Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos.
11-13. Marie Kuijken and Veronica Kuijken, fortepiano; La Petite Bande.
Challenge Classics. $18.99 (SACD).
Mozart: Trio for Oboe, Viola and
Piano (“Kegelstatt”), K. 498; Oboe Quartet, K. 370; Piano Quartet No. 2 in
E-flat, K. 493. Ensemble Schumann (Thomas Gallant, oboe; Steve Larson,
viola; Sally Pinkas, piano) and Adaskin String Trio (Emily Ngai, violin; Steve
Larson, viola; Mark Fraser, cello). MSR Classics. $12.95.
Prokofiev: Violin Concertos Nos.
1 and 2. Rudolf Koelman, violin; Musikkollegium Winterthur conducted by
Douglas Boyd. Challenge Classics. $18.99.
Federico Moreno Torroba: Guitar
Concertos, Volume 2—Homenaje a la seguidilla; Tonada concertante; Concierto de
Castilla. Pepe Romero and Vicente Coves, guitar; Extremadura Symphony
Orchestra conducted by Manuel Coves. Naxos. $12.99.
Lou Harrison: Concerto for Violin
and Percussion; Grand Duo; Double Music. Tim Fain, violin; Michael
Boriskin, piano; Post-Classical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez. Naxos. $12.99.
Jeffrey Jacob: Awakening for
Piano and Orchestra; The Loch before Sunrise; A Mirror upon the Waters; Music
for Haiti; Remembrance of Things Past; Sonata for Cello and Piano; Reawakening.
Navona. $14.99.
Modest in instrumentation
and, by and large, in emotional effect, Mozart’s first three concertos written
for his own subscription concerts in Vienna (1782-83) receive buoyant, historically
informed and altogether pleasant performances on a new Challenge Classics SACD
that features Marie Kuijken in No. 11 and Veronica Kuijken in Nos. 12 and 13.
Despite the numbering of the concertos, the first written was actually No. 12
(K. 414 in A), and it is in some ways the most forward-looking of the three.
Its central Andante, although lacking
the emotional heft of later Mozart piano concertos’ slow movements, is notable
for quoting a work by Johann Christian Bach, Mozart’s onetime mentor. J.C. Bach
had died shortly before Mozart wrote this concerto, and the slow movement comes
across as a tribute to him – not a deeply elegiac one, to be sure, but one of
poise and elegance. Indeed, poise and elegance are hallmarks of all three of
these works, which are small-scale enough to be played a quattro, using only piano and string quartet. La Petite Bande is
in effect a somewhat expanded chamber group, and reducing it to quartet size,
as for this recording, makes perfect sense. First violinist Sigiswald Kuijken
takes one significant liberty with Mozart’s scoring, replacing the cello with a
double bass (played by Elise Christiaens; Sara Kuijken plays second violin and
Marleen Thiers is the violist). This alteration is done on a well-argued basis
from a musical standpoint that nevertheless changes the texture of the
concertos in some unexpected ways. They are also interesting ways that listeners familiar with the concertos in
their more-usual orchestral form will find intriguing. In some ways the
piano-quartet versions of these concertos throw an unexpected light on some
formal features that stand out despite the works’ comparative conventionality.
This is particularly true in No. 11 (K. 413 in F), which features a first
movement in three-quarter time (a rarity in Mozart piano concertos) and a final
Tempo di minuetto – also a rarity.
No. 13 (K. 415 in C) is perhaps the least successful of the concertos from an
analytical standpoint – its opening, prior to the piano’s entry, is engaging
and involving and more impressive than anything that happens after the piano
part appears. But here the concerto sings with warmth and gentle beauty, and
the performance – like those of the other two concertos – is historically
informed, and elegant enough to keep listeners involved no matter how well they
know these works.
