(++++) FOR THE SOUND OF IT

Bruckner: Symphony No. 5, transcribed for organ by Erwin Horn; Françoise Choveaux: Bruckner Window VI—Poème pour orgue, Op. 285. Hansjörg Albrecht, organ. Oehms + YouTube. $14.99.

     The fascinatingly quixotic Oehms project to release Bruckner’s symphonies in transcriptions for organ, mostly made by Erwin Horn, continues to be as engaging as it is odd and historically unjustifiable. With Symphony No. 5, it also runs into some procedural problems that render one of its intriguing elements less satisfactory – although this is not an issue with the symphony transcription itself, nor with the always-exemplary playing of Hansjörg Albrecht.

     Bruckner’s Fifth is above all a work of counterpoint, and its structure is unusual: it is the composer’s only symphony whose opening movement starts with a slow introduction; the first and last movements are not only related thematically but also begin identically; and the second and third movements start with the same notes, albeit in very different tempos. The contrapuntal elements of the work translate rather well, if quite inauthentically, to the organ: this is in large measure a fugal symphony, with a double fugue on the finale’s main and chorale themes being a significant element – and one that Albrecht handles with his usual attentiveness to detail and exceptional coloristic abilities.

     Other parts of the symphony do not come across so well, however. One of the work’s nicknames is the “Pizzicato,” because three of the four movements (all except the Scherzo) begin with pizzicato strings – and this particular effect does not translate very satisfactorily to the organ, which is, after all, essentially a wind instrument. To be sure, “Pizzicato” is not Bruckner’s own designation for Symphony No. 5: he called it the “Fantastic.” But that is not particularly helpful, since the title – unlike that of No. 4, which he called the “Romantic” – does not fit the music to any notable extent.

     Whatever its nickname, this is a very large symphony, lasting more than 76 minutes in Albrecht’s organ performance. And that produces a problem for the concept of including a newly composed “Bruckner Window” with each organ version of a symphony. One was written for the Fifth, by Françoise Choveaux (born 1953), but it would have been a stretch to add its 10-minute length to that of the symphony itself: the old notion of an 80-minute maximum for CDs no longer applies, but 86 minutes would still really be stretching things, and there would arguably have been a diminution of sound quality to accommodate the additional music on a single disc. Therefore, Choveaux’ Poème pour orgue, Op. 285 has been relegated to a YouTube performance, where the sound quality and overall ambience do not measure up to those of the CD and where the ongoing visuals of Albrecht and of St. Margaret Munich, whose Klais Organ he plays, are a significant distraction from Choveaux’ work. The piece itself is a curious one: it flickers in and out of actual Bruckner themes, opens quietly and with delicacy and proceeds in that mode for two-and-a-half minutes, then swells significantly for a full minute, and then goes quiet again. As it continues, it contains lots of Bruckner elements but, because of the way Choveaux uses them, it sounds almost athematic. A sudden speedup around seven minutes in, with considerable dissonance, leads to a climax a minute later – after which the work goes nearly silent to the end. Actually, the last two minutes are more delicate and affecting than the rest of the piece, which accomplishes the stated goal of “commenting on” Bruckner through a modern idiom, but which in and of itself is somewhat underwhelming.

     In some ways, Bruckner’s Fifth is itself underwhelming in this organ version: however impressive Albrecht’s playing may sound, however respectful and well-thought-out Horn’s transcription may be, this is a symphony in which Bruckner very carefully thought through and assembled a variety of instrumental effects that collectively produce the elegantly contrapuntal elements of the music – and that simply do not exist in this recording, except in rather palely imitative form. Nevertheless, as with all the entries in this strange and strangely appealing series – this is the sixth of them, since Symphony No. “0” is included in the set – both the transcription and the performance contain attractive, even engrossing elements that occasionally shed new light on Bruckner and more often give aficionados of his music a chance to hear it in a genuinely beguiling way. These are basically recordings for Bruckner fanatics; they are certainly not for listeners new to the composer and his symphonies. And they repay audience fanaticism with some of their own: there may be no legitimate justification for turning Bruckner’s symphonies into organ works, but anyone who simply accepts that this can be done and therefore is being done will have to admit that Albrecht delivers each of these oddities, including the Fifth, with tremendous skill, absorption and compelling engagement.

