(++++) ILLUMINATING A LESSER LIGHT

Christian Sinding: Symphonies Nos. 1-4 (complete). Norrköping Symphony Orchestra conducted by Karl-Heinz Steffens. Capriccio. $29.99 (2 CDs).

     Norway’s Christian Sinding is by no stretch of the imagination a great composer, but he is a far better one than the near-total absence of his symphonies from concert halls and recordings would suggest. Sinding’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (the first of three that he wrote) is still heard from time to time, and his brief piano piece in salon style, Frühlingsrauschen (the third of a set of six such works), retains some popularity. But here is a measure of just how obscure Sinding has become: the two-CD set of his four symphonies on the Capriccio label gives completely incorrect years for his birth and death both on the back cover and in the oversize headline at the start of the enclosed booklet. The dates given in this release are not even close: Capriccio lists them as 1881-1949, but Sinding was actually born in 1856 and lived until 1941.

     Aside from being a tremendous embarrassment to Capriccio – well, it should be – this is a clear indicator of the extent to which Sinding has faded into obscurity (thankfully, the short essay within the booklet is mostly accurate as to dates, although at one point it states that Sinding was 53 in 1919, when he was actually 63). But Sinding’s four symphonies are far more worthy of at least occasional performance than the near-eradication of the composer’s oeuvre indicates. It is true that Sinding received at best mixed reviews from his teachers, but it is also true that this was due more to his unwillingness to apply himself diligently to his studies than to any lack of talent (although, to be fair, opinions on that were somewhat mixed as well). Sometimes compared, and not unfavorably, with Grieg, Sinding in fact suffered mainly from difficulty finding his own compositional voice and suitable influences to develop it. What the very fine performances of his symphonies by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra under Karl-Heinz Steffens show is that Sinding’s sensibilities remained locked into Romantic style and sensibility throughout his life, and that when he did encounter strong influences to which his musical thought resonated – principally Wagner and Richard Strauss – he was rather too sponge-like to produce fully original-sounding material,  much less to stretch the boundaries of structure and harmony beyond those of the mid-to-late 19^th century.

     Yet all these observations give too little regard to Sinding, and it is very much to Steffens’ credit that he considers a recording of the composer’s symphonic cycle worthwhile. The four symphonies, created over a time span of more than four decades, may not show significant progress or attunement to changing tastes and approaches in music, but they do display considerable refinement – which, over time, is more and more polished, so that all four have a Romantic sheen that can perhaps be better appreciated in the 21^st century than in the 20^th, when so much unashamedly Romantic material was often considered déclassé.

     Symphony No. 1 (1894) is Sinding’s only one in a minor key (D minor); the version that survives is the third – Sinding diligently worked on honing the effectiveness of the symphony, whose second version had been performed in 1890 (the first version was never published). The primary sound world here is that of Tchaikovsky: there is an opulence to the strings, a willingness to incorporate moody solo elements (such as a bassoon in the finale), and a pervasive lyricism that reflect Russian models (Sinding’s later music sometimes sounds a bit like Glazunov). Except in the ominous opening of the finale, Sinding’s Symphony No. 1 does not explore its minor key to a substantial degree and certainly does not dwell on deep emotional matters to any significant extent. But it is a more-than-satisfactory work that shows some real skill in orchestration and that provides listeners with a satisfying auditory experience without requiring too much metaphorical stretching of their ears.

     Symphony No. 2 (1907) is in three movements (No. 1 is in the more-conventional four). Lacking a Scherzo, Symphony No. 2 in D major is also somewhat lacking in the lightness that such a movement could, at least in theory, provide. Here the influence of Wagner has become clear, primarily in the orchestration and textures rather than through any exploratory harmonies or pointed emotional impact (although the main theme of the finale is rhythmically intriguing). Steffens does a particularly good job with this symphony by refusing to let it become turgid: some parts are rather thick in sound, but Steffens finds lighter material within the less-than-light scaffolding and emphasizes it to good effect. The symphony does sound like a bit of a throwback – to the time of its predecessor – but it is smoothly conceived and, for the most part, convincing on its own terms.

