Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2;
Bartók: Violin Concerto No. 2. Gil Shaham, violin; The Knights
conducted by Eric Jacobsen (Prokofiev); Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Stéphane Denève (Bartók). Canary Classics. $16.99.
Idil Biret Archive Edition,
Volume 18: Brahms—Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34. Idil Biret, piano;
London String Quartet (Carl Pini and Benedict Cruft, violins; Ruşen Güneş, viola; Roger
Smith, cello). IBA. $9.99.
Bruch: String Quartets (complete). Diogenes Quartet (Stefan Kirpal and Gundula Kirpal, violins; Alba
González i Becerra, viola; Stephen Ristau, cello). Brilliant Classics. $7.99.
On Safari: MirrorImage Goes Wild. MirrorImage Horn Duo (Lisa Bontrager and Michelle Stebleton); Tomoko
Kanamaru, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.
Luca Buratto: Live at Honens 2015. Luca Buratto, piano. Honens. $20 (2 CDs).
True virtuosi – modern ones,
anyway – tend to use their considerable talents for more than sheer display.
Sometimes they try to further one musical cause or another; sometimes they
deliberately subsume their abilities to further the overall quality of
chamber-music performance; sometimes they put their capabilities in the service
of rediscovered or brand-new music. In Gil Shaham’s case, he likes to use his
recording label, Canary Classics, to promote music in which he strongly
believes; and that is why he launched a series called “1930s Violin Concertos.”
The second volume in the sequence is a real beauty, with Shaham in fine fettle
and his technique in full bloom in the works by Prokofiev and Bartók. The balance in the Prokofiev is
particularly winning: although Shaham stays front-and-center when he should, he
has no problem (that is, no ego trouble) scaling himself back so Eric Jacobsen
and the excellent chamber group called The Knights can come to the fore when
appropriate. The first movement of their collaboration is particularly
impressive, with Shaham offering an emotional, almost soulful reading of the
music and Jacobsen and the ensemble providing such well-balanced backup that he
overall performance sounds like that of a top-notch chamber performance:
strongly communicative and with a sense of conversational handling of the
motivic material. The rest of the concerto is a bit more straightforward, but
this still comes across as a first-rate interpretation. The Bartók, a longer and in some ways more
discursive work, is on the slow side here, although not as slow as a previous
Shaham performance (from 1999) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Pierre
Boulez. Shaham finds a constant flow of lyricism in this concerto, offering a
passion-packed reading whose virtuosity is deceptive in its apparent
simplicity. There is nothing easy about this piece, but Shaham surmounts its
technical challenges so adeptly that listeners can stay focused throughout on
the work’s emotional underpinnings. The Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra
under Stéphane Denève provides finely nuanced backup,
its playing perhaps not quite as precise as that of the Chicagoans under Boulez,
but just as well paced and sectionally well-balanced. The result is a CD that
puts Shaham’s virtuosity front-and-center – but always in the service of the
music, on which the spotlight truly shines.
The latest Idil Biret
Archive recording features the Turkish pianist’s skill being use equally
successfully at the service of Brahms’ Piano Quintet. It needs to be said up
front that this is not a recording for everyone, because for all the excellence
of the performance, it dates to 1980 and was recorded in mono; it is also the
only work on the disc, which means this is a 41-minute CD, essentially a
smaller-size version of a vinyl disc of its time. Even in 1980, monophonic
sound was essentially obsolete, so the disc is certainly a throwback; but
listeners already familiar with the music will find this version revelatory
enough so they may well want this recording as their second or third, albeit
not their first. This quintet started out for strings alone (with two cellos),
then was recast by Brahms for two pianos before he eventually turned it into
piano-quintet form. Despite Brahms’ own skill as a pianist and despite the
influence of Clara Schumann, who was largely responsible for getting Brahms to
transform the music into this form, the quintet requires considerable restraint
from the pianist; and the best thing about Biret’s work here is the way she
provides that restraint without ever seeming to hold anything back. She simply
joins the London String Quartet as an equal partner, takes material handed off
to her, hands it back as appropriate, and produces throughout a feeling of
mutual assurance and easy camaraderie that serves the music particularly well.
The well-paced first movement never drags, the ensuing slow movement offers a
calm center, the assertive scherzo also includes effective episodes of
lyricism, and the finale manages to be both strong and poetic – emerging as a
unifying movement that ties the whole work together neatly. This is a substantial
performance in every way except sonically: the digital remastering is perfectly
fine, but the monophonic reproduction sounds distinctly old-fashioned for the
simple reason that it is.
There is no piano on a new
Brilliant Classics release of chamber music by Bruch, but there is plenty of
virtuosity to go around: every member of the Diogenes Quartet plays with
soloist-quality intensity and strength, bringing warmth, power and lyrical flow
to the music of one of the 19th century’s most skilled creators of
mellifluous melodies. Bruch’s quartets are little-known nowadays, and a
highlight of this exceptionally well-priced release is its inclusion of a third quartet in addition to the only
two by Bruch that were previously recorded. This world première recording is of a C minor quartet
that the composer – yet another of those amazing child prodigies of his century
– created at the age of 14. It was a prize winner for him, getting him a
scholarship at the Mozart-Stiftung that launched his musical career as a
student of Ferdinand Hiller. The quartet, rediscovered only in 2013, is
certainly derivative of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann, the usual suspects
for a quartet written in 1852. But its movements flow so well, its themes are
so florid with beauty and true Romantic-era emotion, that it looks forward with
considerable clarity to Bruch’s later work. In fact, the first of Bruch’s two
previously known quartets, Op. 9, is in the same key as this youthful work – C
minor – and lifts significant portions directly from the “student” quartet: the
main theme of the slow movement and nearly the entire Scherzo. It is a shame
that Bruch’s chamber music is under-heard today, because he clearly came to the
form early and with considerable skill. His second already-known quartet, Op.
