Wednesday, 5.7.08, 6:00 am
Aimez-vous Brahms? (Symphony No.1, op.68)
"Library Building" posts are reviews of recordings I find to be essential to every good collection of classical music - recordings of interpretations that are the touchstone for their repertoire.
There is very little in any music that is universally liked – and classical music is no exception. Very few music lovers would dismiss Beethoven, though plenty listeners will confess difficulties with his late string quartets, for example. Mozart comes as close to universal adoration as possible, but his very popularity will make dismissing him more attractive. Glenn Gould toyed with this strained and self-conscious idiosyncrasy when he declared Mozart incapable of writing a good piano concerto and generally a bad composer. (Just earlier in April, Gould’s 40-minute Public Broadcasting Laboratory telecast “How Mozart Became a Bad Composer” was screened at the Paley Center in New York and Cinématheque Ontario in Toronto.)
Tchaikovsky, a favorite with nearly all, can cause a rash with those who claim his ballets saccharine and (a few of) his symphonies to be dripping with cloying, unchecked emotions in four out of four movements. A view that I can sympathize with. Brahms, finally, isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, either. New York Times and Washington Post critic Anne Midgette wrote an article called “The Allusionist” in which she admitted that, while “not … actually [finding Brahms’ music] odious”, she has trouble liking his music.
She’s not the only one, of course, to voice dislike or reservation about the music of Brahms, who was born today, 175 years ago in Hamburg. Notable in his dislike and incomprehension of Brahms was another birthday boy, Tchaikovsky - born today, 168 years ago. Tchaikovsky, who knew Brahms personally, thought him a “giftless, self-inflated mediocrity”. (At least Brahms wasn’t the sole victim of Tchaikovsky’s strong opinions: Wagner bored him, he found Handel fourth-rate, and Gluck’s creations “relatively poor, though not unattractive”.)
Brahms’ music is variously described as too academic or too emotional (a strange remark, that, by George Bernhard Shaw). Boston critic Philip Hale suggested Symphony Hall be named “Exit in case of Brahms”, Benjamin Britten and Hugo Wolf quipped devastatingly about Brahms. (Referencing Hale, Leonard Bernstein suggested that the anti-Brahms argument only continues among snobs.)
I myself can’t get the proper appreciation on Brahms’ string quartets, have very mixed feelings about much of the solo piano music, and find the d-minor Piano Concerto consisting of great music, but not being a great concerto. But there are many works that I do love. Most of the chamber music, unequivocally, and the symphonies. Following up on the question of how important exposition and repeat are in a classical work, I’d like to look at recordings –recent and not– of Brahms’ works that I deem meritorious, starting with the First Symphony.
Finished and premiered in 1876, when Brahms was already a seasoned and widely famous composer of 43 years, the First Symphony has a tortured 14-year history. The reason for this long period of gestation – Brahms’ self-doubts, the orchestral ‘trial balloons’ that came before it (Haydn Variations, Serenades, d-minor concerto), his insistence of only delivering a ‘finished’ masterpiece as his first symphony, and the looming shadow of Beethoven – are all factoids well enough known. The point is rather that he succeeded in creating four symphonies that are on a developmentally similar stage, great successes, and staples of the symphonic repertoire since their inception.
Self-aware of its dramatic stance, the first movement stomps away with strings driving one way and the pounding timpani going off in the other direction like an old steamer on the Danube. Best at bringing out the drama of ever diverging elements is undoubtedly Leonard Bernstein with the Vienna Philharmonic. I never owned this performance, recorded in 1981, on CD – and what I remembered wasn’t too exciting. Moreover, a DVD of Bernstein conducting the First and Third Symphony with the Israel Philharmonic (reviewed here) didn’t excite me much.
Watching and listening to the First Symphony now, on the DVD release on Deutsche Grammophon, I found myself positively surprised.
Even without hearing Bernstein’s charming introduction, his performance invokes a sense of piercing dread between the sweetly plucked and lyrical moments that the first movement all has to offer. When Bernstein takes the first movement repeat, he does it more than dutifully. His Brahms is broad, but it isn’t as heavy as I remembered. Of course, comparison to Christian Thielemann’s new recording (also on DG, more about which below), helps put Bernstein’s tempos – I - 17:40 (14:20, without repeat), II - 11:06, III - 5:40, IV - 19:29 – in perspective.
Like Bernstein’s, so is James Levine’s Brahms with the Vienna Philharmonic recorded live – and the playing is excellent in either case; a bit smoother for Levine. The Andante sostenuto is a miracle to the extent that Bernstein manages to sustain it at all over 11+ minutes, but remains legitimately contentious. I prefer Levine here, who certainly is not lacking breadth or sumptuousness, clocking in at a fairly conventional 9 ½ minutes. Indeed, in all but the last movement, the ‘broader-sounding-than-he-is’ Levine’s pace is the same or marginally quicker than the no-nonsense Szell (CBS/Sony, Cleveland Orchestra) and the propulsive Günter Wand (RCA, North German Radio Symphony Orchestra [NDRSO]).
If weighty Brahms at reasonable or “normal” tempos is your thing, Levine is among the uncontroversial top choices. Weightier still, and well possibly controversial, is one of the newest recordings, Christian Thielemann’s. It’s a live account from June of 2006 in which he manages what he hadn’t quite been able to do with his Bruckner 5th from two years before – he out-slows Sergiu Celibidache (EMI, also live, also with the Munich Philharmonic). This recording opens with an excellent Egmont Overture (Beethoven) that fits into the high-romantic dress very well: the juxtaposition of noble breadth and gentle power, supported by thundering timpani rolls, convey something of the “firestorm of burning passion” that the SZ-reviewer of the live performance heard.
