(++++) SPIRITUAL JOURNEYS

Mahler: Symphony No. 5. Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR conducted by Gary Bertini. SWR Music. $20.99.

Christopher Tyler Nickel: Mass; Te Deum. Catherine Redding, soprano; Vancouver Chamber Choir and Vancouver Contemporary Orchestra conducted by Clyde Mitchell. AVIE. $19.99.

     There is always a sacred dimension to Mahler’s music, even when it is not made as explicit as in Symphonies Nos. 2 and 8. The spirituality can even crop up in unexpected works, such as Symphony No. 5, when a conductor appears as attuned as Gary Bertini was to the underlying emotionalism and sense of connection not only with the work’s deeply felt internal emotions but also with something beyond the personal. The new SWR Music release of Bertini conducting Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR offers an older performance than ones with which those who know Bertini’s Mahler are likely to be familiar: this reading dates to 1981. Bertini (1927-2005) continued to explore Mahler in later decades and with other orchestras, but this Mahler Fifth comes across as evidencing an unusually personal relationship between composer and interpreter, with a strong sense of the transcendent. The first movement features a very clear trumpet opening and deliberate pacing, with Bertini keeping the rhythm very consistent: this is indeed Wie ein Kondukt, as Mahler instructed. There is a strong contrast with the faster section about five minutes from the start, and unusual clarity throughout in the balancing of strings with brass. The delicacy of the timpani is notably contrasted with the lyricism of the strings 10 minutes along, and there is an ongoing strong sense of yearning – this is part of the spiritual dimension here – with a delicate ending. Then the second movement is decidedly stürmisch at the beginning and is paced quickly. Again there is an emphasis on lyricism when the opportunity presents itself, and a great sense of warmth throughout. The movement tends to be a bit episodic, with a stop-and-go quality, but its forward motion is propelled as appropriate, and Bertini dwells on the warm, even sweet elements. Percussion is handled aptly for emphasis but not overdone; the same is true for the brass exclamations. This reading is not as intense or dramatic as some performances, with the result that the final portion has less of a triumphal feeling, but it does offer a sense of uplift before the quiet ending simply dissipates.

     The bright horn proclamation at the opening of the third movement introduces nice rhythmic motion, the pacing perhaps a trifle fast – and again, Bertini offers unusually sensitive balancing of strings and brass. Smooth flow dominates here: the movement is not really kräftig but on the delicate side. Still, there is plenty of heft in the brass when that is called for after about five minutes. The chamber-music delicacy of the scoring comes through especially well here, with fine soloists and impressively soft ensemble playing. The Adagietto is almost unbearably sweet at the start, as Romantic with a capital R as it can be. There is a sense that Bertini stretches out the themes as if reluctant to let them go. The performance, although on the slow side, is not exceptionally so in clock time, but it has an expansive, almost timeless feeling about it. Here Bertini dwells on every possible nuance of warmth, and once more a spiritual element comes to the fore: again and again the music seems about to evaporate, but the melody sustains and spins out further to the end. Then the mood is lightened immediately with the jaunty opening of the finale as the non-string sections return. Bertini moves this movement at a fairly quick pace, producing a strong contrast to the Adagietto. Indeed, the finale percolates along brightly, almost merrily, with a lightness not usually associated with Mahler. There is even something approaching jubilation after about six minutes – and the significantly lightened mood continues throughout, a series of bursts of brightness culminating in a chorale that really does sound like a capstone for the whole symphonic edifice. The sense of a symphony moving “from darkness to light” is pervasive in this performance, and if that is scarcely an unusual path for a symphonic work to take, Bertini manages to imbue Mahler’s Fifth with a sense that both the dark elements and the light ones have resonance beyond the purely personal and individualistic.

