(++++) POISED AND PLEASANT IF NOT PROFOUND

Vivaldi: Concerti per vari strumenti II. Les Musiciens du Prince – Monaco conducted by Gianluca Capuano. Naïve. $16.99. 

Conradin Kreutzer: Septet; Friedrich Witt: Septet. Charis-Ensemble (Dietheim Adorf, clarinet; Stephan Rudiger, bassoon; David Bryant, horn; Rainer Sonne and Brigitte Rocholl-Gerlinghaus, violins; Christina Lohss, viola; Anette Adorf-Brenner, cello; Norbert Brenner, double bass). MDG Preziosa. $23.99. 

David Balakrishnan: Island Prayers; Darkness Dreaming; Groove in the Louvre; Rhiannon Giddens: Pompey Ran Away; Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate: Little Loksi’; Terence Blanchard: Turtle Trajectory. Turtle Island Quartet (Gabe Terracciano and David Balakrishnan, violins; Benjamin von Gutzeit, viola; Naseem Alatrash, cello). Azica. $16.99. 

     The remarkable facility with which Vivaldi approached the creation of concertos for instruments of all kinds is very much on display on a grab-bag of a disc that is Volume 75 of the ongoing and outstanding Vivaldi Edition from Naïve, which is exploring works by Vivaldi found at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin. The performers this time, members of an ensemble called Les Musiciens du Prince – Monaco, are new to the series, and they and conductor Gianluca Capuano prove just as adept with Vivaldi’s music and with period performance practices as have all the other fine contributors to this long-running sequence of first-rate recordings. The six concertos on this CD – which is the second in the Vivaldi Edition with the all-encompassing label Concerti per vari strumenti – are quite varied indeed. RV 535 in D minor is for two oboes, which expertly weave lines around each other when not playing in unison; despite the key, the work, as usual in Vivaldi, is scarcely dark. RV 543 in F is for oboe and violin, and here Vivaldi contrasts the wind and string sounds to good effect while keeping the music moving in his usual upbeat manner. RV 553 in B-flat is for four violins, but sounds most of the time like a work for two pairs of the instruments – here Vivaldi elegantly balances the demands of a soloist-focused concerto with the style of a concerto grosso. RV 555 in C has the most-varied scoring of any work here, uniting and contrasting winds, bowed and struck strings, and harpsichords – it is scarcely conceived on a grand scale, being as short as Vivaldi concertos usually are, but its complex instrumentation gives it a high level of aural attractiveness as well as the generally celebratory manner associated with its home key. RV 557, also in C, is a kind of double-double concerto, featuring two violins and two oboes – but it is the violins that dominate the two fast movements, while the central Largo includes two recorders, basso continuo, and zero oboes: wind players in Vivaldi’s time played more than one instrument and likely switched from their outer-movement oboes to the recorders, giving the concerto an unusual overall instrumentation. Finally, RV 570 in F is known as La Tempesta di mare and is for transverse flute – rather oddly replaced by recorder in this performance – plus oboe and bassoon, and features an unexpected solo-violin part in the first movement. The bright and lively playing throughout the CD and the unfailing inventiveness of Vivaldi put on display in all these varied concertos make the disc, like so many others in the Vivaldi Edition, a real pleasure to hear. The music is not especially consequential – it is exploratory of sonorities and instrumental design, but always within a comparatively rigid formal structure. And yet it is always charming and elegant, and the little structural surprises with which the concertos are peppered keep them fascinating. 