(++++) IN CELEBRATION OF FAILURE

When Everything Went Wrong: 10 Real Stories of Inventors Who Didn’t Give Up! By Max Temporelli and Barbara Gozzi. Illustrations by Agnese Innocente. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

     Most new things don’t work. Most new ideas don’t pan out. Most plans fail. We rightly celebrate the grand innovations of thought and process and creativity that bring us so many items we appreciate and take for granted today, but we tend to behave as if all that stuff just happened – as if somebody came up with an idea, had a “eureka!” moment, and something new and significant was born into the world.

     The reality is very, very different, and the sooner young, up-and-coming idea merchants and creators realize that, the better. Thus, When Everything Went Wrong is a valuable learning guide and an unusually straightforward way to let young people know – in a thoroughly nonjudgmental way – that most of the wonderful things they conceptualize are not going to happen. Or at least not the way they think they will happen.

     When Everything Went Wrong urges what is essentially a failure-is-success way of thinking, and the textbook case of that is Thomas Edison – whose accomplishments are presented first in the book. Edison had a devilishly difficult time figuring out how to make an electric light bulb. But he never gave up trying and experimenting, and became famous (and eminently quotable) for proclaiming that he had not failed 10,000 times but in fact had succeeded in showing that 10,000 things would not work. What a fantastic attitude! Young readers of When Everything Went Wrong who are able to absorb that viewpoint will have a much, much easier time in their future creativity than ones who become despondent over failed efforts – of which there are many, in any area you care to name.

     After presenting Edison’s situation, Max Temporelli and Barbara Gozzi set forth nine others, in multiple fields. The reason for their sequence of presentation is unclear – it is neither alphabetical nor chronological – but each person profiled in the book is worth knowing about, and if none is as well-known as Edison, all were highly accomplished inventors who had to find their way to success by trudging through failure after failure.

     What all these creative thinkers had in common was the ability to bounce back when things did not work as they thought they would – and the ability to look at what went wrong and use whatever it might be as a gateway to a better approach. And as the book shows, failure need not be technological: it can also be society-driven. Thus, Jan Ernst Matzeliger’s creation of a machine to make shoe construction far more efficient – allowing a tenfold increase in producing shoes – was blocked for years by traditional shoemakers’ skepticism. And James Dyson’s invention of a bagless vacuum cleaner fell victim to the manufacturers of traditional-with-bag units – so that Dyson had to set up his own company to produce his revolutionary unit.

     Most people profiled in When Everything Went Wrong are not household names. Yes, many readers will know of Guglielmo Marconi and his creation of the wireless telegraph, and at least some may have heard that Wilson Greatbatch developed the cardiac pacemaker. But fewer likely have heard of Margarete Steiff, who tried to make pincushion elephants but found that people refused to use them that way, preferring to have children play with them – resulting, later, in Steiff’s invention of the teddy bear (whose connection to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is unaccountably omitted from the book). Stephanie Louise Kwolek’s role in creating the super-strong fabric Kevlar is much less known than Charles Goodyear’s success at developing artificial rubber (although the book wrongly calls him “the inventor of rubber” – there are multiple small errors of this sort that somewhat mar the work’s quality). And although microwave ovens and Coca-Cola are so much a part of everyday life that it is hard to think of when, how or by whom they were first created, it is fascinating to read the stories of Percy Spencer’s melted candy bar (which led him to figure out microwave cooking) and John Stith Pemberton’s accidental creation of Coca-Cola when he poured sparkling water into a medicine mix based on cocaine (an ingredient not mentioned in the book, although it is key to the story). Pleasant illustrations by Agnese Innocente nicely complement the brief but mostly accurate stories in When Everything Went Wrong, and young readers – and even adults – will not only enjoy the book but also benefit from the underlying message (repeated in one form or another in every case study) that failure is and must be seen as a learning experience for success to follow. “Enjoy failure and learn from it,” said James Dyson, and while that can be a very hard lesson to learn, it is a wonderful one to internalize, and one that is taught to very good purpose in When Everything Went Wrong.

(++++) THE SOUND’S THE THING

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 17 and 27. Walter Klien, piano; Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. Vox. $16.99.

Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2; Vocalise. Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Vox. $16.99.

     Forty or so years ago, as digital recording began to take over from analog, the transformation of recorded sound was by no means instantaneous or its success in all forms of music predetermined. The reason was that, while digital recordings of pop music were always fine – the music is largely formulaic and does not require a particularly wide dynamic range, and digital recording worked especially well for very loud sounds – classical music did not adapt readily to the new approach. Given its greater nuance and subtlety, its need for clarity of individual instruments as well as massed ones, the crucial importance of a very-soft-to-very-loud range of sounds, and the pesky insistence by audiophiles that recording quality could at times be a sufficient reason to choose one performance over another, classical music was pulled into the all-digital age with far more misgivings than pop music ever had. Given that classical music is a niche market, the weight of popular music was certain to tip the economic (if not artistic) balance toward digital recording rather quickly, even if classical-music listeners were left unsatisfied. So the triumph of digital was something of a foregone conclusion, whether classical-music audiences liked it or not.

