Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier,
Book I: A Composer’s Approach. Don Freund, piano. Navona. $14.99 (2 CDs +
DVD).
Cécile Chaminade: The
Composer as Pianist—All of Her Known Recordings for G&T and Duo Art.
Pierian. $18.99.
Chopin: Ballade No. 3; Scherzo
No. 3; Fantasy in F minor; Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 23, “Appassionata”;
Piano Sonata No. 32. Van Cliburn, piano (Chopin); Claudio Arrau, piano
(Beethoven). ICA Classics DVD. $24.99.
Bruckner: Symphony No. 8.
Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by William Steinberg. ICA Classics DVD.
$24.99.
Mahler: Symphony No. 4; Mozart:
Symphony No. 35. Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Klaus Tennstedt.
ICA Classics DVD. $24.99.
Scott Brickman: Piano Sonatas Nos.
2 and 3; L’Orfeo for guitar; Fiddleheads for violin; Snowball for violin,
guitar and piano; Knotty Pieces for violin and guitar; Winter and Construction
for violin, guitar and piano. Nathanael May, piano; Matt Gould, guitar;
Beth Ilana Schneider-Gould, violin. Ravello. $16.99.
Sophia Serghi: Night of Light;
Ikon; Full Moon Haiku; Cantus Integritatis. Alena Hellerová and Lucie Silkenova, sopranos;
Eliska Weissova, mezzo-soprano; Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by
Vit Micka. Navona. $16.99.
Sergio Cervetti: Leyenda; Chacona
Para El Martirio De Atahualpa; Nazca; Madrigal III. Alena Hellerová
and Eva Kolkova, sopranos; Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by
Vit Micka and Petr Vronský.
Navona. $16.99.
A very interesting
combination of performance and pedagogy at a very reasonable price, Don
Freund’s performance and discussion of the first book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier may not be in the
forefront of piano versions from an artistic standpoint, but it is well-played,
thoughtfully presented and distinguished for Fruend’s genuine attempt to
communicate with 21st-century audiences about this brilliant 18th-century
music. Freund (born 1947) presents the
music itself, played forthrightly on a modern piano, on two CDs, and then
offers a DVD containing “lessons” about four specific pieces – the preludes and
fugues in C major, C minor, C-sharp major and C-sharp minor. Freund clearly understands this music both
historically and in terms of its communication potential, and rehearing the
four works on the DVD after listening to and watching the “lessons” is quite an
interesting experience after initially simply hearing them played on CD. Freund is himself a composer, as the title of
this recording makes clear, but what really comes through in the DVD is that he
is a fine teacher (he is professor of composition at the Jacobs School of Music
at Indiana University). Freund discusses
Bach’s compositional process and how it affects specific elements of the
performance of The Well-Tempered Clavier,
and if his emendations on the basis of his analysis are generally small ones (e.g., a grace note added to the C-sharp
minor prelude), they are nevertheless fascinating to learn, and they do add to
a listener’s appreciation of Bach’s music.
On its own, the CD performance is all right but scarcely outstanding;
even those who like hearing this music on a modern piano will find Freund an
adequate but not exceptional player. Still,
this Navona release is a valuable three-disc set for its combination of an
understanding rendition of the music with discussions that will help listeners better
comprehend and relate to Bach’s work.
A new Pierian CD of piano
music by Cécile Chaminade
(1857-1944) delves into the past in a different way. Chaminade is almost completely forgotten as a
composer today, although her Concertino for Flute does get an occasional
performance. What is intriguing is that
she made six recordings of her compositions for G&T, the company that later
became EMI, in 1901, and those recordings are among the most sought-after among
collectors of piano recordings.
