(++++) BITS AND PIECES

Christoph Graupner: Quartet in G Minor for strings and continuo, GWV 724; Trio Sonata in B Minor for flute, violin, and continuo, GWV 219; Sonata in G Major for flute, obbligato, harpsichord, and continuo, GWV 708; Concerto in D Major for flute, strings, and continuo, GWV 310; Johann Friedrich Fasch: Sonata à Quattro in G Major for flute, two violas, and continuo; Telemann: Quartet in D Minor for flute, violin, viola, and continuo; Ernest Louis, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt: Symphony No. 1—Chaconne. Musicians of the Old Post Road (Suzanne Stumpf, traverso; Sarah Darling, violin and viola; Jesse Irons, violin; Marcia Cassidy, viola; Daniel Ryan, cello); Benjamin Katz, harpsichord. OPR Recordings. $18. 

Scott Wollschleger: Lost Anthems. Leilehua Lanzilotti, viola; David Kaplan, piano. New Focus Recordings. $18.99. 

Schumann: Waldszenen; Arabeske in C; Clara Schumann: Impromptu in E; Quatre Pièces Fugitives; Brahms: Vier Klavierstücke, Op. 119; Poulenc: Trois Novelettes; Germaine Tailleferre: Sicilienne; Mozart: Gigue in G, K. 574. Sarah Beth Briggs, piano. AVIE. $19.99. 

     There is plenty of music out there that is not so much lost as misplaced: it turns up in odd corners of libraries and private collections and proves to have at least modest historical and/or entertainment value. The same applies to composers: some are relegated to obscurity not because of any inherent weakness in their music but simply because their works do not stand out in any significant way from others of their time. This is largely the case with Christoph Graupner (1683-1760), a well-thought-of musical figure in his era but one whose works faded rather quickly afterwards because, although well-made and pleasant to hear, they were not especially distinguished – with other composers of his era creating equally well-wrought pieces that were more distinctive. An exceptionally well-played period-instrument performance of four rediscovered Graupner chamber works by the Musicians of the Old Post Road pretty much confirms the notion that Graupner was a workmanlike composer of well-made but rather stolid material that fit well into the expectations of his time without pushing any boundaries or exploring new concepts. Everything is pleasant, unassuming, well-balanced, and carefully constructed – and not particularly memorable, except to the extent that the performances make it so. Graupner’s G minor Quartet is a highlight of the disc, its two slow movements somber in the Baroque manner and its concluding Presto providing a pleasantly upbeat conclusion. His other minor-key work here is a nicely balanced Trio Sonata that also features a bright finale. The G major Sonata shows the composer writing idiomatically if not very distinctively for flute, while the D major Concerto has more lilt for the wind instrument and a pleasantly pastoral feeling about it, with a bouncy finale requiring considerable breath control. The Graupner works are interspersed with various others in no particular order and to no particular effect, giving the CD the feeling of a personalized program reflecting the interests of the performers – which is, of course, fine. Telemann’s four-movement Quartet contrasts interestingly with Graupner’s minor-key works, its two pairs of Adagio – Allegro movements handled adeptly, with interesting rhythmic touches, propulsive forward motion in the fast sections, and well-handled blending and contrast between the flute and other instruments. It shows, in microcosm, why Telemann remains a towering figure of his time, while Graupner does not. The Sonata by Fasch (1688-1758) is also in four movements and features an especially pleasant flute part in the second-movement Allegro. And the pleasant little Chaconne by Ernest Louis, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (1688-1758), serves mainly to show that there were other composers of the era, including some in the nobility, who were quite as capable as Graupner was of producing well-balanced if not especially memorable musical entertainments. The CD is certainly worth having for a cross-section of little-known music of a specific time period, in uniformly top-notch performances – but it is only the Telemann work that most listeners will likely find themselves wanting to hear again and again. 

