Domenico Scarlatti – Angela Hewitt – Hyperion (2016)

Tags

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

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Arvo Part – Lamentate

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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

Richard Powers – Orfeo

Tags

Book Review, Classical music, Novels about America, Orfeo, Richard Powers

Music of the spheres; music in the genes

The subject matter of Richard Powers tellingly titled ‘Orfeo’ is immense – immortality and transcendence, the desire to make sense and purpose of it all, and what remains always outside our ability to grasp its intangibility, but is always on the edge of our yearning reach.

Orpheus in classical mythology is a poet and musician of such power that all of the natural world is charmed by his music. In one version, he is the son of Apollo. He descends to the world of the dead to bring back his wife Eurydice, a task which ultimately fails as he disobeys the instruction to not look back.

Corot – Orpheus leading Eurydice from the Underworld Wiki Commons

The central character of Powers’ book, Peter Els, though initially trained as a chemist, with a particular interest in its metaphysics, the secret at the heart of matter, falls as passionately for the metaphysics of music, becoming a composer. The book charts not only the history of music, the intense experience, the yearning, the transcendence, the way, which, if we pay attention to it, it can be felt almost at a cellular level, but also, through the central character in space and time (America, 1960’s onwards) the life of that country.

And there is more. At the start of the book, Els is 70. He has begun, in his search for a music which is present and meaningful, to return to his earlier training, and look at the building blocks of living matter, the alphabet of DNA, and how parallels can be found with the alphabet of music. He is exploring the music of biology, at cellular level

Unfortunately, in a world fearing chemical and biological terrorism, the discovery of a home lab where genetic engineering is taking place, makes Els a fugitive, on the run from the security forces.

Els’s ‘run’ also takes him into a spiralling run backwards and forwards into his own personal history, through first and last loves, the start and ending of relationships, with women, with his closest friend, and with his child.

This is a weighty, difficult, challenging read in many ways, exploring music and specific pieces in immediate depth, diving into the heart of them, and Powers uses language most potently, but demands work from the reader. His clear craft of language, the sense that every sentence is constructed with care, like notes perfectly placed, holding their hidden harmonics, meant it was important to understand precisely the meaning of often complex words. I was using the dictionary frequently. I was also highlighting, almost on every page, observations about art, about music, about biology, chemistry, philosophy, metaphysics, which were telling, weighted and beautiful

And most of all, the wonderful, illuminating journeys through musical works, both real, and imagined (some of Els’ compositions) sent me back to listen, or to listen for the first time.

Proverb Music by Steve Reich, Text Wittgenstein. One of the pieces of music explored in Orfeo

In this, Powers’ reminds me a little of another American author, Siri Hustvedt, another fierce intellect, who in ‘What I Loved’ with a central character who is a visual artist, creates invented pieces of art through words so real that I could see them, and went vainly searching for them via Google, convinced that Hustvedt must have seen or made them. I had exactly the same response to Els’s compositions. Powers writes so impeccably and presently within the heart of specific ‘real’ pieces, that, surely he must have heard the pieces his central character composes.

This will no doubt be a particularly potent novel for those steeped in the Western classical music tradition, as practising musicians, and probably even more so for composers.

The point of music is to wake listeners up. To break all our ready-made habits

It may not be the book if music holds the space of background:

Half the clientele have their own earbuds, the other half use this music, if at all, only as protection from the terrors of silence

Music…………..doesn’t mean things. It is things

Orfeo Amazon UK
Orfeo Amazon USA

Philip Glass – Glassworks

Tags

Classical music, Glassworks, Music review, Philip Glass, Philip Glass Ensemble

Romantic tone poems, lush and lyrical

Glassworks is a beautiful thing, gentler and more reflective than the vibrant, glittering repetitions which are typically associated with Philip Glass.

In Glassworks, only 2 of the pieces, Floe – like a first sudden moment at the start of a tropical dawn chorus – and the brass section sax rich shining Rubric, have the fierce edges. The other 4 pieces are more simple, flowing, watery.

There’s a typically Glass like circling quality to the whole CD – the opening track ‘Opening’ simply keyboards, for all the world a whisper away from the slow movement of one of the great Romantic piano composers, is echoed again in ‘Closing’, where the piece has become more textured by a chamber orchestra taking it up.

Glass’s typical repetitions, small builds and diminishings don’t feel meaningless in any way, there’s something really satisfying about being held in a structure which changes slowly. ‘Opening’ has the lovely muted grey violet quality of dusk.

Floe starts plangently, softly, and then explodes into edgy texture, rushing piccolo, sax, horns, its like a thousand cicadas wiring up for the day, and there’s something very thrilling about it. Just as you think your nerve endings can take no more of the texture and vibrancy, the track settles back into a breathing space for itself and then whirls off again to its resolved climax

Islands moves back into something more flowing and haunting, slightly melancholic, even a little menacing, with strings in a minor key, odd snatches of melody which feel as if they belong to ‘Psycho’ or ‘North by Northwest’!

Rubric, is the most jazzy, riffy of all the pieces. I found myself responding to it in that head nodding way of marking the rhythm that often seems to happen when people listen to jazz!

Facades is simply beautiful. It probably has the most shifting melody going more quickly to new places, melancholy and soulful, strings and sax, played sweetly and sadly.

An expanded version of this 1990 album has been re-issued with several additional tracks, which does exist as an mp3 – I only have this, shorter album as CD, so am used to its more contained musical shape. The expanded version does have a much more appealing cover pic though (illustrated here)  Unless you were a Glass Fan you really might be offput by the unappealing brown cover replete with Glass a scowling. It says ‘Don’t Buy Me!’

