(++++) AROUND AND AROUND WE GO

Rodgers and Hammerstein: Carousel. Nathaniel Hackmann, Mikaela Bennett, Sierra Boggess, Julian Ovenden, Francesca Chiejina, David Seadon-Young, Matthew Seadon-Young, Naomi Wakszlak; “Carousel” Ensemble and Sinfonia of London conducted by John Wilson. Chandos. $43.99 (2 SACDs).

     Just when everybody, including Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II themselves, knew that the duo could not possibly produce another success on the level of their first musical collaboration, Oklahoma!, along came Carousel and knocked everybody’s thinking for a loop. Several loops, in fact. The vast expansion of the Broadway musical’s musical environment that Oklahoma! represented was tied to what was, objectively speaking, a rather thin story line with basically formulaic characters – redeemed by a whole passel of utterly charming tunes. Even the dramatically necessary darkness, the ending with a death and its rapid dismissal, had something of a tacked-on feeling – none of which diminished the tremendous reception of Oklahoma! or reduced its impact by one iota. Its Pulitzer Prize was richly deserved.

     But then what? Rodgers and Hammerstein collaborated on the film musical State Fair in 1945, but what about a second stage musical? The answer turned out to be Carousel, a rather oddly named work whose title points to colorful gaiety and happy warm-weather family outings but whose plot is dark and is driven by complex and even unpleasant characters and their interactions. That makes it sound as if Carousel is an opera, and in fact it is the most operatic of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s nine stage musicals – and, oddly enough, the one whose music has been least familiar.

     Oklahoma! was the first musical to have an original-cast recording with the music in its original orchestrations – although not quite everything was included, as became clear when John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London produced the Chandos release of all the music in all the original Robert Russell Bennett orchestrations. But the gulf between what was thought of as “all the music” and what really is “all the music” is far greater for Carousel, whose original-cast recording runs 55 minutes but whose new Wilson-led two-SACD release lasts more than an hour and a half. That is indeed opera-length, and to say that this recording is revelatory is a vast understatement.

     Carousel is about life and the afterlife, death and what comes after for those left behind and (to some extent) those who have passed on. Even at full length, and as befits its themes, it has fewer intensely memorable, bright and bubbly songs than Oklahoma!, although June Is Bustin’ Out All Over and, in particular, You’ll Never Walk Alone are among the greatest of all Rodgers and Hammerstein creations. But what a complex and character-driven piece Carousel turns out to be – especially so with the excellently chosen lead singers in this recording, all of whom know how to use their lines (spoken as well as sung) to explore and delineate their characters and their sometimes muddled (and thus very human) motivations. Carousel is based on a 1909 play called Liliom by Hungarian dramatist Ferenc Molnár – the play’s title means “lily” and refers not only to the flower commonly associated with death and funerals but also, in Hungarian slang, means “tough guy” and thus applies to the play’s and musical’s antihero. Liliom is renamed Billy Bigelow for the musical, the action is moved from Budapest to Maine, and the play’s gloomy ending is given a hopeful tinge of uplift for the musical – a significant change that apparently even Molnár himself appreciated.

     The innovations that make Carousel so important in Broadway history, although largely taken for granted nearly 80 years later, have freshness and renewed power as shaped by Wilson and his cast of singer/actors. One of those is the lack of an overture – the opening scene, which visually introduces the characters, turns out to work very well even without visuals. Also crucial to the design of Carousel are an extended ballet that advances the stage action and, again, makes some fine dramatic points even as an audio-only presentation; and the remarkable eight-minute Soliloquy in which the largely unsympathetic Billy Bigelow is transformed into someone with depth and at least some minimal potential for good as he contemplates becoming a father. Even the less-known and heretofore virtually unknown material comes to life here, and the orchestrations – begun by Bennett but, because Bennett had other commitments, turned over to and almost fully handled by Don Walker – are highly effective, thanks in part to the decision to record this release in a theater rather than a concert hall so as to produce the auditory ambience that Carousel would have had for its initial audiences. It is worth pointing out that Carousel opened with an orchestra of 39 players – an exceptionally large complement (Oklahoma! had 28) and some three times the size of typical modern theater orchestras. Wilson’s use of the original-size orchestra, the full original score, and an assemblage of performers who thoroughly understand their roles and their characters’ place within the world of Carousel makes this recording an unequaled presentation of and tribute to the musical, its creative team, and the ability sometimes to move from an outstanding creation to one even more outstanding. It was the third Rodgers and Hammerstein stage collaboration, Allegro, that would turn out to be a letdown – but that is very definitely another story.