     The idea of something lost and found again appears in very different guise on a New Focus Recordings CD of Lost Anthems by Scott Wollschleger (born 1980). This is a (+++) disc of very limited appeal, not only because of the music itself but also because it is a full-price offering for just 25½ minutes of material – the value will be there only for listeners already committed to Wollschleger’s music and/or the aesthetic from which it arises. The 15 sections of Lost Anthems are intended to convey a sense of alienation, which some of them do fairly well, and one of introspective thoughtfulness, at which they are rather less successful. The sound world of this two-instrument work is one that will be highly familiar to anybody acquainted with the techniques and auditory expectations of contemporary music. The inherently rich sonority of the viola is largely absent, abandoned in favor of frequent use of the instrument’s highest register, persistent ostinato passages and tremolando sections, and extended techniques that elicit sounds intended to set listeners’ ears (and perhaps their teeth) on edge. The piano is heard most often in its upper and lower registers – an effect that can be highly dramatic (as in Alkan’s La chanson de la folle au bord de la mer of 1847, for anyone who thinks this sort of conceptualization is anything new) but that here is used mostly to create a rather vague aura of the sinister. The prepared-piano elements and extended keyboard performance techniques are unsurprising and to be expected in modern works of a certain type. The instruments play at rather than with each other, their contrasts evocative of shifting tonal (actually atonal) worlds reflective, at least by intent, of the divisions within modern society – expressions of alienation that are pretty much unsurprising but that audiences attuned to sounds and approaches like Wollschleger’s will find apt, if scarcely congenial. 

     The pleasant, pleasantly played works on a new AVIE disc featuring Sarah Beth Briggs are from an entirely different tonal and expressive universe. All use the piano in far more conventional ways – not surprising in light of the dates of the compositions – and all are offered in juxtapositions that are, if anything, even more highly personal than those underlying the Graupner-and-others presentation by the Musicians of the Old Post Road. Briggs’ chosen pieces exist in very different time periods and have very different sensibilities; what is almost the sole thing that unites them is Briggs’ own feelings about their contrasts and interrelationships – hence, presumably, the CD’s title, Small Treasures. For a listener, a further point of unity is the uniformity of conceptualization and execution of Briggs’ interpretations: she knows just what she wants to say with each piece and just what she wants to extract from the composers’ thoughts. So the dominant sense of pastoral pleasure of Schumann’s Waldszenen and the almost lullaby-like rocking motion that Briggs brings to his Arabeske are as carefully thought-through as are the delicacy of touch and gentle melancholia that she finds in Brahms’ final solo-piano work, his Vier Klavierstücke, Op. 119. However – and this is where the CD falls short despite the top-of-the-line pianism – the arrangement of the material is all over the place, personal to the point of being quixotic. Waldszenen opens the disc, but Arabeske is the fourth of the eight pieces on the release; and the Brahms set appears seventh. Between the two Schumann offerings are two works by Clara Schumann: a delicate, swaying Impromptu, which is essentially high-class salon music, and Quatre Pièces Fugitives, whose lightness of sensibility and quiet warmth occupy a world quite different from that of the Brahms miniatures. These small works’ small pleasures lead to the Arabeske, and then we are suddenly wafted to the world of Francis Poulenc and his Trois Novelettes, another multi-piece set that Briggs handles with aplomb. But these are pieces of a different century and different musical culture, and their appearance is, if not exactly jarring, certainly a trifle outré, especially when it comes to the second of them, Très rapide et rythmé. After the Poulenc, Briggs offers what seems to be an encore, a Sicilienne by Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983). This has a certain level of kinship with the Poulenc, albeit in a somewhat different harmonic universe, but its main reason for being here seems simply to be that Briggs feels like playing it in this context. And it is not an encore after all – the Brahms pieces are placed after the Tailleferre, creating a rather jarring worldview whipsaw despite, again, the excellence of the actual pianism. Then Briggs does finally offer an encore, reaching back to Mozart to do so: his Gigue in G, K. 574 occupies worldspace and earspace quite different from anything else on the CD, cementing the feeling that listeners have sat through an enjoyable hour-and-a-quarter-long intimate piano recital whose contents, if presented in rather helter-skelter fashion, are at least united through the skill of the performer. Listeners for whom that skill is enough reason to own this a-bit-of-a-mishmash disc will revel in Briggs’ way with the music and will, presumably, find their own tastes reflected in her choice of material. For a more-general audience, though, this will be a (+++) CD, a recording whose loveliness of expression and quality of pianism do not quite make up for programming choices that are so individualized as to limit their enjoyability to audiences that are fully in tune with the performer herself.