     “Fascinating” is a bit of an overstatement where the septets of two little-known composers of Beethoven’s time are concerned – but it is certainly intriguing to hear what lesser lights of the late Classical and early Romantic era were producing purely to bring their audiences pleasure. Conradin Kreutzer (1780-1849) and Friedrich Witt (1770-1836) were accomplished composers, and if they made no attempts to produce heaven-storming works along the lines of Beethoven’s (Witt and Beethoven were born in the same year), they certainly did know how to meld a chamber ensemble skillfully and produce music that brings considerable listening pleasure in part because it does not attempt to be challenging. Kreutzer’s six-movement Septet in E-flat is for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, and has some characteristics of an updated Baroque suite because of its unconnected movements and Kreutzer’s determination to provide material in a wide variety of tempos and forms – the latter including both a Menuett and a Scherzo. A recent MDG Preziosa recording of this seldom-heard work is not exactly “new,” being a performance by the Charis-Ensemble dating all the way back to 1986. The CD sounds remarkably good, however, and the players take the music quite seriously without ever being heavy-handed in their performance or trying to make the material communicate more meaningfulness than it can comfortably contain. The second movement, Adagio, is the longest and is a good example of what the work does and does not try to be: the slow pacing is more of the meandering variety than that of emotive depth. There is surface-level charm throughout Kreutzer’s Septet, and that is more than enough to make it enjoyable to hear even if the impression it leaves is one of evanescence. Witt’s Septet, although shorter, is more likely to stay with listeners – because of Witt’s considerable skill in writing for winds. Witt wrote a symphony once attributed to Beethoven, and two of his other symphonies were favorably reviewed by E.T.A. Hoffmann, but his music is almost never heard anymore – and on the basis of this Septet, that is something of a shame. The work is actually for eight instruments: clarinet, bassoon, horn, string quartet, and double bass – with the bass present to reinforce the cello line, much as in Beethoven’s Sextet, Op. 81b, which calls for seven instruments. Witt’s work is in F and in four movements, and the clarinet, bassoon and horn parts are out front and sufficiently distinctive throughout to give the work a warm and pleasant quality from start to finish. As in Kreutzer’s piece, Witt makes no attempt to produce anything profound, but there is certainly songfulness in the Adagio cantabile and considerable bounce and lyrical flow, nicely blended, in the other three movements. Listeners who enjoy music of this era – even (or perhaps especially) unchallenging works that must have been crowd-pleasers in their day – will find this CD very pleasurable indeed. 

     Contemporary chamber works sometimes strive for greater meaningfulness than they actually possess when they are heard. An Azica CD focused largely on compositions and performances by David Balakrishnan (born 1956) is one example. Balakrishnan and the other members of the Turtle Island Quartet try to mix and match musical approaches, forms and types on the disc, all for the purpose of producing a kind of portrait of the wide range of styles and concerns of American concert-hall (if not exactly classical) music. This is a lot of freight for these sincere but generally lightweight pieces to carry. Balakrishnan’s Island Prayers, for example, has three movements that are supposed to trace a common trajectory, from seriousness to joy. They do so to some extent, but not in any especially distinctive or distinguished way: the piece wears its emotional heart on its figurative sleeve and is interesting enough, but scarcely deeply expressive. Also here are Balakrishnan’s Darkness Dreaming, whose intense opening promises profundity that the rest of the piece never quite delivers, and Groove in the Louvre, whose amusing title is a high point in a work that possesses touches of humor and an improvisational feel – which make it actually quite listenable without making it seem to have anything particularly trenchant to communicate. The quartet members do throw themselves into all these works with enthusiasm, and the impressive performances are a major point of interest on this (+++) CD. Three non-Balakrishnan compositions expand the range of material heard here. Pompey Ran Away by Rhiannon Giddens (born 1977) is essentially a brief history of fiddle playing, using “fiddle technique” and a background awareness of Copland to produce a pleasant aura of sound. Little Loksi’ by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate (born 1968) is based in Chickasaw stories and music but actually sounds mostly like an extension of Giddens’ tribute to old-fashioned fiddle playing – and unlike Giddens’ work, somewhat overstays its welcome. And Turtle Trajectory by Terence Blanchard (born 1962), intended as a tribute to this quartet, certainly gives the players something of a workout but does not have all that much to offer to a broader audience. All the music here is made attentively and with a good sense of string-quartet capabilities and aural possibilities in contemporary music. And every piece on the disc has elements that make it worth hearing once. But there is little staying power in these works, little in them that will likely lead listeners who are not also string players to be affected by the music in ways that make them want to hear the music repeatedly.