The Brahms, alas, is of questionable merit. If you like Brahms as a weighty bully, a juggernaut of a romantic symphony, there is much you will find to enjoy in the sumptuous playing of the Munich Philharmonic. Less so, for anyone else. Timings cannot convey everything – sometimes nothing. But here the impression of the ear is in accordance with the numbers. Consider Thielemann’s 14:33 for the first movement – and that’s without the repeat that Thielemann does take.
Some moments sound threatening and lumbering, but on the upside the transitions are well cared for, the voices are developed organically out of the material, and the brass chorale after a good four minutes into the fourth movement (in the Più andante from “C” onward) is every bit as touching as it should be. But the dynamics are, surprisingly, narrower than wide, and the sound rich but not ideally clear. It’s a performance I would have loved to be at in concert and a recording I’d love had I been. As it is, I admire much in it and move on, largely unmoved.
Speaking of unmoved: Wolfgang Sawallisch, a Kapellmeister I much admire, sees his 1991 Brahms First with the London Philharmonic Orchestra re-issued for the umpteenth time. This time again on EMI (the cycle has also been licensed to Brilliant Classics) on their “3” series. Packaged like this, at super-budget price, it’s a good investment for the Schicksalslied, Tragic-, and Academic Festival Overtures, and the Haydn Variations that are also included – but the symphonies, including the First, don’t rise far above the capable and adroit. (Sawallisch, unsurprisingly, does not include the first movement repeat.)
Apart from Thielemann and Celibidache, the Munich Philharmonic has also recorded the Brahms First with James Levine (live on Oehms Classics, which I haven’t heard), and live with Günter Wand on Hänssler Profil. Coupled with a very fine Beethoven First Symphony from 1994, Wand’s autumnal 1997 Brahms does not enthuse me greatly. A rather slow performance, it lacks the tension and energy to navigate the longueurs without sagging. For the extended line, Thielemann, Bernstein, and Celibidache offer more, even in their exaggeration. But most unfavorable is the comparison of Wand with himself from 1983 with the NDRSO.
From the introduction to the last note, this ‘83 recording is the most energetic and propulsive recording I know, with unfailing momentum and excitement. It compares well to the rightfully classic Szell and the somewhat overrated, though equally classic, Toscanini (RCA, NBC Symphony Orchestra). It isn’t so much a fast performance (the fast movements are actually slower than with Levine) as it is a quickening one. The tempi, even within the movements, are between similar and identical with Szell, no note is ever caught slacking, everything is played ‘on the toes’. The slow second and fourth movements benefit from the pace by presenting the music as if unquestionably cut from one cloth.
No Brahms First has yet surpassed Wand in my estimation – but one that came awfully close is Marek Janowski’s with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The first installment of a new Brahms cycle on Pentantone SACDs, it demonstrates how good it is to have this orchestra recording regularly again. (With Baltimore on Naxos, Philadelphia on Ondine, Cleveland and LA on DG, Chicago on its own label, and Minnesota on BIS, the American orchestra recording scene –all but dead a few years ago– is revived again, proving the gloomy naysayers wrong.)
Marek Janowski’s Brahms is a swift kick in the rear of many Brahms recordings out there. “Swift” is to be taken literally. At 15:10 his first movement takes not much longer with the repeat than Thielemann’s without. He is faster in every movement than any other of the above mentioned conductors and yet he scarcely sounds rushed. It’s refreshing Brahms to hear, and should be so far away from the accusations of tediousness that even anti-Brahmsians might find here what they need to love Brahms a little, after all. The coupling with first-rate Haydn Variations op.56a and superb sound makes this disc an auspicious start of a 21st century Brahms cycle.
Wednesday, 4.30.08, 6:00 am
New Releases: CDs
Rehearing Vincent d’Indy
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
I know I’ve come across – and dismissed – the music of César Franck-student Vincent D’Indy (1851-1931) before. I faintly remember an old EMI disc with a symphony and I seem to recall a Marco Polo disc with a chamber works. That - and being unmoved. But my ears have been opened now, by a new Chandos release that makes me re-evaluate d’Indy at once and thoroughly. Instead of being in my mind an also-ran of French music of the turn of the last century behind Ravel and Debussy, I find him catapulted to the forefront of French symphonic writing, all courtesy of Rumon Gamba’s recording of three tone poems with the marvelously performing Iceland Symphony Orchestra.
Volume 1 of d’Indy’s orchestral works opens with the 1905 Jour d’été á la montagne (op.61), a musical day-trip in the Ardéches mountains that makes Debussy’s more famous impressionist works pale in comparison. (That strength of statement may be partly caused by the excitement of discovery – but only in part. After all, it is wonderful to hear fresh music of this quality without having to go back to the two, three all-too-familiar staples.)
The eerie bird calls that toll through the (very dark) darkness of the night barely giving way to dawn (in Aurore) and again just after dusk (in Soir) are of a veracity that reminds me, if faintly, of nature described in great moments of Wagner and Richard Strauss. The hovering opening (in C) has that aboriginal, out-of-nothingness sense also found in the beginning of Das Rheingold, or Also Sprach Zarathustra, or Mahler’s First and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But even in surging daylight, this chromatic beauty of a work remains enormously impressive; most importantly it never lapses into being dainty or epicene.
Still more obviously under the influence of Wagner (and Liszt) is the much earlier La Forêt enchantée (op.8, 1878), created with the impression of the premiere of Der Ring des Nibelungen still fresh in his memory. A horseback-romp through an enchanted forest (a German specialty, that) with a seduced hero and plenty magic, this piece is slightly more explicit and not as hauntingly evocative – but it’s just as effective in telling a (musically) compelling story.