     Symphony No. 3 in F is a postwar work (1919) that returns to the four-movement structure of No. 1 and practically revels in its old-fashioned virtues of sumptuous orchestration, thematic splendor (the opening of the work makes quite an impression), and a slow movement of genuinely lovely and highly lyrical character. Sinding may show no interest in forward-looking harmonies and techniques here, but he makes a strong case for the lyrical beauties to be found in late-Romantic symphonic music and in the assertion, within the musical realm, of a level of continuity that was not to be found in the highly discordant political realities during and after World War I. Indeed, even a century-plus after Sinding wrote this work, there is something satisfyingly solid (if perhaps a bit stolid) about it: it pushes no boundaries and explores no new musical or emotional realms, but it takes audiences to and through a place of warmth, expressiveness, and all-encompassing aural beauty – a region of safety at a time when listeners surely needed as much of that as they could find in the concert hall or anywhere else. Indeed, the gorgeous placidity of the peacefully lilting Andante is as striking today as it was more than a century ago.

     It is only in his final symphony, a work in E-flat from 1936, when the composer was 80 years old, that Sinding significantly experimented with symphonic style – although not to any great extent with the basically Romantic scoring and sound of the orchestra. Symphony No. 4 bears the title Vinter og Vår (Frost and Spring) – A Rhapsody for Orchestra, and is in seven continuous movements, of which the first and last take up almost half the total 33-minute length. Sinding does tweak his orchestral forces a bit here, using piano, harp and bass clarinet in addition to the instruments of the traditional Romantic orchestra. The result is occasional touches of sonic color that are not to be found in the three earlier symphonies. The work as a whole has more the feeling of a tone poem than of a symphony, although structurally it straddles the line between stricter symphonic expectations and the freer form usually associated with a piece containing the word “Rhapsody” in its title. There are numerous subtle distinctions of style and approach in Symphony No. 4 that collectively give it a feeling and overall impression different from what audiences receive from the first three symphonies. But the refinements are subtle, not in any sense grand or grandiose, much less overwhelming: the sensibility of the symphony remains firmly within the Romantic mode and era, and in fact the finale of Sinding’s last symphony sounds somewhat more like Richard Strauss than anything in his earlier symphonic works.

     The Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, although it is Swedish, seems thoroughly conversant with Sinding’s music, which has more in common with the German school of the 19^th century than with anything specifically Scandinavian, much less Norwegian. And Steffens is a very strong advocate for this music: again and again he explores whatever levels of pathos and emotional connection it contains; again and again he finds the colorful elements in Sinding’s scoring and brings them to the fore; and at every opportunity, he thoroughly engages listeners with Sinding’s accomplishments – which, even if not at the level of the great Romantic and post-Romantic symphonists, are indicative of a finely honed musical sensibility using comparatively modest compositional abilities to create convincing, engaging, often elegant works conveying modest but still significant pleasures that it really would be salutary for audiences to experience more frequently.

(++++) EMOTIONAL EVOCATIONS

Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor; Réminiscences de Don Juan; Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses—No. 10, Cantique d’Amour. Lise de la Salle, piano. Naïve. $16.99.

Dvořák: String Quartet No. 10, “Slavonic”; John Elmquist: Sacred Traces; Rhiannon Giddens: At the Purchaser’s Option with Variations; Bongani Ndodana-Breen: Apologia at Umzimvubu; Steven Snowden: Hidden Mothers; Komitas: 14 Pieces on Themes of Armenian Folk Songs—Selections. Kontras Quartet (Eleanor Bartsch and François Henkins, violins; Ben Weber, viola; Jean Hatmaker, cello). MSR Classics. $14.95.

