Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 1-3; Overture in the
Italian Style in D; Rosamunde—excerpts. Copenhagen Phil conducted by Lawrence Foster.
PentaTone. $29.99 (2 SACDs).
Bruch: Double Concerto for Clarinet, Viola and
Orchestra; Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano. Giovanni Punzi, clarinet;
Eva Katrine Dalsgaard, viola; Tanja Zapolski, piano; Copenhagen Phil conducted
by Vincenzo Milletari. Brilliant Classics. $9.99.
Mahler: Symphony No. 5—arranged for piano four
hands by Otto Singer. Piano Duo Trenkner / Speidel (Evelinde Trenkner and Sontraud Speidel).
MDG Gold. $18.99 (SACD).
The juxtaposition of Schubert’s early
symphonies with some of his later stage music is a surprising one that reveals
similarities of structure and approach in ways that are not obvious even for
listeners who already know the symphonies, Rosamunde,
and the two “Italian style” overtures. A very interesting PentaTone release
featuring the Copenhagen Phil (an amusingly odd name that unfortunately makes
this very fine ensemble sound like a “philharmonic light”) offers listeners
much to think about as well as a great deal to enjoy. Lawrence Foster conducts
the first three symphonies with a pleasantly light hand and an emphasis on
their dancelike elements that serves them well. The first two symphonies are
usually considered highly derivative, of Mozart and/or Haydn, and certainly
there is much in them that echoes those composers – but the wonderful choice of
themes, the exceptional melodic gift that Schubert already had so clearly when
he wrote these works in his mid-teens, and the willingness to shift from key to
key abruptly and surprisingly (and in the main very effectively), all mark
these pieces as distinctly Schubertian. It is true that both have very long
first movements that somewhat overbalance the rest of the works, and each first
movement starts with a highly serious slow introduction (Adagio in the first symphony, Largo
in the second) that is somewhat formulaic, in the sense that nothing else in
either work has equal intensity. But by Symphony No. 3, Schubert has clearly
started finding his own way, offering a much shorter first-movement
introduction, a better balance among the movements, and a scurrying finale that
radiates joie de vivre. Foster and
the Copenhagen Phil give the impression of genuinely enjoying playing this
music, not just doing so out of a feeling of obligation: the strings are fleet
and light throughout, and the woodwinds, always so important to Schubert,
percolate along merrily in all three symphonies. The two-SACD set, recorded in
PentaTone’s usual top-quality sound, next moves to the distinctly Rossinian Overture in the Italian Style in D of
1817 (two years after the Symphony No. 3). The weightier and lighter elements
of this concert piece are nicely balanced both by Schubert and by these
performers – and it is disappointing that only this overture, not its companion
in C, can be heard here (there was plenty of room on the disc for both). The
recording concludes with five excerpts from Rosamunde,
stage music representing Schubert in a significantly later developmental style.
Although these entr’actes and ballet pieces do not seem chronologically much
later, dating to 1823, the intervening years after the Overture in the Italian Style in D were ones in which Schubert’s
music underwent considerable change, attaining a richness and persuasive depth
that it had previously lacked. This is especially noticeable in the first
entr’acte, which scholars believe may have been intended (perhaps in somewhat
different form) as the finale of the “Unfinished” symphony (which is actually
only one among multiple unfinished Schubert symphonic efforts). This entr’acte is
strong and effective music, by all accounts far more so than the play for which
it was written. The remaining excerpts offered here are on the lighter side,
but lack nothing in the way of charm and beauty, and the last of them – ballet
music marked Andantino – is
especially graceful and played here with great sensitivity. Again, something is
missing that could have been included: the Rosamunde
overture, which, although largely recycled from Die Zauberharfe, is thoroughly enjoyable and deserves to be heard
more often. So this recording, already first-rate, could have been even better
with slightly expanded repertoire – but what it does offer is more than enough
to engage listeners and get an audience thinking about Schubert’s
expressiveness and the differing manner in which it comes across in his early
symphonies and his writing for the stage.
