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

Tags

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

Philip Glass – Violin Concerto No. 2 “The American Four Seasons”

Tags

Classical music review, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Marin Alsop, Minimalism, Philip Glass, Robert McDuffie, The American Four Seasons

Shimmers, soaring violin, and addictive brilliance

Philip Glass I know is somewhat of a ‘Marmite composer’ – even among his fans (of whom I am one) and this particular piece of work appears to be even more Marmiteish than most.

Some regretted the early Glass turning away from much more avant-garde work, following instead a combination of minimalism and extreme romanticism, finding him become too accessible perhaps, or too formulaic, as the rushes and the glittery shimmers and repetitions he is known for, plus his lyricism, has meant he has often been the background to film, TV and commercial, with snippets of works getting regular airings.

Personally, I find his trademarks work for me well, and have only once felt he was running a little on empty and plagiarising himself – his 2011 opera The Perfect American – but that is possibly because I can’t imagine anything from Glass, in operatic form, can match Satyagraha, where the subject matter (Gandhi) met the elevation of the music. The Perfect American portrayed Disney, a darker, less elevated individual than others (Einstein, Gandhi, Akhnaten) who have been a useful fit for Glass, a Buddhist, in his operas

This particular piece was written for the American violinist Robert McDuffie in 2009 and is referred to as ‘The American Four Seasons. McDuffie had been interested in a piece which would serve as a ‘companion’ to Vivaldi’s popular work, but it was not, as far as I understand, composed as any kind of variation on Vivaldi – it was merely a work in four movements.

McDuffie did connect it more to the Vivaldi piece. Glass created a set of four solo pieces for the violin (specifically for McDuffie) to stand in place of violinist cadenzas within pieces. Each ‘solo’ now precedes one of the four orchestral movements

The order in which each movement and solo is to be played is then left to the individual soloist and conductor. That is, the interpreters decide which piece belongs to which season, and, indeed the order in which the ‘year of seasons’ should start.

Personally I found that part of Glass’s explanation – handing control to the players, or, in these days of playlists, to the listener to programme and change a playing order as they choose, a bit spurious. I chose to buy the CD for a better quality of sound than a squashed MP3. And so unless I want to be fiddling around with the remote out of some desire to play mindgames, listen from start to finish. Curiously, I’m not even particularly ‘bovvered’ to want to play guessing games over seasons. I am content with this as a wonderful piece of music. And will continue to eat spoonfulls of this musical Marmite with enormous enjoyment, again and again

Marin Alsop conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in this recording, from the European première of the piece at the Royal Festival Hall in 2010.

Meanwhile………apologies, it was a blogger who alerted me to this recording, and I didn’t note down who you were before rushing off to buy it, more than a month ago. I can’t find who you are from any tag search – if you read this, please leave me a comment, and I can embed a link to your original post which included this, but wasn’t specifically ABOUT the piece

Discovered! It was, of course, Victoria Addis’ fabulously absorbing, wonderfully analytical blog A Hermit’s Progress I have been happily spending time on that blog, and the link will take you to a veritable cornucopia of wonderful musical delights, in a rare musical blog post on her site – she is normally writing (and speaking) equally engagingly about literature
Philip Glass -Violin Concerto No. 2 Amazon UK
Philip Glass -Violin Concerto No. 2 Amazon USA

Arvo Part – Tintinnabuli – The Tallis Scholars

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Arvo Pärt, Classical music review, Peter Phillips, Tallis Scholars, Tintinnabuli

Happy Birthday, Arvo Pärt, from The Tallis Scholars

The Tallis Scholars’ tribute to one of my favourite composers, Arvo Pärt, in his 80th year, is a beautifully executed performance of some of Pärt’s shorter choral works

Pärt is a deeply reflective composer. Many of his compositions are intensely transcendent, mystical, numinous. He is unostentatious, there is little flamboyant, bravura, glamorous expression, and perhaps because of that ability to strip to a sparse and sometimes simple core his works are profoundly intense.

The Tallis Scholars, under the direction of Peter Phillips, like Pärt himself, get their individual personality vocals out of the way, and let the music itself sing, apparently effortlessly.

My only cavil is a curious one, to do with programming and the generous length of the CD itself.

Because most of Pärt’s works, even the lightest, have such a powerful intensity it became (for this listener) too overwhelming to listen straight through to 8 works, as most of them left me rather reeling in an altered state.