     Franz Liszt, larger than life as a persona even in his own time, continues to fascinate pianists not only through the extreme technical complexity of his music but also through its extraordinarily wide-ranging emotional compass. It is certainly true that much of what Liszt created was done for showmanship – the virtuoso performances that brought him tremendous fame (or notoriety) as well as money, and that led most observers to place him first in a pantheon of superb pianists from Thalberg to Pixis to Kalkbrenner to Dreyschock to Alkan. But in his best works, Liszt absorbed and transcended the forms and uses of pure virtuosity and created genuinely compelling music whose exceptional difficulty he placed at the service of equally exceptional storytelling. Lise de la Salle handles two such substantial and substantive Liszt works with great skill and understanding on a new Naïve CD. The notoriously difficult-to-pin-down Piano Sonata in B minor – there continue to be arguments about its form, its structure, its purpose and its emotive substance – here gets a thoroughly convincing interpretation that makes the disparate sections of the piece sound like parts of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. This works very well indeed: the sonata can easily seem disjointed through its many elements, tempo changes and quicksilver mood changes, but de la Salle does not see it that way: she allows each portion of the work to emerge effectively on its own (for instance, the clarity of the Allegro energico – Più mosso section is exceptional), but she puts forth an underlying communicative approach that lets listeners hear the sonata as a totality while still reveling in individual elements of its construction. There is a certain sense of a rollercoaster ride in this performance, not only in the exhilarating sections but also in the quieter and more inward-looking ones that here function as chances to catch one’s metaphorical breath. The sonata is followed on the disc by a gentle, rather sweet reading of Cantique d’Amour from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses, presented as a kind of palate cleanser between the two much larger pieces on the CD. And then de la Salle tackles Réminiscences de Don Juan with the same intensity she brings to the sonata – in some ways, to even better effect. Liszt did something unusual with this particular showpiece, essentially retelling the story of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a way that emphasizes the moral lessons inherent in the opera while allowing the sheer variety of musical material to be put on display. The key to Liszt’s approach is the use of the music of the Commendatore both to open Réminiscences de Don Juan and to close it, creating bookends between which everything else in the fantasy is positioned. The very substantial technical demands of the work must be at the service of its foundational message, and this is just what de la Salle does. The love duet and “champagne aria” retain all their beauty and bubbliness here, but de la Salle places them neatly in Liszt’s context in a way that gives Réminiscences de Don Juan, taken as a whole, considerable emotional heft and potency. The result is a CD that showcases de la Salle as a Liszt interpreter of the highest order.

     There is also emotion aplenty in the works on an MSR Classics CD featuring the Kontras Quartet, but matters here do not fit together quite as well and are not, in totality, quite as convincing. The centerpiece of the recording is Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 10, “Slavonic,” which literally centers the disc: two works precede it and three follow it. On its own, the Dvořák takes up almost half the CD, so in this way too it is central to a listener’s experience. And certainly the performance here is a very fine one. The love of the composer for his homeland permeates this 1879 work, and the warmth and beauty throughout the quartet come across to very fine effect. The second-movement Dumka (elegie) is especially affecting, the third-movement Romanze then heightening the lyricism before the bright finale provides a release of tension that has mounted significantly but almost imperceptibly through the middle movements. Unfortunately, nothing else on the disc communicates at this level or in this way: most of the other pieces require audiences to have some sort of extramusical knowledge in order to appreciate the material, while Dvořák’s work, however steeped in his homeland, reaches out beyond its time and geography. The CD opens with Sacred Traces (2017) by John Elmquist (born 1960). This is a rather self-consciously contemporary blending of jazz rhythms with extended (actually overextended) harp passages, commissioned by the Kontras Quartet and so undoubtedly sounding as they and Elmquist want it to sound – but there is nothing particularly convincing, much less sacred, about it. Next is At the Purchaser’s Option with Variations (2016) by Rhiannon Giddens (born 1977), arranged for string quartet by Jacob Garchick. This is another of the innumerable “slavery was horrible and cruel and inhumane” pieces that composers churn out from time to time; it has more lilt than one would expect from its communicative intent, and manages to make some points rather well by keeping matters brief (three-and-a-half minutes). The Dvořák appears next on the CD, followed by Apologia at Umzimvubu (2006) by Bongani Ndodana-Breen (born 1975). This requires understanding of and familiarity with the Xhosa tribe of South Africa for full understanding; heard simply as music, it is rather insubstantial despite some impressive use of pizzicato elements. After this comes Hidden Mothers (2020) by Steven Snowden(born 1981)  – another piece trying to make a societal point that has often been made before, in this case about the importance of motherhood in all times and places. Its three short movements, each bearing a woman’s name, vary in tempo and technique, in some ways interestingly (a birdsong-like passage in the second movement) and in others unsurprisingly for a contemporary work (the verbal and nonmusical elements in the third movement). After this, the CD returns to an earlier time with Nos. 1, 11, 5, 8 and 14 (in that order) from 14 Pieces on Themes of Armenian Folk Songs by Ottoman-Armenian priest Soghomon Soghomonian (1869-1935). Known as Komitas, he is considered the founder of Armenian national music, and these five short pieces (like the others in the same work) show why: much like Bartók and Kodály in Hungary, Komitas collected and presented folk material from his nation in ways that highlighted its connection to his homeland and its people. This string-quartet arrangement, by Sarkis Aslamazyan, lets the beauties and clear rhythms of the pieces flow freely: Nos. 8, Echmiadzin Dance, and 14, Song of the Little Partridge, are especially effective here. And if these pieces lack the emotional overlay that Dvořák brought to his homeland-centered music, they at least provide a pleasant (and pleasantly upbeat) conclusion to a (+++) CD that is very well-played throughout even though its emotive landscape is decidedly uneven.

