(+++) VISITS TO THE PAST

A Byzantine Emperor at King Henry’s Court: Christmas 1400, London. Cappella Romana conducted by Alexander Lingas. Cappella Records. $19.99 (SACD).

Richard Beaudoin: Reproducció (after Casals/Bach); Unikat (after Argerich/Chopin); Bacchante (after Debussy/Debussy); Nachzeichnen/Tracing (after Gould/Schoenberg); You Know I’m Yours (after Monk); Les deux lauriers (after Teyte/Cortot/Debussy); “La chevelure” from Trois Chanson di Bilitis. Neil Heyde and Rohan de Saram, cellos; Maggie Teyte, soprano; Alfred Cortot, piano. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

David Post: Concertino á Cinque for Clarinet and String Quartet; Piano Quintet for Piano and String Quartet. Martinů Quartet (Lubomír Havlák and Adéla Štajnochrová, violins; Zbyněk Paďourek, viola; Jitka Vlašánková, cello); Jan Dušek, piano; Ludmila Peterková, clarinet. Bridge Records. $15.99.

     Although virtually all musical performances reach into the past – assuming what is performed was created prior to the performance itself – some take longer, deeper and more-distant trips than others. The latest recording from the always-excellent Cappella Romana delves into a very-far-away time indeed, presenting world première recordings of medieval Byzantine and Sarum chants for Christmas, some in Latin and others in Greek. Conductor Alexander Lingas unearthed these works and leads them in historically informed performances – no small feat from a temporal distance of more than 600 years. The overriding concept here involves a journey to the court of England’s King Henry IV, who ruled from 1399 until his death in 1413. He was visited during the Christmas season of 1400-1401 by Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiológos, who reigned from 1391 until his death in 1425, and who was seeking foreign aid in defense of Constantinople, which was under siege by the Ottoman Turks. The political outcome of the visit was mixed: Henry provided substantial funds but no official military assistance. But the musical riches unearthed by Lingas remain. Like all music of this time period, these works require a re-setting of one’s usual way of listening: their sound is quite different from that of later music, and the inclusion of Greek chants such as Pentekostaria and a portion of Kalophonic Megalynarion by Saint John Koukouzelis requires a perception shift from the comparatively familiar cadences of medieval Latin to the far-less-often-heard ones of Greek. There is more than an hour of material on this Cappella Records CD, and the music’s sound is certainly an acquired taste. The performances are first-rate throughout, with the full choir and multiple soloists within it (soprano, alto, tenor and baritone) declaiming the material with sensitivity and a firm understanding of accentuation: the words are entirely clear throughout, which was one of the points of chants of this kind. Among the most affecting elements are one in which a sustained choral note in Prologue of the Kontakion for the Nativity of Christ floats behind a subset of the choir’s voices, and one in which there is an especially clear contrast between higher and lower voices in the traditional Magnificat. Listeners interested in a trip far back in music will find this recording to be a splendid time machine – not one all travelers will wish to enter, to be sure, but one that will handsomely repay those interested in this time period and its music.

