(++++) 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.