     Many did not, believing that the richness and warmth of top-notch analog recordings could not be matched by even the finest digital ones. Objectively speaking, that was correct; but it was also irrelevant in the face of technological progress. Happily, over the years and decades, advancements in digital processing brought classical recordings to the same level as the best analog ones (or very nearly the same level); and in recent times, methods have been developed for re-processing excellent analog recordings in digital form, allowing those performances to re-enter circulation in the now-ubiquitous digital format while giving listeners who never had a chance to hear the originals an opportunity to find out what all the fuss was about.

     And that brings us to two new recordings on the revived Vox label – once synonymous with very wide-ranging repertoire in performances that were, to put it charitably, highly variable in quality. At their best, Vox recordings were at the summit of audio quality in their time – and even if performers were often second-tier rather than among the absolute best, the enhancement of performance quality through excellence of recorded presentation made the best Vox releases real gems.

     What made them so notable is quite evident on these CDs of Mozart from 1978 and Rachmaninoff from 1979. The Mozart concertos may not be in any sense historically informed, and the Rachmaninoff may not be played with the sumptuousness accorded this music by the world’s best orchestras – but the performances are well above average in quality, played with warmth and spirit and engagement, and the recordings (done by the much-praised Elite Recordings team of Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz) really are exemplary. The CDs are stated to be “ultra high definition transcriptions,” so it is difficult to be sure how much of the recorded quality originated in the 1970s and how much is the result of painstaking updating. But one thing is certain: the transcriptions could not bring forth any sound or balance that was not already present in the original recordings. And that means that the inherent quality of production underlying these discs was very fine indeed – including a more echo-intensive sonic presence than is usual in digital recordings, and that gives a close parallel to the experience of listening to a concert-hall performance from a seat close to the stage. In the Mozart, the sound of Austrian pianist Walter Klien’s instrument is always noticeably in the forefront, but Klien comes across as first-among-equals rather than a full-scale counterbalance to the orchestra, as the piano often became in Romanic repertoire. Stanislaw Skrowaczewski paces the Minnesota Orchestra well, and if the ensemble does not quite have ideal precision and sectional balance all the time, it makes up for any minor flaws through the musicians’ comfort with the concertos and their apparent enjoyment of the music. The whole CD has lovely flow, with both concertos nicely paced – unrushed but never overly slow. The variations that make up the finale of No. 17 are especially delightful here.

     The Rachmaninoff symphony has a vast and brooding quality in Leonard Slatkin’s interpretation, and the expansiveness of the symphony is turned to its advantage instead of seeming overdone (although, irritatingly, Slatkin does not repeat the first movement’s exposition, which certainly lengthens this already-long movement but which produces greater balance for the symphony as a whole). The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra is not really an ideal ensemble for this broad, hyper-Romantic, sometimes nearly swooning material: it is a touch too clean and clear, just a bit on the thin side in the strings, so the music does not come across as being as weighty as it can (although some listeners will likely find this a positive element of the performance, not a negative). Slatkin does not hesitate to let the emotionalism of the music flow and even overflow, but he also knows when to keep things somewhat more restrained, as in his lovely handling of the Vocalise that is offered as an encore. The high quality of modern digital recordings is now taken for granted, and indeed they have become significantly better in recent years, to the point at which even the most serious audiophile can generally be satisfied with them. It did, however, take quite some time for digital audio to catch up to the best analog audio that preceded it. The chance to hear digital transcriptions of some of that older, top-quality audio, placed in the service of very fine musical performances like these, is a most welcome one.

(+++) SEPARATIONS AND JOININGS

Mozart: Symphony No. 40; Serenade in G, K. 525, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”; Vivaldi: The Four Seasons—Summer; Bassoon Concerto in E minor, RV 484; Holst: St. Paul’s Suite; Bach: Violin Concerto No. 1; Violin Sonata No. 3—Adagio. Ontario Pops Orchestra conducted by Carlos Bastidas. OPO. $15 (2 CDs).

New Music for Brass Trio by Lauren Bernofsky, Erik Morales, Ivette Herryman Rodriguez, Jeff Scott, Dorothy Gates, and Shanyse Strickland. Lantana Trio (Raquel Samayoa, trumpet; Stacie Mickens, horn; Natalie Mannix, trombone). MSR Classics. $14.95.