(++++) SOLOISTS AND OTHERS

Horatio Parker: Organ Concerto; Wayne Oquin: Resilience; Christopher Rouse: Organ Concerto; Ives: Variations on “America.” Paul Jacobs, organ; Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero. Naxos. $19.99.

Michele Mangani: Music for Clarinet and String Orchestra, and for Clarinet and Piano. Seunghee Lee, clarinet; Manhattan Chamber Players; Steven Beck, piano. Musica Solis. $25.

     The use of organ with other instruments remains something of a rarity, despite the importance of the organ’s emphatic appearance in such symphonic works as Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3, Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony, Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 7, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8. Using an organ as concerto solo is even less common, and that makes a new Naxos CD featuring Paul Jacobs and the Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero very welcome indeed. The opening and closing works on the disc are especially noteworthy (so to speak) – and are in a sense related. The CD starts with the 1902 Organ Concerto by Horatio Parker (1863-1919). This is a highly worthwhile discovery (or rediscovery): although Parker was among the American composers of his time who were looking for an “American” musical sound, he was thoroughly steeped in and devoted to European models, and this concerto shows just how firmly he grasped them. The organ’s contributions to this finely wrought concerto are thoroughly thought-through and well-developed. The first movement, which takes up half the work’s 21 minutes, is stately and elegant, the interplay between organ and orchestra well-balanced and intelligently managed. The short second movement provides an interval of surprising delicacy and refinement, while the finale is broad, wide-ranging and emphatic – and played by Jacobs with considerable flair and expressive panache. Parker was not really an innovator in practice, whatever his intentions might have been, but he was a fine musical craftsman whose sure-handed approach to this concerto nicely showcases his considerable ability. He was not, however, a particularly salutary instructor of his most-famous pupil, Charles Ives, who almost offhandedly “Americanized” music while showing himself much less a respecter of tradition than Parker was (Ives’ Symphony No. 1 was specifically created under Parker’s tutelage, and sounds it). This Naxos CD ends with the solo-organ variations on “America” that Ives created in 1891 (when he was 17) for the Fourth of July, 1892, and that other composers have found irresistible to edit or modify: the version here was done by famed organist E. Power Biggs in 1949, and the work is best-known in its rather flashy orchestration by William Schuman (1910-1992). Most of the Ives variations in their organ version are actually rather subtle, and there is notable use of bitonality. Jacobs does not overplay the work, but explores it with mostly serious engagement (albeit with appropriate lightness in the third variation and the “Polonaise” fourth) and a fine sense of its overall structure. The other works on this CD are much more recent and of somewhat lesser interest. The Organ Concerto by Christopher Rouse (1949-2019) is a late work (2014) that sounds as if the composer is trying a bit too hard to assert his contemporary bone fides through intense (and loud) dissonance in the first movement before producing a much gentler and more congenial second movement Lento and then a rather neatly balanced concluding Presto that, however, never quite decides where it wants to go. And Resilience (2015) by Wayne Oquin (born 1977), although certainly dramatic enough in its contrast between organ and orchestra, seems more gestural than genuinely heartfelt: it is well-made but does not ultimately seem to have very much to say. This disc as a whole is a worthwhile exploration of some little-known repertoire, and Jacobs and Guerrero do a fine job presenting the material as engagingly as possible – although the older items here stand out more forcefully than do the newer ones.

