(++++) A PATH TO UNDERSTANDING

Mahler: Symphony No. 5. Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles. Reference Recordings. $24.98 (SACD). 

     It is hard to imagine that Mahler did not have Beethoven’s Fifth in mind when composing his own Symphony No. 5. After all, Mahler’s symphony begins in exactly the same rhythm as Beethoven’s, although the first notes differ: G,G,G,E-flat in Beethoven, C-sharp, C-sharp, C-sharp, A in Mahler. The key structure of the two symphonies also has notable although not exact similarities, with Beethoven’s Fifth in C minor (ending in C major) and Mahler’s Fifth opening in C-sharp minor (ending in D major). The parallels can easily be overemphasized and pushed too far, but they are worth keeping in mind because of the similar-but-different emotional trajectories of the two symphonies: Beethoven’s moves with clarity from darkness to light, while Mahler’s may be best thought of as moving from dark and intense complexity to a finale of comparative simplicity (a form of progress that clearly appealed to Mahler: he followed it in much the same way in his Symphony No. 7, four years after No. 5). 

     Mahler’s duplication of Beethoven’s opening rhythm comes in the form of a solo trumpet rather than an orchestral tutti, and in this respect Mahler’s symphony of 1902 has something in common with Sibelius’ First, finished two years earlier, which starts with a clarinet solo. Still, if Mahler’s approach was not unique in the opening of his Symphony No. 5, the work bears the unmistakable stamp of his personal interpretation of what had come before – and of his personal journey through life at a point where, for the first time, he created a symphony wholly separated from the song cycles that were the building blocks of his earlier works. 

     Sir Donald Runnicles shows in a new Reference Recordings release that he thoroughly understands Mahler’s musical and emotional position in this symphony. Runnicles produces an overall expansive reading that is not, however, especially slow. He gets the moods right from the start, with a very gloomy and funereal opening whose strength of emphasis makes it feel a good deal slower than the clock time shows it to be. Runnicles and the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra really lean into the intense emotions of the movement, and indeed Runnicles does not hesitate occasionally to hold back the music with some rubato that is intended to make an ensuing passage even more strongly felt. Generally, though, Runnicles wisely keeps the rhythm of this funeral cortège even, and the exceptional delicacy and quiet toward the end are all the more effective as a result. 

     The second movement, which Mahler regarded as the symphony’s emotional if not structural opening, is presented with plenty of vehemence, but with great care taken to ensure that all the individual notes of the cascade of intensity are heard, not slurred. The orchestra is at its best here: the trumpets are exceptional, and the strings, while generally astringent, show themselves also capable of great warmth. The triumphal D major chorale near the movement’s end hints at where the entire symphony will go eventually, even though this specific movement concludes in A minor. Indeed, there is a definite feeling of exhaustion and collapse as the movement’s end approaches: it is quite well done. Less creditable are the ritards within the movement, some of which are a bit too pronounced and cause the momentum to flag instead of resulting in a sense of stronger emphasis, which is presumably Runnicles’ intention. 

     Runnicles gives the third movement good pacing: Mahler was worried that conductors would take it too fast, and Runnicles is careful not to do so. The opening horn, however, starts modestly instead of ringing out loudly, giving more of a pleasant invitation to attention rather than a clarion call. The gentle lilt of Ländler rhythm is brought out clearly in the first portion of the movement, and as a whole there is an expansive feeling here – especially in the middle, where the pace becomes quiescent and individual instruments are highlighted. The movement in its entirety is weighty enough to stand on its own as Part 2 of the symphony, per Mahler’s label: it represents a transition in mood and a different sort of emotional heft from what is communicated by the first two movements. The speedy final section works well as a capstone. 