10 in E, confirms this: the melodies are captivating, as Bruch’s usually are,
but there is also a sure balance to the parts and some genuine creativity in
the themes, their development and even in the work’s structure – notably in the
Scherzo’s two very different trios. The performances here glow with the
musicians’ involvement in the music, and the music itself is beautifully
balanced, warm and winning.
The horn duo called
MirrorImage certainly displays plenty of virtuosity on a new MSR Classics
recording called On Safari, and there
is a pleasant lightness and humor to the whole production that makes the disc,
in the main, enjoyable. But the quality of the music, as opposed to that of the
playing, is rather uneven, and the whole notion of the production – to write
pieces inspired by the term “safari,” which each composer thinks about quite
differently – gives the enterprise less cohesion than it could have. Some of
the tracks are distinctly animal-oriented and surprising: Uneven Ground – A Short Walk on Safari (2012) by Mark Schultz
(1957-2015) features Lisa Bontrager as “soprano chimp” and Richard Price as
“bass chimp.” Other works present sounds that interestingly complement the two
primary instruments: The Hunt (2008)
by Laurence Lowe (born 1956) includes Jaren Angud on hand drum in an effective
complement to the horns. There are also pieces here that interpret “safari” in
terms having nothing to do with the word’s usual animal-focused meaning, such
as Prayer (2014) by Michael Daugherty
(born 1954), which is one of the most affecting pieces on the disc, and Reverie (2012) by James Naigus (born
1987). This is one of two Naigus pieces here – the other is Journey’s Call (2014) – but neither is
really a standout on the disc. The other works here are Majaliwa “God willing, we will meet again” (2009) by Paul Basler
(born 1963); Rastros – Por Los Senderos
del Chaco (2011) by Luis Szaran (born 1953); and a pleasant little encore
called Improvisation (2014) by
Maureen Young (born 1993). On balance, this is a (+++) recording with very fine
playing throughout, some of it in the service of music of considerable interest
and some of it showcasing the performers’ virtuosic abilities but offering them
in the context of less-captivating material.
The context of the new
two-CD Honens release featuring pianist Luca Buratto is clear enough: Buratto
was the 2015 Honens Piano Competition Prize Laureate. Clearly the sole purpose
of the release is to let listeners hear how good Buratto is and why he was
chosen for this major honor. And certainly the recording shows Buratto to have
plenty of technical skill and a certain amount of interpretative ability as
well. But the whole enterprise is so intensely devoted to Buratto that much of
the music gets short shrift – and the material presented is a complete
hodgepodge that makes no sense outside the venue of a competition. There are
four major works here, the most impressively performed being Schumann’s Fantasy in C, Op. 17, in which Buratto
couples his very considerable pianistic skill with sensitivity and
understanding befitting a pianist of much greater experience (Buratto is 22). There
is also Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7,
again handled with great skill, although here the understanding of the
composer’s emotional milieu seems less sure. And there are Mozart’s Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, K. 498,
known as “Kegelstatt,” in which Buratto seems a touch constricted by being
required to perform as an equal with clarinetist James Campbell and violist
Hsin-Yun Huang rather than as first-among-equals; and Hindemith’s Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 11, No. 4,
where Buratto seems more comfortable in a partnership role with Huang. It is
true that these four works show Buratto’s ability to play a variety of music
with skill, although his pianism is not as varied from piece to piece as it
will likely be with greater experience and maturity. Nevertheless, this
material is very well handled – but what music lover will likely want this two-CD
set for these pieces in these performances, aside from someone committed to
collecting recordings of Honens Piano Competition winners? The puzzle of who
the audience for the recording could be only deepens when the remaining works
here are considered. There are two Ligeti études, Nos. 15 and 16 from his third book, separated for some
reason by Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse.
There is No. 14 from Schumann’s Davidsbundlertänze.
There is Buratto’s backup of soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian in two songs by
Pauline Viardot and two by Fernando Obradors. There is his backup of
clarinetist Campbell for Lutoslowski’s Dance
Preludes. And at the end of the second CD there is Brahms’ Geistliches Wiegenlied, Op. 91, No. 2,
in which Buratto joins both Bayrakdarian and Huang. From the viewpoint of a
competition, this sort of mishmash makes complete sense, being designed to
showcase versatility and to give competitors a chance to make up any
shortcomings in one type of music through exceptional strength in another. But
from the point of view of anyone considering what to listen to in a personal
setting, such as one’s home, this nearly two-and-a-quarter hours of Buratto
requires extreme devotion to the pianist himself or to his success in the
Honens Piano Competition for a purchase to make any sense. The performances
themselves are good enough to earn the release a (+++) rating, but it is very
difficult to determine just why most music listeners would be interested in
integrating this recording into their collections.
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