     If Horatio Parker’s works were in a sense determinedly old-fashioned, that was less of a criticism in his time than a similar comment would be about a composer today. Yet Michele Mangani (born 1966) manages to be both old-fashioned in sound and fascinating in instrumental intricacy – at least on the basis of the clarinet-focused material on a new Musica Solis disc featuring Seunghee Lee. Only a single one of these 14 tracks, Theme for Clarinet (for clarinet and piano), has been recorded before, making the disc an interesting exploration of world première recordings. The first seven items, including six originals and an arrangement, are for clarinet and string orchestra. Executive is immediately impressive in its balance of solo and ensemble, its rhythmic vitality, and its exploration of the clarinet’s chalumeau range, where Lee appears to be particularly comfortable. Although it lasts only five-and-a-half minutes, it is the longest work on the disc. Pagina d’Album is warm and moderately paced, with a kind of film-music ethos about it. Intermezzo has similar sensibilities at an even slower speed. Next on the CD is Mangani’s arrangement of Piazzolla’s Tango Étude No. 3, which has a brightness and acerbity lacking in the CD’s first three tracks and provides a welcome contrast with them. Everything else on the disc is a Mangani original. Love Theme is a yearning “song without words” that is more sweet than plaintive. Dancing Doll is a very slow dance indeed, more a swaying than anything involving actual dance steps. And Ave Maria, the last clarinet-and-strings piece here, is similarly emotive without expressing any particular religious fervor – although its familiar theme is nicely handled. The next three tracks are the Tre Danze Latine for clarinet and piano: Contredanza is not strongly accented but has a pleasant lilt, Vals Criollo has considerable rhythmic vitality, and Chorinho is deliciously fast-paced and allows Lee and pianist Steven Beck plenty of opportunities to collaborate while bouncing material around. The four remaining works are, like most of the pieces here, standalone miniatures. Dreaming returns in clarinet-and-piano mode to the quiet wistfulness of most of the clarinet-and-strings works. Theme for Clarinet is slow, lies low on the instrument, and would fit a warm fantasy or rose-colored romantic sequence in a movie particularly well. Andante Malinconico is not significantly more melancholic than many of the other pieces offered here: Mangani paints almost always in darker colors and produces mostly crepuscular effects. The CD ends with Souvenir, yet another sweet and mostly quiet piece whose foundational gentleness fits the clarinet very well but whose emotions have by this time been quite thoroughly explored in other works on the disc. This is pretty music rather than anything profound, and the similarity of length and emotional heft of most works on this CD make its 50 minutes of music seem longer – unless the disc becomes background music, which it seems to invite itself to be. Its emotionally monochromatic nature makes this a (+++) recording despite the undeniable attractiveness of Lee’s playing and the skill of her string-ensemble and piano accompanists. Although in many cases they are individually effective, the pieces here are less satisfying when heard as the consecutive totality in which they are presented for this recording.

(++++) MINING THE PAST

Holst: Sāvitri; Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, Third Group; Four Songs for Soprano and Violin; The Evening-Watch; Hammersmith—Prelude and Scherzo; The Perfect Fool—Ballet Suite; The Planets. Ariadne. $24.99 (2 CDs).

Josef Tal: Exodus; Walter Kaufmann: Indian Symphony; Marcel Rubin: Symphony No. 4, “Dies Irae.” The Orchestra Now conducted by Leon Botstein. AVIE. $19.99.