Back in the old days of vinyl records, the limits of equipment and disc meant that a record was around 20 minutes maximum per side, and listening rather became structured into a roughly 40 minute whole, with a half way break to turn over. But because CDs can be far longer, the buyer can have a feeling of being cheated at paying the same price for a 40 minute CD as for a far longer one, so there is a subtle push coming from the buyer wanting more for their buck, and producers, compilers and the like stuff the package more fully. And sometimes pieces, however well written or performed, do feel like ‘fillers’

This was certainly the case for me here. There are some standout pieces, and a more modest CD length might have lost 2 or 3 of the works, and kept every piece as a stunning, shining jewel. It isn’t that any of the works are poor, it is that some of them are exceptional and I rather wanted all of them to be so. I would have lost Which Was The Son Of, The Woman With The Alabaster Box and Tribute to Caesar.

The opening 7 movement Sieben Magnificat Antiphonen is surely one of the jewels. Tallis use 2 voices to each of the vocal lines. This particular piece effortlessly rings with Pärt’s trademark ‘tintinnabuli’, those bell like overtones, the close, beautifully on the edge of discordance, edgy close harmonies. There is something about this kind of harmonic work which, every time, tugs the heart, and causes tears to flow. Some kind of impossible longing for musical resolution, whilst also staying within what is unresolved.

The bookend piece which closes the CD, Triodion (the opening and the closing pieces are the longest by far, each about 13 minutes) is another, different, stunner. The text of this piece is in English. Most of the pieces – all sacred texts, or extracts from the Bible, are in Latin, and the CD comes with a good liner, giving the texts in several translations

In Triodion, which must surely have been fiendish to perform, though Tallis do it seemingly without strain and effort, Pärt overlaps and opposes rhythms and sung lines in the same way that he usually does with the harmonics. He creates a dynamic with those tight, unusual harmonies which are more familiar in some of the Eastern European countries than in Western European music, and here the addition of the pleasing and diverging entry points to the sung lines is delicious, a kind of tease and tickle to the eardrum which made me shiver with delight

These two pieces in particular are the ones which draw me in, to listen and experience most closely.

I hope Arvo appreciated his tribute from Tallis!

Arvo Pärt – Tintinnabuli – The Tallis Scholars Amazon UK
Arvo Pärt – Tintinnabuli – The Tallis Scholars Amazon USA

Arvo Part – Lamentate

Tags

Alexei Lubimov, Andrey Boreyko, Anish Kapoor, Arvo Pärt, Classical music, Classical music review, Hilliard Ensemble, Lamentate, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra

Bleak, deep and curiously comforting

I’ve been devotedly in thrall to the pared down, often stripped to the bone, music of Arvo Part, for some years. Part, arguably Estonia’s best known citizen, created his particular style of minimalism, ‘tintinnabuli’, based on the close harmonic overtones heard in the ‘tintinnabulation’ when a bell is struck. Part’s stunning music is not just empty stylistics, however, but always arises from his own deep connection to the numinous, to deep reflection, to his faith.

Nearly 80 now, he continues to sear the listener with the potency and deep reflection in his work. His music is always something best listened to with full, awake, attention. And the silence and space between notes is as much part of the soundscape as the heard music.

Hilliard, Da Pacem Domine

This particular CD consists of 2 works, a short a capella choral piece, Da Pacem Domine, beautifully floated by The Hilliard Ensemble, and a long orchestral piece Lamentate.

Anish Kapoor Marsyas. Flicr, Commons 2, non commercial use. Matt Hobbs

Lamentate was inspired when Part saw Anish Kapoor’s Marsyas in The Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, and had a kind of cataclysmic, cathartic experience from how he was affected by it. ‘Lamentate’ is not a lament, as is often the case in sacred ‘Lamentations’ for the dead, it is a lamentation for the living – for the fact that we are all in relationship to the knowledge of our own, individual mortality. Whether we consciously seek to live with awareness of that, or whether we live in denial, it shapes us.

As Part’s notes on this piece reflect :

I have written a lamento – not for the dead, but for the living, who have to deal with these issues for themselves. A lamento for us, struggling with the pain and hopelessness of the world.