     Unsurprisingly, the spiritual elements are more explicit and overt on an AVIE recording of the recently composed Mass and Te Deum by Christopher Tyler Nickel (born 1978). What is unexpected is the comparative darkness of Nickel’s treatment of traditional Latin texts that contain, by their very nature, a healthy dose of spiritual affirmation and uplift. Nickel does not see or set the texts conventionally, for all that he mostly employs expressive consonance in these works (with a smattering of polytonality and, inevitably, a certain degree of dissonance that is never pervasive). The Mass (2023) has a single movement, the Gloria, marked “Brightly,” and it could scarcely be set on any other basis while staying true to the words – but of the seven movements in all, the last four are insistent upon a seriousness that veers again and again toward the dour, although it usually stops just in time and comes across as thoughtful and a touch uncertain. “Adagio,” “Solemn,” again “Solemn” and “Lento” are the designations of these sections, with the very slow setting of the concluding Agnus Dei not so much undermining the promise of peace as turning the phrase dona nobis pacem into a plea rather than an expectation. This is a distinctive and unusual way to set the words of a Mass, and there is a cinematic quality about the work’s expressiveness – no surprise, given Nickel’s forays into film music. The very fine singing of the Vancouver Chamber Choir and sensitive playing of the Vancouver Contemporary Orchestra under Clyde Mitchell make this Mass more a matter of quest and questioning than of proclamatory certainty in the promises of the Credo. And the thoroughgoing praise of the Te Deum (2021/2024), which also includes expressive soprano soloist Catherine Redding, comes across as even more skewed toward a darkness that its reassuring words are designed, if anything, to dissipate. Salvum fac populum tuum, “save thy people,” seems to be the primary message here, beyond the more-formulaic words of praise. And miserere nostri, the call to have mercy upon us, is another phrase that in Nickel’s setting seems more pleading than is justified by the verbiage speravimus in te: there is no overt suggestion that our trust is misplaced, but there is a degree of discomfort in asserting its presence and, as a result, some uncertainty about the final Te Deum words asking that we never be confounded. The Te Deum is more moderately paced than the Mass, with three of the four movements set “Andante,” but the concluding “Grave” produces a final feeling of the crepuscular, if not exactly of the dark. In this way the work’s ending and some of its music recall the exceptionally dour opening of the setting, which is brightened by Redding’s voice atop the choir’s – but not by the specific music she sings, which sounds much less like a song of praise than a rather tentative hope for better things than one actually expects. The unusual handling of the Mass and Te Deum will be clearest to listeners who are familiar with other composers’ more-straightforward handling of these words. But even those from other religious traditions, or none at all, will have no difficulty experiencing the uncertainties and sorrows that sound as if they pervade both these pieces. Nickel’s frequently downbeat settings are undeniably effective, but those who are familiar with the words of these works and with other arrangements of them will be left to look and listen elsewhere for the spiritual uplift that these texts, and the music to which they are typically set, traditionally invite an audience of believers.

(++++) IMPRESSIVE, IF INAUTHENTIC

Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Books I and II. Idil Biret, piano. IBA. $45.99 (4 CDs).

     If any four-to-five-hour chunk of notes can be said to be the foundation of all classical music as it is known today, it is Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, which demonstrates conclusively and inarguably how what is now essentially the standard form of instrumental tuning on Western instruments can be used to produce effective and good-sounding works in every single major and minor key. Never mind that modern tuning is not quite equivalent to Bach’s well temperament or that there are advantages to alternative tuning systems, which produce different intervallic impressions that can be used to good effect – Bach’s 48 preludes and fugues underlie even systems that differ from his, because in those cases well temperament becomes the reference point from which those alternatives deviate.

     More than a musical foundation stone, The Well-Tempered Clavier is the underpinning of Western keyboard technique, and has been for hundreds of years. This is true even though instrumental designs, tuning and sounds are now quite different from those of Bach’s time – and even though it is not entirely certain for which instrument (or perhaps instruments) Bach intended The Well-Tempered Clavier. This is music that belongs to every keyboard artist, and that is why it is part of the underlying educational and performance history of pianists such as Idil Biret. The Turkish virtuoso has performed The Well-Tempered Clavier, in parts or its totality, for seven decades, and in 2015, when she was 74, she made the complete recording that is now available in the long-running Idil Biret Archives series distributed by Naxos.

     It is important to know what this interpretation is and what it is not in order to judge it fairly and decide whether it is worth owning as one’s preferred recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier – or, more likely, as one of several favored versions, it being impossible to produce a definitive reading of this music. On the one hand, Biret’s formidable technique is everywhere apparent here, used sometimes to produce a sense of long lines and extended melodies that go beyond the essence of notes on a page, while being kept in check at other times so the structural underpinnings of the preludes and (especially) the fugues come through clearly and cleanly. On the other hand, Biret’s rendition of The Well-Tempered Clavier is inherently pianistic, beholden to the sounds and sustaining capabilities of a modern piano even when avoiding excessive pedal use and the potentially overdone dynamics attainable through the instrument’s substantial key travel. Here, The Well-Tempered Clavier does not sound at all as it does in historically informed performances on keyboards of Bach’s time. The effectiveness of Biret’s reading requires a willing suspension of disbelief in the aural world of Baroque music and a desire to absorb Bach’s work in thoroughly modern guise and with ears attuned to the 21^st century, not the 18^th.

