Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No.1;
Grieg: Piano Concerto. Stewart Goodyear, piano; Czech National Symphony
conducted by Stanislav Bogunia. Steinway & Sons. $17.99.
Grieg: Violin Sonata No. 3;
Enescu: Violin Sonata No. 2; Janáček: Violin Sonata. duo526 (Kerry
DuWors, violin; Futaba Niekawa, piano). Navona. $16.99.
Strauss: Die Fledermaus; Emperor
Waltz; Voices of Spring; Annen-Polka; Neue Pizzicato-Polka; On the Beautiful
Blue Danube. Eberhard Waechter, Hilde Gueden, Erich Kunz, Gerhard Stolze,
Giuseppe Zampieri, Walter Berry, Peter Klein, Rita Streich, Elfriede Ott, Josef
Meinrad, Giuseppe di Stefano; Chor und Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper
conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Andromeda. $14.99 (3 CDs).
A new generation of
top-notch soloists and chamber musicians is making its way steadily through
concert and recital halls and onto recordings, and in some cases shining new
and intriguing light on even the most well-worn works in the classical
repertoire. Thirty-five-year-old Stewart Goodyear, for example, tackles the
piano concerto written by 35-year-old Tchaikovsky with more than technique: he
brings a tempestuous spirit and firm control of the music to a work that can
easily sprawl, providing plenty of fire when it is called for and taking the
music at brisk tempos that do not feel rushed because Goodyear allows the music
plenty of time to breathe when that
is appropriate. Young pianists have built careers on Tchaikovsky’s First Piano
Concerto – Van Cliburn is the best-known example – but Goodyear is better known
for his Beethoven than for his handling of the Romantic repertoire. And indeed,
Goodyear’s sense of structure, his insight into Tchaikovsky’s construction of a
well-built edifice despite choices that seemed distinctly odd to the composer’s
contemporaries (such as the failure of any opening material from the first
movement to reappear later), can be traced to the pianist’s immersion in the
inevitable and complex logic of Beethoven’s sonatas. This Steinway & Sons
recording is the label’s first with orchestra, and in truth, the orchestra
itself is acceptable without being in any way outstanding: Stanislav Bogunia
aptly backs Goodyear up but does so with little flash or particular insight,
and the Czech National Symphony plays well but without the lushness that one
would ideally want in Russian (and, for that matter, Czech) music. Still, the
orchestra’s contribution here is more than adequate, if not at the level of the
pianist’s. The orchestra handles its part in Grieg’s Piano Concerto well, too,
but here again, the limelight is deservedly on Goodyear. This concerto was
written earlier than Tchaikovsky’s First (1868 vs. 1875) and by a younger
composer: Grieg was just 25 when he finished it. The youthful exuberance of the
work, especially in its dancelike finale, often gets short shrift when compared
to its broad Nordic themes, but not here. Goodyear does not exactly make the
music ebullient – which it is not – but he allows its folklike elements to come
strongly to the fore, and his attentiveness to detail (along with the
orchestra’s, which is clearer here than in the Tchaikovsky) helps make this
both a strong performance and a genuinely interesting one.