Souvenirs (op.62), finally, is a twenty minute tribute to his evidently much beloved wife (and cousin) Isabelle, who died just after d’Indy returned from a trip to the United States. It’s a tribute truly and audibly written with, as Germans would say, blood of the heart (Herzblut) – powerfully moving and – thus comes Wagner into play again – working around a constantly developed Leitmotiv that he took from an earlier work of his, the op.15 Poème des montagnes. It caps a terrific disc of superb music, excellently played and in very fine sound.
Thursday, 4.24.08, 6:00 am
The Sounds of Korngold
"Library Building" posts are reviews of recordings I find to be essential to every good collection of classical music - recordings of interpretations that are the touchstone for their repertoire.
On May 18th the Korngold exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Vienna will close - and if you have not been there yet and won’t be able to stop by Vienna this spring, you can still enjoy the essence of Korngold from his music. For that purpose I have put together a list of what I think are essential (and non-essential, but beautiful) Korngold works - and my favorite recordings thereof.
.
.
Concerto for Violin op.35 & Much Ado about Nothing, op.11 Suite with Gil Shaham and André Previn (Deutsche Grammophon 439886 - also contains the Barber Violin Concerto). Two great romantic violin concertos and played with utmost mastery and beauty. Unlike on his later recording with Anne-Sophie Mutter (coupled with an unattractively played Tchaikovsky concerto), Previn neither plays up the film music aspect (much to the performance’s benefit), nor does Shaham self-consciously struggle against it’s Hollywood-ring (as does Heifetz, for example).
.
.
Das Wunder der Heliane with John Mauceri conducting (Decca 829402). For any lover of 19th and 20th century opera, this really is a must-have. (I have written about it here before, and it made my Best-of-2007 list.)
.
.
.
.
Die Tote Stadt either with Leif Segerstam (on Naxos 660060) or the classic 1975 recording under Erich Leinsdorf (RCA Victor Gold Seal 7767). Die Tote Stadt is a standard work in the canon of romantic opera – and with this surprisingly tenacious, evenly cast, and marvelously conducted challenger on Naxos, Leinsdorf finally has competition to take seriously.
.
.
.
Sextet with the Raphael Ensemble (Hyperion 66425). This disc (Roger Tapping plays the viola on it, by the way) also contains Schoenberg’s lovely “Verklärte Nacht”. Two of the most wonderful chamber works from that period from composers that would go into such different directions, musically, if not geographically.
.
.
.
.
Symphony in F-sharp (dedicated to F.D. Roosevelt) with Franz Welser-Möst and the Philadelphia Orchestra (EMI 86101). Quite possibly the best recording of this Symphony at any price – but definitively so at EMI’s budget price. This is sumptuousness become manifest. Barbara Hendricks’ Simple Songs”, op.9 (4 out of 6) and Marietta’s famous aria from Die Tote Stadt are more than just fillers.
.
.
.
Concerto for Piano Left Hand with Marc-André Hamelin and Osmo Vänskä (Hyperion 66990 - also contains Joseph Marx’ Piano Concerto). There really isn’t a recording to challenge Hamelin’s account. If the Violin concerto could be thought of Korngold’s Rosenkavalier, the Piano concerto would be his “Salome” (Gary Graffman). The coupling with the deliciously über-romantic Marx is ideal.
.
.
.
Sursum Corda, Sinfonietta with the BBC Philharmonic under Matthias Bamert (Chandos Classics 10432x). These are two early symphonic works and they are tremendous achievements, rivaling the Symphony for bristling romanticism. Bamert and his forces revel in every aspect of it. In Chandos’ very welcome series of Korngold re-issues, this one should probably rank the highest.
.
.
.
The Sea Hawk and other classic film scores in excerpts on a magnificent recording with Charles Gerhardt on RCA Victor Gold Seal 7890 – possibly difficult to find but worth seeking out. (ArkivMusic offers this as an Arkiv Disc!) If you want to hear the very complete music of Sea Hawk, go with William Stromberg’s very fine recent Naxos recording.
.
.
.
Piano Sonatas (complete) with Michael Schäfer (Profil Hänssler 4083) – superbly performed in every respect.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Suite for Piano left hand & Strings op.23 played by an star-powered ensemble made up of Leon Fleisher, Yo-Yo Ma, Jamie Laredo, and Joseph Silverstein (Sony 48253) – coupled with the Franz Schmidt Left-hand Piano Quintet.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Tuesday, 4.22.08, 6:00 am
A Munich Home for Dessau & Ullmann
The Jakobsplatz Orchestra in Munich is a cultural and musical enrichment to what is already a culturally and musically rich town. In this, the small group – made up mostly of Conservatory graduates and students – is aided by a combination of factors. First, while there is a slew of good to world-class symphony orchestras in Munich, there are not that many professional chamber orchestras around. Among those, the Munich Chamber Orchestra (MKO), formerly under Christoph Poppen and much recorded on ECM, reigns supreme. The Jakobsplatz Orchestra vies to fill the void behind it.
Adding to the special role the Jakobsplatz Orchestra fills in Munich’s cultural landscape is its close association with the Jewish community at the Jakobsplatz. Inspired by the construction of the Munich Jakobsplatz Jewish Community Center and the beautiful new Synagogue, it was founded by young members of the Jewish community of the greater Munich region. It describes itself as “a meeting place for young Jewish and non-Jewish professional musicians” with the goal to “encourage dialogue and use the universal language of music to play a role in the culture of living together”. In that function, it adds an invaluable dimension to the Jewish cultural scene in Munich, of which the Synagogue, Museum, and Community Center in the most central location in town are only the outward statement.
Finally, the orchestra benefits from the excellently innovative and unusual programs that it presents under its young and hearteningly curious director, Daniel Grossmann. I have already written about their staging of Viktor Ullmann’s “Emperor of Atlantis”, a collaboration that was a great success not the least thanks to the Bavarian State Opera’s involvement and cooperation. (Even if the music itself is of questionable value.)