(+++) OF BEAUTY AND FAITH

Orlando Gibbons: Anthems; works by Marco Galvani, Cecilia McDowall, Nicola LeFanu, and Will Todd. ORA Singers conducted by Suzi Digby. Orchid Classics. $16.99. 

Songs in Ladino, Hebrew & Yiddish. Shira Karmon, voice; Rainer Maria Nero, guitar. Gramola. $19.50. 

     The human voice, individually or in a group, has always had unique power to express emotions – to assert joy, sorrow, hope, belief and more. Composers have harnessed the voice since the early days of what is now considered classical music, and one who did so with particular skill was Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625). For the 400^th anniversary of his death and the 10^th anniversary of its own establishment, the early-music choral group ORA Singers had the intriguing idea of recording Gibbons’ Anthems while also inviting contemporary composers to comment musically upon them. Like other projects of this sort, this is a limited-appeal production whose expected audience needs to be interested both in Gibbons’ creations and in modern harmonic and rhythmic explorations of them. The 10 surviving Anthems by Gibbons, some heard as they have come down to modern times and others reconstructed by David Skinner, form the backbone and centerpiece of this Orchid Classics CD, which also includes hymns from Gibbons’ Hymnes and Songs of the Church as well as 21^st-century material based on or responding to the 17^th-century material. It is all a bit much to take in from an intellectual standpoint – again, this is scarcely a CD for a wide audience – but the sheer beauty of Gibbons’ work and the excellence with which the ORA Singers present it make it possible simply to listen to the disc for the pleasures and uplift it delivers and only then, perhaps in a later hearing, look into just how the whole thing has been put together. It is useful to remember that much of the material here is not presented in its original form – not even the pieces traced directly to Gibbons. Harry Baker has arranged The Song of Moses for soprano solo, choir and piano; The Song of Angels for choir and piano; The Lamentation of David over Saul and Jonathan for vocal soloists, choir and piano; The Song of Hezekiah for choir and piano; and Veni Creator Spiritus for choir and piano.

     James Weeks is the arranger of Who’s this, that leaning on her friend, for soprano, choir and piano, and of Arise thou North-winde from the North for soprano, tenor, choir and piano. Although inauthentic on their face, these are all sensitively made arrangements that allow use of a modern accompanying instrument and preserve the basics of Gibbons’ music, in several cases accentuating elements through the solos. The purely choral material in Gibbons’ original settings is simply wonderful: Hosanna to the son of David; Almighty and everlasting God; Deliver us, O Lord; O clap your hands; Lift Up Your Heads; O Lord, how do my woes increase; O Lord, in thy wrath rebuke me not; a brief Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis; O Lord, I Lift My Heart to Thee; I am the Resurrection; and O Lord, in thee is all my trust. Throughout, the beauty of the voices brings forth the meaningfulness of the words, inviting listeners to engage with higher realms and producing a feeling of exaltation even in our much more secular age. As for the commissioned contributions of contemporary composers, these include a “reflection” on Hosanna to the son of David by Marco Galvani (born 1994) that is attractively upbeat; a “re-imagination” of O clap your hands by Cecilia McDowall (born 1951) with distinctly modern rhythms and an up-to-date sense of jubilation; a “reflection” – called Be still, my soul – on O Lord, in thy wrath rebuke me not by Nicola LeFanu (born 1947), which harnesses considerable dissonance and moves to eventual peacefulness; and another “reflection,” this one on Veni Creator Spiritus, by Will Todd (born 1970), which concludes the CD with a slower pace than Gibbons’ original and comes across as genuinely reflective of the text. Everything is sung impressively and with great sensitivity, and listeners with a strong disposition to material of this sort – and this vintage – will find much to admire, and much to respond to, in this carefully thought-through assemblage. 