Sigiswald Kuijken’s
alteration of Mozart’s instrumentation is well and intelligently argued – for
one thing, Kuijken points out that the chamber versions of the concertos were
intended for amateur performance, and most households would have a cello
available far more readily than a double bass. Kuijken might also have noted
that other changes in Mozart’s performance recommendations are by no means
uncommon. For example, the “Kegelstatt” trio was originally written for
clarinet, viola and keyboard – the first work ever composed for that particular
combination, the clarinet at the time being quite new. Apparently as a result, when
the work was published in 1788, it was designated as being for violin, viola
and piano, with the clarinet part listed as an alternative; and Mozart himself
seems to have approved of this change. Novelty is all very well, after all, but
music was meant to be sold and performed, and the work was more likely to find
buyers in the violin-viola-piano arrangement. And it is also worth noting that
the piece was apparently conceived not for piano but for harpsichord: Mozart
started writing “ce” (for cembalo,
harpsichord) in the first movement before changing it to piano forte, but left cembalo
as the designation for the second and third movements. So it is hard to be sure
just what can be considered “changed” when this trio is performed today. And
that in turn opens up what Ensemble Schumann has done for the work in a
recording for MSR Classics: here the trio is performed on oboe, viola and piano. There is no historical justification for
this at all, but the instrumental mixture makes for subtle changes in what is
already a subtle piece of music, whose three movements (Andante, Menuetto, Allegretto) are less strongly contrasted than
are those in many other Mozart works. The performance, a world première recording of this version, is a
pleasant one that flows lyrically, and the use of oboe rather than clarinet (or
violin!) gives the work a different flavor that seems not “wrong” but simply an
enjoyable alternative. The other two pieces on the CD complement this version
of the “Kegelstatt” nicely. The Oboe Quartet is an earlier work (1781) that at
times requires the oboe to play higher in its range than did other music of
this time: the quartet has, in fact, some of the flavor of a concerto! Thomas
Gallant handles it with plenty of skill and flexibility – the same
characteristics he brings to the oboe version of the “Kegelstatt” trio. The
third work here, the Piano Quartet K. 493 (1785), is more commonly heard on
recordings with its G minor predecessor, K. 478 – but it nicely complements the
major-key, oboe-focused works on the disc, and is played with warmth and
insight.
Insight and performance
skill also abound on a Challenge Classics release featuring much later music:
the two concertos for violin by Prokofiev. If Mozart’s three early piano
concertos ones for Vienna are as striking for their similarities as for their
differences, something similar may be said of these Prokofiev concertos. These
live recordings of readings by Rudolf Koelman and Musikkollegium Winterthur
under Douglas Boyd show performers clearly concerned with showcasing both the
similarities between the works and their differences. No. 1 (1923) is largely a
Romantic or neo-Romantic work, following an emotional arc that begins with
considerable lyricism (Prokofiev marked the violin melody sognando, “dreamily”) and, after a far-more-angular and
modern-sounding Scherzo, returns in
the third movement to calmer feelings in which the violin is accompanist as
much as soloist. The piece ends by fading away – a conclusion handled with
particular skill by Koelman and Boyd. Concerto No. 2 (1935) is also pervaded by
grace and simplicity, with a greater folk-music feeling than in the earlier
concerto – and a distinct Spanish flavor in the finale, where castanets are
prominent. But the work’s overall sensibility, like that of its predecessor, is
far less bold and forward-looking than some earlier Prokofiev works – less
overtly Romantic than the first concerto, perhaps, but scarcely possessed of a
more-than-a-decade-later set of rhythmic and harmonic sensibilities. Koelman is
a sensitive, highly involved performer: Prokofiev himself said he wanted the
second concerto to be completely different from the first in content and form,
but Koelman is as attuned to the works’ similarities as to their differences,
which often seem to be matters more of emphasis than of overarching
sensibility. And Koelman’s understanding of how to make the solo violin stand
out from or blend with the orchestra, depending on what is needed, is excellent
– perhaps being traceable to his years as concertmaster of the Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra. The one possible disappointment for listeners is that
the CD includes only the concertos,
which together last not even 50 minutes. Other fine performances are available
that offer additional, complementary music.
Prokofiev’s second violin
concerto may have traces of Spain in it, but in that respect it does not come
close to the guitar concertos of Federico Moreno Torroba (1891-1982), which are
much less frequently performed and recorded. Torroba wrote about a hundred
works for guitar, and Naxos is in the middle of releasing a three-volume set of
Torroba guitar concertos featuring Pepe Romero; his onetime student, Vicente
Coves, who is an absolutely first-rate guitarist in his own right; and Coves’
conductor brother, Manuel, as orchestra leader. The second volume of this music
includes Homenaje a la seguidilla
(1962), a tribute to a song and dance form that is intimately associated with
Spain – Torroba’s music is redolent of the nation’s musical heritage. Also here
is Tonada concertante (1975-80), an
alternately inward-focused and extroverted-and-playful work with which Romero
(who also performs Homenaje a la
seguidilla) seems intimately acquainted, and in which he appears to take
great joy. Coves is the soloist for Concierto
de Castilla (1960), whose pervasive lyricism clearly evokes Castile – a
region with which Torroba strongly identified. In all three works, the
Extremadura Symphony Orchestra plays with real panache, reveling in the
concertos’ rhythms and responding quickly and with apparent ease to Manuel
Coves’ direction. Torroba himself was a conductor of some skill, notably in his
own music, and would likely have appreciated Manuel Coves’ attentiveness to the
contrasts between these works’ soft and gentle sections and their bold and
flamboyant ones. Listeners with any interest in 20th-century guitar
compositions – of which Torroba was an acknowledged master – will likely want
not only this CD but also the preceding one and the third volume that is yet to
come.