In February they put on “The Enchanted Forest”, the second part of Ladislas Starevich’s film L’horloge magique ou La petite fille qui volait être princesse (“The Magic Clock”), which is as delightful, comical, and whimsical a story of a little girl dreaming about being a (miniature) princess in a forest with all its wonder-full creatures, as the accompanying music of Paul Dessau is a treat to hear.
Accompanying this magical, relatively light, fare was Werner Henze’s “Idiot”, a small collection of dramatic scenes from Dostoyevsky’s novel (text Ingeborg Bachmann) that goes with Henze’s fiendishly difficult music that the orchestra, to be honest, coped with, rather than excelled in.
The most recent concert on April 8th featured more ambitious and – partly – rare treats. The Benno Sachs transcription of Debussy’s L’après-midi d’un faune for chamber orchestra may be rare only because the original isn’t, but it offered pleasure through transparency instead of color. The flutist had a particularly lovely, airless tone while the strings were no better than could reasonably expected: two exposed violins are always going to be a likely weak spot in such transcriptions. The orchestration for harmonium, piano, flute, cello, bass, oboe, clarinet, violins, and percussion is typical for the Schoenberg’s transcription club (of which Benno Sachs was a member) that has also brought us wonderful reductions of Johann Strauss, Bach, Bruckner, and Mahler (here, here, here, here, and here).
Things were better in Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder where mezzo soprano Ann-Katrin Naidu impressed amid the passionately, if not always faultlessly, playing band. The horn part’s difficulties demanded their tribute, but bassoon and oboe excelled. Disappointing only the meager cello tone, especially where that instrument would have been so important in the score. Instead of full, resonant, and plump pizzicatos, the player had only flat little thuds to offer.
Naidu’s voice impressed, but not without a strange impression of her gifts being attained through professional work rather than being a natural gift. The more dramatic the musical moment, the more these strengths (literally and metaphorically) came to the fore. A nice sheen – more soy milk than satin – on the attractive surface of her voice doesn’t cover the lack of natural depth or warmth. The mid and low registers promote a nice tone in her voice, but pp passages and the high notes on “Sterne” in the second song, “Dark Flames”, lied outside her comfort zone.
Stealing the show, in any event, was actor Jochen Striebeck who took to the spoken part of Viktor Ullmann’s Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (“The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke”). Grand, elaborate, ambitious, this setting of Rainer Maria Rilke’s youthful poem-cum-epic is considered Ullmann’s masterpiece which, like the Emperor, was created in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. After hearing it performed live, I am inclined to agree about the high regard in which it is held in. (Fischer-Dieskau has recorded it together with Richard Strauss’ Melodrama “Enoch Arden”, but only in the piano version, which suffers greatly in comparison to the chamber orchestra version.)
This story of a soldier, reminiscing heavily, moving to the front in Hungary in 1663, being promoted to flag bearer and then missing the battle after a love-filled night with a countess, only to find heroic death wildly storming into the enemy, was a favorite read of German soldiers in the World Wars, and has inspired not only Ullmann, but also Frank Martin, Kurt Weill, Kasimir von Pászthory, Will Eisenmann, Henri Sauguet, Douglas Lilburn, and Hermann Reutter to compose around it.
With vibraphone, harmonium, saxophone and other assorted instruments, the music made for an enthralling combination of music and monologue. Pittoresque, like music to a film. Or music as a film. One feels that the music really only affirms the mood that one assumes the poem ought necessarily to have, even if it were completely unknown prior to hearing Ullmann’s composition. All this while still sounding very much a composition of its time, or slightly before it. The roaring 20s sound to us out of this composition from the moaning 40s.
Through all this Striebeck spoke, declamed, yelled, sputtered, and waxed in as many ways as there are moods in the poem – delivering an interesting bout with the music over which had primacy, la musica or le parole.
(Another sound world that came to my mind, though unrelated in any way except loose association, is that of Hans Zender’s compositional re-interpretation of Die Winterreise – a very colorfully illustrated travelogue worth hearing for anyone without an overtly developed sense of the sacrosanctity of Schubert.)
It is moments like these – musical but also going well beyond it – that make the concerts of the Jakobsplatz Orchestra Munich so richly rewarding even when the playing often shows room for improvement and the conductor all-too-nice, a bit too well mannered with the music. A little more experience on the part of the former, a bit more grit for the latter, and continuously original programming of neglected, rare, and new works – Jewish or not, secular and sacred – will see this musical institution be indispensable to Munich’s cultural life.
Picture of Synagogue interior © Ulrike Grote
Friday, 4.18.08, 6:00 am
New Releases: CDs
Mahler’s Fifth - Recordings
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
Yoel Levi’s recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony came out in 1995 and so I was surprised to see it cross my desk again, having until now been unaware of Telarc’s “TELARC CLASSICS” series of re-issues. (The covers and notes are the same, but the price is now low-mid.)
All the same, this was a good opportunity to revisit the interpretation that convinced me, when I first heard it, that even an American Orchestra without a Mahler tradition could deliver faultless, possibly spectacular Mahler — and compare it to other more or less recent (re-)issues.
In my survey of Mahler recordings – perpetually under construction, because these days good Mahler recordings are being issued faster than I can type – I’ve placed it rather high on my list for its neutral interpretation and splendiferous sound, just below Riccardo Chailly’s in that ‘category’, whose Fifth is similar in those two aspects but with the Concertgebouw offering more color than the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Quite the opposite from his Telarc colleague Benjamin Zander, who favors drama, sharp contrast, and even exaggeration, Levi falls on the side of what I call “well behaved Mahler”. This is not –necessarily– meant as a derogatory categorization: Chailly, Haitink, and Tilson-Thomas are all at home there, and by all accounts superb Mahler conductors. But if Zander, Mitropoulos, Bernstein, and Sinopoli are your (only) measure of what makes good Mahler, Levi won’t be for you in any case.