     The time span from the Middle Ages to the 21^st century is explored vocally in a very different way on a Gramola release offering 21 songs in three languages: Ladino (the language traditionally spoken by Sephardic Jews), Hebrew and Spanish. Music originating in time periods from that of medieval Spain to modern-day Israel – and including Eyal Bat’s setting of soprano Shira Karmon’s poem “About Rachel” – is here arranged by flamenco guitarist Rainer Maria Nero in ways that produce an aurally attractive blend of voice and instrument. The sound is often quite distinctive, the blending of Karmon’s voice with Nero’s guitar emphasizing the emotional expressiveness and rhythmic structure of these brief songs. The Ladino and Hebrew languages will likely be largely unfamiliar to most listeners, emphasizing the narrow targeting of the release – like the Gibbons-focused CD, this is very definitely a niche product. Nevertheless, there is an accumulation of feeling as the disc progresses that can sweep audiences along to worlds that they may never have visited but that showcase attractive levels of emotional connection. The arrangers and composers here will scarcely be familiar to many, but the consistency of Nero’s arrangements and the engaging involvement of Karmon in each piece pull listeners effectively into the small worlds on display. Among the composers included on the disc are Matti Caspi, Achinoam Nini (Noa), and Simon Laks, with poems by Ibn Gabirol, Ehud Manor and others – plus many traditional songs enlivened and rendered highly expressive through Nero’s accompaniments. Many of the pieces actually begin with a guitar solo that sets a mood that Karmon picks up, explores, and extends. The CD is an exploration of Jewish heritage extending over many centuries, speaking to an audience that finds music to be a unifying force whose power has changed but scarcely diminished during hundreds of years and despite unending sociopolitical upheavals and dislocations. The newer material, especially the songs by Caspi (1949-2026), is especially attractive from a strictly musical point of view, its Brazilian and Latin influences brought to the fore by Nero’s guitar. The older, traditional songs provide a contrasting sonic landscape that Karmon and Nero explore with care and understanding, and the disc as a whole will be attractive to listeners tied to the material by their own religious and cultural backgrounds or interested in exploring some less-known musical material reflective of a particular ethnic group.

(+++) PRESENTATION MATTERS

E.T.A. Hoffmann: “Liebe und Eifersucht”; “Dirna”; “Das Kreuz an der Ostsee”—excerpts; Arlequin; Overtures to “Der Trank der Unsterblichkeit” and “Liebe und Eifersucht”; Missa in D minor; Miserere in B-flat minor; Symphony in E-flat; Overture to “Undine”; “Aurora”—Overture and March; Grand Trio for Piano, Violin and Violoncello; 6 Duettini Italiani for Soprano, Tenor and Piano; Quintet for Harp and String Quartet; Complete Sonatas for Fortepiano; Friedrich Witt: Sinfonia in A. Vocal and instrumental soloists; Orchester der Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele conducted by Michael Hofstetter; Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss conducted by Johannes Goritzki; WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln conducted by Rupert Huber; Kölner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens; Beethoven Trio Ravensburg; Parisii-Quartett; Wolfgang Brunner, fortepiano. CPO. $99.99 (8 CDs). 

     So much depends on how one reads the notes – and the words. “Presentation matters” can be a noun followed by a verb – or an adjective followed by a noun. The two meanings of the phrase are very different – and in the case of a new CPO release of music by E.T.A. Hoffmann, both are highly relevant. 

     There is a recent tendency that is both fortunate and unfortunate when it comes to collections of previously released recordings. The fortunate element is the return to availability of performances that tend to be very fine, of music that tends to be overlooked and is not well-represented on disc. The unfortunate one is the laziness and cheapness of the actual releases, which put the quality of performances at odds with the form in which the music is packaged. That is exactly the case with this collection of CDs of recordings that originally date from 1995 to 2014: it is extremely good to have the music available again, and extremely frustrating to have it made available this way. 

