Paganini: Violin Concertos Nos.
1-6. Ingolf Turban, violin; WDR Radio Orchestra Cologne conducted by Lior
Shambadal. Profil. $49.99 (4 CDs).
Carlo Alfredo Piatti: 12 Caprices
for Solo Cello. Carmine Miranda, cello. Navona. $14.99.
Mitch Hampton: Piano Music.
Mitch Hampton, piano. Navona. $16.99.
Whether or not Paganini was
the greatest violinist of his time is arguable. Others who studied and adapted
his style, such as Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, may well have surpassed him
technically. But Paganini was the greatest showman
violinist of his era – of that there is no doubt. Fueling and exploiting rumors of a pact with the devil, highlighting
rather than shrinking from a jaw deformity that made his face look distinctly
peculiar, deliberately drawing attention to his extremely long fingers, and
dressing in a way guaranteed to keep all eyes on him during his performances,
Paganini entertained in a way that no virtuoso ever had before. And of course,
as was the custom in his time, he wrote music that he would himself then
perform – music that was intended to be well-nigh unplayable by others, if not
outright impossible. The deliberate confusion he created with his Concerto No.
1 is a case in point: he made it seem utterly impossible to perform by writing
the orchestral parts in E-flat and the solo part in D – and he then used scordatura to make the work playable,
obtaining an added benefit by having the orchestra fade more into the
background in E-flat (because that key limits the use of open strings) while
giving the soloist even greater prominence. The point of this purely technical
wizardry, and a point brought forth wonderfully by Ingolf Turban in his Profil
recording of the complete Paganini violin concertos, is that Paganini was a
thoughtful and accomplished composer as well as a brilliant performer. He knew
exactly what he wanted and exactly how to get it, and it is no accident that
all six of his concertos have a distinctly Rossinian feel to them while also
showcasing the solo violin to an extreme degree. Concerto No. 1 is nowadays
almost always played in D, but Turban returns to its original version in E-flat
and, as a result, lets listeners hear it with all the splendor and, yes,
self-importance that Paganini intended it to have. Throughout the concertos,
Turban captures much of the wit and songfulness of the music, accepting its
technical difficulties and surmounting them, but never letting the works
deteriorate into mere display pieces – as it is tempting to do. The fact is
that Paganini had considerable talent as a composer – he was more a craftsman
than innovator, to be sure, but his craftsmanship produced finely honed
concertos that sound quite different from each other even though all six follow
the same pattern: a very extended first movement, a second movement that is
more an intermezzo than a true slow movement and that is always the shortest of
the three, and a finale that blazes with technical brilliance and leaves the
audience gasping. Turban plays cadenzas of his own in all the concertos, and
does not hesitate to produce some real fireworks in them; but he also allows
the music to sound tender, even soulful, when that is appropriate, and he makes
the only fairly extended middle movement (in Concerto No. 5) genuinely moving.
Throughout the set, he gets strong and creditable backup from the WDR Radio
Orchestra Cologne under Lior Shambadal, a conductor who knows enough to get out
of the way here and let the soloist’s playing shine through. Concertos Nos. 1
and 3 were recorded in 2000, Nos. 2 and 4 in 2003, and Nos. 5 and 6 in 2005.
The sound in all of them is first-rate, and the set as a whole provides an
excellent way to appreciate both Paganini’s undoubted mastery of his instrument
and his ability to create highly attractive, tuneful and well-constructed music
to showcase himself.
Paganini is even better
known for his 24 Caprices, Op. 1,
than for his concertos, and those caprices transcend their form to become more
than mere études, much as the concertos are more than surface-level technical
displays. The caprices are highly listenable music as well as an enormous
challenge to perform. Other composers’ caprices are less substantial and
therefore less attractive for general listeners. That is the case with the 12 Caprices for Solo Cello by Carlo
Alfredo Piatti (1822-1901). Piatti was a very accomplished cellist: Liszt heard
him play a borrowed instrument and was so impressed that he gave him an Amati,
and Mendelssohn offered to write a concerto for him but did not live to do so. Piatti’s
12 caprices seem to have been inspired in part by Paganini’s 24, but Piatti
himself, for all his technical prowess, was clearly less inspired as a
composer. His 12 Caprices are often
imitative (of violin and guitar, for example) rather than fully involved in the
intricacies of the cello, whose wide range opens up even more possibilities in
solo playing than the violin possesses – a fact known as far back as Bach’s
time. A few of the Piatti caprices actually owe a debt to Bach’s Cello Suites, in particular Nos. 2 and
4, while others show violinistic influence (Nos. 1 and 9, for example) and
still others (notably No. 7) make it sound as if Piatti wanted to use the cello
as a guitar, or at least with guitar techniques. Carmine Miranda plays this
music for all it is worth, and seems sincerely dedicated to bringing out its
value as music rather than as technical
experimentation and embellishment. The simple fact, though, is that Piatti’s 12 Caprices are not especially
interesting for non-cellists: rather than plumbing the depths of the cello,
they look into its technical capability of seeming to be something it is not (No.
3, for example, really pushes into the instrument’s high range). Cellists will
welcome this very well-played although very short (41-minute) Navona recording
and will find it highly interesting, and for them it will get a (++++) rating;
but for general listeners, the music simply does not have enough to say – the
overall (+++) rating is as much for the excellence of Miranda’s playing as it
is for what he plays.
Another (+++) Navona
recording also features virtuosity, but in this case the disc’s title, Hard Listening, is apt. Mitch Hampton’s
music lurches from one extreme to another, sometimes incorporating elements of
the past (Petite Dirge is reminiscent
of Chopin and other 19th-century piano composers) but always
focusing more on structural elements than on music’s evocative and
communicative power. Like many contemporary composers, Hampton draws on
multiple musical fields – jazz is particularly prominent as an influence – and
does not hesitate to incorporate elements of other works into his own: Large Dirge in memory of my father draws
on the Rodgers and Hart tune “Where or When.” Hampton’s music is the opposite
of easy listening – hence the disc’s title – but aside from its wished-for
iconoclasm, it does not communicate much beyond the composer’s ability to
construct works from disparate sources and in differing styles. Hampton
certainly plays his own pieces with enthusiasm: The Royal Blue Trickle Suite for Piano, Goodbye Cornelius and the
title work – which is actually four pieces in a “Series for Solo Concert Piano”
– are all performed with enthusiasm, as Hampton dwells on and brings out both
the derivative and sometimes deliberately trivial elements and the denser,
more-complex ones. There is a feeling of experimentation about the entire CD,
which may be exactly what Hampton is looking for here and which may intrigue
listeners who see music as being an intellectual exercise as much as or more
than an emotionally stirring experience. Other listeners, though, may find
these works’ lack of stylistic integrity and their somewhat overdone
manipulativeness to be less than convincing.
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