Among recently issued Mahler Fifths is Solti’s “final performance in a concert hall”, with the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich (Decca). A monument to Solti, maybe, but certainly not to Mahler. It isn’t even Solti’s best recording of the Fifth, which should be all the damnation necessary for Mahlerians to stay away. Dudamel (on DG) audaciously recorded an audacious Mahler Fifth: A success until compared to other versions. Perhaps it is marred by excitement for its own sake? Dudamel is to be experienced live for the whole deal – on CD his undeniable charm and magic suffer.
At least in Europe, the Berlin Classics “Basics” edition is available, which also includes a Mahler Fifth. For the price of a fancy coffee drink, you can purchase this unpresumptuous looking CD with a picture of the Venice canals (Hello Visconti!), but no performer information on the front cover. It reveals itself as Václav Neumann’s first, 1969, recording with the Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig and it is a performance not to be missed at any price. Like a swift kick in the rear, this interpretation never stalls and it moves through the treacherous Adagietto in unsentimental yet loving nine minutes and forty seconds. The first movement is nice and tight – the instruction “Schritt”, even a ‘measured’ one, being a rather brisk walk, after all – not a Sunday saunter. (This performance is also included in the mix-and-match Brilliant Mahler box.)
Simon Rattle’s Berlin Fifth just re-issued in the Rattle-Mahler box set on EMI (despite Sir Simon’s insistence that his Mahler traversal was not to be considered a “cycle”), suffers from relatively dense sound compared to the clear and open sonics of Levi. And Rattle’s saggy Funeral March just about sabotages the excellent last two movements.
The first movement of this symphony can –should– be riveting and full of tension in-between the lacunae of funeralesque calm. Neumann achieves this with tight screws, Kubelik (DG, but not –sadly– on Audite) through buoyant vigor, Bernstein (DG) at least partly through exaggeration. Best of all – most compelling and emotive (!), most unforgivingly relentless (and this may be a surprise or even mildly controversial to readers) – is Pierre Boulez (DG) in this. Levi manages better than some, but not to the degree that these latter mentioned conductors do.
Uncompromising and inevitable, too, is Haitink in the Fifth during the Eurovision Christmas Matinée concert (25 XII 1986). Alas, that performance, part of a near-complete set on Philips, can only be gotten from the Netherlands these days, so comparison (otherwise a given, not the least because of very similar timings with Levi) won’t be terribly helpful to most. (The set is also available on DVD, now.) But before this review sprawls too much toward a comparison of Fifths in general, back to the Levi at hand:
Levi’s second movement, with just over 15 minutes on the slow side, has all the momentum it needs, even when the delicate slow section comes to a virtual hold. The sound is so detailed that you can hear the violinists’ fingers slide on the strings – yet without being so intrusive that you can’t ignore it, if you don’t want to hear it. The Telarc sound offers almost surprising roundness here, not the stereotypically ‘glare & blare impressiveness’ that their engineers often try –and succeed– to impress with.
I am missing, amid all the detailed excellence, the vehemence in this movement. I wish it grabbed the listener more by the lapels: After sawing and hacking through the turmoil, with winds and brass snarling along, the premature climax of the broad D-major chorale (12:10) should transport even the most reluctant ears. Mine only get nudged. There simply isn’t enough sweep with Levi.
The Scherzo is already a big-footed one – but a cynic might attest Levi furthermore the need for a hip replacement. I don’t hear Viennese gayety here, or at least not enough. The clarinet gaggling and clucking beneath the four horns leading to the first prominent horn solo is too reluctant. (Very few conductors – Kubelik, Barshai (Brilliant) – get this done in a nicely, happily clicking, mechanical way). The layered horn entries that come before the next horn solo are not as overpowering as I’d want them to be, but then Haitink does spoil one by letting each instrument linger on its note, to devastating effect. Levi still succeeds compared to Rattle, where that moment is a dud, and Neumann, who separates the notes too much.
The Adagietto has been much written about – and it is so powerfully moving that it survives even Bernstein and his funeral elegy approach or Haitink’s almost accidental fourteen minute indulgence on the Berlin Philharmonic recording. (Fittingly Bernstein played it at Robert Kennedy’s funeral and it was played at Bernstein’s own.)
But it is empathetically not a song of mourning and otherworldly removal – not the symphonic version of “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (for analogies to that, the slow movement of the Fourth Symphony is better suited) – but instead a tender love song. Alma was supposed to have her heart melt over this, not her feet fall asleep. Even if we grant Mahler’s piano rolls of this movement to be played faster than an orchestra would allow (< 8 minutes), surely swift is tendentially more correct than slow.
In any case, few other pieces of music can so plainly demonstrate the difference between objective and subjective time. “Play fast – sound slow” is, or should be, the preferred way. Naumann (9:40), to an extend Rattle (9:32), Zander (8:30), and Barshai (8:20) get this beautifully done. (Bruno Walter, who should know, took just over seven and half minutes for it in his New York recording [Sony], but I can’t say that that makes the best case for my “swift = better” theory.) The key is to keep the movement in constant flow. To what extend Levi succeeds is going to be a matter of each listener’s subjective preference more than measurable or objective musical fact. At 11:05, Levi is in the safe, slowish middle, likely to offend no one and please most.
The fine Rondo-Finale (15:43) is well put together and the ASO outplays many orchestras with greater Mahler credentials that have tried themselves on this. Were it that accuracy was the be-all, end-all in Mahler, this movement would get even higher marks than it already does. But other conductors catch fire much sooner. Rattle does at around 2:40 – Levi at around 11 minutes. The last minute – from the major climax onward – is plain terrific with Levi, though, it should be said, it is difficult to make that part any thing less than impressive.
