Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1, 5
and 9. New York Philharmonic (Nos. 1 and 9) and Wiener Philharmoniker (No.
5) conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Archipel. $22.99 (2 CDs).
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons;
Concerto for Three Violins; Arvo Pärt: Passacaglia. Anne Akiko
Meyers, violin; English Chamber Orchestra conducted by David Lockington. eOne.
$16.99.
Foundations: Modern Works in the
Classical Tradition by Andrew Schultz, Sergio Cervetti, David Nisbet Stewart,
Joanne D. Carey, Daniel Perttu and Jonathan Sacks. Navona. $16.99.
Abhanden: Music by Chinary Ung,
Claude Vivier, Daniel Dehaan, Andrew Greenwald, Marcos Balter and Eliza Brown.
Chris Wild, cello; Ensemble Dal Niente. Navona. $14.99.
McCormick Percussion Group: Soli for
Soprano with Percussion Orchestra. Jamie Jordan, soprano. Ravello. $12.99.
European Folkscapes. Apollo
Chamber Players. Navona. $16.99.
One of the conductors most
responsible for presenting the standard classical-music repertoire with the
high quality and attention to detail that audiences have come to expect was
Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989). Something of a martinet and a stickler for
precision, Karajan, principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 35
years, was often accused – especially in the years after 1970 – of insisting on
Nazi-like precision in performance at the expense of emotional feeling,
resulting in technically polished but ultimately vapid readings. The accusation
had political elements to it, since Karajan had joined the Nazi Party in the
1930s, apparently for social and professional reasons more than ideological
ones. But the critique tended to stick, in part because Karajan made so many
recordings – he was one of the best-selling classical musicians of all time,
perhaps the best-selling of all – that both proponents and detractors could
find at least some works to bolster their beliefs. The Karajan controversy
sometimes overshadowed the conductor’s extraordinary musicianship, and a look
back at some of his earlier performances is therefore salutary. Listeners
willing to forgive the Archipel label for the substandard sound of its new
Karajan release will hear some very high-quality music-making from the 1940s
and 1950s, featuring Karajan conducting orchestras with which he was not
usually associated. The earliest recording here, of Beethoven’s Fifth, dates all
the way back to 1948 and features the superb Vienna Philharmonic, an ensemble
that Karajan did lead from time to time. Never released before, this
performance has all the intensity and dynamism that listeners came to expect
from Karajan, and a good deal of the slickness as well, although the
comparatively primitive sound makes the orchestra sound less polished than is
its wont. These readings of the First and Ninth came 10 years later, and the
1958 sound, while scarcely first-quality, is significantly improved over that
of 1948; but the New York Philharmonic – not an orchestra with which Karajan
often appeared – is far from being the equal of its Viennese counterpart. These
are nevertheless compelling interpretations. The First is fleet enough but somewhat
grandiose, lacking any strong sense of the Mozartean elements that made it into
a transitional work for classical music in general at the end of the 18th
century. The Ninth is grandiose, too, almost operatic in its drama, and here
Karajan really comes into his own. Some may find the performance a bit
overwrought by modern standards, but there is no doubt that it is carefully put
together, very well paced and, in the finale, scrupulously balanced, exciting
and affirmative. The quartet of soloists is at the absolute highest level:
soprano Leontyne Price, contralto Maureen Forrester, tenor Léopold Simoneau, and bass Norman
Scott. Karajan pushes them to excel – he was expert at extracting top-quality
performances from singers – and excel they do. This is a memorable performance
that helps show why Karajan, despite the controversies about his life and art, remains
a seminal figure in the history of 20th-century orchestral conducting.
Beethoven’s music is some of
the best-known in the classical sphere among people who do not normally listen
to classical works. But some music by other composers is even more familiar than
most by Beethoven – one example being Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, the first four of the 12 concertos from his Op. 8
collection. There are innumerable fine recordings of these concertos, but few
attempt to connect Vivaldi’s 18th century to the 21st as
clearly and explicitly as does the new (++++) one by Anne Akiko Meyers on the
eOne label. To begin with, Meyers offers really excellent readings of these
concertos from the 1720s, using a violin dating to the 1740s: the “Vieuxtemps”
Guarneri del Gesù, whose beauty
of sound and evenness of tone add considerable warmth to the concertos even as
Meyers’ playing proffers virtuosity of the highest order – and is ably
accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra under David Lockington. So far, so
much in the past. But the remainder of this CD lies firmly in the 21st
century. Vivaldi’s F major three-violin concerto, RV 551, gets a very fine and
very well balanced performance, the three violins playing off each other with
elegance and poise – with all the solo parts played by Meyers, thanks to 21st-century
recording technology. The one-player-many-roles performance capability actually
dates to the latter part of the 20th century, but technology now
allows it to be considerably more refined, and the undoubted attractions of
this interpretation are wonderfully juxtaposed for listeners with the knowledge
that all three solo lines, so seamlessly interwoven, belong to the same
performer. And then there is the other piece on the CD, Passacaglia by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Clearly inspired by a musical form of the Baroque, this work
– written in 2003 for violin and piano and arranged by the composer for violin,
string orchestra and vibraphone ad
libitum in 2007 – brings Vivaldi’s time directly into ours, neatly
complementing Vivaldi’s own music. It would be exaggerating the importance of Pärt’s composition to place it on the
same level as Vivaldi’s: Pärt’s
work, which he wrote for the Hannover International Violin Competition, is an
occasional piece lasting just four minutes (eOne unaccountably and irritatingly
provides no timings for any of the music on this short CD). But including the Pärt work here certainly showcases the
continuing influence of older classical music on the composers of today.