Transfers of the six, which are of works dating to 1884-99, all appear on
the newly released CD, along with a dozen recordings dating to 1920-27. Chaminade proves to be a fine advocate of her
own music, and if none of the works is particularly substantial – they are not
quite salon music, but are scarcely profound – all are very well structured,
and are convincing both formally and emotionally. Chaminade was comfortable writing in a
variety of forms, from Troisième
Valse Brillante (1898) to Danse Créole
(also 1898) to Marche Américaine
(1909 – Chaminade’s music was for a time quite popular in the United States,
which she visited in 1908). The value of
this CD is almost entirely historical, but the music itself has considerable
charm, and perhaps this recording will spark at least a modest Chaminade
revival.
Historical reasons are
also the main ones for considering three newly released ICA Classics DVDs,
although the piano performances of Van Cliburn and Claudio Arrau, which date to
1959-60, are themselves highly worthy of being heard. In fact, they are worth being seen as well,
for the contrast between the performance styles of these two preeminent
pianists. Cliburn, playing just a year
after his legendary triumph at the 1958 Tchaikovsky competition, is highly
involved in the music but has a somewhat cool on-stage persona, while Arrau is
fiery and intense in his Beethoven – of which the reading of the composer’s
final sonata, No. 32, is particularly well-informed and well-articulated. Cliburn’s Chopin is something of an acquired
taste, lacking the strong emotional involvement provided by some other pianists
but revealing the underlying structure of the music in a very effective
way. The Fantasy in F minor is a highlight here. The problem with this DVD is the rather odd
pairing of the pianists – Cliburn or Arrau fanciers would surely have preferred
a disc containing only one pianist or the other – but presumably these BBC
recordings were what was available, and the repertoire fits together well
enough even though the melding of performers is somewhat uneasy. The DVD is really for those interested in
exploring on screen the techniques of great mid-20th-century
pianists: the sound is all right but not up to today’s standards, but the
playing is first-rate throughout.
ICA Classics’ two latest
Boston Symphony DVDs are also for those with a strong historical interest – in
the orchestra, which for a time was likely the best in the United States, as
well as in the specific conductors.
There are many excellent Bruckner Eighth and Mahler Fourth recordings,
not to mention the huge number of CDs of Mozart’s “Haffner” symphony, so these
specific performances, despite many felicities of detail, will not likely be
anyone’s first choice. However, those
with an interest both in the Boston Symphony in 1962, and in the approach to
Bruckner of William Steinberg (never considered a first-tier Bruckner conductor),
will certainly find this release intriguing.
Steinberg’s emphasis is more on Bruckner’s warmth than on his massive
sonorities, although the orchestra provides full-throated sound and the
burnished brass section is particularly good.
Steinberg was not yet the orchestra’s music director when this recording
was made – he assumed that post in 1969.
By 1977, when Seiji Ozawa was music director and when the Klaus
Tennstedt Mahler/Mozart DVD was recorded, many players were different and the
Boston Symphony was a bit past its pinnacle: Ozawa allowed sprawl and
sloppiness into what had been a beautifully balanced and well-controlled
orchestra, although the Boston forces never matched the precision of the
Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell.
In any case, Tennstedt’s Mahler/Mozart concert, recorded in color, offers
serviceable if scarcely revelatory performances of both works, with lovely
singing in the Mahler finale by soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson. Collectors of Boston Symphony recordings will
find these interesting, but it is the orchestra and the conductors, not the
music, that takes center stage in both these DVDs.
Composers in the 21st
century look toward the past in a very different way, and indeed define “past”
differently from the way older composers did.
Scott Brickman (born 1963), who teaches at the University of Maine at
Fort Kent, deems the past to consist as much of the Beatles as of the Second
Viennese School, and his works often have the sound of pastiche as a
result. They are both modern and
modernistic – the former word being descriptive, the latter critical of an
approach filled with sudden high notes followed by crashing chords, which is
pretty much what listeners who are not fans of modern compositions would expect
to hear. The piano sonatas – No. 2
(2006) in four movements and No. 3 (2008) in three – are clear enough in
structure and somewhat related to each other, but never seem to go anywhere;
nor does it seem they were intended to do so.