     Biret certainly makes The Well-Tempered Clavier her own. There are pluses and minuses – some matters of interpretation, others matters of opinion – throughout the four-and-three-quarter-hour span of this four-disc set. So what follows are some once-over-lightly thoughts.

     In Book I, the first fugue is rather stodgy, the scurrying second prelude is very attractive, and the third prelude is also well done. The extended fourth fugue is somewhat too resonant, largely because of Biret’s pedal use – it is worth pointing out that fugues never work quite as well on piano as on harpsichord, because piano sounds sustain even when the pedal is not overused; there is therefore some lack of clarity in the individual lines. Prelude No. 5 is bright and delicate, No. 6 dances bouncily with well-articulated triplets, and Fugue No. 6 has more clarity of the voices than do some others under Biret’s guidance. Fugue No. 7 is presented with an attractively light touch. The very extended eighth prelude-and-fugue combination is a highlight here: the prelude serious although somewhat over-resonant (again, from pedal use), and the fugue deeply emotional. The ninth prelude-and-fugue entry, shorter and lighter, provides an effective contrast. Prelude No. 13 has a pleasantly pastoral feeling, while the comparatively simple No. 15 is handled with attractive straightforwardness. The pleasant Prelude No. 20 is followed by a somewhat puzzling fugue that includes a difficult hand stretch above a held lower note – a comparatively easy effect on piano but a nearly impossible one on harpsichord, which could indicate that Bach intended at least parts of The Well-Tempered Clavier for pedal harpsichord or even organ. Prelude No. 21 is ebullient and nicely upbeat, with a pleasing stop-and-start quality that contrasts well with the more-deliberate rhythm of its paired fugue. As for No. 24, the longest of all 48 elements of The Well-Tempered Clavier, the very extended prelude's steady left-hand bass anchors it well, and the fugue's chromatic theme makes for a good contrast.

     In Book II, the first fugue is nicely paced and elegant, the second prelude has attractive dynamic contrasts, and in the third fugue, Biret successfully keeps individual left-hand notes crisp – although the harpsichord is still better than the piano for this material. In Prelude No. 4, the initial delicacy and wistfulness are effective, but as this piece proceeds, it relies too heavily on the piano's note-sustaining ability. Similarly, Prelude No. 5 features runs up and down the keyboard that are more effective on harpsichord. Fugue No. 8 is one of Biret’s few missteps: it is overly stodgy and tends to drag. But Prelude No. 9 contrasts well with it, being bright and lively, while in Fugue No. 10, the grace notes are especially nicely handled. Fugue No. 11 is jaunty, while the seriousness of Prelude No. 12 is well-communicated – although, as elsewhere, there is a bit too much pedal. The ornamentation in Fugue No. 13 is well-handled, but the bass in Fugue No. 14 is somewhat over-emphatic. Prelude No. 15 is bright and upbeat, No. 18 starts with dramatic flair, and No. 19 features gentle motion. The 20^th prelude-and-fugue combination is the most proto-Romantic of Biret’s interpretations: the dark sound relies heavily on the piano's sustaining of notes, and she handles the fugue similarly. Fugue No. 22 also relies heavily on sustained chordal notes, above and amid which an individual-note line moves stepwise. And Fugue No. 23 likewise depends on individual notes being heard against a sustained chordal background – an effective piano technique unavailable on instruments of Bach’s time. The final prelude proceeds pleasantly and gently and leads to an equally pleasant fugue featuring good balance between right and left hands.

     No listener will mistake Biret’s reading of The Well-Tempered Clavier for a historically informed performance, but no listener should deem it anything less than thoughtful. It would be easy for a performer to overdo the capabilities of a modern piano in order to give Bach’s work scope and sweep far beyond what Bach intended – while undermining its academic/educational elements, which are key to its structure and effective presentation. Biret is too thoughtful and intelligently restrained to misuse all the capabilities of the piano in music created for and within a very different sound world. As a result, she produces, in the main, a sensitive and admirably understated piano version of a work not written for piano but certainly capable of communicating its many pleasures and instructional elements via a keyboard whose capabilities Bach never knew.

(++++) SOLO ENDEAVORS

Franz Xaver Mozart: Piano Sonata in G; Fantasy on the Russian Song “Tchem Tebya Ya Ogortshila” and a Krakowiak; Variations on a Minuet from the First Finale of W.A. Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”; Variations on a Russian Theme. Robert Markham, piano. Grand Piano. $19.99.