     Gustav Holst (1874-1934) turns out to be an Impressionist of a very specific, unusual and engaging kind. The fascinating artistic rediscovery of Holst on a two-CD Ariadne release provides an unusual chance to hear and contrast Holst’s one super-big hit, The Planets, with the occasionally performed Hammersmith—Prelude and Scherzo, and with various other pieces that are considerably more obscure. Holst’s preoccupations with the music and culture of India, with astrology, with the concept of English “national music,” and with scene-painting of various sorts make for a highly varied body of work that is difficult to characterize because, as this recording shows, its character is fluid and keeps shifting. This release delves deeply into the past for its performances, which date to 1945-1965. Other than The Planets, the half-hour chamber opera Sāvitri is the longest work offered, and its odd sonic otherworldliness gives it as much of an evanescence as portions of The Planets possess. Holst wrote his own libretto for this work about tricking Death by accepting a boon and then cleverly asking for life – which is attainable only by banishing Death, at least for a time. The verbiage is philosophical and repetitive, and the flow of set pieces gives the work more expansiveness than its modest total length would indicate. Soprano Arda Mandikian, tenor Peter Pears, baritone Thomas Hemsley, and the English Opera Group Chorus and Orchestra under Sir Charles Mackerras perform in this live recording from 1956. Several other vocal works are presented after Sāvitri. The third of Holst’s four collections of Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda includes elegant scene-painting in four settings for female voices and harp – a highly evocative and very skillfully employed combination. The title is a trifle misleading, since these are not traditionally religious works but portraits of specific circumstances and the gods associated with them – this being perhaps clearest in the second of them, Hymn to the Waters. The live recording here, from 1965, features Michael Jefferies on harp and the Purcell Singers under Imogen Holst, the composer’s daughter and advocate and a fine composer in her own right. Four Songs for Soprano and Violin – another very interesting aural mixture – features Honor Sheppard and Nona Liddell in another 1965 performance. These are settings of medieval religious poetry that provide a fascinating complement to and contrast with Holst’s handling of Sanskrit hymns. Next on the CD, The Evening-Watch for mixed chorus, also from 1965, again offers Imogen Holst and the Purcell Singers, here with mezzo-soprano Pauline Stevens and tenor Ian Partridge. This choral work is the first of a set of two motets and is based on a text by a 17^th-century English metaphysical poet – further demonstrating how wide a net Holst cast for content as well as sound. The first CD in this release concludes by showing Holst as an entirely instrumental tone-painter, with his Hammersmith evoking a riverside district of London – first the river itself, then the people in the area, and then the river again, underlining its foundational importance to the population. The 1965 performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Norman Del Mar is an effective and fine-sounding one. There are, however, limits beyond which even the best audio restoration cannot go, and the second disc in this release bumps up against them. It opens with the ballet music from another short Holst opera, The Perfect Fool – unfortunately not the entire work, which is deucedly difficult to come by. This is a recording from 1945 by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Malcolm Sargent, and yes, that is the orchestra long conducted by Arturo Toscanini – and the recording was made in the notorious Radio City Studio 8-H whence so much Toscanini material emerged in so disappointingly compressed and ill-sounding form. Sargent does a fine job with the music itself, but even with highly skilled modern restoration techniques, the muddiness and stolidity of the aural experience are, if not execrable, certainly far from admirable. These conditions are equally disappointing in The Planets, a 1946 recording from a better venue – Symphony Hall, Boston – featuring the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Women’s Chorus under Sir Adrian Boult, who knew the score inside-out and had conducted the work’s world première performance. But even with Arthur Fiedler as chorus master, the voices here do not stand out for clarity, and the orchestra sounds anything but pinpoint-accurate in attack and sectional balance. Thankfully, there are much better versions of these works otherwise available, and equally thankfully, this CD – best thought of as a bonus accompanying the first one in this two-CD set – does have substantial historical value. It is the first disc, though, that is truly revelatory of Holst’s subtleties of sound, of thought, of philosophy, of musical expression.

