness of the material speaks, or rather sings, for itself, with Michael Zaugg conducting a performance replete with emotive evocation. But listening to this music objectively is the opposite of its point. Centered at a very specific moment in time, created as a kind of cultural assertion for a nation attempting to avoid despair while negotiating deeply fraught political circumstances as well as horrendous ongoing combat, Sheehan’s Ukrainian War Requiem exists to rally the troops, both literally and figuratively: the singers emote through their words, encouraging further resistance and national assertiveness while mourning all that has been lost already and all that may yet be lost in the future. Ukrainian War Requiem is a deeply moving work for anyone who keeps its reason for being firmly in mind throughout its 67-minute duration. But it is not a work intended to persist in the future for its purely musical qualities, despite having many fine ones. It is a piece that exists for sociopolitical and geopolitical purposes; the fact that it engages those purposes through music rather than, say, painting (as Picasso did in Guernica), is simply testimony to the particular artistic medium in which Sheehan’s skills lie.

     The purpose of Naïve’s new recording of Vivaldi’s 1716 opera Arsilda is more prosaic: this is part of the wonderful, ongoing Vivaldi Edition that is exploring works by Vivaldi found at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin. Specifically, it is the 74^th release in the series. Vivaldi’s own purpose in creating Arsilda was more prosaic still: it was and is merely an entertainment of a specific type, designed to transport audiences to a much-fictionalized ancient time period when, the opera suggests, the ins and outs and intrigues of romance and politics were much the same as in the audience’s own 18^th century. Ancient Pontus had a fascination for several opera composers, including the 14-year-old Mozart (Mitridate, re di Ponto, K. 87). Vivaldi’s Arsilda was censored in its time because the title character falls in love with another woman, Lisea – although to modern sensibilities this is understandable enough, given that Lisea spends two acts pretending to be Tamese, her twin brother. None of this is played for any sort of humor: Arsilda is a dramatic work that includes ceremonial elements, battles and a prison scene. It is also packed with freshly composed music, which was by no means true of other operas of its time, including Vivaldi’s. One aria is repeated from the oratorio Juditha Triumphans, but everything else in Arsilda was composed for it – perhaps contributing to its popularity and success in the 1716 and 1717 seasons. Structurally, the opera is very much of its time, with the plot carried along mainly through recitativo secco and recitativo accompagnato and the arias being illustrative of characters’ personalities and their feelings about various events. There are some musically clever moments, such as the second-act aria Quell' Usignuolo with its birdsong imitations, but by and large the virtuosic vocal requirements are unsurprising – which does not make them any less impressively executed by the seven soloists, who are solid in their understanding of the style of Vivaldi’s time and generally have breath control that is often, well, breathtaking. The chorus and orchestra also perform in very fine style under the direction of Andrea Marcon, who paces everything suitably and balances vocal and instrumental parts with calculated skill and a clear understanding of Vivaldi’s priorities. The modern audience for Arsilda will inevitably be a limited one: there is nothing especially gripping either in the plot (which involves mistaken identities and royal machinations) or in the music (which is expertly made and well-balanced but in no way groundbreaking or especially distinctive within Vivaldi’s oeuvre). But listeners enamored of the top-notch Vivaldi Edition as a whole, and of its opera components in particular, will be more than satisfied with the chance to experience yet more evidence that Vivaldi, who has long been known for only a tiny percentage of his music, was as much an expert in producing entertaining and well-made operas as he was in creating the huge number of three-movement concertos with which he is most closely associated.

(++++) WHY MORE BACH? THIS IS WHY

Bach: Cello Suites (complete). William Skeen, cello and violoncello piccolo. Reference Recordings. $24.98 (2 CDs).

     The question still comes up periodically: with so many recordings, and so many excellent recordings, of this-and-that music by this-and-that composer, do we really need yet another one? The concept of “need” may be a bit tricky in that formulation, but if the question is rephrased to ask if there is any justification for yet another release, which is the underlying query, then the answer comes from performances such as William Skeen’s recording of Bach’s six cello suites. The world of recorded music would be at least a bit dimmer if these readings had not been captured and made available, and that is more than ample reason for their existence.