     It is not a matter of the physical packaging. The discs are in individual cardboard sleeves – with E.T.A. Hoffmann shown the same way on all of them, but with a clever design in which his hair is colorized differently in connection with each original release. The eight CDs are then presented in a cardboard box, resulting in a more eco-friendly offering than ones involving traditional plastic jewel cases. The entirety of the release comes with a 112-page booklet – and there is the problem. The booklet contains the exact notes and essays offered with the original recordings, resulting in multiple ridiculous and frustrating time references, for example to “upcoming” events in, say, 2001. Furthermore, 32 of the pages are devoted to notes on the many performers – notes that are long since outdated and refer to circumstances and life events that have long since passed. And on top of all that, what is not included with the release is what is arguably the most important element of all where less-familiar repertoire is concerned: the words to vocal music. It is simply unconscionable to present a full performance of Liebe und Eifersucht, whose Singspiel structure means that it is packed with spoken dialogue that is crucial to the plot and indeed is the primary mechanism carrying it forward, and not to give any of the work’s words to listeners – even though a complete libretto was included with the original release. It is unfortunate, if not quite at the same level as this, to leave out the words to Hoffmann’s Missa in D minor and Miserere in B-flat minor, since the former follows the usual Latin text of the Mass and the latter uses 11 of the verses of Psalm 51, which is widely accessible. But it is a miserable decision to fail to provide the libretto of Dirna, an hour-long melodrama: its form itself is fascinating (there is only narration bolstered by and commented upon by music, with no actual singing except a few mildly atmospheric choral numbers), but there is no way an audience lacking in fluent German will be able to follow what is going on, and the libretto is wholly inaccessible anywhere except in the booklet that came with the original CD release. 

     On top of all these issues are some oddities carried over from the original CDs and not explained when they came out, much less now. Notable among these is the inclusion on the sixth disc in this set of a symphony in A by Friedrich Witt (1770-1836). The work has nothing to do with any music by Hoffmann, and although Hoffmann in his role as music critic did once write about two Witt symphonies, those were Witt’s Nos. 5 and 6, not the piece heard here. The rationale for a single Witt piece being added to eight hours of music by Hoffmann is inexplicable at best, and in fact is never explained. 

     All these presentation matters (adjective/noun) are highly frustrating. But it is important, indeed crucial, to keep in mind the extent to which presentation matters (noun/verb) in Hoffmann’s music, since the performances throughout are never less than worthy and generally much more than that. In his brief life (1776-1822), Hoffmann filled many roles, although today he is remembered almost solely as an author and a very significant contributor to the development of Romanticism in literature and, through it, in music (Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann, and more). Hoffmann’s literary creations and his other artistic endeavors – he was a fine caricaturist – have stood the test of time very well indeed. His music has not; but Hoffmann considered himself a composer above all. He idolized Mozart: Hoffmann changed his third name, Wilhelm, to Amadeus, in honor of Mozart, even though he used Wilhelm on documents throughout his life and it is “E.T.W. Hoffmann” that appears at his gravesite. In his best music, Hoffmann never strayed far from the Mozartean ideal: the overdone plot complexities of Liebe und Eifersucht are put across through a great deal of genuinely charming music that recalls Mozart again and again, the comparatively formulaic religious works also recall some of Mozart’s endeavors, and there are Mozart-reflecting elements in Hoffmann’s chamber music as well. The pieces here that stray farther from Mozart tend to be less successful: Hoffmann’s instrumental music, in general, comes across less effectively than his stage works, although there is considerable charm in the piano trio (whose finale includes a quotation from Mozart’s Symphony No. 41) and harp quintet presented in this set. It is worth noting that the eight-disc collection does not necessarily include the best of Hoffmann’s music: for example, it omits Undine, his most successful opera, and his very well-made Six Canticles for a cappella choir. But CPO had available for this project only the recordings it had previously released, so any repertoire weaknesses simply result from the catalogue on which this repackaging draws. Musically, for its incomplete but nevertheless insightful view of Hoffmann as composer, this is a (++++) release, but in terms of how shoddily it is put together and how many  opportunities for insightful presentation were missed, it merits only (++). Hoffmann deserves better, even though he was scarcely a top-tier composer. Anyone curious about his music will find much here that is engaging – but will be left alone, without guidance from the set itself, to put Hoffmann as composer into context and evaluate his quality in that portion of his short but multifaceted life.

