(+++) FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT

Schumann: Cello Concerto; Fantasiestücke; Adagio et Allegro; Intermezzo from the sonata “Frei aber Einsam”; Romances, Op. 94; Träumerei from “Kinderszenen”; “Widmung” and “Du Bist wie eine Blume” from “Myrthen”; Clara Schumann: Three Romances; “Ich Stand in Dunklen Träumen”; Romanze from Piano Concerto; Brahms: Scherzo from the sonata “Frei aber Einsam”; Fabien Waksman: Replika; Michelle Ross: Désenvoyé; Jean-Frédéric Neuberger: Vibrating; Patricia Kopatchinskaja: Kingelnseel und Choral; SMS. Christian-Pierre La Marca, cello; Jean-Frédéric Neuberger, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Raphaël Merlin. Naïve. $19.99 (2 CDs).

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 30 and 31; Josquin/Wuorinen: Ave Christe; George Benjamin: Shadowlines—6 Canonic Preludes for Piano; Dowland/Byrd: Pavana Lachrymae. Benjamin Hochman, piano. AVIE. $19.99.

David Fulmer: Violin Concerto “Jauchzende Bögen”; Cantantes Metallis; I have loved a stream and a shadow; Star of the North—Requiem for Zhanaozen; Only in darkness is thy shadow clear; Eldorado; immaculate sigh of stars…; whose fingers brush the sky. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

     Some tributes are so deep, so heartfelt, so intensely personal, that it seems churlish to respond to them with anything short of admiration. And when they are musical tributes to musical figures, it is hard not to be moved by them even if they seem to be more than a tad overdone. Christian-Pierre La Marca’s beautifully played, cello-focused two-CD Naïve set is specifically designated as  a tribute to one of the great love stories in classical music, that of Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck (later, after a famous confrontation involving her father, Clara Schumann). Robert Schumann produced some incomparably beautiful, soaringly Romantic music, which La Marca believes fully reflected his feelings for Clara – perhaps a bit of an overstatement, although in a sense Robert Schumann was one of the primary creators of the Romantic musical era, not only through his music but also through his writings and, for that matter, his tragic personal history of mental illness and death at the age of 46. Clara Schumann, herself a composer of some merit, was primarily a performer, one of the very greatest pianists of the 19^th century; and then there was Johannes Brahms, his music largely discovered and assertively championed by Robert Schumann, with Brahms’ own respect-and-longing for the widowed Clara Schumann scarcely a secret from anyone although their relationship appears to have remained one of extremely close non-romantic friendship (perhaps with an underlying current of yearning on Brahms’ part – very much a part of the capital-R Romantic sensibility). There is a tremendously rich narrative as well as musical vein to be mined in the Schumann/Schumann/Brahms oeuvre, but even that is not enough for La Marca, who puts together a potpourri of beautifully limned performances from the 19^th century and also offers world première recordings of four contemporary composers’ new cello-and-piano works (commissioned by La Marca) in which the composers consider, reconsider, interpret and reinterpret the Robert/Clara connection. If this brief description makes it sound as if all this is a bit much – well, it is. There is nothing wrong with any of this, no sense that the whole complex production is anything less than heartfelt and sincere. But it is very difficult to figure out the audience for what is essentially a musical mishmash. La Marca plays everything by the Schumanns and Brahms very well indeed, so listeners interested in his technique and in some very fine cello performances – including a beautifully rendered version of Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto – will find much to enjoy here. But pretty much everything other than the concerto is a tidbit, a small encore taken (often arbitrarily) from a larger work or set of works that would be far more effective heard as a totality even if in that form there would be less obvious “romanticism” (or “Romanticism”) then there is here. And the inclusion of the five works by four of today’s composers – pieces scattered about and juxtaposed with some of the most beautiful of the short excerpts from the Schumanns’ music – really does not work at all. Instead of trying to somehow outdo or extend the love and yearnings of the Schumanns, the modern composers create acrid, acidic up-to-date material that verges on parody (presumably unintentional) and serves only to highlight how much more expressive and meaningful the music of the Schumanns was and is when compared with the material by today’s music makers. Fabien Waksman’s Replika mixes piano pounding and string screeching with an occasional bit of almost-lyricism. Michelle Ross’ Désenvoyé (“Unsent”) plods along to nowhere in particular. Two pieces by Patricia Kopatchinskaja are predictably atonal and disconnected-sounding – the opposite, really, of what the Schumanns’ works are. And Jean-Frédéric Neuberger’s Vibrating has the cello, yes, vibrate, while Neuberger plays a piano part that interjects bits and pieces of notes and the occasional trill. In fairness, all the modern composers’ works are well done for what they are, but what they are not is anything remotely connected to the Schumanns’ love story except perhaps in the composers’ own minds, and maybe La Marca’s. Context matters: a CD consisting entirely of modern compositions inspired by works by the Schumanns would come across better than a hodgepodge that interpolates contemporary-sounding pieces among tremendously emotive ones from the 19^th century. What La Marca offers here surely makes sense to La Marca himself, but unless a listener is so attuned to La Marca’s thoughts and emotions as to be his virtual clone, the effect of this production will be far less than intended – with the positive elements lying entirely in the performances of the highly expressive works of the more-distant past.