The tracks on this version reviewed here are:
1. Opening 2. Floe 3. Islands 4. Rubric 5. Facades 6. Closing

Glassworks Amazon UK
Glassworks Amazon UK

Tchaikovsky/Sibelius: Violin Concertos

Tags

Andre Previn, Classical music, Kyung-Wha Chung, London Symphony Orchestra, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky

That sunny dome, those caves of ice!

Flicr. Commons rogueanthro

This is a gorgeous pairing, the Tchaikovsky gloriously swooping, gleeful and brilliant, the Sibelius full of sombre grandeur, a painting of a majestic landscape, indifferent to petty human concerns. It’s a match of Spring and Autumn. Kyung-Wha Chung‘s playful, ecstatic violin line in the Tchaikovsky is full of exuberance, leading the orchestra to follow her high spirits, dancing across the musical landsccape

Click on Image to See Source

The mood darkens with the Sibelius, and from the swoops, soars, turns and balletic virtuoso leaps and glides in the Russian piece, we move to an intensely lyrical sustained series of smooth phrases, a cold, clean, austere world full of soul and introspective depths, still reflections in dark water, cracking ice. It’s a piece which musically echoes Wordsworth:

“For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.”

It is a tone-poem to the land, and Kyung-Wha Chung plays this with poise and a real spaciousness, those sustained legato lines rolling out to a limitless horizon

Kyung-Wha Chung, Violin
Andre Previn, Conductor
London Symphony Orchestra

Here is Kyung-Wha Chung with another orchestra and conductor, at an early stage of her career with the Tchaikovsky. I personally really appreciate the Previn/LSO, where the piece for my money takes wing and soars so much more ecstatically!

Tchaikovsky/Sibelius: Violin Concertos UK
Tchaikovsky/Sibelius: Violin Concertos USA

Maria Joao Pires – Le Voyage Magnifique: Schubert Impromptus

Tags

Classical music, Franz Schubert, Le Voyage Magnifique, Maria Joao Pires, Piano music, Romantic composers

Soulful limpidity

After hearing Pires playing one of the Impromptus on Radio 3 I immediately and feverishly downloaded this as soon as the music had finished

And I have been soaking in this music, as if it were crystalline water in some enchanted, secluded grotto. Yes, fine, there is technical mastery here – but so much more. This is expressive, emotionally engaged playing, yes, but it is also extremely refined. Not otiose flamboyance, even in the thundering passages, we don’t get the musician ‘showing off’, we get the music itself being shown.

At times, I steer away from the Romantic canon, as it can lead to some self-indulgent playing, and feel a little chocolate boxy, but Pires is light years away from self-indulgence, and from the saccharine

Le Voyage Magnifique : Pires, Schubert Amazon UK
Le Voyage Magnifique : Pires, Schubert Amazon UK

Janine Jansen – Bach: Inventions & Partita

Tags

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

Sol Gabetta – Haydn/Hofmann/Mozart: Cello Concertos

Tags

Cello, Classical music, Haydn, Hofmann, Mozart, Sol Gabetta

And the Cello Itself Sprang to Life

I heard  Argentian cellist Sol Gabetta in concert, a while ago, and she is electrifying. One of the pieces she played, a Beethoven work for piano and cello, familiar to me, I’d already heard, enjoyably, at another live concert, and with a different cellist. All I can say, with Gabetta, is that I felt that in fact, I’d never heard the piece before, because it suddenly made total sense in a way I hadn’t previously experienced. Cello and piano were having a conversation with each other which was fresh, dynamic and new. She brings warmth, vibrancy, intelligence, passion, great musicality and heart into her playing.

The pieces on this disc/mp3 are:
Hofmann Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in D Major;
Haydn – Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in C Major
Mozart – Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in D Major re-scored for Cello

In the first piece, the Hofmann, at times the cello has a sweetness, shimmer and shine more commonly found in the violin. The Haydn sounds – young! There’s a freshness, a romantic lyricism to her rendition, a quality of innocence and joyousness. As at that live concert, listening to her is to smile, more and more with happiness that such music exists, and that someone can delight the listener afresh with it

This is a wonderful recording, Gabetta’s cello itself has a gorgeous, lush, rich, warm tone; she clearly loves her cello, loves the music her cello sings and I can almost believe that her particular cello is a sentient creature with soul!

The Mozart piece feels a little like an `album filler’, and is anyway a piece scored for the flute, here adapted for the cello. And it begs the question `why?’ If Mozart scored it for the flute, that is where it is meant to be heard, played by flautist and orchestra, not by cellist and orchestra. Perfectly pleasant but not as immediately grabbing this listener as the other pieces, which are specifically scored for the cello. However so lovely and right are the first two pieces that I can live with what seems like a less inspired programming choice for the third

Here is a You Tube video of Gabetta playing Haydn at incredibly fast lick – clearly the conductor had a train to catch, but she still manages to suffuse this listener with joy, despite wanting to shout whoa! slow down! to the man with the baton!

Sol Gabetta – Haydn/Hofmann/Mozart Cello Concertos Amazon UK
Sol Gabetta – Haydn/Hofmann/Mozart Cello Concertos Amazon USA

A later edit – I found a much more spacious You Tube rendition with Gabetta and Basel Orchestra, performing the Haydn in C Major in entirety. She, they and it are a delight!