Over all, my impression of Levi’s Fifth is better than the nitpicking of every movement might suggest. But there is no denying that I do not think as highly of it anymore, as I once did. There is too much high octane competition available, for a Mahler record to succeed on sonics alone. Even if I exclude the love-or-hate Bernstein (a must in every serious Mahler collection but not an ideal first choice) there are still upward of half a dozen recordings that I’d prefer (Abbado/Berlin, Barshai, Boulez, Chailly, Kubelik/DG, Neumann/Leipzig). If, like I, you have one or two dozen versions of each Mahler symphony on your bulging shelves, Levi certainly deserves the space. Otherwise this recording is attractive enough to deserve consideration and sampling, but doesn’t merit a ‘blind’ recommendation.
rec. Atlanta Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta, 13/14 February 1995
TELARC 80394 [72:38]
Saturday, 4.12.08, 1:24 am
Classical Performances
Easter Pilgrimage - Parisfal [sic!]
“Almer Wallfahrt” - © Winfried Eberhardt
-
Easter – the word – and the Easter Bunny have at its root the Nordic goddess of fertility Ostara, via the German “Ostern”. Or so we are told by the Angle-Saxon missionary Beda. The Brothers Grimm took that tale up because it came with an irresistible story: Happening upon a poor bird whose wings were frozen to its body, Ostara saved the poor creature by turning it into a bunny. Having been a bird, it got to continue laying eggs.
Those who follow reviews of new Wagner productions around the world will have heard about Christoph Schlingensief’s Bayreuth Parsifal (2004 – 2007). It was controversial, of course, and intriguing. Criticism and intrigue seemed to have the same source: that this Parsifal had symbolism poured over it by the bucket; among them also a decomposing bunny.
Parsifal, with its themes of redemption and the explicit Good Friday references, is the Easter Opera. And since Schlingensief (apparently fighting lung cancer) also includes an ‘eternal mother figure’ in this clutter, the bunny-symbol might just make sense.
Making sense of Parsifal, no matter what production, is always a tough challenge. It is, frankly, a weird opera, even without decaying bunnies. A Bühnenweihfestspiel – a sacred stage festival drama about the pure fool who is to become the keeper of the holy grail: the last opera Wagner finished, a mix of the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Buddhism, and mystically inclined Christendom that drove Nietzsche bonkers. Not surprisingly, there are about as many interpretations as there are stagings of this opera, always highlighting a new aspect or, more likely, obfuscating it.
Part of the European Easter Pilgrimage were three Parsifal performances: The new production at the Paris Opera (director Krzysztof Warlikowski [of Brokeback Onegin fame], conductor Hartmut Haenchen), Konwitschny’s Parsifal in Munich (conductor Kent Nagano), and the Christine Mielitz Parsifal in Vienna under Christian Thielemann. Not surprisingly, they were about as different as can be.
Konwitschny’s Parsifal in Munich was the first Wagner Opera I ever saw – and at the time I felt like a lobster thrown head first into boiling water. But that experience not having killed me, it made me stronger. And it significantly increased my ability to sit through – and enjoy – a Wagner opera, and ask questions later.
Questions, for example, like why the grail is represented by the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit (a live dove) walking out of a tree (Munich). Or why a young kid saunters aimlessly across the stage in all three acts in Paris. Or why a naked woman sprints across the Vienna stage at the unveiling (!?) of the grail.
Accordingly, there are at least two ways of judging the success of a Parsifal staging: How much thought the director packed into their dramatic development and symbolism (often impossible to figure out at just one viewing), and how effective the staging brings out the known, more superficial elements of the opera.
In Paris, Warlikowski stages Parsifal on a dark stage with a prominent semi-circle of amphitheater staging that looks as though pinched from the set of a Bayreuth Lohengrin first act. In what is fast becoming a modern tradition, a non-speaking role was added as a guide for whatever it is that the director wants us to come away with from this production. In Willy Decker’s Salzburg La Traviata it was the figure of Time/Death, in Claus Guth’s Le Nozze di Figaro (also Salzburg) it is Cherub, related to, but not identical with, Cherubino. In Konwitschny’s Flying Dutchman from Munich there is a Senta archetype whisking through the picture.Warlikowski has a kid, a young boy of perhaps six, eight years who doodles with pen and paper in the background during the first act (projected on a large screen at the back of the stage), scribbles during the second act, throwing the crumpled paper balls at Klingsor, and in the third act tends with painstaking care to a little vegetable garden. In addition, there is an older, genderless figure that leads Parsifal through the acts, at the conclusion of the opera sitting down with him at a table for a little chat. Is this a juxtaposition of the naïve and unknowing vs. the wise and all-knowing – a metaphor for the course that Parsifal takes over the three acts of this opera?
The atmosphere of Warlikowski’s production is academic, not mystic. A pre-med lecture at the Sorbonne in Act 1 (hospital beds; Titurel in a wheelchair), a trip to Les Folies-Bergère in Act 2, and an exploration of post WWII Germany in Act 3. There were some very effective touches to Act 2, apart from the ‘mirrors of self-awareness’. Finally a successful symbolized way of throwing the spear, rather than dragging the old javelin through otherwise modern sets: A lane of red lights ’shot’ toward Parsifal. A second line then turned the thrown spear into the cross, the sign of which Parsifal makes to destroy Klingsor. Ingenious here the Brechtian trick of destroying Klingsor’s castle by turning the lights on and exposing the set: No more castle, no more make-believe – it’s just a stage-set with props and lighting rigs.
The third act is preceded by a screening of the last six minutes of Roberto Rossellini’s “Germany, Year Zero” which brought life to the Parisian audience: “Ridiculous”, “Wagner, please” and some exclamations less suitable for reproduction were hollered through the huge Bastille Opera. It was like a game of who could come up with the wittiest insult for a directorial interference that should have seemed mild and minor to audiences used to Gérard Mortier’s productions.