     There is another change of emotional focus at the start of the Adagietto. The harp at the beginning has a celestial feeling about it and is kept quite prominent throughout. Runnicles here insists on exceptional gentleness of expressiveness, and the movement is notable for the repeated sense of yearning halfway through – not in a Tristan und Isolde sense but more in the nature of expected and anticipated emotional reciprocity. And then comes the comparative simplicity of the finale, with its brass opening akin to that of the third movement, but featuring a much jauntier, even trivial response – certainly nothing weighty. Here there is a definite sense of having come through considerable emotional turmoil, both negative and positive, to a celebratory place, with material presented in a comparatively straightforward manner (which, as noted, will also be Mahler’s approach in Symphony No. 7 in 1906). The cheerful “chugging” rhythm of the movement, initially in the lower strings, is very apparent in Runnicles’ reading, and the hints of earlier-movement emotions are brought forth to very good effect – for example, the yearning of violins halfway through this finale. As this movement, simply designated Allegro, moves toward its conclusion, the chorale heard earlier in the symphony flowers fully and is allowed to crown the totality of the work, which it does in fine style – although the last few measures are here taken a bit too quickly to be fully satisfying. 

     What Runnicles and the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra offer here is an unapologetic Mahler Fifth, one that delves deeply into emotion without wallowing in it unduly, and one that takes the audience along on a spiritual journey that may not be grounded in verbiage, as were Mahler’s earlier symphonies, but that shows just how effectively Mahler could communicate the feelings underlying words without being bound to verbal specificity. This is a performance of understated understanding, one that allows Mahler’s musical expressiveness free rein while keeping his foundational emotional content, which can sometimes be overdone, well-balanced and clearly communicated – without becoming cloying or overstated.

(+++) ACCEPTING THE INEVITABLE

Wilfrido Terrazas: Trilogía del Dolor—An Investigation of Human Pain in Three Parts. Wilfrido Terrazas, narrator and flutes; Miguel Zazueta, tenor; Madison Greenstone, clarinet; rocio sánchez [sic], cello; Mariana Flores Bucio, soprano; Camilo Zamudio, percussion. New Focus Recordings. $18.99. 

     It is a curiosity of the human spirit that extended dwelling on pleasure tends to come across as unseemly, while prolonged meditation on pain appears profound. Certainly Wilfrido Terrazas (born 1974) is seeking depth, both musical and verbal, in his hour-plus-long, three-part meditation, Trilogía del Dolor. Whether the material will resonate with listeners will be a highly personal matter: other long-drawn-out music focused on pain – Mahler’s and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphonies come to mind – tends to search for context and moments of lightness (or at least wryness) for purposes of contrast, but Terrazas stays relentlessly on target from start to finish, relying on alterations of instrumentation and the use of words from numerous sources to provide some differences of perspective among the work’s 11 pain-focused movements. 

     Terrazas’ work is entirely in Spanish, as are the titles of its first two sections, Llevarás el nombre (“You will bear the name”) and Pequeña familia (“Small family”). The third section, however. has an English-language title, Ten Thousand Regrets, even though all its verbiage is in Spanish. The sources of the words are poems by Nuria Manzur-Wirth in the three elements of the first section; texts by Terrazas himself in the three parts of the second; and poems by Ricardo Cázares, Tania Favela, Mónica Morales Rocha, and Nadia Mondragón in the five portions of the third. On the face of it, Trilogía de Dolor would seem to be an extended expression of ego and self-importance by the composer, given his participation as text provider, narrator and instrumentalist; but the words themselves are intended to convey a sense of the universality of pain as a human experience rather than to delve into and duplicate Terrazas’ own experiences of it (except insofar as he is himself a member of the human family). 

     The music underlying and underlining the words is rather less intense, less dramatic and less pain-pervaded than the words themselves: there is nothing here akin to the finales of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth or Mahler’s. The instrumentation is sparse: flutes alone in the first section, clarinet and cello in the second, and a small ensemble in the third consisting of flutes, clarinet, cello and percussion. There is something theatrical in the construction of Trilogía del Dolor, which in fact is designed to include a visual artist in live performance. The theatricality comes through well enough, however, without any overt visual element: it is the expressive nature of the verbal delivery that projects sincerity and intended engagement with the audience. 

     The nature of the music also contributes to the sense of a stage performance. Less off-putting than much avant-garde material, although certainly existing within the common contemporary musical space of blended forms, aural experimentation, improvisation and extended performance practice, Trilogía del Dolor is in effect a chamber opera of the besieged soul, an exploration of the sadness of everyday life, of memory, of relationships, of intersections and interactions with the external world – all with a perhaps-inevitable conclusion, intended to be comforting, that combines resignation with a certain degree of healing and gratitude. Terrazas takes listeners on this journey with a number of less-than-unusual harmonic forays and a few moves into the aurally unexpected: a breath of bolero here, note flurries there, fragile wind/string interaction in one place, cacophony in another, thinness of sound in several places, lusher harmonies in a few. 

