J.S.Bach – Goldberg Variations – Zhu Xiao-Mei

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Classical music review, Goldberg Variations, J.S. Bach, Zhu Xiao-Mei

Generosity and humanity without restraint

I have loved Bach’s Goldberg Variations since my teens; it is an essential piece of music for me. Glenn Gould has been THE interpreter, against whom I judged others. Indeed, as I have two recordings, I judge him against himself.

I bought Zhu Xiao-Mei’s 2016 recording then, with some trepidation, having found her through her extraordinary autobiography, The Secret Piano. What she said about Bach, what she revealed about herself in her devotion to, and understanding of, his music, made this listening urgent and compulsory. Would it disappoint? Could she match the perfection I find in Gould as an interpreter?

Oh my. Oh my. I can’t raise one above the other. These are so extraordinarily different, creating such a unique experience within this music, of equal intensity. Profound, visceral, spiritual, hugely reflective, totally engaged.

Listening to Gould, I am brought to stillness, in some glimmering, numinous state. The music is transcendent, touching the divine, taking me to yearning for the ineffable. Music pointing to the dispassionate stars. I would like to be freed from the bonds of matter. This is music which makes tears pour, without strain, without, even, being able to name the emotion.

By contrast, Zhu Xiao-Mei takes me to total engagement and inhabitation of my human beingness. And, whilst I never thought about the gender of the performer with Gould, from the off, Zhu Xiao-Mei’s does feel like an interpretation which is particularly feminine. I was put in mind of the willing surrender of self, the making space for the other, that supremely female experience of pregnancy. I thought/felt the presence of various Artworks depicting The Annunciation, of everything I knew about embryology, the negotiation between fertilised egg and its embedding/inception in the womb. On a spiritual/metaphorical level this has always seemed to me to be an act (even if unconscious) of generosity. Here life, the life of the other, can begin, offered a safe harbour.

This performer effaces herself, she makes room for the music. It is not a performance demanding the listener to marvel at, and admire the pianist (though we do!) Rather, we are asked to marvel at, to admire the composer, to marvel at, to admire how HE speaks, to listen to his language, to hear what he is listening to, to what he has heard and must communicate to us. I understood, from Zhu’s revealing, that this Bach is after all, human too. Deeply spiritual, deeply connecting with ‘That Which Is’ – but doing so by being deeply embedded in matter, embodied, in community. Bach was a husband and a father. The warmth of human, the challenge of human, is all in this interpretation.

With Zhu’s interpretation I found myself embracing the limitations and expressions of embodiment. Not seeking to escape from the chains of matter, glorying in them. How I would have behaved in a live concert hall, I don’t know – but I was on my feet, dancing the dynamic variations, and sensing into the dynamics of breath, heartbeat, blood flow in the more introspective variations. Both yearning skywards, but also grounded, held (happily) by gravity.

No tears flowed, instead, she led me to ‘thoughts that do lie too deep for tears’, an awareness of the divinity within (however one might define it) through its works, through all that is. This god/goddess dwells within us, Pan-theistic indeed.

I have struggled (as I am not a musician) to define the difference between two glorious, miraculous interpretations, and can only do it by their effects upon me, subjectively.

Actually, Zhu Xiao Mei herself – who masters language nearly as meaningfully as she does music, explains exactly what I find from her music, in the CD notes, which include an interview with her by Michel Mollard, who makes this interesting observation, and question

Michel Mollard: Glenn Gould retired from the world in order to deepen his interpretation of the Goldberg variations, whereas you have decided to take the opposite approach by playing the work in public throughout practically the whole of the world

ZX-M : Yes, for me communicating with my audience is crucial. I am playing for them again. It is my contact with an audience that has allowed my performance of the Goldberg Variations to mature, and I have them to thank for that.

She makes space not just for the composer, the music, but also for the listener

Unfortunately I can’t find any extended sections of Zhu Xiao-Mei on a YouTube playing Goldberg, hence these two very short excerpts from various live performances and the documentary on her life and music. The extended Gould YouTube is of his first recording of the works, 1955, taken at some lick. Zhu Xiao-Mei takes almost twice as long to play the Variations through, choosing to play the repeats, and also making something of the silence, pauses between variations

Goldberg Variations UK
Goldberg Variations USA

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Domenico Scarlatti – Angela Hewitt – Hyperion (2016)

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Angela Hewitt, Classical music, Classical music review, Domenico Scarlatti, Hyperion, Piano Sonatas

“The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails”

It was searching for a You Tube video with Scarlatti piano pieces, to illustrate a post which happily brought me to the first of Angela Hewitt’s Scarlatti series CD

As Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) wrote over 500 piano sonatas, Hewitt’s intention, as I understand it, is to release more CDs, with a selection of the sonatas which she believes could work well together, as in a concert setting. They are quite short, most typically between 3 and 6 minutes. She has chosen and grouped the programme into sequences which she believes work well together, rather than the more obvious sequential, with the major and minor paired. She explains in the liner that sometimes one of a pair is weaker than the other which would make listening a more uneven experience

Hewitt not only plays these, deliciously, as if in some miraculous way music just happened to pour out from her fingertips, but she also writes liner notes of great clarity and illumination. Though the notes will I assume make even more sense to musicians, they are full of insightful pointers that open the pieces out to greater enjoyment still, for non-musicians

I know that these pieces, most of them, are clearly not easy to play – the rapidity of notes, the interesting rhythms, the fiendish, darting crossing of hands, trills, turns, dabbed at notes, but the glory is that I was not sitting jaw dropped in admiration at what must be the strength, flexibility and control in the bones, nerves and muscles of her hands. I had no sense of the effort such mastery must take. Instead, this sense of music as an absolutely natural dynamic – like water racing over over pebbles in a stream, breezes whipping through leaves

The first two lines of a long forgotten poem, Sunday Morning  by Louis Macneice flashed through my mind as I listened to Hewitt dance through these pieces – many of them were indeed dance inspired, dance rhythms

Down the road someone is practising scales,

The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,

Not that Hewitt’s playing sounds like the practising of scales, but it is quicksilver

Scarlatti by Domingo Antonio Velasco 1738

Unfortunately, I had been hoping to find a You tube of a single sonata, by Hewitt, to embed, but alas, there is none, only the short compilation by Hyperion of this 2015 CD

Volume 2 of her Scarlatti sonatas will no doubt make its appearance here in due course. I have that pleasure to explore when I have soaked myself thoroughly in this first CD

However, I did find quite an interesting series of short lectures on ‘the Scarlatti Effect’ . The other three can be found on YouTube and there are of course other videos of other Scarlatti interpreters playing some of the 500. But for the moment, just leave me with Hewitt, whilst leaves, breezes, fountains, silvery shoals of fish and brooks-a-babbling pour from her fingers

There is a fairy story about a girl blessed by a fairy, so that each time she spoke, sparkling gems of great riches, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and pearls, fell from her mouth. That must have been a bit of a burden, actually, far better to receive the gift of pouring music from fingertips!

Angela Hewitt Scarlatti Vol 1 Hyperion Amazon UK
Angela Hewitt Scarlatti Vol 1 Hyperion Amazon USA

Purcell – Music for A While (Alfred Deller)

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Alfred Deller, Baroque Music, countertenor, English Baroque, Purcell

Stolen Away To Elfland

Alfred Deller, celebrated English countertenor, who was equally adept at singing English folk music and early music, is here enchanting in these songs by Purcell. There is a curious sort of limpid ethereal floating to his voice, something other-worldly, which takes this listener, at least out of the 21st century, and makes me feel I have somehow been transported to Arcadia, a land of impossible green-ness and clarity, where people might indeed be spirited away by Faerie Folk! The voice is disembodied, appearing to magically float in the air. Listen to it too long at times of betwixt and between (dusk and dawn) and you might be stolen away by elves, like Thomas A Rhymer! The richly pure vocals float above the most warmly embodied of string instruments, a simple cello accompaniment, which is twined about by harpsichord on some tracks. Angelic bliss indeed.

Forgive the purple prose, but Deller’s voice is like a fantastical invention, produced not through technical artifice (twiddled synthetically in a recording studio) but somehow, impossibly, by Deller himself. He doesn’t seem to strain to produce the sound, it is a natural artifice!

Loss of a star as not all of the songs are equally riveting and valid – this is down to the specific Purcell pieces, rather than to Deller. The 7 minute long From Rosy Bow’rs in particular lasted every one of its 7 minutes, whereas the other long track, The Plaint was sheer delight.

Purcell – Music For A While – Alfred Deller Amazon UK
Purcell – Music For A While – Alfred Deller Amazon USA

Janine Jansen – Bach: Inventions & Partita

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Bach, Baroque Music, Classical music, Janine Jansen, Maxim Rysanov, Torleif Thedeen, Violin

Joyous and spring-like youthful verve and vigour

I found this quite by chance searching for some CDs featuring the viola player, Maxim Rysanov, who I have recently heard twice in concert.

This CD however is really violinist Janine Jansen‘s show, with the viola and/or cello (some are 2 part inventions, some 3 part) providing a lushly warm and generous cushion to allow Jansen’s violin to leap, spring, pirouette and generally sparkle above.