     There is a direct connection with India, but a very different one from Holst’s, on a  new AVIE release featuring rediscoveries of works from the 1940s by 20^th-century Jewish composers who were displaced by the Holocaust. The expressions here are more directly experiential and much less emotional/intellectual than those of Holst. Leon Botstein and The Orchestra Now start with a sensitively played exploration of Exodus for baritone solo and orchestra by Josef Tal (1910-2008). The familiar Biblical story of the escape of the Jews from slavery in Egypt – obviously a tale with tremendous resonance for Tal – is interpreted by the composer in five movements that draw on the Psalms as well as the book of Exodus itself; the work is sung in Hebrew, with the emphatic baritone solo supplied by strong-voiced Noam Heinz. Although Tal was influenced by Schoenberg, Exodus is by no means strictly a twelvetone work – though it does not disclaim 20^th-century compositional techniques in general. Its most dramatic portion, The Passage of the Red Sea, is handled with strength and commitment, and the celebratory material that follows is effective in a rather cinematic way. The work is well-made, but somewhat superficial: it is difficult to imagine it withstanding repeated hearings particularly well. Next on the disc is Indian Symphony by Walter Kaufmann (1907-1984). This work was actually written in India, to which Kaufmann escaped before making his way to England (and eventually the United States). The symphony deliberately incorporates a raga into its construction, but its aural landscape is emphatically that of Europe despite some passes at exotic-sounding harmonies and rhythms – the gentle repetitiveness of timpani in the second movement being especially effective. The overall effect of the work is somewhat on the bombastic side, with the third movement in particular sounding if anything rather too determinedly triumphant and cheerful. More substantial than the Tal and Kaufmann works is Symphony No. 4, “Dies Irae,” by Marcel Rubin (1905-1995). Indeed, Rubin’s piece, the fourth of his 10 symphonies, is nearly as long as the other two works on this disc put together (although for some reason the CD lists this 35-minute symphony as lasting 10 minutes and 19 seconds). Rubin’s symphony starts with an extended Kinderkreuzzug (“Children’s Crusade”), whose highly effective string-solo opening sets the stage for an increasingly difficult and dramatic, rhythmically variable and often quite intense exploration of wartime, war-torn themes that surely reflect Rubin’s personal experiences to a considerable degree. The symphony, far from building to a triumphal or exuberant overcoming-obstacles sort of conclusion, ends with a rather brief and surprisingly melancholy third movement, labeled Pastorale-Andante, that is all the more affecting in its deliberate avoidance of the deepest sorrow or the celebration of horrors overcome. Whether this work is titled Dies Irae or War and Peace (its original label), it is all the more effective for eschewing easy and overt scenes of horror or quiet – indeed, it is in no way overdone or exaggerated, and is all the more moving as a result. Taken as a whole, this is a (+++) CD, because the pieces by Tal and Kaufmann, although admirable in intent and well-crafted, are not especially revelatory or memorable outside their historical context. Rubin’s Symphony No. 4, on the other hand, has about it a timeless quality that transcends its actual time period and gives it continuing resonance and relevance even some 80 years after it was composed.

(+++) UNIFYING FACTORS

Khachaturian: Gayane (excerpts); Spartacus (excerpts); Masquerade Suite. Mikael Ayrapetyan, piano. Grand Piano. $19.99.

Chopin: Études, Op. 10; Stravinsky: The Firebird (excerpts); Antonio Molina: Malikmata; Ramon Tapales: Mindanao Orchids; Lucio San Pedro: Salamisim (Remembrance). Ross Salvosa, piano. MSR Classics. $14.95.

     The thinking that unites a concert or recital, whether live or recorded, is far more obvious in some cases than in others. Mikael Ayrapetyan is well-known for performing piano works reflecting his Armenian heritage, having explored the music of many Armenian composers. So it makes sense for him to offer an entire Grand Piano CD devoted to works by Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) – and, for the sake of novelty and exploration of material in a form in which it is not well-known, to devote most of the recording to world premières. Thus, the excerpts from the 1942 ballet Gayane and the 1954 Spartacus are heard here for the first time in recorded form. The original versions of these works are well-known (at least in excerpted form), but not so the piano arrangements: Gayane was arranged by A. Tseitlin (1962) and Vily Sargsyan (2005), while Spartacus was arranged by Emin Khachaturian, the composer’s brother (1975), and Sargsyan (2005). Ayrapetyan is a strong and willing advocate for this music, playing it sure-handedly and with sensitivity to its cultural and folk-music roots as well as its drama and theatricality. But unfortunately, the piano can only go so far with material that is distinguished in part by the composer’s idiomatic and highly engaging orchestrations. Gayane is one of the “Socialist realism” scores so beloved of the rulers of the USSR, with the titular heroine standing up to her lazy and criminally inclined husband and eventually finding happiness with the commander of the local Soviet frontier guard. The extremely familiar Sabre Dance is but a small part of the ballet, although it has become ubiquitous in multiple media; other numbers show Khachaturian’s impressive command of mood-setting and rhythmic variety. The multiplicity of emotions comes through even more clearly in Spartacus, with the extended and highly emotive Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia being a high point of the work and unsurprisingly being exceptionally well-known. Indeed, there is so much effective music in Spartacus that the composer was able to create no fewer than three suites from the ballet – with the arrangement performed by Ayrapetyan being, in effect, a fourth. But for both Gayane and Spartacus, the piano arrangements simply pale when compared with the orchestral ones: Khachaturian was so adept at assigning evocative instrumental lines appropriately than the comparatively monochromatic sound of the piano, no matter how well played, never really does justice to the quality and theatricality of the material. This is apparent as well in the Masquerade Suite (1944), arranged for piano in 1946 by Alexander Dolukhanian. This is the one work on this CD that has been recorded before, but it is easy to hear why the piano version has never caught on as the orchestral one has. The sway, elegance, rhythmic effectiveness and sectional balance that are everywhere present in the original become coloristically diminished, even unidimensional, on the piano – again, no matter how well they are played. Ayrapetyan’s piano sound also suffers to some extent from his use of a Fazioli instrument: these are very fine pianos with unique sonic capabilities that set them apart from the much-more-common Steinways, but the Fazioli does not fit the aural palette of Khachaturian particularly well, taking these arrangements even further from the originals than their performance on any piano already does. Listeners who are assembling a collection of Armenian piano works in suitably authentic and sensitive performances will gravitate to this disc for the excellence of the pianism, but the music itself is unified as much by its less-than-exemplary reflection of the original orchestral material as by its national origin.

