(++++) THE FLOW’S THE THING

Chopin: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2. Christian Zacharias, piano and conducting Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne. MDG Preziosa. $24.99 (SACD). 

     Sometimes a labor of love can be as much labor as love. That seems to have been the case with these recordings of Chopin’s piano concertos featuring Christian Zacharias – based on the unusually engaging and informative program note about them by Werner Dabringhaus (the “D” in MDG, “Musikproduction Dabringhaus und Grimm”). These performances date to 2003 (Concerto No. 2) and 2004 (Concerto No. 1), and are now being made available on MDG Preziosa, a kind of “archive” label within the firm. 

     Anybody who believes that classical-music recording is mostly just a matter of microphone placement and fiddling with a few knobs or volume-and-balance adjusters here and there, then letting the musicians play as usual, will be disabused of that notion by reading Dabringhaus’ account of the complexities of these particular recordings, which delve into everything from the inability to use control-area air conditioning to the necessity of rearranging instruments in order to capture sound accurately within a theater setting that was not designed for orchestral performances – all of this after being initially unable to locate the recording venue because of map imprecision. A well-told tale of events that are amusing and worthy of recollection in hindsight but were surely quite frustrating when initially endured, Dabringhaus’ reminiscences provide greater context than listeners usually get when it comes to considering just how a particular recording came to be. 

     None of this would matter much, of course, if the performances did not turn out to have been worth the effort to capture them more than 20 years ago – and to remaster them for release now in SACD form. Thankfully, though, Christian Zacharias’ sensitivity to Chopin, both as pianist and as conductor of Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne (of which he became artistic director in 2000), makes this a very worthwhile release that does not require audiences to know anything about its provenance in order to involve them deeply in the high-quality interpretations. 

     Chopin did not much want to write for orchestra – he did so only about half a dozen times – and it has long been observed that these concertos are lacking in their orchestral accompaniment, which is mostly accompaniment rather than genuine interplay between soloist and ensemble. Nevertheless, the works endure and continue to provide great listening enjoyment thanks to their many manifest charms. Zacharias is quite sensitive to this: his impeccable pianism melds well with a conducting style that treats the 40-or-so orchestral players as collaborators to a somewhat greater extent than the music is typically thought to allow. This becomes clear immediately in the very expansive opening of the first movement of Concerto No. 1 – a movement that is half the length of the entire concerto and significantly longer than any other in either of these works. Zacharias conceives its four minutes of introductory material on a grand scale, taking a genuine Allegro maestoso tempo with an emphasis on the second word. This leads to a grandiose piano entry and a performance that thereafter keeps the soloist in the dominant position that Chopin envisioned but that does not allow the orchestra to fade entirely into subservience. It is a winning and impressive way of handling the material, helping to turn the work into something more closely approximating a Romantic-era concerto rather than a solo-piano work with occasional accompaniment by other instruments. After this large-scale opening, it is lyricism that dominates the always-lovely second movement, with Zacharias allowing the music to unfold at a deliberate pace without ever dragging or appearing on the verge of becoming stale. Expressive warmth dominates without ever becoming cloying – and the result is a very strong contrast when the brisk finale sweeps away the rampant emotionalism in a bright and bouncy krakowiak that gives Zacharias plenty of opportunities to show off his nimble finger work. 

     Concerto No. 2 (actually written shortly before No. 1) gets equally sensitive and thoughtful treatment. The concertos are structurally very similar, but Zacharias is sensitive to numerous subtle ways in which they differ. The opening movement of No. 2, for example, is approached with less sense of grand scale, and its lyricism rather than anything portentous comes to the fore. Concerto No. 2 is considerably shorter than No. 1 but places equal emphasis on its first and longest movement. Here Zacharias makes less of an attempt to balance solo and orchestral roles, allowing the free flow of pianistic virtuosity to stay in the forefront of a rather one-sided musical conversation. Zacharias’ playing here is more forceful and intense, more overtly display-oriented, than in the opening of Concerto No. 1, although he is still at pains to bring forth the lyrical beauties of the music. The second movement, even more heartfelt than the slow movement of Concerto No. 1, is pervaded by decorative delicacy that Zacharias offers with admirable clarity of individual notes within the many cascades. And the concluding mazurka exudes charm and a pleasant sense of wavelike motion as its themes unfold and intermingle. Zacharias the pianist expertly balances the more strongly chordal passages with the lighter, shimmering ones, and if the orchestra has little of significance to contribute, Zacharias the conductor does make sure that the ensemble material is presented with style and rhythmic flair. This is, all in all, a highly pleasing release that, the exigencies of recording notwithstanding, comes across as demonstrating that, in this case, love’s labor is scarcely lost, even two decades after these sounds were first captured.

(+++) IT’S ALL ABOUT THE SOUND

Music for Winds and Voice by Ornette Coleman, Oliver Nelson, Eric Dolphy and Jeff Lederer. Mary LaRose, vocal soloist; Jeff Lederer, clarinet; Wildebeest Quintet (Michael Gentile, flute; Mike McGuiness, clarinet; Katie Scheele, oboe; Sara Schoenbeck, bassoon; Nathan Koci, horn). Little (i) Music. $10. 

Lei Lang: Six Seasons—Instrumentation Lab. Charles Deluga and Lei Lang, live DSP; Stephen Drury, piano; members of Ensemble Dal Niente, Mivos Quartet, loadbang, and [nec]shivaree. New Focus Recordings. $24.99 (2 CDs). 