Interestingly enough, the scene of a young boy wandering alone and abandoned through the wreckage of Berlin, only to jump to his death in desolation, made perfect sense in the retrospective light of the orchestral prelude to Act 3… as if the music had been written to follow a scene like that. And the young boy from the stage (and the film?) now took to tending to his garden in Germanic-meticulous, perversely dedicated ways. Every leaf some attention, every bit of gravel carefully aligned. It was difficult not to think of an allegory on evil Germany (Klingsor) awakening after destruction, after having its un-healing wound (Nazism) treated, and now putting the same single-mindedness it had shown in war to reconstruction. Redemption through advanced agronomy. Parsifal’s return to this scene is one of brokenness, not heroism – his character limps into view as someone who has seen too much to still be light of heart, taking care of the despondent, “Führer-less” (as explained by Gurnemanz) Knights.
Hartmut Haenchen’s take of the score took to de-traditionalizing Parsifal in order to attain something more akin to the original, rather than the Knappertsbusch-ified drag-and-crawl style. (Admittedly, no one crawled with such glorious dignity as Knappertsbusch.) The premiere performance of Parsifal was reported to have taken just over four hours. Haenchen, like Boulez, his erstwhile tutor, manages in just under four hours. (Especially notable in the underplayed, de-romanticized Karfreitagszauber.) Haenchen has researched, and written about, the tempo relationships within the work and was not just fleet (without sounding rushed) but also relatively sparse, presenting Parsifal as a condensation of Wagner’s craft in which just the essential elements were retained. The result sounded neutral and subservient to the music. The orchestra was in fine shape (no more), the bells – amplified? – sounded synthetic.
Franz Josef Selig’s Gurnemanz was massive and very impressive, if not very nuanced. Stig Andersen jumped in for Christopher Ventris as Parsifal and had, apart from some brief (though serious) problems in Act 3 and a few swallowed moments after “Die Wunde” in Act 2, a good night. Evgeny Nikitin’s Klingsor acted well in his red, Devil-caricature velvet suit, but was a touch underpowered and difficult to understand. Alexander Marco-Buhrmester did not strike a cutting figure as Amfortas but neither was he memorably inept. Ditto Victor van Halem (Titurel). They might of course have suffered (or benefited) from neglect because of the presence – and what a presence it is! – of Waltraud Meier’s Kundry. Still, after so many years of making this role completely hers, she continues to fascinate with her ability of melting acting and singing into a wholly performed one. The vibrato gets wider, but Kundry – this Wagner hybrid of at least four figures – can take an earthier, grittier voice in Act 1 anyway, and – if used in the service of fleshy seduction – too. A fascination and still well worth traveling for.
Of the Munich and Vienna Parsifals more next week.
Tuesday, 4.8.08, 10:13 am
New Releases: CDs
The Cello Suites, Bach - II
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
Bach’s Cello Suites have been popping up left and right, recently – re-issues and new recordings alike. As with every piece of music that is so widely recorded (there are more than five dozen versions currently available, not counting transcriptions for recorder, guitar, marimba, harp, viola, double bass – some of which I will deal with in another piece on “transcriptions”), the question arises why yet another recording is necessary or what it can bring us that is new, or different, or even better.
Listening to a variety of recordings made over the last forty years, the answer is: a lot, actually. On technical grounds, improvements are notable. On interpretive grounds there is a greater variety available - from playing the Suites romantically to playing them as ‘idealized music’, to the historically informed (HIP) approach. And, very notably, the sound quality has come a long way from Pablo Casals’ famous Ur-recording (1936-39) to Anne Gastinel’s recording for naïve, the latest I have. (Although since then, Warner has already issued Alexander Kniazev’s Suites, and Arte Nova, Guido Schiefen’s.)
Just re-issued in the UK on the “Penguin / Gramophone Recommends” series from Virgin/EMI – and available in a myriad of different issues from EMI – is Mstislav Rostropovich’s recording. And no matter how many times I hear it, it just doesn’t get any better. It remains brilliant drudgery, with Rostropovich senselessly noodling through the the Suite’s Prélude or the second Suite’s Courante, and elsewhere just grinding down to listless emotional stasis. Was Rostropovich too reverent in tackling these works? Perhaps he was afraid of improperly bringing his own personality to the high holy temple of Bach… and ended up with performances into which no emotionality seems invested. The result, whatever went into the making of these 1995 recordings, sounds to these ears like a musician’s checking of boxes – the notes are all there –, but little more.
I have a difficult time listening through all six of Rostropovich’s Suites in one sitting – something that, while not necessary the recommended dose for these works, isn’t difficult with the best accounts. I don’t wish to suggest that the success of this recording is entirely due to the effect Rostropovich’s name has on buyers and listeners. After all, it isn’t without merits – like technical accuracy (though that should not have been too novel in 1995) – and it must genuinely enthuse at least some Cello Suite aficionados. But though I try to figure out what that might be – apart from Bach’s genius which shines through in any performance – I just can’t. I can only - strongly - recommend sampling this alongside other versions, in case the temptation should strike to make this one’s only recording of the Cello Suites.
Consider as an alternative the timeless Fournier, the virtues of which I have extolled elsewhere, and which now comes at super budget price in DG/Archiv’s “Al Fresco” series. I felt redeemed in my near evangelical advocacy of Fournier when a friend with good ears recently wrote me:
“I’ve always felt well served by Paul Tortelier’s performances and without much need to acquire another (although I did pick up the Truls Mørk - love the sound of his cello - and the new Isserlis).