Nils Vigeland: Piano Sonata; 9 Waltzes and an Ecossaise; Mnemosyne; Perfect Happiness. Jing Yang, piano. New Focus Recordings. $18.99.

     The extent of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s uniqueness in musical history is highlighted, among many other ways, in the lives of his only two children who survived to adulthood (four others died in infancy). Karl Thomas Mozart (1784-1858), born second, tried to make a career in music, but gave up when in his mid-20s and became an accountant and Italian translator. He did, however, earn enough royalties from his father’s music so that he was able to buy a country estate near Lake Como. Franz Xaver Mozart (1791-1844), the last-born of the children, was only four months old when his father died, so any paternal musical influence would have had to be inherited – which it was not. F.X. Mozart did become a pianist of some note and a moderately successful composer with the misfortune to be a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras – much like Hummel, with whom F.X. Mozart studied. The main way F.X. Mozart found his own compositional voice was through what was essentially salon music, especially the sets of Polonaises Mélancoliques for which he became modestly well-known. But as a new Grand Piano CD featuring Robert Markham shows, F.X. Mozart did have grander ambitions, at least early in his life: the four works on this disc were all created by the time the composer turned 24. The earliest of them – published when F.X. Mozart was all of 14 – draws directly on his father’s music, and is a well-wrought set of variations on the famous Don Giovanni minuet from the opera’s first finale. The seven variations make no pretense to profundity – even the F minor sixth is at most wistful or thoughtful – but all lie well on the keyboard and provide for an effective recital piece. Markham does a fine job with them and, indeed, with all the works here, including another set of variations (published when the composer was 18). These Variations on a Russian Theme wander further from their basis (an unidentified song) than do those based on Don Giovanni, and feature a variety of pleasant pianistic ornamentation that Markham handles with aplomb. A more-substantial work and the latest-composed on the disc is the elaborately titled Fantasy on the Russian Song “Tchem Tebya Ya Ogortshila” and a Krakowiak, which dates to 1815. This is considered F.X. Mozart’s most-virtuosic piano piece and is an interesting amalgam of Russian- and Polish-derived thematic material that becomes increasingly demanding of the performer as the variations progress – after which the attractive Krakowiak lightens matters for listeners although still making significant demands on the pianist. The longest work on this CD is the largest that F.X. Mozart ever composed: his Piano Sonata in G, which he completed at the age of 16. This is a well-made four-movement work that is somewhat oddly proportioned: its emotional center, a solemn Largo, is the shortest movement, lasting only three minutes in a work that spans nearly half an hour. There are plenty of interesting elements in the sonata, including the substantial first-movement development section and the increasingly elaborate technical display in the finale. But compared with the piano sonatas of W.A. Mozart or the early ones of Beethoven that were in vogue at the time, F.X. Mozart’s 1807 sonata is comparatively unconvincing, showing a good grasp of the formalities of the form but no significant interest in exploring new areas of either technique or emotion. It is a fine piece that might be more impressive had it not been created by someone named Mozart – and certainly Markham does his best to present it as convincingly as possible.

     A sonata is also the longest work on a New Focus Recordings CD of the solo-piano music of Nils Vigeland (born 1950). This sonata, begun in 1979 but not put into final form until 2008, retains roots and some structural elements from the past while using harmonic language and pianistic approaches that mark it clearly as a contemporary work. The first movement, which really is in sonata form, emphasizes the piano as a percussion instrument, as so many modern compositions do; the second offers elements of lyricism within a largely dissonant soundscape; and the third and last is notable for its extensive use of trills – not as ornaments, the way F.X. Mozart and many others use them, but as an integral part of the movement’s rhythmic structure. The sonata, which Jing Yang plays with fervor and commitment, takes up nearly half the length of this short (49-minute) CD, but is less engaging than the shorter works on the disc. The single-movement Mnemosyne (1987) offers an effective contrast between quieter inward-looking material and exuberant outward-focused music that is made with a strongly percussive orientation. The four short movements of Perfect Happiness (2000) do a surprisingly good job of expressing forms of joy: ebullience in the first movement, quiet peacefulness in the second, and a mixture of outward and inward feelings in the third and fourth (which Yang performs as a single track). The most-interesting work on the CD, though, is 9 Waltzes and an Ecossaise (1987), whose combinatorial title is reminiscent of F.X. Mozart’s for his fantasy/krakowiak. Interestingly, Vigeland’s piece harks back to F.X. Mozart’s time, although its specific compositional referent is Schubert. Yang does an especially good job of drawing attention to the underlying dance rhythms of the movements, which are often almost athematic but which require (and, here, receive) careful attention to the complementary material for the two hands. Three of the movements last less than a minute, and only one reaches minute-and-a-half length, but there is an impressive wealth of feeling communicated in the aptly named Appassionata and its immediate successor, Sardonico, while other movements clearly reflect such titles as Ostinato and Mesto – this last being the final one before the Ecossaise, which brightens matters considerably and retains a pleasantly dancelike feeling with some elfin touches in the keyboard’s higher reaches. Like Markham’s disc, Yang’s is at its best in the less-portentous pieces that, in the case of Vigeland’s music, showcase clear familiarity with the exigencies of piano performance (Vigeland is, like F.X. Mozart, a pianist/composer) while drawing on forms and approaches of the past and casting them in a more-modern aural idiom.