Grieg was essentially a
miniaturist, as the episodic elements of his Piano Concerto show. His Violin
Sonata No. 3 shows his orientation even more clearly. Like the concerto’s
finale, this sonata has many dancelike elements, and in fact the work as a
whole has something of the feel of an elaborate partnership between the
players. First violin leads piano along, then cedes control, then piano takes
the lead, then violin follows, and so on – the conversational elements of
chamber music are particularly clear here, especially so when the performers
choose to bring them out. And that is just what Kerry DuWors and Futaba Niekawa
do: performing under the name “duo526,” they explore the music as partners in a
nuanced reading that accepts and heightens the folk-music elements used by
Grieg here, as in the Piano Concerto, and at the same time they allow the
chamber work’s lyrical flow to carry listeners along effectively. The other
pieces on this new Navona CD get equally strong performances. Like the Grieg,
both the Enescu and the Janáček
include folk elements, but each work here uses them for different purposes. If
Grieg is lyrical and dancelike, Enescu is melancholy if not actually
depressive. Enescu’s harmonies are bolder and more modern in sound, but his
emotions are just as much those of the Romantic era, using long-sustained
melodies to pull players and listeners alike along through a darker emotional
landscape than Grieg’s, for all that both these are minor-key sonatas (Grieg’s
in C minor, Enescu’s in F minor). More modern-sounding still is the Janáček Sonata, whose handling of the instruments
is at the opposite pole from Grieg’s. Here violin and piano frequently seem to
be at cross-purposes, interrupting each other and introducing new material or
reacting strongly to what has come before. Taken together, the three sonatas
here show three very different approaches to violin-and-piano writing, and one
of the most impressive things about the partnering of DuWors and Niekawa is the
way they take on these significantly different works with equal effectiveness
and understanding. The juxtaposition of Grieg, Enescu and Janáček is an unusual one, but one that
works very well indeed in the hands of performers as skilled as these.
There is surely no doubting
the skill of the best performers of yesteryear, and even as listeners admire
today’s up-and-coming virtuosi, modern digital remastering makes it possible to
enjoy performances by some of the truly great names of many decades past. But
the digital age also makes some slipshod practices all too easy, and the truly
execrable packaging of the Andromeda release of the New Year’s Eve 1960 live
performance of Die Fledermaus is a
case in point. Every principal in this recording has died, so there is no one in
the cast to object to the horrendous presentation of what was obviously a
thoroughly charming staging in which Herbert von Karajan, sometimes thought of
as a humorless and stereotypically Teutonic conductor, seems thoroughly to
enjoy himself in a light, frothy and very well-acted (as well as well-sung)
version of Johann Strauss Jr.’s most famous operetta – which, by the way, dates
to one year before Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. This remastered mono
recording is in fact more a stage play than what we now think of an operetta:
these days, dialogue is shortened or even rewritten and music is emphasized,
but half a century ago (and, for that matter, in Strauss’ own time), the spoken
parts of an operetta were every bit as crucial as the music. Indeed, one reason
Strauss’ operettas were by and large unsuccessful – despite their wonderful
melodies – was that the libretti were generally poor, which meant audiences
were getting only a percentage of what they paid for in a night out at the
theater. Today’s listeners get only a percentage of what they pay for in this
release, too, despite the very low price for a three-CD set. It is
understandable that a budget re-release would contain no libretto. But this one
contains no synopsis, either. And no information on the performers. And nothing
about the recording except the date. And no
timings for any of the tracks! This is beyond unforgivable: it is simply
idiotic. It is particularly galling for English-language listeners not to know
how long the dialogue sections, which the audience finds thoroughly amusing,
are: they often run to 10 minutes. And it is genuinely irritating for listeners
to have no information on the “gala sequence” inserted toward the end of Act
II, which includes, in addition to orchestral music, Erich Kunz (who plays
Frank, the prison warden) singing Vienna’s famous Fiakerlied and guest artist Giuseppe di Stefano (who has no role in
the operetta itself) performing the famous Neapolitan song O Sole Mio and Franz Lehár’s
lovely Dein ist mein ganzes Herz. There
is treasurable beauty here, ruined by awkward, clumsy and uncaring packaging
decisions. The five non-operetta works offered as supplements to the stage
production were recorded earlier – in Brussels on May 7, 1958 – and their sound
is significantly poorer than is that of Die
Fledermaus. But they have charms, too, with Hilde Gueden singing the
concert-aria form of Voices of Spring
and the Wiener Männergesangsverein
presenting the choral version of On the
Beautiful Blue Danube. There is a great deal of fine music, fine playing
and fine acting here, enough to give the release a (+++) rating even though it
is presented in a subpar package that is thoroughly unworthy of the material.
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