(++++) IN CONCLUSION

Bruckner from the Archives, Volume 5: Symphonies Nos. 6 and 7; Te Deum. NDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi (No. 6); South German Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hans Müller-Kray (No. 7); Wilma Lipp, Elisabeth Höngen, Nicolai Gedda, Walter Kreppel, Vienna Singverein and Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan (Te Deum). Ariadne. $29.99 (2 CDs).

Bruckner from the Archives, Volume 6: Symphonies Nos. 8 and 9; Psalm 150. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eugen Jochum (No. 8); Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch (No. 9); Hilde Česka, soprano, with Vienna Akademie Kammerchor and Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Henry Swoboda (Psalm 150). Ariadne. $29.99 (2 CDs).

     One of the most ambitious and revelatory projects conceived for the Bruckner bicentennial in 2024 was a six-volume, 12-disc release of remastered historic recordings of all the symphonies and a number of the composer’s shorter works, most of them radio airchecks that had never been released before. The final two volumes of this series on the Ariadne label are at the same very high performance and more-than-satisfactory audio quality level as the first four, showing yet again that even before Bruckner’s symphonies became part of the more-or-less standard repertoire for many conductors and orchestras, there were performers advocating them in the strongest possible terms through sensitive, often compelling readings that set the stage for the vast proliferation of concert-hall and recording-studio versions that were still to come.

     The downside to that proliferation has been a certain argumentativeness and quirkiness in some more-recent Bruckner performances, with disputes over which editions to use, what sort of pacing to employ, and whether or not to conform to the longstanding if largely inaccurate belief that Bruckner’s symphonies are in some sense organ-like works with a cathedral-appropriate sense of majesty and spirituality. The Bruckner Archives performances date to an earlier time when, generally speaking, Bruckner’s place within the pantheon of Romantic-era symphonists was accepted at face value and conductors saw his unusual combination of rhythmic, harmonic and contrapuntal approaches as matters of style within his time period – resulting in readings in which his debt to Schubert and his parallels to and divergences from the sound of Wagner were particularly clear. This adds up to a salutary straightforwardness in the Bruckner Archives symphonic performances, including those in the fifth and sixth volumes.