     The way music “should” sound is not always clear. Modern instruments and modern tunings produce effects very different from those employed in times past, and modern performance techniques – vibrato on strings, flutter tonguing on winds, and so forth – have also changed over time. Inherent performance expectations change as well: for example, the improvisational elements that are foundational in jazz have made their way into concert-hall music as well, taking the classical-music world well beyond traditional score modifications such as rubato. Elements of both the jazz and classical worlds intersect on a new CD from clarinetist/saxophonist Jeff Lederer (born 1962) – offered on his own label and including more than a touch of the electronic. The result is music both instrumental and vocal that will not likely reach a wide audience but that should intrigue, even fascinate listeners to whom works by Ornette Coleman, Oliver Nelson and Eric Dolphy already speak. Coleman’s Forms and Sounds, here rather unnecessarily presented as tracks separated by other material, has a strongly electronic aural quality along with some improvised bassoon material. Dolphy’s Woodwind Sextet, mvt 2 mixes enhancements with some very pure instrumental elements, notably in the flute. But most of the material on the disc comes from Nelson: Images, Lem and Aide, Nocturne, There’s a Yearnin’ and Three Seconds, all arranged to include electronically modified vocals (the adjective is “enhanced” for those predisposed to enjoy such modifications). Listeners who know and enjoy the music of Coleman, Nelson and Dolphy – these works or others – will find the differing sound of the arrangements here intriguing, and the entire involvement of a woodwind quintet casts a blanket of sound over the material that differs from what is usually heard. Enjoyment of specific tracks will be a matter of personal preference, but There’s a Yearnin’ and Three Seconds come across particularly well thanks to the clarity of Mary LaRose’s vocal delivery and the attractive differences between the two tracks’ rhythms. Also of considerable interest here is a work by Lederer himself, which has the intriguingly overdone title Cruxifiction (not a word). Arranged for winds and electronics, the piece has a haunting quality that does go on for too long – nine-and-a-half minutes – but that brings forth an interesting instrumental mixture of acoustic and electronic material whose varied pacing, from very slow to very quick, combines to good effect in some respects even though, in others, an underlying repetitive element simply becomes irritating. All the music here is well-played and presented with a sense of commitment to the composers’ forms and their communicative objectives. Heard simply as a sequence of intermingled sounds of varying types and points of origin, the pieces will be worthwhile experiences for audiences that gravitate to mixed genres and interpretation/reinterpretation of established composers’ works. 

     And speaking of intermingled sounds, they are very much the point of a very extended work called Six Seasons by Lei Liang (born 1972). New Focus Recordings offers the two-hour piece on two CDs, the first (Solos) lasting an hour and a quarter, the second (Ensemble) taking up the remaining time. Rather than being continuous, Six Seasons consists of a series of short works, ranging in length from less than one minute to more than 10. Most are not music in a traditional sense – the opening Prelude, for example, starts with the call of a beluga whale, followed by electronic-keyboard chords. The following items include a baritone solo featuring indrawn breath that sounds like an extended scream of pain, a trumpet-and-trombone item that sounds like percussion, and then pieces for piano, harp, bassoon, ensemble, trumpet, voice, trombone, bass clarinet, piano, cello, and electric guitar. The point made again and again is that he instruments do not sound like what listeners will expect them to sound like: Liang explores soundscapes that insist on being something beyond the “merely” aural, reaching out to – well, what they reach out to is far from clear. The sounds emanating from all the instruments are altered, filtered, overlaid, switched, expanded or contracted, and generally transformed into something recognizable as sound but not in terms of its point(s) or instrument(s) of origin. Liang’s idea involves taking ocean sounds (recorded off the coast of Alaska) and mingling them with highly modified instrumental sounds and extended performance techniques in order to produce a sense of immersion – presumably within the ocean, although this is never made explicitly clear, with some sections sounding more as if they are transporting listeners to the innards of a toilet bowl or the workings of a thunderstorm’s clouds. Both animal calls and instrumental sounds are occasionally intelligible, but their clarity comes within a sonic environment designed to distort perception and undermine the reasons for being of animals, instruments, and performers. The first part of Six Seasons ends with two pieces labeled Postlude, one sounding like gentle rain interrupted by a crash and the other like a small shriek with tiny bits of piano sprinkled on it. Liang’s determination to be perceived as extremely avant-garde is everywhere apparent, and the notion that only the cognoscenti can possibly appreciate the depth and richness of his tone-and-noise painting pervades  the project. The second, “ensemble” part of Six Seasons is entirely for grouped instruments and consists, unsurprisingly, of six elements – which share their titles with six of the parts of the “solo” material. However, it is not always apparent that there are multiple instruments involved in these items, since the alterations worked in the “solo” material are also used in the “ensemble” elements, and the intentionally extensive electronic manipulation does an excellent job of concealing the source of whatever is being modified. The primary difference in the “ensemble” segments is length: they are much longer than the individual pieces in the “solo” realm. But they produce exactly the same impressions by using exactly the same methods of distortion, overlay, extension, textural modification, and so forth. Two hours of this is a lot of it, and if Liang was looking to reach an extremely rarefied audience and take listeners on a long, long journey to realms whose connection with any traditional notion of music is obscure at best, he has certainly succeeded. Six Seasons demonstrates, if any such demonstration is still necessary in the 21^st century, that contemporary composers are quite as capable as slightly less-recent ones of producing material that will be extremely off-putting to the vast majority of potential listeners while making a tiny subgroup of fans feel as if its members are part of an inner circle of auditory superiority.