     Trilogía del Dolor is most effective when it is most restrained both verbally and musically: it does go on for quite a long time with its unerring focus on matters more melancholic than depressive, but it works best when it does not overdo the dolorousness or try to turn elements of everyday existence into some sort of deep existential tragedy. Indeed, Terrazas shows through his choice of texts and arrangements of accompanying music that he regards pain as an inescapable and perpetual element of human existence, an experience shared by all in the human condition and one that, indeed, cements the interconnectedness of humanity. This is a valid if scarcely original conceit that has the advantage of removing some of pain’s sting by subsuming personal experience into the communal. Trilogía del Dolor does somewhat “protest too much” in its variations, verbal and textual, upon its single focus, and as a result is not entirely convincing throughout . But Terrazas’ skill at weaving differing combinations of vocal and instrumental material together helps keep this extended self-meditation effective, if not exactly enjoyable, and prevents it from coming across as simply self-referential navel gazing. It is less deep than it wants to be, but does touch with sensitivity on an essential element of what makes us human.

(++++) REMNANT RICHNESS

Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Cello Concerto; Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra; Korngold: Cello Concerto. Kristina Reiko Cooper, cello; Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra conducted by Constantine Orbelian. Delos. $18.75. 

     The European diaspora in the years before and during World War II took composers in a wide variety of directions, musically as well as in the geographical sense in which it displaced so many others. The juxtaposition on a new Delos CD of cello-and-orchestra works by Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996) and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) shows this in some intriguing ways. 

     Most of the recording is devoted to the music of Weinberg, whose compositions are undergoing something of a rediscovery and renaissance. In fact, on one level it is disappointing that this recording includes only two of his three cello-and-orchestra pieces, omitting the Cello Concertino that was discovered posthumously and would have fit on the CD along with everything already on it. The reason for the disappointment is that Weinberg’s obvious skill in writing for cello, his sensitivity to the instrument’s acoustic and emotional range, will likely leave the audience wishing for more. Nevertheless, what listeners do receive from Kristina Reiko Cooper and the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra under Constantine Orbelian is very worthwhile music indeed, certainly justifying the recent (if still modest) upsurge in Weinberg’s popularity. 

     Weinberg’s Cello Concerto dates to 1948, by which time he was resettled in Stalin’s Soviet Union and engaging in the juggling act required of composers at the time: expressing himself while trying not to draw too much attention from the arbiters of socialist realism in music. The melodic beauty of the concerto is everywhere apparent, and the work has an elaborate intensity that places it within the Romantic era emotionally while providing more than a few hints of the compositional modernity that Soviet composers were supposed to hold firmly in check. It is a four-movement piece that in a sense is in two two-movement sections: the very expressive opening Adagio ties musically and emotionally to the not-much-quicker Moderato that follows; then there is a significant change of mood for an Allegro that concludes with a very extended and elaborate cadenza and moves straight into an Allegro finale. This concluding movement is in many ways akin to the music of Shostakovich, with whom Weinberg shared a close friendship: Shostakovich considered Weinberg, 13 years his junior, to be one of the best Soviet composers, and helped shield him, his works and his family from the depredations of Stalinism. The dissonances, angularity and rhythmic insistence of the finale of Weinberg’s concerto all bring Shostakovich to mind, as does the work’s distinctly Shostakovich-like quiet ending. Yet Weinberg’s own style is apparent throughout, and Cooper and Orbelian do a first-rate job of bringing forth Weinberg’s unique compositional elements while not neglecting to highlight his echoes of Shostakovich and, occasionally, of other composers as well. 

     Weinberg’s Fantasia for Cello and Orchestra (started in 1951, completed in 1953) is a three-movement work that shares a number of elements with the Cello Concerto – including its opening-movement Adagio and its eventual quiet ending – but that is distinctive in its handling of thematic and rhythmic material. The soulful first movement contrasts strongly with a second one that has much of the feeling of a scherzo and in that respect is, yes, Shostakovich-like in some of its rhythms and harmonic wanderings. The cello’s guitar-like strumming at one point is striking. The very short finale is unusual in the tempo that Weinberg chooses – Andantino leggiero – and is delicate and thoughtful throughout, questioning rather than decisive at the end. Cooper’s sensitivity to the flow and feeling of this movement is especially notable. 