     Skeen’s is an unusually personal and unusually personalized interpretation of these iconic, thrice-familiar works. There is nothing grand or grandiloquent in his readings: this two-CD Reference Recordings release provides the feeling of sitting in on an intimate recital or extended practice session, in which the performer is communing deeply with his instrument and the audience is listening in on and sharing a very deep emotional experience. Skeen is an expert in Baroque performance, and his fluency extends throughout this cycle, which he plays on a 1725 Giovanni Grancino cello and, in Suite No. 6, a restored five-string violoncello piccolo from the 1680s – using, in all the suites, a replica of a bow from the 1720s, which is the time period of these works. Skeen wields these weapons of peace and grace with consummate skill, comfortably engaging with the Grancino instrument’s richness of tone in the lower region and its well-contrasted comparative lightness and brightness in the upper register. The cello suites are less elaborate, complex and (arguably) virtuosic than Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin, but in Skeen’s readings they are of equal stature and so well differentiated each from the next that the formulaic nature of their structure becomes essentially invisible.

     Like many performances only now being made available in recorded form, these recordings were influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic: they were produced at Skywalker Sound, as excellent a recording venue as can be found anywhere these days, in August 2020, just as the worst strictures of the pandemic began to be lifted to a limited degree. It is impossible to pin down the extent to which the depredations of that time period influenced the performances and recordings of the music, but certainly the life-affirming qualities of these works and their constant assertion of meanings beyond the mundane come through here with exceptional clarity.

     Two-disc recordings of these six suites are not possible in the suites’ numbered sequence because of the works’ differing lengths and the exigencies of the recording process: Nos. 4-6 are just a bit too long to fit on a single CD without risking quality deterioration. So producers and performers need to come up with a rationale for whatever order they choose to use for presenting the music. In this case, the first disc contains Nos. 1, 5 and 4, in that order; the second, Nos. 3, 2 and 6, in that order. Skeen’s idea is that this presents the music in order of increasing complexity, and that is as good an argument as any – although it is arguable, given the scordatura tuning of No. 5 and the complexities of several of the movements within that suite and Nos. 2-4. It is, however, certainly true that No. 1 is the shortest and most straightforward of the suites, and No. 6 the longest and most complex, so the presentation here is quite justifiable. All the suites do have some elements in common, and Skeen’s readings bring these out: in particular, all six Sarabande movements are deeply felt and highly expressive. Beyond that, the structural similarities of the works belie their very different effects. All the suites are in six movements in the sequence Prélude – Allemande – Courante – Sarabande – paired Menuets or Gavottes or Bourrées – Gigue. But the richness of Bach’s imagination, and his determination to explore the vast capabilities of an instrument that in his time was generally relegated to the role of continuo, mean that a performer as sensitive as Skeen can and does produce six musical experiences that differ considerably from each other.

     Highlights and elegant touches abound throughout these readings. There is exceptional bounce in the speedier dances, with the Courante in Suite No. 1 in G being particularly engaging. The rich resonance throughout Suite No. 5 is impressive, the work’s C minor tonality adding to its depth. In No. 4 in E-flat, the strongly accented Prélude is packed with well-contrasted chords and runs, while the leaps in the Courante and bouncily accented first Bourrée are additional pleasantries. No. 3 in C opens with especially rich sound and resonance that Skeen preserves throughout, resulting in a particularly emotive Sarabande that contrasts very effectively with the first Bourrée that follows. The Courante in No. 2 in D minor is exceptional in the distinction between its perpetuum mobile feeling and the occasional chords that interrupt the flow, while the Gigue is nicely balanced on a knife’s edge between gracefulness and a kind of lumbering quality. In No. 6 in D, the lighter sound of the five-string instrument is much brighter than anything heard in the other five suites, with the result that the higher register is more prominent here than elsewhere. But the Allemande – the longest movement in any of the suites – has pervasive emotionalism and exceptional warmth, to which the perky Courante that follows makes an especially effective contrast.

     It is actually a bit unfair to single out specific movements and any of the many individual highlights of Skeen’s performances, since their overriding characteristic is one of unified thinking and playing: as individualistic as the suites’ movements are, these are works to be heard in their totality, and Skeen’s awareness of this and his ability to present the foundational unity of each individual suite – and of the six-suite sequence as a whole – is as exceptional as his playing of the music. Skeen, like other first-rate performers of this repertoire, is well aware that one’s thinking about the music and one’s response to it will vary and develop over time, so that any specific recording captures only a particular moment in life and a particular stage of a performer’s thinking and communicative ability. But that is the point for audiences as well: any rendition of music as profound and wide-ranging as Bach’s cello suites is heard and processed, emotionally and intellectually, based on each listener’s circumstances at a specific time. It is therefore inevitable that these Skeen performances, as outstanding as they are, will not be and cannot be the last word on the music either for him or for anyone hearing this recording. And that is the justification not only for this exceptional release but also for the many more versions of Bach’s cello suites that are certain to be performed, recorded and made available to audiences for the indefinite future.