     The juxtapositions run from the past to the deeper past – as well as to the present day – on an AVIE release featuring pianist Benjamin Hochman. This disc too is a personal journey, if not one as overwrought and overextended as La Marca’s. The main attractions here are the performances of two of Beethoven’s last three sonatas, a trio of works in which the composer, having struggled to the top of a metaphorical and psychological mountain in his Hammerklavier sonata (No. 29), essentially surveys the landscape around him and atop the summit. At the start of the CD, Hochman opens No. 30 expansively and with a fantasia-like sense of exploration, brings considerable delicacy to the short second-movement Presto, and then balances quietude and beauty to very fine effect in the extended third movement, especially taking to heart the molto cantabile portion of the movement’s tempo-and-mood indication. At the end of the disc, Hochman offers an equally sensitive reading of Sonata No. 31, the first movement of which somewhat reflects the finale of No. 30 in its indication of Moderato cantabile molto espressivo. There is a pleasantly meandering quality to Hochman’s handling of this movement that results in a very strong contrast with the brief Allegro molto second movement: this sonata and No. 30 follow very closely parallel designs of total length and length and sequence of individual movements. Hochman nicely balances the varying moods of the finale of No. 31, from the more-Romantic earlier elements to the later fugal ones that connect Beethoven’s sonata more closely to the past. It is a shame that Hochman does not also offer Sonata No. 32 on this recording – but that is a deliberate omission, since Hochman’s point here is not to produce a Beethoven recital but to elucidate what he sees as Beethoven’s connections with earlier as well as more-recent expressive material. To that end, the CD has a kind of “arch” format: Beethoven appears first and fifth, material by earlier composers is second and fourth, and a work of the 21^st century is offered in the middle. The success of the whole project depends on how closely listeners can hear (not just intellectually understand) the connections among the pieces. Sonata No. 30 is followed by the motet Ave Christe by (or attributed to) Josquin des Prez (ca. 1450-1521), sensitively arranged for piano in 1988 by Charles Wuorinen (1938-2020). Hochman’s delicacy in handling the motet is notable, although the work’s connection to Beethoven’s late sonatas is less so. Sonata No. 31 is preceded on the disc by the famous lute work Lachrymae (“Flow My Tears”) by John Dowland (1563-1626), arranged for harpsichord (decidedly not piano) by William Byrd (1543-1623). Here too Hochman plays with feeling, but this piece sits oddly on a modern piano, and the performance does not really capture the work’s depth of feeling – or, again, the nature of its connection to Beethoven’s late piano sonatas. As for the piece around which the entire CD is centered, it is Shadowlines—6 Canonic Preludes for Piano, written in 2001 by George Benjamin (born 1960). Benjamin here does his own outreach to the past, notably in a passacaglia in the fifth of the pieces – which takes up more than six of the work’s total of 15 minutes. It is clear intellectually that Benjamin, like Beethoven, reaches to earlier music and imbues old forms with newer meanings. The specific sound world of Benjamin is, however, very different from that of Beethoven, to such an extent that in some of the preludes (notably the second, Wild, and fourth, Tempestoso) it is simply not possible to hear any reasonable level of connectedness between Beethoven’s world and Benjamin’s. As with the works of the contemporary composers featured in the La Marca project, Benjamin’s music stands well on its own and in its own context, but Hochman’s attempt to force it to share the context of Beethoven’s sonatas is just that: forced. The intellectual underpinnings of this Hochman recital are convincing in their own way, at least to a certain extent; but despite the attractiveness of Hochman’s playing, the musical arguments drawn from his foundational thoughts are not especially convincing.

