To all classical music fans: It's time to explore the new and unknown.

....sounds like you were following the tune.

During a late night Prom, I once fell asleep on the floor and started snoring to some Messian. Fortuntately I had a friend to kick me.

Mantovani? Now I know why you like the Moon Safari album

David

Faure Nocturnes

some time ago, in the violin sonata thread, I mentioned Faure's First violin Sonata, a wonderful piece everyone knows who's familiar with more than five violin / piano pieces.

However, after posting I went back to the recording (by Shlomo Mintz and Jefim Bronfman) and found my connection with the second sonata is much stronger. There's something about late Faure (say, from the year 1909) that's absolutely unique in musical language, and the beauty of it is Faure uses a lot of old-style technical moves (sequences, particularly), just to achieve an out. A kind of sublime release. In his best works (and the second violin sonata is among the very best) there are these constant progressions that are only looking for a way out. Form to get away from form: I say that's beautiful.

Inspired by this reacquaintance with the sonatas I purchased a two disc set of Faure's Nocturnes today, by the French - Canadian pianist Jean-Paul Sevilla (on Agon). The first disc covers the early pieces; the second the mature works. Especially the last four Nocturnes (9 to 12) are stellar. Obviously you can live without them, but why would you? Life's too short to miss out on this music. This is a unique person (uniquely talented) expressing himself in a way that will never be repeated in the entire history of humankind - to put it mildly.

I recall a recital by Jean-Yves Thibaudet, 18 years ago, playing the same program, and stressing the sublimity of the late pieces more - like: the tenth is a dirge for a woman, a friend, who died too soon; for the last one, Faure's wife kissed the blanc paper (he was 75 years old), and it's like you can hear her in the resulting music - but live performances are invariably more explicit, and I can recommend this recording. Late Faure is one of the best things there is.

Herman

What can I say, Nick? I've had some bad experiences with Collard, too - him managing to make the Chopin Ballades sound dull & dutiful.

I guess it depends on whether you like late Faure - in some ways he can be repetitive, singing the same song over an over. If you like the song, however, you want to hear more and more of it. In that case this recording would be worth a try.

Herman

I recently picked up a nice assortment of off-the-beaten-path works of generally above average quality.

First up, I picked up Walton's First Symphony and Partita on Naxos. As with the Second, this is a very fine work. I find it hard to claim that the symphony is the equal of the best from the last century, but it is worth a listen.

Next up, I picked up another volume of orchestral works by Witold Lutoslawski on Naxos with Antoni Wit leading the Polish National SO. It is volume 4 I do believe. What a disc! The Cello Concerto is the highlight, and I must confess that I believe it to be on the same level as the Shostakovich First or the Dutilleux. Extraordinary. The Livre pour orchestre, Novelette, and Chain 3 are all equally outstanding, the Livre, in particular, striking me as near-mandatory listening for fans of music of the last century. Wit and his Orchestra are well recorded and seem to be spot on. I will definitely be buying more discs in this series as well as the EMI discs with the composer conducting; Methinks I will start collecting works by the Polich master.

My final item also comes from a Polich composer: Karol Szymanowski. My local CD hut still had a copy of the complete piano works played by Martin Jones from Nimbus. I snatched it up. I am so glad I did. I have professed a fondness for the works of ol' Karol before and this set only reinforces my positive outlook on his music. The recordings and performances are pretty much better than Martin Roscoe's in every work (and Roscoe's playing is superb). Almost every work emerges as wonderful, the Metopes and Masques, as well as the sonatas sounding every bit the masterpieces they are. This is a truly outstanding set. If you can find it, buy it. (It was only $30 for four discs.)

His violin sonata on Chandos is well worth a listen. Very lyrical

Best Walton

and, obviously, the best Walton are his Violin Cto (Chung or Kennedy), his Cello Cto (Ma or Webber) and His Viola Cto (Kennedy). But that's no "new and unknown" fact, of course. They are among the best 20th C concertos, though - always worth mentioning.

Herman

McCabe's string quartets on Hyperion are quite compelling recent music.

More Late Fauré

This week I got a recording of the two Cello Sonatas Gabriel Fauré composed late in his career, performed by Steven Isserlis and Pascal Devoyon (RCA Victor). Both are very late works, from 1917 and 1922, making them later than the Debussy cello sonata!

The first sonata in d minor is perhas the more succesful. The first mvt is very nervous, very interesting. The second mvt has the kind of almost devotional quality peculiar to late Fauré. Imagine basing an entire six-minute piece on a four-note figure (laa-di-laa-da etc)! It's gotta be nerve wrecking. Of course the best Mozart andantes are that simple too.

The second sonata is also in a minor key.There's a lot of other cello stuff on this recording, and even though the violin sonatas are marginally better, I can fully recommend this disc to anyone who likes Fauré's violin sonatas. It's exquisitely beautiful music.

I also got a disc of Fauré piano music, by Paul Crossley on CRD (from way back in 1983), featuring the Nine Preludes Opus 103. At 24 minutes together a wonderful cycle. Perhaps better, i.e. more varied than the Preludes I posted about before. Why does no one ever play works like these in a recital? It's stunning music.

And in conclusion I'd like to enquire, in case he's reading this, how the creator of this thread is doing? Is your recent upgrade already well run in, Todd - the little one you posted about sometime ago?

Herman

Recently I made yet another order from my beloved Berkshire Record Outlet that included what I thought was a fiendishly good deal on a five-disc set of harpsichord music by Couperin. The music was indeed by Couperin, but not Francois, as I had hoped, but by his uncle, Louis. Blandine Verlet's set apparently encompasses the entire keyboard output of old Louis. (I should have read the description more carefully.) Since I only paid $20 for it, I figured worse case I sell it to a resale shop for $15 after I listen.