Four (+++) new releases devoted
entirely to contemporary music, three from Navona and one from Ravello, show
equally clearly how the works and styles of the past can still exert a strong
influence on today’s composers – even a foundational one, which is the point of
the title of a new Navona CD called Foundations.
The works here are by David Nisbet Stewart
(five pieces), Andrew Schultz (two), Sergio Cervetti, Joanne D. Carey,
Daniel Perttu and Jonathan Sacks (one apiece), and they range from Stewart’s
firmly tonal toccatas to a Latin choral work by Cervetti to an
organ-and-orchestra one by Sacks. The notion here is to use underlying elements
of Western classical music to say something new, albeit by frequently using old
texts. The pieces bear little relationship to each other, and the overall
feeling of the CD is of a pastiche rather than a firmly grounded, interrelated
disc. It is essentially a sampler of modern composers who use older classical
forms and/or instruments – an interesting presentation, but not really a compelling
one.
In a somewhat analogous
vein, a Navona disc called Abhanden
(German for “lost”) features cellist Chris Wild exploring six modern chamber
works whose sensibilities range from those of traditional Western aesthetics to
those of Cambodian folk songs. Wild does manage to show connections among these
pieces by Chinary Ung (Spiral),
Claude Vivier (Piece pour Violoncelle et
Piano), Daniel Dehaan (If It
Encounters the Animal, If It Becomes Animalized…), Andrew Greenwald (Jeku [II]), Marcos Balter (Memória), and Eliza Brown (Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen),
but listeners may not find those connections particularly persuasive, since so
many involve turning the warm, rich tones of the cello into something
distinctly screechy and self-consciously modernistic (as is hinted at in the
modern-ish titles of several of the works). Brown’s piece, despite its title,
has nothing whatsoever to do with Mahler’s of the same name, and although
soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett handles the work more than adequately, the music
itself has little of the direct emotional communication of its namesake.
Indeed, emotional connection is not generally in the forefront of these
compositions, wherever their influences come from.
A soprano is crucial to all
three works on the newest Ravello CD from the McCormick Percussion Group: To the Roaring Wind by Matt Barber, Twelve Virtues by Baljinder Singh Sekhon,
II, and Chant après Chant by Jean
Barraqué. Once again here we have three disparate pieces connected only
tenuously, but on this disc the connections are stronger than on Foundations or Abhanden. This is thanks partly to the continuity provided by
soprano Jamie Jordan being featured throughout and partly to the fact that the
percussion accompaniment in all three works gives them certain auditory parallels
despite their very different structures. Barber’s nine-movement work is based
on the poetry of Wallace Stevens, while Sekhon’s extended single-movement piece
has the Bible as its source – and Barraqué’s even-more-extended offering is a secular one with a focus on
opposites. Despite the variation of sound within the percussion ensemble, the
use solely of percussion instruments on this disc tends to wear thin after a
while, and by the time the hour-plus of music is over, the whole production is
somewhat tiring – all the more so because Barraqué’s work is rather over-extended. Fans of percussion writing will
be intrigued by the expressiveness of which the McCormick Percussion Group is
capable, but for a general audience, Soli
is something of a chore to hear from start to finish.
Many composers on all three
of these discs show that they have been influenced by music that goes well
beyond Western classical boundaries; indeed, such international and
multi-national influences are common in contemporary classical music. Navona’s
new CD with the Apollo Chamber Players (violinists Matthew Detrick and Anabel
Ramirez, violist Whitney Bullock, and cellist Matthew Dudzik) takes that
influence to a different if not necessarily higher level by presenting 13 original
arrangements for string quartet of traditional folk melodies from all around
Europe: Germany, Greece, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Spain, Russia,
Italy and the Basque region. Two Basque
works, one for solo violin and one for violin duo, are highlights here; another
is an eight-minute Fantasy on Bulgarian
Rhythms that is the longest work on this fairly short (52-minute) CD. The Fantasy, written by Karim Al-Zand, was
commissioned by the Apollo Chamber Players, and they themselves transcribed or
arranged all the other music heard here. Their playing is assured and
well-balanced and their enjoyment of the music palpable, but the music itself
is generally rather thin, tending to pleasant and simple tunes and considerable
repetition. As a brief survey of some of the many countries and styles of folk music
from which composers draw inspiration, European
Folkscapes is interesting, and some of the tunes and arrangements are
pleasant and involving in their own right. Taken as a whole, this is scarcely a
disc with substantial musical value, but it provides pleasant listening and a
chance to hear some fine quartet playing in repertoire that may not be
classical itself but that certainly has had impact on the classical-music
world.
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