In Search of Great Composers:
Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Chopin—Four Films by Phil Grabsky. Seventh Art.
$48.99 (4 DVDs).
Cello Stories: The Cello in the
17th and 18th Centuries. Bruno Cocset, cello; Les
Basses Réunies; text by Marc
Vanscheeuwijck. Alpha. $27.99 (5 CDs).
Mozart: Violin Concertos Nos. 3,
4 and 5; Adagio in E, K. 261. Henning Kraggerud, violin; Norwegian Chamber
Orchestra. Naxos DVD. $24.99.
Context matters.
Special-purpose releases that might generally be of only limited or targeted
interest at most times of the year can in some cases gain in value and
suitability when considered as gifts. Here are three fine recent releases that,
from a strictly musical perspective, reach out in only a specialized way. But
if you are looking for a meaningful seasonal gift for someone whom you know to
have an interest in the material presented here, then each of these items can
be a perfect match and can bring joy that extends well beyond the holiday
season.
In Search of Great Composers is a compilation of four films in
which Phil Grabsky seeks out the venues in which major composers lived and puts
together an assemblage of pictures and words – many taken from the composers’
own letters – to create a portrait of each of them: Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn
and Chopin. Strictly as music, the films are somewhat lacking: the performances
are uniformly fine and sometimes a great deal better than that, but they are
also uniformly brief – inevitable in films that seek to encapsulate entire
lifetimes and entire sets of musical production in about two hours (the Haydn
film runs 102 minutes, Chopin 115, Mozart 128, Beethoven 139). Anyone who
already knows the music will be at least a touch disappointed that
comparatively little of it is heard in any of these movies – but on the other
hand, anyone who does not know the
music will get enough of a taste of it to be able to decide for himself or
herself whether it is worth seeking complete performances elsewhere. In a
somewhat similar vein, anyone already familiar with these composers’ lives will
find little or nothing that is new here: Grabsky’s search does not take him or
his audience into any particularly unfamiliar or ill-plumbed territory. But,
again, anyone who does not know these
composers as people and is not aware
of their struggles and successes, their trials and triumphs, will get plenty of
material here to whet his or her appetite for seeking out additional
more-in-depth information somewhere else. The discussions with musicologists
and historians that pervade all four films are something of a mixed blessing:
they tend to be too wordy and at times pompous to interest people just learning
about the composers, but do not offer anything especially revelatory to people
already familiar with Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Chopin. These academic
elements are probably inevitable in biographical films like these, but they are
less interesting than the composers’ own words, the words of musicians who
perform the composers’ music, and the music itself. The fact is that reams of
biographical material have already been produced about all four of these giants
of classical music, and plenty of dramatized versions of their lives have been
offered in the past. For example, the relationship between Chopin and George
Sand had more than enough crisis and controversy to sustain a 1991 film called Impromptu. Grabsky is not trying for
“docudrama” here, though, or for films that are entertaining above all. He is
striving to convey a sense of the men behind the music, to provide viewers with
information showing how the composers’ lives were reflected in what they
created – or, if the music did not directly respond to specific biographical
occurrences, at least to associate
the composers’ creativity with the lives they led and the times in which they
led them. Grabsky’s films are skillfully made and nicely paced, but not
revelatory for anyone who already knows their topics and focuses. For someone
not well-versed in these composers’ lives and music, however, they can make an
excellent gift that can open the door to all sorts of additional exploration of
both the music and its creators.