Another Naxos release,
featuring the music of Lou Harrison (1917-2003), is a bit more of a (+++) niche
recording and a matter of individual taste. Indeed, like many productions
featuring the venturesome Post-Classical Ensemble, the disc is defiantly
different, exploring music that remains outside the mainstream even though some
of it dates to the 1940s. Harrison’s Concerto
for Violin and Percussion (1940/1959) is as much a display piece for
percussion, of which Harrison was extremely fond throughout his career, as it
is a showcase for violin. It is one example among many of Harrison’s use of
interval control as a compositional device: it employs only a small number of
melodic intervals, resulting in a rather dry texture that is characteristic of
much of Harrison’s music. Tim Fain plays the work skillfully, and Angel Gil-Ordóñez leads it with his usual flair
and sure understanding of music that does not necessarily lend itself to ready
comprehension. Harrison, like his friend John Cage, was preoccupied with the
Balinese gamelan and the fusion of elements from Eastern and Western music –
the two men were innovators in that mixed form, which has since become so
common as to be something of a cliché. How well Harrison and Cage worked
together may be heard in the jointly composed Double Music (1941), which was created for a series of
Harrison-Cage percussion concerts in San Francisco and which exemplifies, in
the short span of seven minutes, many of the composers’ interests in sound and
in music that in significant ways moves beyond traditional notions of what is
musical. Again, Gil-Ordóñez
brings both knowledge and a sure hand in sound shaping to the performance. Even
more gamelan-infused than Double Music
is the latest work on this CD, Grand Duo
(1988), featuring Fain and Michael Boriskin. An extended five-movement chamber
suite, lasting well over half an hour, it is filled with percussive techniques
that often make the piano approximate the untuned percussion instruments that
Harrison so favored elsewhere; and at the same time it offers some intriguing,
if highly unconventional, sound contrasts between the violin and the piano.
Harrison’s music, scarcely to all tastes or intended for everyone, provides
listeners who are disposed to pay attention to boundary-breaking works ample
opportunities to stretch their ears in new and often-unexpected directions.
Although the works by
Jeffrey Jacob on a new Navona CD are more recent than those by Harrison, their
sound world is less exotic. Jacob, who plays piano in all the pieces here that
require one, uses the instrument more conventionally than Harrison does and
with greater lyricism and attention to harmony. There are several concertos or
concerto-like works on the disc, most of them evocative rather than abstract. Awakening features Jacob with the
National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba under Enrique Perez Mesa. It is a fairly
straightforward spring-and-rebirth piece, inspired by a Thomas Hardy poem. The Loch before Sunrise and A Mirror upon the Waters, both featuring
Jacob with the Capital Philharmonic of New Jersey under Daniel Spalding, are
impressions of Alpine lakes. Music for
Haiti and Remembrance of Things Past,
both with Spalding directing the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, have
a wind-instrument focus. The former uses a piccolo to try to reflect earthquake
devastation in Haiti, the music following a wholly predictable path from sorrow
to hope to rebirth. The latter focuses on the oboe and combines virtuoso
passages with inward-looking, meditative ones. All five of these works have
concerto elements; the remaining two on the CD do not. One is Sonata for Cello and Piano, played by
Jacob and Lara Turner, in which two equal-length movements are nicely
contrasted – the first gentle and the second considerably more acerbic. The
final piece here is Reawakening, for
solo piano, in which Jacob recalls and to some extent rethinks Awakening as a solo work. This (+++) CD
will be of considerable interest to listeners familiar with and strongly
involved in Jacobs’ music: it provides a great deal of insight not only into
how he thinks musically but also into how he brings those thoughts through with
his own performances. However, more than an hour of Jacobs’ music will be a bit
much for listeners not already enamored of it: the expressions and gestures
tend to become familiar, and the repeated attempts to move impressionism into a
more-modern idiom start to sound much the same after a while. The CD
nevertheless shows Jacob to be a fine craftsman of concerto-style material as
well as other forms.
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