     The approach is quite evident in the 1961 recording of Symphony No. 6 by the NDR Symphony Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi – who also led Symphony No. 5 in Bruckner from the Archives, Volume 4, where he conducted the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. Although Dohnányi was not a conductor usually associated with Bruckner, and in 1961 was not focused primarily on the concert hall (he was General Music Director of Lübeck Opera from 1957 to 1963), this rendition has a pleasant directness and a sense throughout of controlled emotional expression – slightly cool, all in all, with everything in its place and nothing sounding overdone or overextended. Bruckner’s Sixth has never been among his more-popular symphonies, but this approach actually shows ways in which it can reach out effectively through a straightforward presentation that neither reduces nor overemphasizes its intricacies (especially in matters of rhythm) and that allows its lyrical elements, especially in the Adagio, to glow. Very different but equally fine in its own way is the reading of Symphony No. 7 featuring Hans Müller-Kray and the South German Radio Symphony Orchestra (now the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra). Not a particularly well-known conductor nowadays, Müller-Kray led this ensemble for more than two decades. This performance dates to 1955 and, despite sound that is not quite at the highest level despite the general excellence of the Lani Spahr/Siva Oke remastering, the reading effectively hits the emotional high points of the symphony, notably the extended cello-led theme of the first movement, the coloration of the Wagner tubas in the Adagio, and the dramatic power of the finale. The symphonies are complemented by a somewhat odd Te Deum reading led by Herbert von Karajan, a brilliant and strong-willed conductor who sometimes came across as if he knew better than the composers themselves what the composers were trying to say. There is some flavor of that in this 1962 Vienna Festival performance, which was given in the hall where the Te Deum was originally heard. Everything is very much in place and very precisely balanced and paced here: the strength of instruments and vocalists is everywhere apparent. But this Te Deum seems less a deeply religious work than an operatic approach to sacred material – a bit along the lines of Verdi’s Requiem. The sense of drama is apparent throughout and is quite impressive, all the more so when the voices occasionally sound pushed to their limits; but the purpose of all the splendor, the underlying celebration of deep faith, gets somewhat short shrift. This is, in its dramatic way, a highly involving performance, but its way is perhaps not quite the way that Bruckner intended it to take.

     The other great sacred work in the last two Bruckner from the Archives volumes, Psalm 150, fares better, perhaps because its more-unidimensional atmosphere – it is strictly an ebullient hymn of praise – is more direct and accessible than the somewhat more-nuanced Te Deum. Unlike most other performances in the Bruckner from the Archives series, this one has been available before, on Westminster Records, one of whose three co-founders was conductor Henry Swoboda – who leads the Vienna Akademie Kammerchor and Vienna Symphony Orchestra in this reading, which dates to 1950. Psalm 150, like the Te Deum, is in C major, but Psalm 150 is half the length of the earlier work (the Te Deum dates to 1884, Psalm 150 to 1892 – it is Bruckner’s last major sacred work). The shorter time frame and sustained brightness of the music, with words that are themselves music-focused through references to trombones, harps, drums, cymbals and other instruments, make for a well-thought-through and nicely balanced performance in which Swoboda remains firmly in control of his forces.

     Firm control is also a hallmark of Bruckner’s Eighth as conducted by Eugen Jochum and played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in a 1957 recording. Unlike many other conductors heard in the Bruckner from the Archive releases, who are skilled but not especially known for their Bruckner performances, Jochum (1902-1987) was a Bruckner expert whose roots as an advocate of the composer date all the way back to 1926, when Jochum made his professional conducting debut leading Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7. He made the very first commercial recording of Bruckner’s Eighth in 1949, using the later-discredited Haas edition of the symphony. By 1957 Jochum was using and advocating the 1955 Nowak edition, and he gives an absolutely first-rate performance of it here, abetted by an orchestra of which he was the founding conductor eight years earlier. All the musical stars align for this first-rate reading, one of the few performances in the Bruckner from the Archives series whose value extends far beyond its historical significance. Jochum takes the full measure of the symphony, to which he brings a sense of very large scale and great drama: this is Bruckner at his most gripping. Nor is emotion in short supply: Jochum plumbs the lyrical and expressive depths of the work from start to finish, turning the Eighth into a deeply moving and very powerful experience – and a thoroughly unified one, which is not at all how this symphony comes across in lesser hands. Of all the remarkable “lost” recordings that this series has rediscovered, this is one of the most outstanding.