     Cooper and Orbelian bring equal thoughtfulness to the very different Cello Concerto by Korngold, a single-movement work (the composer planned to add two more movements but never did) that is packed with intensity and not a little bombast. Unlike Weinberg, Korngold left Europe behind and forged a successful career in the United States – specifically in the film industry, to which he contributed scores of considerable power. His Cello Concerto rests particularly strongly in moviemaking: it was created as a centerpiece of a 1946 Bette Davis melodrama called Deception that was built around a musical love triangle involving a pianist, a cellist and a composer. The film itself was not a success, perhaps because its formulaic plot and dialogue melded less than smoothly with the elegance of the classical-music world, exemplified by Korngold’s score, against which the action played out. But the Cello Concerto itself is impressive and actually works well in the single-movement form into which Korngold shaped it in revising what he created for the movie. Surprisingly, much of the earlier portion of the concerto is more modern in sound than the Weinberg works on this CD, with the dissonances more prominent and more strongly emphasized. Korngold effectively merges Romantic melodies with modern rhythms, opening with considerable drama through chords alternating between C major and C minor, then presenting highly contrasting thematic material – sweeping and passionate on the one hand, lyrical and yearning on the other. The last portion of the concerto is light and comparatively bouncy, and the cello part is extremely difficult – a fact that seems not to trouble Cooper in the least. She and Orbelian take the full measure of this work, following its contours with care and hinting at the sense of abandon underlying elements of the film from which the concerto derives – but without ever overstating or descending into anything crass. This CD as a whole is a top-notch exploration of 20^th-century music that in some ways rises above its era and the experiences from which these composers created it – while in other ways being strongly representative of the circumstances that led Weinberg and Korngold, and many others, to seek creative fulfillment in places distant from their own homelands.

(++++) SCULPTED SOUND

Music for Bassoon Solo by Maurice Allard, Nikolaus Maler, Klaus Thunemann, Malcolm Arnold, Gordon Jacob, Willson Osborne, Marcel Farago, Charles Koechlin, Antonio Lauro, and Mathieu Lussier. Céleste-Marie Roy, bassoon. MDG Scene. $24.99 (SACD). 

Richard Carrick: l’Algérie. Either/Or (Bahar Badieitabar, oud; Richard Carrick, piano; Jennifer Choi, violin; Justin Jay Hines, percussion; John Popham, cello). New Focus Recordings. $18.99. 