     For some of today’s composers, ties to the past primarily involve choosing instruments (and sometimes forms) that have long been familiar, and pulling them in different directions by extending techniques, altering the sonic landscape, or otherwise disconnecting potential audience expectations from prior experience. Many of the eight works by David Fulmer (born 1981) on a New Focus Recordings CD are reflective of this approach. Fulmer, himself a violinist, reaches to some extent to the relatively recent past through his connection with Milton Babbitt (1916-2011), with whom Fulmer studied. This can be heard in the longest work on the disc, the violin concerto Jauchzende Bögen (“Jubilant Bow”), played by Stefan Jackiw with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen conducted by Matthias Pintscher. The work has a three-part sonic canvas: soloist, string quartet, and full orchestra. The actual sound is rather formulaic, but the overall design is intriguing in its centering of an extended violin cadenza between two ensemble passages. The other extended work here is Cantantes Metallis for cello (Jay Campbell), piano (Conor Hanick), and percussion (Mike Truesdell). Although classical on one level, this is a sort of heavy metal music on another, with the instruments sounding distinctly metallic and the cello’s usual warmth and long lines transformed into a sound far closer to that of the percussion. I have lived a stream and a shadow (played by Conrad Tao) and whose fingers brush the sky (titled with the affectation of no capital letters and performed by Hanick) are solo-piano works. The former features metal-sounding running passages interspersed with chordal ones; the latter also gives the piano a metallic timbre, although sections of it are a bit more expressive – expressiveness generally not being a hallmark of Fulmer’s music. Star of the North—Requiem for Zhanaozen is for solo cello (Campbell) and is an occasional work, the occasion being a fatal clash between workers and authorities in Kazakhstan in 2011. Since it is highly unlikely that most audiences will have any idea whatsoever of what the piece is about, the work’s strident dissonance and violent sounds will seem to exist mainly to offset, musically, its concluding chorale-like harmonics. The remaining three pieces on the CD also feature specific references: they are inspired by works by poet Hart Crane. Only in darkness is thy shadow clear is for two pianos (Nathan Ben-Yehuda and León Bernsdorf) and is interestingly conceptualized: the two pianos are tuned a quarter tone apart. This obviously leads to a complete lack of harmonic centrality (scarcely a matter of concern for Fulmer in any case) – more intriguingly, it takes the ear on an unusual journey in which it tries to capture some evanescent and elusive sense of consonance that, under the circumstances, is quite impossible. Eldorado, for string trio (played by the Horszowski Trio), rarely uses the entire three-voice grouping, instead presenting solo and duo passages that produce differing interactions among the players. And immaculate sigh of stars… (titled without capital letters and with an ellipsis) is a solo work for harp (Parker Ramsay) that works strongly against any of the feeling of ethereality with which the instrument is associated: Fulmer wants the harp to be denser, deeper and darker than it is generally perceived to be, and in this work as in others his primary interest seems to be in finding ways to produce a variety of metallic sounds. The extent to which Fulmer’s music looks back to or connects with the past, even the recent past, is arguable, but his determination to take familiar instruments and instrumental combinations in new directions – drawing on listeners’ expectations based on what they have previously heard from those instruments – comes through clearly throughout the recording.