Here is the whole of Lamentate, in a version with Diana Liiv, piano. Lexington Symphony, conductor Jonathan McPhee. Sound quality not wonderful though

From the crushing, weighty opening two movements, where it almost feels as if an implacable indifferent force will roll over the listeners, annihilating them, in the third movement small, fragile, simple, beautiful and hesitant pause filled lines of melody arise, carried by the solo piano. Later, these lines, are taken up, turn by turn, by other instruments. It’s almost like an offer and an acceptance of tenderness, some comfort from another. Again and again, there are musical lines which arise, phrases which never quite complete and resolve – the ending is inevitable, but the answer can only be a kind of accommodation, a trying, a beauty created from a greater embodiment, so the ‘being here’ is more and more fully realised.

These crushings, these solo questings, these arisings of musical line from the solo piano which are then taken up, questioned again by other instruments, are like some kind of manifestation of grace – the comfort of human consolation and connection in the face of the inevitability of death

Part’s own history and background in devotional music is within the Eastern Orthodox Church, but there are even threads of musical influences from Arabic music in one of the movements, Lamentabile.

The whole movement of the piece, with the return, again and again to the knowledge of our mortality which shapes our living, is towards a deepening richness that comes from ‘living with knowledge’

And, though not in any way (obviously!) a great fanfare of a triumphal piece, it is a piece which is astonishingly beautiful, moving…and though I surrendered to it quite viscerally, getting flattened by the implacable opening, slowly having little green shoots of growth, moving towards the light of day, connecting, and then being flattened, the whole was about ‘responding in the here and now’

As I reflected (as the piece makes the listener do so) I was reminded of the work of existentialist humanist psychotherapist Irving Yalom, and his books, specifically, Love’s Executioner and Staring At The Sun. This music takes the same journey, and encourages ‘Living Awake’

The performance in my CD version, (not the You Tube version here) is from the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, with Alexei Lubimov, piano, and conducted by Andrey Boreyko. And it is all magnificent.

Arvo Part Lamentate Amazon UK
Arvo Part Lamentate Amazon USA

John Adams – Harmonielehre

Tags

CBSO, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Classical music, Classical music review, Harmonielehre, John Adams, Minimalism, Sir Simon Rattle

A razzle-dazzle Rattle-Battle!

A youngish Simon Rattle recorded this thrilling version of John Adams equally thrilling Harmonielehre in 1993, (and it was released in 1994) well in the middle of his tenure with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and it is a stunning, exhilarating ride.

My EMI classics version comes with disc notes which made my eyes and brain spin, , full of references to how Adams’ piece nods to Schoenberg’s writing on harmony, and tracing the Minimalist movement in the States, but these were not notes which spoke particularly to me.

I first heard this piece in a concert devoted to ‘minimalists’ and though I’d gone for pieces by two of my favourites, Part and Glass, this was the piece that sang out to me.

What did make sense to me (both in the notes for that concert, and the liner notes here) is that the initial inspiration came from a dream which Adams had had, of a huge tanker rising out from the San Francisco Bay and taking flight.

The terror and the shock and the glory of this is there in the explosive beginning. I remember the first time I heard it, like some sort of rollercoaster punch to the gut, nearly lifting me out of my seat. There is so much beauty in the frequently returned to power of this waking kraken, roaring out of the deep. Perhaps the surprise of the piece though is the delicacy and grace, a musical line also arises and is sweet, flowing, lyrical. The arch of musical line and the brute force of pulse, shimmer, repetition and development, the little threads of change which I find so exciting in minimalism, seem to tussle, tangle and weave with each other. It’s like a dialogue between grace and power, powerful grace, graceful power.

(if you stay with the Youtube, it will automatically spool on to continue playing this piece, cut into the sections Youtube uploads generally seem to arrive in)

The second movement surrenders its opening completely to an expressive, expansive, unwinding, like coming free from gravitational pull. And curiously reminded me of the dreamy languor of Debussy, particularly L’Apres Midi d’un faun. But just when it seemed safe to drift dreamwards, Adams begins to wind everything up, and there’s another kind of dialogue between dynamic tension, forward propulsion and the slow unwinding. I found this marvellous to listen to ‘in my body’, like some kind of sympathetic nervous system/parasympathetic nervous system juxtaposition – heart speeds, heart slows, heart speeds, heart slows.