     Vivaldi’s three dozen concertos notwithstanding, the bassoon has not always been treated with the musical respect it deserves, being relegated for far too long to a subsidiary and often clownish role within the orchestra. Modern bassoonists, thankfully, will have none of that, and the best of them are displaying the full emotional compass of which the instrument is capable – often by unearthing little-known works by little-known composers, or by playing music by contemporary composers who are determined, for reasons of their own, to showcase the instrument. And there is no better showcase than material that is written for the solo bassoon – including the pieces by all 10 composers heard on a very fine MDG Scene SACD featuring Céleste-Marie Roy. The disc not only demonstrates how wide-ranging the expressiveness of the bassoon can be but also shows how varied are the composers intrigued by it: those represented here are from France, Germany, England, the United States, Romania, Venezuela and Canada. And they are from multiple time periods: Charles Koechlin (1867-1950) was born earliest, Mathieu Lussier (born 1973) most recently. Roy handles every piece on the disc with understanding and, where appropriate, flair. Along the way, she helps confirm the inescapable persistence of Paganini as a source of inspiration for variations: three very different pieces on the release use his famous 24^th caprice for solo violin as a basis. They are Variations sur un thème de Paganini (1986) by Maurice Allard (1923-2004); 18 Variazoni su un Thema di Paganini (2020) by Klaus Thunemann (1937-2025), which at one point includes an echo of a Vivaldi bassoon concerto; and Phantasy on a Theme by Paganini (1984) by Marcel Farago (1924-2016). The three works are separated on the disc, but it is worth hearing them one after the other to find out the very different ways in which the same inspirational theme is handled on the same instrument by the three composers – as a jumping-off point for Farago and as the basis for a variety of interesting and frequently complex elaborations by Allard and Thunemann. Indeed, the varying uses of the solo bassoon are apparent throughout this unusual and unusually interesting recording. Fantasy for bassoon (1966) by Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006) is, like most of his music, approachable and enjoyable listening. Partita for solo bassoon (1971) by Gordon Jacob (1895-1984) consists of five micro-miniature movements – the whole work lasts just five-and-a-half minutes – with Jacob’s typical mixture of seriousness with good humor. The 2 Monodies pour basson (1947-1948) by Koechlin are brooding and atmospheric. The bassoon’s usefulness in non-Paganini variations is clear in Ten Variations on “La Folia” (2021) by Nikolaus Maier (born 1972), with the work based on a tune that also attracted the attention of Vivaldi and many others. Rhapsody for bassoon (1958) by Willson Osborne (1906-1979) showcases the instrument’s expressiveness, while Lussier’s Fantasia Tango pour basson (2002) displays its rhythmic capabilities to good effect. And the five 1998 Paquito D’Rivera arrangements for solo bassoon of works by Antonio Lauro (1917-1986) show that although Lauro is best known by far because of his guitar music, here too the bassoon has bone fides in terms of forays into rhythm and expressiveness. In truth, listening to this disc straight through from start to finish can be a bit much – this is a lot of solo-bassoon material in one package – and it may be more enjoyable to pick and choose among the tracks at various times, as by hearing the three sets of Paganini variations one after the other or perhaps listening to the fantasies by Arnold, Farago and Lussier as a threesome. What is clear throughout, in any case, is that Roy is thoroughly committed to careful presentation and skilled interpretation of all this music, and does a highly commendable job of proving, if proof be necessary, that the bassoon has all the fluidity and emotive potential that one could want in any wind instrument, even if it has not always been utilized to the fullest extent of its capabilities. 

     The instrument that is central to the concept of l’Algérie by Richard Carrick (born 1971) is the oud, a lutelike, fretless 11-or-12-stringed instrument with a deep, warm and resonant sound. Carrick, like many contemporary composers, likes to create auditory experiences joining multiple cultures and musical forms, while also extending techniques associated with well-known instruments – in this case the piano, which is equipped with magnets and mutes and which Carrick himself plays as part of an ensemble known as Either/Or. l’Algérie, whose title does not begin with a capital letter (a common spelling affectation among many modern compositions), is a nine-movement suite that is the second part of a trilogy incorporating music from the Maghreb region of North Africa – hence the prominent oud, which is important in that area’s musical life. The piece is semi-autobiographical, as are the other portions of the trilogy, The Atlas and The Path. There is aural experimentation of all sorts in l’Algérie, sometimes literally through improvisational sections and sometimes through the performance techniques that Carrick requires, and the sounds resulting from them. Unsurprisingly for an avant-garde work, l’Algérie has a wide variety of self-referential elements, some involving Carrick’s family (his mother was born in Algeria) and some from his own experiences hearing or researching specific tunes and musicians. Some of the resulting sound is interesting, such as the occasional coupling of oud and violin. But much of it is simply as-expected juxtaposition, incorporating elements of non-Western music, plus jazz and other forms, into segments that will display Carrick’s intentions and their own meaning only to audiences willing to delve into the background of l’Algérie and use their research to further their understanding of what they are hearing. Taken at face value – or perhaps “ear value” is more accurate – l’Algérie is just another example (albeit a long-form one) of all the sonic material that a contemporary composer can extract from unusual instrumentation and/or unusual performance techniques. The occasional dips into more-traditional sounds, as at the start of the movements called La reine and Gnawa Loops, are quite welcome as aural oases in what is otherwise material whose meaningfulness to Carrick is no doubt sincere but is not effectively communicated to listeners outside those already acquainted with his works and his personal life. Because of its narrow focus and because this is a short release for a full-price CD – lasting fewer than 45 minutes – the recording is a (+++) disc whose largely self-limited appeal makes it seem indifferent to reaching out to any audience wider than the inner circle of Carrick cognoscenti.