Lei Liang: Hearing Landscapes; Hearing Icescapes. Lei Liang, electronics; David Aguila, trumpet; Teresa Diaz de Cossio, flute; Myra Hinrichs, violin. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

     The phenomenon of “greenwashing” has become well-known as organizations (usually but not always corporations) create publicity trying to prove how environmentally friendly they are, but do not make any actual significant contribution to environmental responsibility. There is a similar occurrence in the arts that could be called “diversitywashing,” although there is not any such term in common use (yet). Even in its most-benign form, this notion – whatever one labels it – consists of drawing attention to how “inclusive” an organization claims to be, with the implication that this “inclusivity” is a reason to fund or attend that specific group’s endeavors. This is a genuinely unpleasant concept that undermines the enormously high quality exhibited by musicians of all races, ethnicities, gender preferences, or whatever “diversity” may be in the spotlight at a given time. Auditions for professional ensembles are traditionally “blind,” with the musicians not visible to the judges, specifically to ensure that selections are made based on quality of performance rather than for extraneous and irrelevant reasons. It greatly demeans anyone who becomes a member of a professional (or semi-professional) orchestra to imply that he or she was selected for “diversity” purposes rather than for an ability to perform music at the highest level. Yet out of a sense of political correctness or because of some other misguided reasoning, many arts groups push the “diversity” button at every opportunity – as the Ontario Pops Orchestra does by calling its new two-CD release “Breaking Barriers” and focusing on soloists Yanet Campbell Secades, Tanya Charles Iveniuk, and Marlene Ngalissamy because of their heritage and skin color rather than the high skill they exhibit on violin (Secades and Iveniuk) and bassoon (Ngalissamy). However well-meaning all this may be, it is also somewhat absurdist when considering CDs, on which the performers are invisible and their capabilities must stand on their own. It is hard to imagine any reason to own this release because of the background or skin color of the soloists – or, for that matter, the background (Colombian) or skin color (white) of conductor Carlos Bastidas. The music needs to stand on its own; the performances must speak for themselves.  And the works chosen for this debut recording by the Ontario Pops have to speak more loudly than other pieces would need to, because all six items are standard-repertoire works with many fine recordings available. The good news in this is that all the performances here are quite good, and listeners who would like to own this specific grouping of material (which admittedly is a rather odd combination) will find the Ontario Pops versions more than satisfactory. Mozart leads off both CDs, with the stately Minuetto a highlight of Symphony No. 40 – although the Allegro assai finale is taken rather too slowly. In Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the first movement is a bit heavy and the second definitely of the Romantic persuasion – a rather old-fashioned way to handle the music, but one that works well for listeners who enjoy this approach. Here too, though, the finale is on the slow side, lacking a certain joie de vivre. Back on the first disc, Vivaldi’s “Summer” starts quite languorously – this is an emotive but not historically informed performance – but sounds quite good, and here the finale is the high point. Holst’s St. Paul’s Suite, which concludes the first CD, starts with strong rhythmic emphasis, continues with pleasantries in both middle movements, and concludes with a really rousing finale: this is the most “pops-like” work on either disc, and it comes off with the most ebullience and stylistic panache. On the second CD, Mozart is followed by some somewhat heavy-sounding Bach, the slow movement of this concerto being more downbeat and draggy than it needs to be. The finale is the best of the movements, with pleasant lilt and verve. The concerto is followed by the Adagio from Bach’s third violin sonata (in C, BWV 1005), which is played sensitively but with a bit too much Romantic inflection. This disc concludes one of Vivaldi’s three dozen bassoon concertos, which contrasts interestingly with the Bach concerto: both are in minor keys (Bach’s in A minor, Vivaldi’s in E minor), which are less than common in both composers’ music. The Vivaldi, like the Bach, tends to plod a bit, although the second movement’s expressiveness is welcome despite being somewhat overdone. The finale, jaunty even though it is in the minor, is a nice blend of warmth and virtuosity. Everything on both CDs is well-played and can stand on its own from a performance perspective – sociopolitical posturing is unnecessary, and is even counterproductive in asking potential listeners to pay attention to something other than the music itself. Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach and Holst are quite enough, on their own, to attract an audience to the Ontario Pops Orchestra. 