And then there is the third movement. Oh my. All shimmer, geometric, like light on the surface of water on a lake, with a running breeze creating an extraordinary visual effect. This movement seemed, at times, quite Glasslike, his kind of hypnotic bright shimmers, lulling and rocking the listener, and firing them up, little jolts of change of rhythm and musical line. And finally, power, energy as that tanker pulls out to the stars

A wonderful piece, both playful and sombre, filled with sunlight and crackling with thunder and electrical storm.

           John Adams

The additional pieces on this CD are the mischievous ‘The Chairman Dances’, taking some music from Adams opera Nixon In China. It is subtitled ‘A Foxtrot for the Orchestra’ and, yes, the listener rather wants to cavort and twirl! And it is happy/silly, like some of the early Penguin Café Orchestra – particularly, Telephone and Rubber Band, all wrapped up in a centre of dance orchestra stateliness.

The CD is completed by two fanfares, the first, Tromba Lantana is almost melancholic, introspective, and then the final, titled ‘Short Ride In A Fast Machine’ is precisely that, another shot of high energy octane, a big shout of fun and celebration

This marvellous CD – both the execution of the pieces, and the programme itself, is a wonderful celebration/showcase of a composer who is so much more than merely a minimalist party liner.

Rattle having fun with the Berlin Philharmonic

The version I have is the 2007 re-release of the original 1994. I’ve included both links to the UK site, it is only the cover which differs (and, for all I know, the liner notes) It is also available as an mp3 download, and the usual ‘snippets available’ for 30 second appraisal.

There seem to be limited copies, and slightly different pricing, on the physical discs. The Stateside site, more sensibly, merges the two rather than confusedly having two listings

Harmonielehre John Adams/Simon Rattle/CBSO 1994 Amazon UK
Harmonielehre John Adams/Simon Rattle/CBSO 2007 Amazon UK
Harmonielehre John Adams/Simon Rattle/CBSO Amazon USA

Dmitri Shostakovich – Symphony No 5 in D minor

Tags

Classical music, Classical music review, Dmitri Shostakovich, Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic Orchestra

Truth trapped in a pressure cooker

This extraordinary piece of music (the 5th Symphony – Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic, 1960 recording) is here given a wondrous interpretation – though I do have one cavil (more of which later)

Shostakovich was for a while a Soviet darling. His music indelibly Russian, strong, heroic – though of course music without words is a particularly subtle medium of expression. Because it is wordless, and because in the end its reception, in the listener’s ears, sinews, guts, heart, is so subjective, it can be far more covertly subversive than art-form using words, which can be coldly scrutinised and analysed by those looking to outlaw heterodoxy. And the complexity of classical music is a particularly good hiding place, especially as performance itself, of the same notation, can uncover different meanings.

Shostakovich fell from grace when his music was combined with narrative and words – the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk. Stalin walked out of a performance, and that was enough. The composer was then living on the edge; a dangerous time and place to stand accused of being ‘unprogressive’ . Men and women were incarcerated in mental hospitals and labour camps for revisionism or being ‘anti-Soviet’ and of course the labels were often cut by apparatchiks to fit all manner of breaches of a constantly shifting Party Line.

The controversial 5th symphony was composed in 1937, and represented Shostakovich’s (ostensible) desire to make amends; he described it as ‘a Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism’ So its controversy resides in part in interpretation and re-interpretation. Did Shostakovich sell-out? Is he therefore pariah as far as other, braver dissenters of the time are concerned? Or (given the possibility of music without words to embrace subtle nuances of meaning) was the piece itself more subversive, still, than the party line ‘approvers’ believed?

A document published in 1979, after the composer’s death, ‘The Testimony’ reported something Shostakovich said :

I think that is it clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth – it’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying ‘Your business is rejoicing, Your business is rejoicing’ and you rise shakily and go off muttering, ‘Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing

And here interpretation in performance plays its part, and where my cavil arises over this otherwise glorious performance.