(+++) BRINGING OUTSIDERS IN

We Are Mighty: 12 Ordinary Americans Who Did the Next Needed Thing. By Sharon McMahon. Illustrated by Susanna Chapman. Knopf. $19.99. 

     Families that consider themselves “minority” or “marginalized” and that want to encourage children to strive for excellence in one area of society or another will appreciate Sharon McMahon’s We Are Mighty, which briefly profiles 12 Americans whose contributions range from the highly significant to the less-known but still important and useful. 

     This is, by design, a very skewed selection of people. Black people, for example, are five of the 12 chosen for these profiles – 40%-plus racial representation in a nation in which the actual percentage is about 13%. And four of the five discussed by McMahon – that is, 80% – are women. Furthermore, Susanna Chapman does something strange with her illustrations, giving several of the white profile subjects facial features and skin tones that make them appear dark-skinned: lighthouse keeper Ida Lewis, for example, and poet Katharine Lee Bates (and, even more clearly, Bates’ brother). The reasons for this are never stated, but clearly a broad definition of inclusivity is the aim, and families in the target audience will appreciate it. 

     As for the specific people chosen, the selection seems simply to reflect the author’s personal interests and advocacy. Lewis was a lighthouse keeper who saved so many lives that she was called the bravest woman in America. Bates wrote the words to America the Beautiful. Both were women who overcame the significant gender-based societal obstacles of their time to help people’s lives, whether physically or through emotional uplift. Also here are Gouverneur Morris, a Founding Father who was disabled after a carriage accident and who was a major force in creating the Constitution, and teacher Virginia Randolph, reporter and suffragist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and World War I ambulance driver María de López. Olympic champion Jim Thorpe is here, identified additionally as “Wa-Tho-Huk,” although the reason for that is never explained. Businessman Julius Rosenwald is included because of the schools he was responsible for building in cooperation with Booker T. Washington. Norman Mineta appears partly because he was a politician but primarily because he had been interned during World War II with other Japanese Americans. Teacher and civil rights icon Septima Clark is included, and baseball player Roberto Clemente, and civil-rights campaigner Claudette Colvin. 

     The book’s subtitle’s reference to “the next needed thing,” a phrase taken from an article in The Journal of Human Resources, may be intended as a generalization uniting these disparate figures, but McMahon’s choices and Chapman’s illustrations construe the phrase more narrowly, since what most of these figures have in common is a push for inclusivity, expansion of rights in various ways, and demonstrations through their actions that individuals from any socioeconomic and (especially) racial background can be significant contributors to society. The specific challenges faced by these 12 ordinary-but-extraordinary individuals are not always made clear – for instance, the dates of their lives are not given in the profile pages, so the societal circumstances each person faced in terms of gender, nationality or race are implied but not put explicitly in context (there is, however, a rather confusing timeline at the back of the book). The absence of explicit context somewhat reduces the effectiveness of the profile pages – that “Wa-Tho-Huk” reference to Jim Thorpe, for example, is actually quite significant, since he was the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States, but that fact is absent from We Are Mighty. On balance, the book is self-limited by the author’s selection criteria and the narrow approach to the brief biographical sketches. Parents looking for inspiration here would do well to page through the book before buying a copy, to ensure some level of connection between their families and the individuals profiled by McMahon and portrayed by Chapman. If there is in fact a suitable relationship, the book will do what it intends to do by providing upbeat stories aimed at giving children uplift and a sense of potential in their own lives.