     Visits to yesteryear take on distinctly modern tones in a series of works for cello by Richard Beaudoin (born 1975) on a New Focus Recordings CD. The approach here is a thoroughly contemporary one: Beaudoin builds new compositions around elements of specific previous recordings, thereby reaching back to performers of earlier times who in turn reached back to composers of still-earlier eras for works to interpret. Thus, for Reproducció, Beaudoin starts with the Sarabande from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 2, as played and recorded by Pablo Casals, and uses the exact pitches, durations and rubato of the Casals performance to create a work in which Neil Heyde essentially ends up playing Casals playing Bach. All the works on this disc reach back in essentially this way. Unikat is based on a Martha Argerich recording of Chopin’s Prelude, Op. 28, No. 4, mapping pianistic elements onto the cello for Heyde to reproduce. Bacchante is based on Debussy’s own 1913 recording of his Danseuses de Delphes, a piece that itself reached back to a distant time through being inspired by the composer seeing a replica of the Acanthus Column in the Louvre. There are layers upon layers here, with elements of piano performance again mapped onto the cello to produce a very different sound and feeling even while paying tribute to the original music, the composer’s performance of it, and the inspiration that led the composer to create the work. Nachzeichnen/Tracing is based on Glenn Gould’s 1965 recording of Sechs kleine Klavierstücke by Schoenberg, and is interesting for being played without a bow: Heyde’s cello becomes a percussion instrument, not one akin to the piano but one reflecting Gould’s interpretation of Schoenberg’s pianistic creation – another case of layers within layers. Looking back to the same time period, the 1960s, in a very different musical way, Beaudoin bases You Know I’m Yours on a 1962 recording of Body and Soul by Thelonius Monk. Here the cello essentially deconstructs Monk’s original by forming a single melodic line from two largely independent piano ones. And then comes a two-cello piece, Les deux lauriers from Debussy’s Trois Chanson de Bilitis, the original here being a 1936 performance by Maggie Teyte and Alfred Cortot, with Beaudoin having Heyde joined by Rohan de Saram so that one cello can essentially reproduce the vocal line and the other the piano’s. This is scarcely straightforward transcription, though: like all the works on the disc, it takes the art of transcribing into new realms by employing precise measurement techniques not only of prior performers’ handling of pitches and rhythms but also of such extraneous sounds as records’ surface noise and the creaking of pianists’ chairs. The actual 1936 Teyte/Cortot recording of the Debussy is included to close the disc and highlight the ways in which Beaudoin has remade and reinterpreted earlier music and earlier recordings. Interestingly, for all the now-obsolete sound quality of this now-ancient recording, it has power, sensitivity and engagement that Beaudoin’s remake lacks – indeed, it calls into question the entire notion of reinterpreting interpretations that were, in their time, highly sensitive to composers’ music – even though the technical ability to transmit that sensitivity was, by modern standards, far from adequate. Beaudoin’s pieces are interesting curiosities, but the Teyte/Cortot performance shows how much is lost when today’s composers and performers use modern technical capabilities as a substitute for deeply felt and thoroughly committed readings that genuinely understand the music that is being performed.

     David Post’s Piano Quintet for Piano and String Quartet (2007) revives the past in a different way and for different purposes. Each of its three movements is in effect an in memoriam for a musician who was murdered in the Holocaust. The first movement remembers Gideon Klein (1919-1945), a fine Czech pianist and composer. Post (born 1949) proffers carefully managed dissonance for a movement in which the piano has concerto-like flourishes while still functioning as an ensemble member. The second movement is for Pavel Haas (1899-1944), a Czech composer who followed Janáček’s style while incorporating jazz and folk elements into his music. Post here creates a delicate movement that flows gently and mostly quietly. The finale is in memory of Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944), an Austrian composer, conductor and pianist who composed 20 works while imprisoned at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. For him, Post creates an oddly disconnected, almost dissociative work of uncertain rhythm and harmony, with Jan Dušek’s piano sometimes leading the strings, sometimes being submerged in them. As a whole, this quintet reaches into a specific past time and memorializes specific individuals while using the musical language of the 21^st century to produce well-structured, musically coherent movements that collectively address and remember a tragedy both overwhelming and intensely personal. However, it is less effective as music in its own right than as a piece whose reason for being is already known to the audience: listeners familiar with the lives of the three musicians named in the quartet’s movements will feel the music’s effect more strongly than will an audience coming to the work without prior knowledge of its antecedents. This Bridge Records CD also includes a Concertino á Cinque from 2010 that features Ludmila Peterková on clarinet. A lighter work than the Piano Quintet, this piece uses the clarinet’s playful and singing capabilities in equal measure, its central Adagio ma non troppo focusing on the instrument’s warm lower register while the opening Allegro giocoso and concluding Allegro giusto utilize a wider range and include some leaps and bounds that make the wind instrument  primus inter pares and keep the strings generally in a supportive role. The Martinů Quartet rises to the occasion whenever required in both these works, and holds in the background when that is what Post wishes. Both the pieces show a fine compositional command of contemporary chamber-music style, and both are well-crafted and convincing on their own somewhat different terms.