     The foundational “glue” of an MSR Classics CD featuring pianist Ross Salvosa is much less apparent and much less relevant to the material on the disc. This is one of those “personal expression” CDs, with Salvosa selecting otherwise unrelated music because, to him, all the works express some sort of societal thoughts or feelings that parallel his own sociopolitical beliefs and stances. Unless a listener chooses to read about Salvosa’s non-musical thinking and try to hear these works in the context in which he mentally places them, there is really nothing here to explain why these specific pieces are juxtaposed with each other. Therefore, the CD becomes one to hear simply on the basis of Salvosa’s pianism – and his skill at interpreting, in particular, Chopin’s Op. 10 set of Études, which takes up 30 of the disc’s modest 52 minutes. Like some individual Khachaturian pieces, several of these études have become hyper-popular and have emerged in multiple guises beyond the concert hall and recording studio. A  challenge for pianists, then, is to keep the very-well-known works fresh while providing an integrated view of the set of études as a whole – even though they were in fact composed during a multi-year period. The underlying technical challenges of these works, which after all are labeled as “studies,” ideally take a back seat to the pieces’ expressiveness, which is what made Chopin’s Op. 10 revelatory and near-revolutionary in its time. Salvosa certainly has no apparent trouble with even the most-difficult technical elements of the material, but he tends to fall somewhat short in the more-emotive pieces, including No. 3 (known as “Tristesse,” although not so named by Chopin) and No. 6, both of which are on the perfunctory side emotionally. The faster études tend to come across better – No. 8 is particularly well-handled – and the concluding No. 12 (“Revolutionary”) is delivered with considerable flair. These études are followed on the CD by three excerpts from Stravinsky’s The Firebird, arranged for piano by Guido Agosti. Like the Khachaturian arrangements played by Ayrapetyan, these Stravinsky versions are reductions, not only in literal sonic terms but also in impact. Taken at face value, though, they are well-handled by Salvosa and are rhythmically effective, especially the opening Danse infernale du roi Kastchei. The disc also includes three encore-like brief works that, however, are placed at the start of the CD rather than the end. Malikmata by Antonio Molina (1894-1980) contrasts a gently nocturne-like scene with more-intense material; Mindanao Orchids by Ramon Tapales (1906-1995) is a mixture of ostinato and crescendo; and Salamisim (Remembrance) by Lucio San Pedro (1913-2002) is a pleasant, mostly gentle, largely arpeggiated, dancelike piece. The musical associations of these short 20^th-century works with the Stravinsky and Chopin material are by no means apparent, and the inclusion of these comparative trifles with Chopin’s études may have meaning for the pianist but makes no identifiable connection from a listener’s standpoint. The disc as a whole is clearly a personal statement and is certainly well-played, but will be of interest primarily to anyone who finds the juxtaposition of material as personally meaningful as it appears to be to the performer.