Winter and Construction (2010)
has the fullest sound here, but the three movements of L’Orfeo (2007) are the most interesting on Ravello’s disc, giving
guitarist Matt Gould a real workout in movements intended to evoke “Styx,”
“Eurydice” and “Morpheus.” The remaining
works on the CD – Snowball (2003), Knotty Pines (2008) and Fiddleheads (2010) – are intermittently
interesting, with the busy noisiness of Fiddleheads
offering more attraction than the others, although this is involvement of an
intellectual sort: nothing here touches the emotions or appears created for
that purpose.
In contrast, the works
on a CD featuring the vocal-and-instrumental compositions of Cypriot composer
Sophia Serghi (born 1972), a music professor at the College of William and Mary
in Virginia, are filled with emotional and spiritual elements. Like Brickman, she draws inspiration from a
variety of sources, but in her case they may be classic literature (Petrarch,
Sappho, a string quartet called “Remembrance of Things Past”) or more recent literary
productions (she has written incidental music for several plays). On the new Navona CD, Night of Light is a spiritually oriented response to Easter in
Manhattan; Ikon was inspired by an
icon that Serghi saw in Paris; Full Moon
Haiku sets moon-related poems by Nancy Schoenberger; and Cantus Integritatis sets four of the
composer’s own Latin poems to music that is inward-looking and meditative. A shortened Night of Light: Reprise ends the CD, which begins with the
full-length version, but the circularity here is more apparent than real: the
music moves in a number of different directions, but all of it is poetic and
intended to evoke a variety of emotions and moods. Very much unlike the music of a composer such
as Brickman, the works of Serghi showcase an alternative way of absorbing and
reinterpreting the past while creating music intended to speak directly to
modern concerns.
Sergio Cervetti (born
1940 in Uruguay) comes from an earlier generation than Brickman and Serghi, but
he too can be heard reaching back while seeking ways to move himself and his
audience forward. Cervetti has written
film music (for Oliver Stone’s Natural
Born Killers, among other movies) and has composed more electronic music
than any other type, but he has also written an opera based on a story by Oscar
Wilde, and a number of works for solo harpsichord – plus a Concerto for Harpsichord and 11 Instruments. Cervetti’s interest in the harpsichord (which
provides an intriguing balance to the tendency of modern performers to play
Bach’s harpsichord music, including The
Well-Tempered Clavier, on the piano) is reflected in Chacona Para El Martirio De Atahualpa, the second movement of the
harpsichord concerto. The concerto (which
dates to 1991) bears the overall title Las
Indias Olvidades and uses the old-fashioned instrument to create a sense of
time and place as well as a contrast with the forces of a modern orchestra. Leyenda
(also 1991), for soprano and orchestra, also looks to the past for its
presentation of a legend, while Madrigal
III (1975), for two sopranos and chamber orchestra, recalls a very old
vocal form in a modern context – Cervetti has written four madrigals, the
others being for soprano solo. The
most-recent work on Navona’s new CD is Nazca
(2010), Cervetti’s first foray into writing for string orchestra. It ties in an interesting way into his
fascination with electronic music: the piece requires the strings to play in
their highest ranges a great deal of the time, with the result that their
acoustic properties sound electronic even though they are not. The five movements of this substantial piece
are intended as musical representations of figurations discovered in the
Atacama Desert almost a century ago: line patterns that appear, from the sky,
to be representational, but that look only like scratches from ground
level. Since these ancient lines long
predate any known ability of humans to get to the level at which they are
recognizable in form, they have provoked many theories about their origin and
meaning, and the fourth movement of Nazca
(“Dreams of the Extraterrestrial”) refers to those ideas as well as to the
possible depiction of an alien being in some of the lines. The four other movements are more mundane
(“The Monkey’s Plain,” “The Spider,” “The Hummingbird” and “The Hands, Hymn”),
but the music has an odd ethereality throughout that seems to fit well with its
subject matter. Cervetti’s works draw on
everything from African-inspired dance to old Latin hymns, seeking – as do the
works of many other modern composers – both to come to terms with the past and
to incorporate it into music with a distinctively modern sound.
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