In 1960 when this recording was made, Bernstein to some extent I think – particularly as he performed this IN Russia with the New York Philharmonic as part of a cultural exchange, friendship programme – plays the finale ‘triumphally’ This was of course ‘pre-Testimony’. He takes the final movement at a fairly ferocious lick. And this has the effect of reducing a particular quality of blaring, shocking dissonance which, when taken a tithe slower, because it is more held, is physically more edgy, uncomfortable, harsh, rather than triumphant. Certainly, a couple of live concerts I’ve attended, in the last couple of years, where this work has been performed, a slight slowing of the pace makes any idea of ‘triumph’ seem full of mockery. In fact, the most recent concert of it, the final notes feel like the end of the world, the ferocious mechanical energy, representing the heavy, productive blows of Soviet industry, which occur in the final movement, speak not of the glory of rising output and economic growth, but of ‘the cost, oh the cost of human life and spirit – it is individual man and woman being beaten under those hammers” Or, as the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich rather more succinctly said

Anybody who thinks the finale is glorification is an idiot

In this version (recorded in 1959) the finale definitely suggests the ‘triumph over adversity’ which the Party Line wanted from its artists, the music is spritely, vigorous optimistic and energetic

Here is Lenny conducting that finale again, 20 years later, and some 90 seconds slower. To my mind, this gives the contrast between the hugely dynamic aspects and the slower, more reflective harmonious sections a kind of manic, angsty, almost deranged quality to the big blaring blusters, like public pronouncements

However, whatever interpretation the composer intended, whether he bowed to pressure or whether the symphony represents a resistant call to those who wish to hear it, one thing IS clear, this is a stunning, profound piece of music. The fact that it has so many possibilities inherent for discovery within it, the fact that performance itself yields such diversity, is testament to its richness

And I do, despite missing the end of the world bleakness of the finale which is uncovered at slightly slower tempo – it is, after all, marked as allegro non troppo, rather than allegro – think this is a wonderfully rich and satisfying interpretation

This version is completed by Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No 2 in F major with Bernstein conducting from the piano.

Though I must admit, such is the power of the Symphony, that I am musicked out and reeling with wrung out emotion and can’t contemplate listening to anything else.

Rarely has the edgy yet bleak despair after the devastation of war, the horror and emptiness of militaristic blare, the utter exhaustion of a kind of inevitable surrender to the posturings of spin, and the end of the world been so beautifully done. The little threads of quiet hope which arise throughout the piece, the small moments of peace and harmony, have nothing to do with the state. Though crushed, again and again, ‘and still they rise’

(Quotes from ‘Testament’ and from Mstislav Rostropovich are from the CD liner notes)

What a piece, what a stunning piece

As stated, the version I have (which Gramophone Magazine particularly lauded) is a long ago recording, and remastered. I can’t find the version on Amazon’s US site, though there are pairings of that recording with other second pieces.

Here is the link to the Amazon UK version I have and it is also available as an mp3 download, so you can hear snippets from each movement of this interpretation

Shostakovich Symphony No 5, Bernstein/New York Philharmonic Amazon UK

Rossini – Il barbiere di Siviglia

Tags

Barber of Seville, Classical music review, Luigi Alva, Maria Callas, Opera, Rossini, Tito Gobbi

As close to heaven on earth as possible

Many years ago I had a jealously, carefully preserved disc of this back in the days of record players. It got copied to cassette (loss of sound quality) pretty quickly for frequent playing to avoid the inevitable scratches. A CD version was a very expensive import, almost unobtainable, and I regretted there was no digital remastered version. Fortunately at some point I reviewed it on Amazon, bewailing the digilack and a kind commentator on my review alerted me that there WAS! (2009 release)

Duly downloaded I discovered an annoying problem, that somehow it had been filed on the PC as Track 1, Track 1, Track 2, Track 2 etc (originally this had been a 2 disc set, but the digi download did not separate the discs. Much work was called for moving files around to be able to play this (a later, more expensive release pf the same production has it as a continuous track for the act, though the Act I overture is listed apart, so I guess this would make for instant playing) though if you wanted to replay specific tracks, harder.

So why would anyone want a version released originally back in the 50s, given the sound engineering was so unsophisticated, compared to today?

Well a more ecstatic, vibrant, incomparable trio of leads is impossible to imagine. First, there is the extraordinary surprise of Maria Callas‘s fabulous Rosina. Known for the depth and almost unbearable suffering of the tragic bel canto repertory – Norma, I Puritani and verismo roles like Tosca, she could never have been the most obvious casting for Rossini‘s quicksilver, fizzy, playful Rosina. Well, think (or rather, listen) again. I defy anyone to produce such a delicious, effortless, flirtatious irrepressibly joyous Una Voce Poco Fa