These pieces, apart from the long solo violin piece, are all short `Inventions’, designed, surely, for players to show off their artistry and hone their skills, encapsulating short musical ideas – in poetic terms, not even quite a sonnet, perhaps a haiku!

Played perhaps in a more romantic and less cool, dispassionate way than one might expect – the effect is of delight in sheer being. Jansen at times almost runs away with herself, such is the verve of her playing. Her violin is mischievous, even in the minor key, slower pieces, the sense of sadness and pathos is not a stuck thing, it won’t descend to unmoving depths of grief – deeply felt,for a moment, it will however move on. Her playing is rainbow like, sunshine and showers rather than arctic winters or parching hot summers.

It all works incredibly well, her delight in playing the music, almost playing WITH the music, brings a smile.

The advantage of these very short inventions is that you can have a quick burst of Bach before going on your way, without having failed to complete a journey, which I’m always aware of if I only listen to part of a longer work.

But for when there is time, the longer Partita no 2 in D minor for solo violin, gives more substantial fare, a 5 movement piece involving different rhythms for different dances. Jansen most suited I think to the more dynamic and playful movements – the Courante and Gigue particularly fine, proceeding skippingly along.

And here she is, with the Allemande from that Partita

Janine Jansen, Violin; Maxim Rysanov, Viola; Torleif Thedeen, Cello

Janine Jansen – Bach: Inventions & Partita Amazon UK
Janine Jansen – Bach: Inventions & Partita Amazon UK

Zelenka – Missa dei Filii

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baroque, Classical music, Czech composer, Jan Dismas Zelenka, sacred music

Enjoying Zelly with due zeal

Having recently discovered Zelenka by some chance or other, I very quickly became enamoured!

He is sometimes referred to as `the Catholic Bach’

There is certainly a greater degree of sumptuous opulence in this music than in JSB, and indeed I had many images of gold, red velvet, richly painted icons, stained glass windows and the like fill my mind, as I listened. There is also a particularly, I can only describe it as bouncy, quality to his music – listen to that opening Kyrie, which is almost folksy.

This is music which has a certain earthiness to it, a flesh and blood quality. It never quite leaves the ground, there is some sort of pragmatic, tangible joy, rather than austerity or mysticism (both of which I also love, musically) Here, I almost expect the choir to be dancing with each other, swinging each other round, wearing elaborate traditional high-days-and-holidays costumes (listen to that Gloria!) Most unseemly behaviour in a church – but why not!

This is a delight in the divine, a joyousness. The musical runs in the Gloria made it hard to sit still. Had I heard it in a church setting I’m sure I would have been expelled for bad behaviour, as it would be necessary to skip and twirl in the aisles!

What a very happy and energetic performance of Zelly this is. Reviewer bounces off into the sunshine, skipping and leaping the Gloria!

Here is a website devoted to all things Zelenka – including also the fact most ‘supposed’ images of Zelenka are NOT of Mr Jan-far-from-Dismal at all! Zelenka site

Zelenka – Missa Dei Filii Amazon UK
Unfortunately there does not appear to be an option to hear this version on mp3 on Amazon USA though the CD exists, albeit with a different cover, though it IS the same version, reissued
Zelenka – Missa Dei Filii Amazon USA

Cecilia Bartoli – Arie Antiche: Se tu m’ami

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Arie Antiche: Se tu m'ami, baroque, Cecilia Bartoli, Classical music, Music review

Turning training exercises into high art

In many ways, this is a very simple CD, featuring Cecilia Bartoli as her voice was back in 1992 (Decca re-issued this in 2005) Arie antiche are a collection of pieces, put together at the end of the nineteenth century, which were designed to train classical singers in vocal smoothness, control, pitching, ornamentation and expressiveness, particularly in the Baroque tradition – or at least the baroque tradition filtered through late nineteenth century vision. So we have pieces by Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Giordani, Paisello – all Italian baroque. And the subtitle ‘Se tu m’ami, indicates these will be love songs, so we are right to expect tenderly seduced ears and a melting heart!

Simply arranged with only an accompanying piano, there is nowhere for the singer to hide

Bartoli 2008 Wikimedia

The CD comes with an accompanying booklet with the words of each aria in Italian and translated into English

In Bartoli’s hands (or most properly larynx pharynx et al) these are far far more than the vocal equivalent of practicing scales, they are intensely musical pieces in their own right which will reveal both the strength and the weakness of the singer.