So your enthusiasm for the Fournier set was always countered in my mind with the “do I really need another set?” syndrome. (Why? It has never stopped me from adding more Sonatas & Partitas…)
However, the al fresco packaging is such a steal, that I ordered it. Goodness – you are right. What was I thinking? The Fournier stands head and shoulders above the others. The involvement, the finesse, the delight of the playing combines for an almost other-worldly experience. I took in all six in a single sitting, and then listened to the lot again.”
Reviewing new releases from Anne Gastinel, Stephen Isserlis (Hyperion), Gavriel Lipkind (edel/Berlin Classics), and Jean-Guihen Queyras (Harmonia Mundi) alongside the classic Nikolaus Harnoncourt (now on apex/Warner) and said Fournier, proved how enormously satisfying and thoughtful the recordings of the young cellist generation are. And it showed how Fournier still holds his own against them. And if not by towering head and shoulders above them, so at least by suffering not from the competition.
Stephen Isserlis’ recording out of the way first: Speedy, lean, without much audible interpretive weight (though plenty via the fine liner notes!), he and his Hyperion engineers offer a somewhat thin sound in a very dry acoustic. That’s surprising, given the luxurious sound that his Stradivarius (Suites 1-4, 6) and Guadagnini (Suite 5) cellos are known to produce in concert or on other recordings.
Isserlis gives a very matter-of-factly reading that makes Gastinel’s – not really a personality-imbued interpretation, either – seem downright willful. There are moments when the interpretation strikes me as timid. Soft parts – listen to the Gavotte of Suite No.5 – can sound rushed and remind me of Rostropovich. (Which you won’t mistake for praise, given the above.) In the best moments he shows élan and a refreshing, athletic stride – but all too often it just sounds wimpy. He is a little easier on ornamentation than his French and German colleagues, and double stops are less often ‘carried over’ more notes - perhaps a result of working off the relatively ornamentation-sparse Anna-Magdalena score?
Speaking of the text: A very likable feature of the Isserlis recording is the inclusion, an appendix of sorts, of the Prelude from Suite No.1 in three versions – faithfully (including mistakes) following the three earliest surviving copies of the work: that of Anna Magdalena Bach’s, of Johann Peter Keller’s, and the manuscript from the Johann Christoph Wesphal collection. (In the recording proper, he plays his own Anna-Magdalena-based amalgamate.) At first hearing the differences might zip by unnoticed, but with enough repeat exposure (for example when comparing seven recordings to another) you can catch some of them even without following a score.
Going back to Fournier, a fuller, more buoyant interpretation than Isserlis’, reveals Archiv’s recorded sound as very, very good. Just right in being neither too reverberant nor too dry, though not as detailed (Gastinel), rich (Lipkind), clear (Queyras), or dryly focused (Isserlis) as the modern competition. This becomes even more apparent on hearing the first note of Harnoncourt. Although the 1965 Teldec/Das Alte Werk recording (part of the first complete Bach Edition) is about four years younger than Fournier’s, it sounds like it could be decades older. It’s as if Harnoncourt played from the bottom of a bottle. The interpretation itself is like a snapshot of the crossroad between the old Casals way of playing the Suites and the emerging HIP trend.
I enjoy Harnoncourt, not so much because of any superior qualities (there are none that I can detect), but because it makes me smile patronizingly. This slightly plodding, slow and inflexible way of playing the Suites – without the benefit of a steadily bouncing forward momentum that rhythmic consistency in Bach otherwise yields – just isn’t up to snuff anymore. And it’s funny to think that it ever was, given the competition even back then.
Harnoncourt is only for the very curious – and Isserlis perhaps for the humorless. In this crowded field, the only ones who will really want to add Isserlis to their collection are those who prefer as straight-laced an account as possible, without going the HIP route. The choice for a modern recording is more likely to be between Gastinel, Lipkind, and Queyras – all of which deserve a recommendation and which I will write about in more detail next week.
In “The Cellos Suites, Bach - I” I looked at the DVD issue of Mischa Maisky’s first recording.
Wednesday, 4.2.08, 1:19 pm
Classical Performances
Easter Pilgrimage - Dutchman Detour
On the way from Amsterdam to Vienna, the Easter Pilgrimage of Matthew Passions and Parsifals I also picked up two performances of less topically related Wagner works: The Flying Dutchman in Stuttgart and Tristan & Isolde in Vienna.
Of course, just about any Wagner opera can be made to fit Easter without straining too much, given the abundance of death through redemption and redemption through compassion (and more death). Senta and Isolde, the Dutchman and Tristan: Surely there is room in their stories to see (or force) analogies to “The Greatest Story Ever Told”.
This is certainly not what Calixto Bieito sees in the Dutchman for his new production at the Staatsoper Stuttgart. Instead, Bieito takes it to be an allegory of isolation in modern society, a critique of the economic system, consumer culture, and essentially a critique of a loss of values and morality. As expected, Bieito does this in his trademark brash, genital-touting style that sells out opera houses, enrages critics, and sends – especially North American – commentators into apoplectic fits of “Eurotrash” bashing. In doing so the culture-pundits often are guilty of precisely what they fault Bieito and his ilk with: They get stuck at superficialities, unable or unwilling to look for meaning or sense wherever hidden, obscured, or disguised.
The results are reviews, not criticism: descriptions with a liberal dose of opinion but devoid of intellectual effort beyond the aesthetic offense taken; devoid of the minimum modicum of charity that should meet even the (seemingly) worst or preposterous production. After all, artistic failure is not failure to please a reviewer’s aesthetic or failure to cater to a reviewer’s ideological or political predispositions. Artistic failure would be if the undertaking were to fail to communicate at all, or if the reasoning behind it were flawed or indeterminable.
This is giving directors a lot of credit, I suppose, but this credit is likely deserved on account of effort and thought put into the productions – which in turn is