     Symphony No. 9 as performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch is not quite at the rarefied level of Jochum’s Eighth, but it too is a highly effective and evocative reading that, by the end, will surely leave listeners wishing – and not for the first time – that Bruckner had lived to complete the finale, which he almost finished but which is not performed by Sawallisch or most other conductors in any of its various completions by other hands. Sawallisch, less of a Bruckner specialist than Jochum, nevertheless has a very strong connection to the composer: Sawallisch led the Vienna Symphony for a decade, starting in 1960, and this happens to be the orchestra that gave the first performance of Bruckner’s Ninth (in 1903, seven years after the composer’s death). That première occurred in the Großer Saal of the Vienna Musikverein, which is exactly where Sawallisch and the orchestra made this recording in 1966. Of course, all the musicians involved were different from those at the work’s first-ever performance, but all great orchestras have a kind of “ship of Theseus” air about them in which the past carries, however evanescently, into the present. In any case, the manner of approaching Bruckner’s Ninth seems to have been passed along, whether directly by prior orchestra members to their successors or indirectly under more mystical circumstances, to the players heard here, because the performance is so idiomatic, so sure-handed, so effective in the way it unfolds and builds within and among the three completed movements, that it very nearly makes a convincing case for regarding this as a fully finished work. Certainly Sawallisch thoroughly explores the very deep and sometimes contradictory emotive elements of the symphony, allowing its intense portions to ring forth with great power while keeping its more-delicate elements extremely quiet and reserved. He treats the fascinating, weirdly flickering Scherzo as a kind of interlude between the grand edifices of the first and third movements, letting it explore its own strange landscape while providing a change of scene, if not exactly any respite, from the intensity of the remainder of the symphony. The extreme dissonance near the end of the third movement is handled especially well here, having a tragic (and almost desperate) character that would not be out of place in Mahler’s Symphony No. 6. To almost the same degree as Jochum’s Eighth, Sawallisch’s Ninth provides listeners with a reading on par interpretatively with just about any conductor’s offering in the many decades between these recordings and the bicentennial year of Bruckner’s birth. Indeed, the sixth Bruckner from the Archives release affirms and reaffirms the importance not only of the composer but also of this ambitious project’s determination to showcase mostly unreleased, long-ago performances of Bruckner’s symphonies and some other works. Taken as a whole, the 12 CDs in this exceptional set of releases vastly broaden audiences’ chances to hear and understand just how important a composer Bruckner was – and just how important were interpreters and interpretations dating to a time before Bruckner’s music was as familiar as it has since become.

(+++) IN TUNE WITH EMOTIONS

Richard Strauss: Sonata for Violin and Piano; Ernest Bloch: Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano; Fauré: Après un rêve, Op. 7, No. 1; Schubert: Ave Maria. Danbi Um, violin; Juho Pohjonen, piano. AVIE. $19.99.

Études for Piano by Boston-based Composers. Jihye Chang, piano. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