Cello Stories is, on the face of it, an even more rarefied release,
an almost-six-hour-long exploration of one specific instrument in one specific
long-ago time period, 300 to 400 years in the past. Certainly, even as a gift, Cello Stories, on the Alpha label, must
be for someone who plays the cello, loves it, has always wanted to know more
about it, or is fascinated by its role in musical history. These “stories,”
though, are not as dry or as academic as might be imagined, thanks in part to
the intelligent writing of Marc Vanscheeuwijck, in part to the numerous
contemporary illustrations that show the instrument at various points in its
history, and in part – large part – to the excellent choice of illustrative
examples of the cello’s development, and the excellence of much of the music in
its own right. The titles of the five CDs clearly reflect their content: “The
Origins: Bonizzi, Degli Antoni, Frescobaldi, Galli, Ortiz, Vitali”;
“Italy-France: Barrière,
Marcello, Vivaldi”; “Johann Sebastian Bach #1”; “Johann Sebastian Bach #2”; and
“From Geminiani to Boccherini: Boccherini, Cirri, Geminiani.” The music and
text go together exceptionally well, and Bruno Cocset’s playing is careful,
idiomatic, and historically very well-informed. There are some little-known composers
and some little-known musical gems here, such as Giovanni Battista Vitali’s Chiacona per la lettera B, coupled with
some music of towering reputation and extreme difficulty: Bach’s complete Cello
Suites Nos. 3, 5 and 6, plus excerpts from his other three. There are three
Vivaldi cello sonatas and two by Boccherini, plus the latter’s Cello Concerto
in G, G. 480. And there are short pieces galore, from all the composers named
on the individual discs. The set as a whole gives a wonderful impression of how
variegated cello music was in the 17th and 18th centuries;
how the instrument developed and attained capabilities that grew and grew; and
how composers increasingly insisted on pushing it in new directions. Giving Cello Stories as a gift requires some care.
It is a very attractive offering, packaged as a book with the CDs at the back;
and it contains both text and music presented with a great deal of knowledge
and even erudition. It is exceptionally well-priced for so many CDs with so
much ancillary material. However, it is, as noted, almost six hours long, and
while that will be enormously attractive for those interested in the cello and
its role in the Baroque, it will be overwhelming for anyone – even an ardent
music lover – who has something less than an all-consuming preoccupation with
and attraction to this specific instrument and the music written for it in this
specific time period. Choose a recipient for Cello Stories wisely and you will be giving a gift of significant
value, one that the receiver will dwell on for a long time and likely return to
again and again for its insights, its interesting music, and its fascinating
historical material. Misfire on the choice of a recipient, though, and you will
be giving something that will be appreciated on an intellectual level for its
depth and quality but that will likely wind up on a bookshelf, or music shelf,
unread, unheard and unused.
Careful recipient choice is also
key to deciding what to do with the new Naxos DVD featuring Henning Kraggerud
and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra playing three of Mozart’s violin concertos
and the Adagio in E, K. 261. Unlike
much of the material in Cello Stories,
these pieces are well-known and widely available, and in fact there is a CD
version of Kraggerud’s performances, also on Naxos, available at a lower price
(without the Adagio). Kraggerud’s
readings of the concertos are very fine. His violin tone is warm and rich in
the lower register, sweet and even in the upper, and the concertos’ cadenzas –
Kraggerud wrote his own – are sparkly to the point of effervescence, if perhaps
not entirely in conformity with cadenzas of Mozart’s time, being of
considerable length that is somewhat out of keeping with the movements within
which they appear. This is a quibble more than a significant criticism, though:
lovers of this music will get a great deal of pleasure from Kraggerud’s
handling of it, and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra’s light and poised support
is an additional big plus. But the question remains: for whom might this DVD be
suitable? It was recorded during a live performance in Norway in January 2015,
and the video is quite fine and does give something of a sense of being present
at the concert – with the ever-present caveat
that when one attends a concert for real, one decides where to look, at what
and when, while when one watches a DVD, those choices are made by the producer
and director (Sean Lewis fills both roles here). Anyone not yet acquainted with
Mozart’s five violin concertos will probably be better served with a CD
recording of the full cycle than with a DVD of the last three, so the
most-appreciative recipient of this DVD would likely be someone who has one or
more recordings of all five concertos already and would like a chance to bask
in the atmosphere of a concert performance done at a high level of quality and
featuring some lovely playing and unusual cadenzas. Yes, that analysis means
that the potential recipients of this DVD will be quite limited – but it also
means that if you know someone who meets those criteria, or if you come up with
other criteria that you feel better indicate who would like this recording,
then this will make a very enjoyable holiday gift for someone who will be
impressed with how well you know his or her musical tastes and interests. Let
the giver beware – or, more precisely, let the giver be aware of the personality and preferences of the recipient.
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