Listen, for example to the utterly haunting Caro mio ben, by Giordani, where Bartolo’s rich but never florid mezzo caresses this love song. What lover could fail to melt, and ‘put an end to this coldness’ as the singer implores! Lotti’s Pur dicesti o bocca bella, a little song in praise of the lover’s kissable mouth is splendidly flirtatious and seductive. I could go on, pulling out track after track to enthuse over, – of the 21 tracks, about half are, in my opinion, as pieces of music, quite stunning. And all are breathed into life by Bartoli’s deliciously un-strained, flexible vocals. She strokes, not stabs, the listener’s ears
Cecilia Bartoli – Arie Antiche: Se tu m’ami Amazon UK
Cecilia Bartoli – Arie Antiche: Se tu m’ami Amazon USA

Vivaldi – Stabat mater. David Daniels, Fabio Biondi, Europa Galante

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baroque, Classical music, countertenor, David Daniels, Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi, Music review, sacred music, Vivaldi

I first came across the American counter-tenor David Daniels in a Live at the Met in HD showing of The Enchanted Isle, and immediately became absolutely captivated by and addicted to, this voice.

It is probably wrong (though understandable) to focus almost completely on the countertenor here, as of course we have a whole group of musicians involved in the experience, so the wonderfulness is a shared production, but the pieces do place the singer centre stage, and it is the role of the musicians to provide unobtrusive, fabulously sensitive support to the strange magic of the countertenor. And Biondi and Europa Galanti are exactly in place, providing this.

There are 3 pieces of music here, the Stabat Mater, Nisi Dominus (Psalm 26) and Longe Mala. I can’t pick apart the technicalities of the pieces, only surrender to them, and to this beautiful, strange, warm and yet ethereal, effortless and brilliantly sparkling voice, a voice seems to come from some angelic realm – not a little cherub of an angel, but an angel whose shining is too bright to look upon. Possibly I’m still carrying the image of Daniels as the almost on the edge of dark magician (Prospero) from The Enchanted Isle here, but this voice really is almost, properly, something truly magical. Surely Daniels has been possessed by some musical elemental, surrendered himself to some celestial entity of singing. No words can convey it…listen and surrender.

The penultimate track of Longe Mala particularly is so profoundly beautiful in its quiet, reflective yearning that it reaches the point where the pleasure in the passing moments is almost too much to bear.

(and other, fortunately unwritten passages, too purple and fulsome with praise to want to read, or write!) Just buy this!
Vivaldi Stabat Mater

Pergolesi – Stabat mater. Kirkby, Bowman, Hogwood, Academy of Ancient Music

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Academy of Ancient Music, baroque, Christopher Hogwood, Classical music, countertenor, Emma Kirkby, James Bowman, Music review, Pergolesi, sacred music

Almost unbearable in plangent magic

What a piece of work this is. I have had this version for a while, and recently bought the David Daniels, Biondi Europa Galante version, Pergolesi Stabat Mater Salve Regina because of the glorious seduction of the Daniels/Biondi/Europa Galante team on the Vivaldi – Stabat Mater, Etc, principally because Daniels is the countertenor par excellence for me.

However, trying to compare these 2 versions this wins, despite the fact of Daniels on the other. Kirkby’s ethereal purity of voice wins out big time for me over Röschmann, but Daniels, ah Daniels takes the biscuit over Bowman, on the solo countertenor sections, though the blend of Kirkby and Bowman together, how their voices weave, is utterly beautiful. – as is the richer, fleshier blend of Daniels and Roschmann – but for me Roschmann is far too sumptuously voluptuous for this piece – not to mention Europa Galante take the music with such bounce, it is almost terpsichorean. Full of vibrancy, brio, opulence – operatic and theatrical.

To come back, however to Kirkby, Hogwood, Academy of Ancient Music and Bowman. Well, to be most particular, come back to Kirkby. In her vocal lines the spiritual, sacred nature of the piece is expressed most tenderly, most yearningly,. However flamboyant and brilliant the music itself is, in the weaving of its lines, this is ultimately NOT an operatic piece, there is a sense of loss, and grief and desolation not to mention surrender which is there. The Hogwood et al is more austere, more lachrymosa, more nakedly suffering. I believe the emotion in this version, because as listener I am pulled in to inhabit it. Yes of course the music itself does have an almost muscular spring to it, but the Hogwood reins it in, creating a tension which is appropriate, whereas Europa Galante go bouncy castle, which feels wrong as if it wrongs the nature of the piece. Unlike the Vivaldi Stabat Mater mentioned earlier the Europa Galante Pergolesi does not break and melt my heart

This Hogwood version is a piece of devotion, the Galante an artwork suggesting devotion

Pergolesi Kirkby