Hummel: Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 and
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 arranged for Flute, Violin, Cello and Piano; Piano
Sonata in F minor, Op. 20. Aurélia Visovan, piano; Anna Besson, flute; Cecilia Bernardini, violin;
Marcus van den Munckhof, cello. Ricercar. $18.99.
Bruckner: Symphony No. 0, transcribed for organ by
Erwin Horn; Overture in G minor, transcribed for organ by Rudolf Innig; Philipp
Maintz: choralvorspiel LI (kyrie XI, orbis factor – brucknerfenster I). Hansjörg Albrecht, organ.
Oehms. $14.99.
There were excellent reasons in the 19th
century to take works that are now considered canonical and transcribe,
rearrange and generally (by modern standards) do violence to them and to the
composers who conceptualized them in specific ways. In the lifetime of Johann
Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) – student of Mozart, friend and sometime rival of
Beethoven, famed virtuoso pianist in the days just before the super-virtuosi
such as Liszt entered the limelight – orchestral concerts were few and far
between. Access to the concerts was limited and often difficult. Travel to the
concerts was time-consuming and sometimes impossible. Recordings did not exist.
There was simply no way for most people to hear “canonical” works, which at the
time were anything but commonly known and certainly not universally
acknowledged as masterpieces. But this was also a time when amateur musical
performances, both for the nobility and for the growing middle class, were
increasingly common – a time when being a cultured European citizen meant
playing at least one instrument at least passingly well. And thus Hummel, as a
small but important part of his musical production, created versions of Mozart
and Beethoven works that could be played at home or in small spaces by
reasonably talented amateurs – spreading the word, spreading the music, in the
only reasonably effective way available. The Hummel transcriptions are uniformly
well-done, sensitive to their creators’ intentions, and produced with the
adeptness of a composer who was quite skilled in his own right. These
transcriptions are no longer “needed” for their original purpose, which has
long been supplanted by recordings and easy access to live performances. But
for their insight into the original works as they were seen in or near their
own time, and for the simple pleasure of hearing skillful chamber-music
reductions of wonderful music, the Hummel transcriptions are decidedly
worthwhile.
One of Hummel’s efforts that appears on a
new Ricercar CD is especially creative and, in its own way, rather amazing:
Hummel’s transcription of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24, the amazing and
deeply moving C minor piece that is the only piano concerto that Mozart ended
in the minor key rather than the relative major. Hummel was here faced with a
significant problem in needing the pianist to be both the soloist and a member
of the accompanying quintet – and his solution is quite delightful, if (by
modern standards) rather sacrilegious. Hummel used his own skill as
composer/pianist to rewrite the concerto’s solo part into a more-virtuosic one
– something more typical of the early Romantic era. He takes the piano through
a wider range, a full octave above Mozart’s, and creates a whole series of
embellishments and ornaments (especially noticeably in the slow movement) that
very effectively distinguish piano-as-soloist from piano-as-ensemble-member. In
the process, the changes alter the feeling and effect of the concerto – and not
to its betterment, by the standards of a time when it is very well-known. But
that was not Hummel’s time, and when this transcription was done, it surely
seemed more a tribute than a graffito. It is quite fascinating to hear in
Aurélia Visovan’s performance, doubly so because she plays it on a fortepiano
of Hummel’s own era: a very fine Conrad Graf instrument dating to 1835. This is
historically informed music-making at its best, providing a wonderful
connection with a time long past and with music in a form long since supplanted
– but filled with charms all its own. Also on the disc is Hummel’s
transcription of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, a more-respectful arrangement that
hews more closely to the original because it can hew more closely to it: there is no dual role for the piano
here, and Hummel can (in the main) simply give the wind parts to the flute, the
string parts to the violin and cello, and the total-ensemble material to the
piano. Even here, though, Hummel-as-composer finds small ways to emphasize
elements that are clear in the full-orchestra version but would be difficult to
communicate with only four instruments: he changes the flute line at the start
of the symphony, for example, better to reflect an orchestral sound that the
quartet cannot by itself duplicate. Anna Besson, Cecilia Bernardini and Marcus
van den Munckhof play in fine chamber-music form with Visovan in both the
Mozart and Beethoven transcriptions, both of which turn out to be worth hearing
on their own in addition to offering listeners a kind of musical time travel.
And the disc also includes one of Hummel’s own works, which helps put his
transcription skill into perspective: his fantasia-like F minor sonata, Op. 20,
which uses the darkness of its minor key quite differently from the way Mozart
used C minor and which mixes early-Romanic intensity with a level of classical
poise that Hummel retained throughout his compositional life. Unfortunately,
this recording omits the exposition repeat in the first movement, offering it
only in an alternative online version of the music. This was done, supposedly,
because the repeat would not fit on a commercial CD – but CDs are no longer
strictly limited to 80 minutes, and while this one does indeed run just under
79 minutes without the repeat, it would last only 82 with it, and that should
no longer have been an issue. In any case, Visovan performs this dramatic and
emotive sonata very well, and in it, Hummel shows how thoroughly he understood
the abilities and limitations of the fortepiano of his time, using its
capabilities to their fullest effect. This is a distinctive and unusual disc –
and an unusually interesting one.
The reason for transcribing Bruckner’s symphonies for organ is harder to come by – in simple fact, there is none. But that is not stopping various musicians from doing so anyway, and a new Oehms CD featuring Hansjörg Albrecht playing the Bruckner-Organ at the Stiftskirche St. Florian in Linz, Austria, is in fact projected to be the first of a series featuring all the symphonies except the “No. 00” that was written when Bruckner was a student. It is certainly true that Bruckner was himself an organist, and more famous as one, at least for a time, than as a composer. It is also certainly true that Bruckner’s symphonic style frequently has him using the instruments of an orchestra as if to duplicate organ sonorities: both his use of dynamics and his handling of orchestral sections show his familiarity with the organ and are evidence of his uniquely “organ-like” approach to symphonic construction. Yet despite these factors, it is undeniably the case that Bruckner wrote very little music for organ, only about half a dozen pieces. It was for improvisation on his chosen instrument that he was known in his time, and his improvisations have not been passed down. So this brings back the question of transcribing Bruckner symphonies for organ – and in truth, the only answer to “why?” is that performers like the idea of trying it. Matthias Giesen, for instance, transcribed Symphony No. 5 and recorded it, and that was an impressive endeavor even if, objectively speaking, a somewhat unjustifiable one. In the same way, this new set of Albrecht performances, which intends to use various organs with which Bruckner was associated, is fascinating in its own right, even with no very solid reason for being. Interestingly, Symphony No. 0 – composed after No. 1 but withdrawn by the composer – sounds quite good on the organ in Horn’s transcription, and Albrecht does a fine job of selecting registers and sonorities that reflect the emotional ebb and flow of the music. Pairing the symphony with the Overture in G minor, one of the composer’s student works, is an intriguing decision, allowing listeners to hear – perhaps more clearly on the organ than in the orchestral versions – just how far Bruckner had progressed between 1863 and 1869, the year he composed the symphony. Just to make this production even more interesting, it includes the first of what will be 10 newly created contemporary compositions collectively to be called “Bruckner Windows,” each by a different 21st-century composer and each planned to accompany the symphony with which it appears. The one by Philipp Maintz is certainly well-thought-through, incorporating material from some of Bruckner’s own Mass settings and producing a choral prelude that is effective enough, if perhaps a bit studied (or over-studied). As a five-minute break between the overture and symphony, though, it serves well enough, and adds to the attractiveness of a CD that is, on the surface, entirely wrong-headed, but despite that is very worthwhile to hear and will be of considerable interest to dedicated Brucknerians.
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