     Although most closely associated with the Romantic era, emotional evocation in music existed before that time period and most certainly continued to exist after it, right up to the present day. Works that invite and receive emotive playing do, however, pose something of a quandary in recorded form: even when they come from more or less the same time period, they are appealing as a total package only to listeners who respond to them in the same way that the performers who arranged the recital do. The personal nature of a recording such as a new AVIE release featuring Danbi Um and Juho Pohjonen is apparent throughout: the four pieces offered, two of them extended and two very brief, have little to do with each other and will be effective for audiences only to the extent that listeners bring with them a response pattern parallel to that of Um and Pohjonen themselves. Richard Strauss’ sole Sonata for Violin and Piano is an early work (1887) and scarcely groundbreaking, but it is filled with lyrical beauty that is interestingly complemented by considerable technical demands. Its emotions vary widely, not only in the sonata as a whole but also within individual movements: the first movement is dark-hued at the start and bright at the end, while the concluding third movement opens with quietly thoughtful feeling before becoming very decidedly outgoing. Um and Pohjonen explore the contrasts within the sonata skillfully, but the highlight of the performance is actually the central movement, marked Improvisation, which is the only one with a consistent mood: its meditative quality is here explored with considerable sensitivity and understanding. The other major work on this disc is the second and far less aurally challenging of Ernest Bloch’s violin sonatas, whose simplicity and lyricism – abetted by the inclusion of themes associated with both Judaism and Catholicism – produces a sense of uplift and mysticism, the latter reinforced by the sonata’s title of Poème mystique. Dating to 1924, Bloch’s sonata contains stylistic elements of its time combined with ones that Bloch said came to him after a mild barbiturate overdose. Um and Pohjonen play the sonata with sensitivity and understanding, but it is not as compelling a work as Bloch’s first violin-and-piano sonata and is not an especially felicitous juxtaposition with Richard Strauss’ sonata. Perhaps aware of this, the performers separate the two works with an arrangement for their instruments of Fauré’s Après un rêve, the first of the composer’s Trois melodies (1870-1877) for solo voice and piano. This is a pleasant enough work but not a particularly substantial one, serving here more as a placeholder than anything else. The CD concludes with another arrangement of a vocal work, Schubert’s ever-popular Ave Maria (Ellens dritter Gesang), which dates to 1825 and was not written as a setting of the “Ave Maria” prayer but as the sixth of seven songs in a cycle for various voices based on Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake. The spiritual elements underlying the material are nevertheless the ones most associated with Schubert’s setting when, as here, it is heard out of context; and the piece is played by Um and Pohjonen with a suitable sense of uplift and devotion. The fact remains, though, that the four offerings on this disc fit at best uneasily with each other, and the recording will be most appealing only to listeners who hear it in the same spirit and with the same spiritual attentiveness that the performers themselves bring to all the music.

     Two hundred years on from Schubert’s work, the desire to express emotion through music remains as strong as ever, and contemporary composers reach for connections through various forms and at various lengths. Pianist Jihye Chang commissioned a series of études from Boston-based composers during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and depredations of 2020-2021, and a New Focus Recordings release showcases her performance of eight of these works. Aside from being thoroughly immersed in contemporary compositional techniques, the pieces have little in common: the feelings they seek to evoke and explore are as disparate as the composers themselves. A Bit of Noise in the System by Dan VanHassel skitters up and down the piano amid quick punctuation-point notes and chords. Nam-Ok Lee by Eun Young Lee jumps about the keyboard in exploratory fashion. Mind Stretch by Yu-Hui Chang is a kind of mini-encyclopedia of sounds and techniques that tumble over each other willy-nilly, while belletude (spelled without a capital letter) by Ketty Nez sounds mostly like background material above which interjections appear, and bariolage (no capital there either) by Marti Epstein is delicate, evanescent and often sounds barely there at all. Fleetude by John McDonald is thoroughly disconnected from itself through stop-and-go pacing and fragmented themes whose emotions change in quicksilver fashion, while Idée fixe by William David Cooper is emotionally split in two with its comparatively rigid first portion and more fantasia-like second part. The longest work here is three pieces in one under the title Lowell Études: Three Etchings on Solitude by Stratis Minakakis. Full understanding of the material requires familiarity with the poetry of Robert Lowell, but listeners to whom contemporary musical approaches are appealing will have little trouble recognizing the many uses of extended techniques, such as juxtaposition of the piano’s extreme registers and an emphasis on the piano as a percussion instrument through pedal-performance participation rather than simple enhancement. Chang plays all the études as if she believes thoroughly in their emotive constructs and their composers' sound worlds. Like-minded audiences will enjoy this journey to, through and around Boston’s musical scene, although it is only fair to point out that nothing in the recital bespeaks any particular element of location except insofar as technical and emotional engagement themselves create individualized aural geography.