     The whole “barriers” thing comes up again on an MSR Classics release of recent music for brass trio, all six pieces being world première recordings. The disc’s overall title, taken from one of the pieces on it, is “Crossing Barriers,” and this presumably refers to the fact that the Lantana Trio is all-female (its members are on the faculty of the University of North Texas). Again, though, potential listeners will likely focus more on the music than on the gender of the people performing it – which makes perfect sense. The pieces come across quite differently despite having some compositional elements in common through their contemporary handling of instrumental sounds. The three-movement Trio for Brass (2002) by Lauren Bernofsky (born 1967) is assertive in its dissonant elements but at its most engaging in the Berceuse second movement. The five very short Black Bayou Vignettes (2019) by Erik Morales (born 1966) bear the neat titles Madly, Sadly, Wildly, Weirdly, and Finally! The conclusion is not quite as emphatic as that exclamation point would imply, but there is some clever tone-painting throughout, especially in the faster movements. Adagio y Danza (2021) by Ivette Herryman Rodriguez (born 1982) provides a suitable contrast between its two movements, although the first is less expressive and the second less danceable than might be expected. The work that gives this CD its title, Crossing Barriers (2021) by Jeff Scott (born 1967), is a three-movement exploration of or comment upon three cities, two in South America (in Ecuador and Brazil) and one in Africa (in Uganda). The music does not appear particularly reflective of local folk tunes or forms of expression: it is more of a personal exploration of and response to the locales and the people living in them. The interweaving of the brass is handled with considerable sensitivity here, and the flow of the middle movement (about Kampala, Uganda) is particularly attractive. Between Friends (2019) by Dorothy Gates (born 1966) is a three-movement trio that is more harmonically old-fashioned than other works on this disc – and often more rhythmically adventurous. The lyricism of its central Andante cantabile is communicated especially well. The disc concludes with A “B.O.P.” (Beats of Power) (2021) by Shanyse Strickland (born 1991). The irregular rhythms and quickly varying themes and tempos make for a strong contrast with Gates’ work and provide a somewhat acerbic conclusion to a CD of uniformly high-quality performances of music that is quite capable of standing or falling on its own, without the need of any particular societal gloss.

     The concern of a New Focus Recordings CD of the music of Lei Liang (born 1972) is more on linkages than on barriers; but here too there are overriding non-musical elements that listeners are expected to accept and internalize without necessarily letting the music speak for itself. Indeed, in Hearing Icescapes, Liang tries to suggest that music must not speak for itself but must respond to wider circumstances. This work, which takes up nearly an hour of this hour-and-a-quarter-long disc, uses a trio, but here there is only one brass instrument, trumpet, along with flute and violin. And the sounds of the trio are subservient to those recorded in the waters near Alaska and subsequently modified by Liang to try to express his concern for a threatened environment. Hearing Icescapes is very, very long – one is tempted to call it glacial, with pun intended – and is designed to communicate the sounds of ice, wind, water, animal communications and the overall fabric of the Alaska environment in its first portion, “Call.” The even longer second portion, “Response,” is where the trio comes in, with the musicians improvising sounds inspired by those heard in the first part of the work – Liang’s intent being to have performers respond to their environment and, by implication, have the audience understand the necessity of human response to environmental degradation and risk. This is a lot to expect of music – and of audiences – and it cannot be said that Hearing Icescapes is particularly effective as music. But it seems not to be intended to be heard as a purely musical experience: Liang tries throughout to interconnect the world of music with the world at large, and it is for listeners for whom that connection works that this very extended piece is clearly intended. The other work on this disc, Hearing Landscapes, is more modest in scale: three movements totaling 20 minutes. Here Liang uses the human voice as a jumping-off point for electronic modifications intended to reflect and comment upon “High Mountain,” “Mother Tongue,” and “Water and Mist.” The genesis of this work is complex, and listeners who know it will get far more from Liang’s music than will those who do not. Hearing Landscapes draws on the paintings of Huang Binhong (1865-1955) and also on Chinese folk singer Zhu Zhonglu (first movement); mid-20^th-century comedians Hou Baolin and Guo Qiro (second movement); and musical performer Wu-jing Iüe, a master of the plucked seven-string guqin (third movement). Liang manipulates the sounds and recordings of these various artists in multiple electronic ways, intending to produce an overall impression of and tribute to Huang Binhong’s landscapes. None of this is likely to be apparent, much less clear, to listeners who do not know the building blocks of Hearing Landscapes. So this work – like the disc as a whole – must be regarded as a very rarefied production, intended for cognoscenti who are interested not only in Liang’s musical and electronic thoughts and manipulations but also in the ideas and plans that are foundational to his creativity.