And then we have Tito Gobbi, whose Figaro is sex on vocal legs, so to speak – dangerous, seductive, heavily male (swoons away!) Such vocal virility must surely result in a Rosina who will declare ‘sod the story, I’m off with the barber!’ But that is before the wooing, idealistic, romantic Lindoro of Luigi Alva bursts into song, and Rosina, as she must, melts and our lusty Figaro will do all he can to help the couple achieve love’s young.

reblogged picture from This Deep Dream’s wonderful Tumblr Opera site

(Alas, the opera savvy amongst us know that Lindoro will, in Mozart and da Ponte’s Figaro turn out to be a betrayer, that Rosina’s heart will be broken. She should have stayed for the barber, after all)

But let us stay for a moment with this divine , sparkling trio not to mention other principals, ensemble and orchestra. Lucky us, to be able to unpick this little bit of musical heaven from its era. Brava! Bravo! Bravo! not to mention Bravissimo and Bravissima

Rossini : Barber Amazon UK
Unbroken Acts Version Amazon UK
Rossini : Barber Amazon USA

Obrecht – Missa Maria Zart

Tags

Classical music review, Missa Maria Zart, Obrecht, Tallis Scholars

Cool, spacious, mantra -like Mass

This is a remarkably `clean’ piece, acoustically, the quality of the setting, not to mention the very even quality of the singers, who hold their notes without vibrato, so that long open notes just roll out, gently rising, falling, intermingling.

The effect is rather like standing on some quiet, calm shore with the waves barely ruffled by breeze. Out beyond the edge of vision, where sea and sky meet, fading into each other, it becomes impossible to see which is which, and an empty space opens and continues. On and on.

The viewer/listener, is floated and held by this cool immensity of horizon/sound. This is singing with the quality of a mantra and The Tallis Scholars do something most magical to hold such a perfectly placed, strong and pervasive ease and poise for what is after all, a long Mass.

Unfortunately I can’t find a You Tube clip of the Tallis Scholars singing this piece, and the only You Tube version was too ‘bounced and busy’ to please me, so the clip below IS of Obrecht, and IS with the Tallis Scholars, doing beautiful things to another sacred piece. However, there is no visual! Gaze at the black rectangle, and just listen.

Obrecht: Missa Maria Zart Amazon UK
Obrecht: Missa Maria Zart Amazon USA

Steve Reich – Different Trains – Smith Quartet

Tags

Classical music review, Different Trains, Minimalism, Reich - Duet, Reich - Triple Quartet, Smith Quartet, Steve Reich

Beauty and Terror

This is a difficult album to sit with – because of the title piece, Different Trains, which is of course a famous piece of modern music which contains the dreadful weight of our twentieth century history within it. ‘Inspired’ by an awareness of the musical and rhythmic possibilities of the sound of trains, Reich wove these train sounds, together with recorded speech, and strong music, into a 3 movement piece, America before the war, Europe During the war years, Europe after the war. The dark despair of certain train journeys in Europe is overwhelming in this piece, their destinations underscored by the voices of camp survivors woven into the last 2 movements. A horrific, horrifying piece. It IS a piece of music, but one which I find it impossible to relate to in terms of musical interpretation. It is a piece which had to be written, given events, but should NEVER have had to be written, at least the last 2 movements, hence the unbearableness of this piece.

I am grateful for the ordering of the pieces in this. I have a version Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint with Pat Methany, and have to say I cannot listen to anything after Different Trains itself, as I am too overwhelmed. It seems equally impossible, disrespectful, to ignore DT and just play Electric Counterpoint.

On this disc, I can come to DT after the experience of the very very beautiful Triple Quartet, and Duet. Music which is edgy, driving, containing that sense of movement and journey – indeed, it hints, inexorably at the Different Trains which darkly await, but I can be moved by the strange beauty of the dissonance of these cross rhythms, arising lyrical lines which weave through close, jarring harmonic. ‘Triple Quartet’ is so called because the quartet either accompanies itself, having prerecorded, twice, itself playing the music, if it happens ‘live’ or has 3 quartets playing together. Triple Quartet Duet – duetting violins and doubled viola and cello duets is lyrical, sweet, and warm, dedicated by Reich to, and inspired by, Yehudi Menuhin for his humanitarian works

I have recently discovered the Smith Quartet. I am enamoured.

Tracks are: Triple Quartet;Duet:Different Trains
Steve Reich – Different Trains – Smith Quartet Amazon UK
Steve Reich – Different Trains – Smith Quartet Amazon USA