Twelve years Schubert’s junior and also
destined to live only into his thirties, Mendelssohn was another composer of
apparently endless lyricism and a personal style that developed early – and
whose future direction, had he lived longer, it is impossible to know. What is
surprising to hear on a new Brilliant Classics release is how Mendelssohnian
music could sound more than 60 years after Mendelssohn’s death. That is the
effect of listening to some very late and little-known music by the long-lived
Max Bruch (1838-1920): Mendelssohn still had nine years to live when Bruch was
born, and was a lifelong influence and source of admiration for the younger
composer. Indeed, in his later years, Bruch – much like Camille Saint-Saëns
(1835-1921) – tended to be ignored or dismissed as hopelessly out of touch with
the fast-changing musical times and tastes of the early 20th
century. And this was certainly true of Bruch, but it was no accident: he
affirmed repeatedly that the beauties of Mendelssohn’s time and of the Romantic
era in general were what he saw as the best possible expressions of which music
was capable, and he showed no inclination to adopt the harsher and grittier
musical approaches created in late Romanticism and afterwards. Interestingly,
Bruch, like Brahms, became deeply interested in the clarinet as a solo
instrument only very late in life – in Bruch’s case because his son, Max Felix
Bruch (1884-1943), played the instrument. But while Brahms created two
wonderful sonatas (Op. 120) that can be played by clarinet or viola, Bruch composed two works to be played by clarinet and viola. They are redolent of beauty
to a degree that is almost cloying (if not quite), and they use the very
similar ranges of the two solo instruments – and their capability of producing
very similar sounds – in ways that create a remarkable intertwining of string
and woodwind, quite unlike anything else by Bruch or, indeed, much else by any
other composer. The Double Concerto for
Clarinet, Viola and Orchestra dates to 1911, the Eight Pieces to 1910, and both works are tremendously assured in
their writing, in their balance and intermingling of the solo instruments, and in
their unending flow of truly gorgeous melodies that are harmonized in the
manner of decades earlier but sound less like a throwback than like an
extension of the Mendelssohnian model. Very rarely heard, these works are
wonderful to discover, and they sound absolutely lovely in performances
featuring Giovanni Punzi and Eva Katrine Dalsgaard – and, in the concerto, the
same Copenhagen Phil heard playing Schubert, although here directed (very ably)
by Vincenzo Milletari. There is some genuine cleverness in Bruch’s concerto,
starting at the very opening, which features two cadenzas – one for each
instrument – before the music begins to move ahead. The first two movements of
the concerto have nearly equal tempo indications, much as do the two completed
movements of Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphony: Bruch marks the first movement Andante con moto and the second Allegro moderato, those being the exact
tempo markings used by Schubert, but in reverse order. The result of this pacing in Bruch’s work is a sense of dreamy,
serenade-like flow for most of the concerto, until the energetic start of the
finale finally interrupts the mood. But here too Bruch offers clever touches, for
example by not bringing in the solo clarinet for almost 50 bars. The concerto
is less a tour de force for the
soloists than a chance for them to cooperate in multiple ways. The Eight Pieces contain more “showcase”
elements, but they too opt primarily for expressiveness rather than virtuosity
for its own sake. They are not connected in any way and, indeed, Bruch did not
think they should be played in sequence – but his son did so anyway, starting a
tradition that continues on the rare occasions when these pieces are heard at
all. Opening and closing with considerable lyricism, and containing one rather
overt tribute to Mendelssohn in the seventh piece, the Eight Pieces include two with titles in German that lie at the
series’ heart. These are the fifth piece, Rumanische
Melodie, and the sixth, Nachtgesang,
both of which take the set to expressive heights not only for clarinet and
viola but also, to some extent, for piano – which Tanja Zapolski plays with
appropriate dedication and warmth.
It remains somewhat amazing to realize
that the Bruch clarinet-and-viola works were written six years and more after Mahler’s far more forward-looking Symphony
No. 5. Mahler lived only to age 50 but was obsessed for decades with pushing
music into new and largely uncharted realms, not so much for philosophical
reasons (as Schoenberg was) as because he was constantly seeking new ways to
offer works that were, in essence, “songs of myself.” Mahler was almost
entirely a symphonist – even his song cycles are symphonic in scope and
structure – and was nearly obsessive in his search for ways to delve deeper and
deeper into his own consciousness and display what he found to the world. By
the time of his Symphony No. 5, he had passed through the Wunderhorn and otherwise song-related stage of the first four
symphonies and moved to an entirely abstract, non-vocal concept conceived in
three large “parts” (the first and second movements, the third movement on its
own, and the fourth and fifth movements). Mahler complained that no one
understood his Fifth, and it was partly in an attempt to make understanding possible
that he went along with the plan for a piano-four-hands version to be made by Otto
Singer (1863-1931). Singer, himself a composer, was a good choice for the role,
being known for arranging the works of Richard Strauss. His piano-four-hands
score was published in 1904, two months before the symphony’s first
performance. It did not come into being without struggle – pretty much
everything in Mahler involves struggle – but the resulting work is quite
fascinating to hear, and quite surprising in many ways. Evelinde Trenkner and
Sontraud Speidel do real service to the music in presenting it on a new MDG
Gold SACD. Mahler’s Fifth is comparatively familiar now, but conductors do not
always pick up on the sense of pervasive loneliness and isolation with which
the first movement is imbued, as Singer, Trenkner and Speidel do. And if the
wonderful horn passages of the central third movement are deeply missed in the
piano-four-hands version, this movement – the symphony’s longest, whose pacing
and structural importance are key to the overall architecture – makes complete
sense in a recording in which the pianists produce the effect of elegance and
irony rolled together into the form of a dissonant but not-quite-grotesque
dance. Trenkner and Speidel nicely put across the delicacy and beauty of the Adagietto, and their sure and deliberate pacing of the finale shows it as the
symphonic capstone that Mahler wanted it to be – indeed, this rondo comes
across to better effect than the movement sometimes does in orchestral
performances. Singer’s arrangement of Mahler’s Fifth will never supplant the
orchestral version, and was never intended to; Trenkner and Speidel, for all their skill,
cannot produce the numerous sonic effects that Mahler, an expert orchestrator
and brilliant conductor, knew just how to evoke. But this is a recording that
Mahler lovers will find very much worth having for the new light that it
repeatedly shines on a complex, difficult and still imperfectly understood
symphonic score.
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