(++++) FOR ALL SEASONS

Bach: Easter Oratorio; Magnificat. Nola Richardson, soprano; Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, countertenor; Thomas Cooley, tenor; Harrison Hintzsche, baritone; Cantata Collective conducted by Nicholas McGegan. AVIE. $19.99.

     It is a tribute to Bach’s extraordinary creativity that his intensely religious Lutheran compositions, written within the conventions of the 18^th century (although sometimes stretching them), continue to have both musical and liturgical appeal 300 years after their creation. Even in contemporary times that are so much more secular than Bach’s, the emotional intensity of these works is uplifting – even to audiences that do not share Bach’s beliefs and may not even know or understand the words he set, much less their purpose within the ecclesiastical year. No small part of the never-ending appeal of this music are the advocacy and excellence of historically informed performances by ensembles such as Cantata Collective under Nicholas McGegan – interpretations that resolutely refuse to regard Bach and his music as fusty museum pieces and that breathe new (or, rather, continuing) life into Bach’s works by recognizing them as deeply felt expressions of faith that can and do reach out far beyond their original audiences and intentions.

     McGegan and Cantata Collective have already produced exemplary recordings for AVIE of two of Bach’s largest religious works, the St. John Passion and Mass in B Minor. Their new release includes two somewhat less-expansive pieces that nevertheless have grandeur of their own. Both the Easter Oratorio (1725) and the Magnificat (1723/1733) are festive works that call for large orchestras including trumpets, timpani, flutes, recorders, oboes and bassoon as well as strings and continuo. And both have specific seasonal purposes: the Easter Oratorio, obviously, for the celebration of the central mystery of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus; and the Magnificat for the Feast of the Visitation (July 2) and also for Advent and/or Christmas. The works differ in significant ways: the Easter Oratorio largely rearranges music Bach had written earlier, and the text is in German, while the Magnificat is filled with new music and is in Latin (a less-common language in the Lutheran faith). But these historical matters are of no significant consequence for modern performers and listeners – which is exactly the point for interpretations like McGegan’s, which are historically aware without being historically insistent in a way that would make them time-bound.

     What listeners hear in McGegan’s Easter Oratorio and Magnificat is celebratory music delivered with understanding, suitable intensity and an unerring sense of style. In the Easter Oratorio, the four soloists – representing Mary Magdalene, “the other Mary,” Simon Peter and John the Apostle – carry forward the story after the chorus initially urges everyone to “hurry and run” to the now-empty tomb of Jesus (the chorus does not reappear until the very end of the work). The emotional underpinnings of the story are well communicated by the sensitivity of the singers, from Mary Magdalene (here sung, interestingly, by a countertenor rather than the more-usual alto) exclaiming about the “cold hearts of men” to John the Apostle being “delighted that our Jesus lives again” and the chorus, at the work’s end, rejoicing that “Hell and the devil are conquered.” And in the Magnificat, the back-and-forth between chorus and various solo and duet parts enlivens the recitation of the formulaic words of praise and helps give them depth of feeling and conviction. The simplicity and purity underlying Quia respexit humilitatem, and the unusual use of three accompanied high voices in Suscepit Israel, are among the elegantly realized touches in this performance. But such details are always subsumed within the work’s overall structure, which is as it should be. Like the prior Bach recordings by Cantata Collective, this one combines a well-sized chamber choir with a well-balanced instrumental ensemble, with all performers collaborating with great sensitivity to the music as music – and to the messages Bach intended to convey. Those messages are scarcely irrelevant to believers in modern times – but even for those who are not believers, or whose beliefs are not in line with those expressed by Bach through these works, the music, as performed here with expressiveness and sensitivity, conveys heartfelt joy and emotional engagement in ways that reach out across the centuries and well beyond the context in which these works were originally created.