I will not be selling the set. While perhaps not great, the music is very entertaining, and there are some extremely captivating bits. Verlet uses Davitt Moroney's published ordering of the works (Mr. Moroney, quite the scholar and musician!). The works are arranged into suites that are not always convincing as suites, but the individual pieces are. Anyway, quite a nice find. It's not going to be played frequently, but whenever I get a hankerin' for some harpsichord, this and Scarlatti by Scott Ross will do nicely. BTW, the harpsichord used is truly remarkable sounding, rich and warm.

Six and Eight

I'm usually not a fan of too much strings together. More than five strings and you want to hear a clarinet or another woodwind, is my feeling. However here's an sextet and octet I got acquainted with recently.

The Octet is by George Enescu (1881 - 1955), a Rumanian composer, pupil of Gabriel Fauré, teacher of Yehudi Menuhin, who, as they say, divided his time between Paris and Vienna. An admirer of relentless masters of form like Brahms and Fauré, his turn of the century Octet (op 7) is above all a wild romantic fanciful piece of work. Particularly the first movement is fine, in the perfomance of Gidon Kremer's Kremerata Baltica - a group of young musicians from the Riga School of Music (among whom a rather nice blonde woman on the cello, called Marta Sudraba). The Nonesuch disc (from 2002) also lists the Quintet (op 29). The recording is phenomenal.

The other recording is from 1977 originally, and it was put on cd by the Swiss Jecklin label, and it turned up in a sale. It's Max Reger's string Sextet op 118, dating from 1910. Reger (1873 - 1916) is the musical link between Brahms and Schönberg, and if this sounds rather dour, admittedly his music occasionally is a little chewey, especially in the first and last movements, where there's a lot of thematic stuff going on.

However in his last decade he wrote an impressive series of chamber works with great sunshiney scherzi and adagios / largos, in which the influence of late Mozart opened up the textures and let in both the light of joy and clouds of deep contemplation. (The great orchestral variation works are part of this, too.) Come to think of it, it's truly amazing this man (drinking barrels of beer, writing scurrilous letters to critics on the loo before going to church to pound away at the organ) wrote the same largo over and over again, and every time it's different and truly shattering.

Reger's String Sextet is one of his sunniest works. The performance by the Zürich Chamber Ensemble is clearly dedicated; Jecklin was that kind of label. No hack work. It's strange this is the only recording within human memory; just as it's strange Reger is hardly ever on the repertory of performing ensembles.

I have no hesitation calling Reger the greatest composer of chamber music (from trio to sextet) in the years before the 1914-1918 War. So I fully recommend getting this disc, should you ever come across it. (That's the hard part.)

Herman

"When was Debussy writing his Trio, Quartet etc. After the war?"

I had thought of that, Sir! Debussy (d. 1918) composed the three sonatas (Cello, Trio and Violin) during and because of the war. Just as Ravel's Piano Trio these were supposed to be patriotic works. I'm disappointed, Sir, you never thought of Marianne and her interesting dress while listening.

Part of why I'd place Reger this high is this string of works he produced in those pre-war years. Debussy is of course a more "important" composer, writing more lovely music, too. (And you know I rate Fauré's chamber works very highly, too.) However Debussy was one of those guys who had to break the mould every time, hence his relatively small oeuvre.
Reger on the other hand was an incredible hard worker, who at a certain point broke away from his penchant for heavy counterpoint and triple fugues (though most of his finales are still in fugue form) and discovered a more open-textured way of writing. Once he'd made this breakthrough it seems he just flogged himself to death as evinced in this catalogue of masterpieces (mainly chamber):

Piano Trio Op 102 (1908)
Clarinet sonata Op 107 (1909)
String Quartet no 4 Op 109 (1909)
Piano Quartet no 1 Op 113 (1910)
Piano Concerto Op 113 (1910)
String Sextet Op 118 (1910)
String Quartet no 5 Op 121 (1911)
Mozart Variations Op 132 (1914)
Piano Quartet no 2 Op 133 (1914)
Violin Sonata no 9 Op 139 (1915)
Clarinet Quintet Op 146 (1916)

The problem with Reger is some people have to get used to his rather German emphasis on structure. Or they don't. Think two parts Brahms, two parts Bach and one part late Mozart. He's not one to let a pretty melody just pop up and pop off. It gets worked into the overall structure and if it don't fit, I suspect the pretty melody goes into the next opus.

However, as I said before, especially his scherzi and largos are amazing. There's this unique way he has of building these beautiful arching long phrases out of very spare material, endowing them with a shattering solemnity. The Piano Concerto's middle movement (beautiful old recording by Rudolf Serkin and Ormandy) is a great example of this.

Good starting works? With a little bit of luck the Mozart Variations for Orchestra are still available in the Colin Davis recording (Philips) or Kurt Masur (Teldec). (Yes, the theme is that same old A major theme W.A.M. exploited in his piano sonata variations K 331!)
Perhaps the best starting point in chamber music is the concluding work, the Clarinet Quintet, available on Nimbus, with Karl Leister and the Vogler Quartet (also featuring the Fourth String Quartet).
Of course there's the 5-disc collection of String and Piano Quartets by the Mannheim string quartet - but that's way too much too start with. (It is an excellent recording though.)

remaining, Sir, your humble servant,

Herman

Nick,

Don't do it! Invest in a few Mozart CDs instead. Eventually you'll begin to appreciate it.

David

Hi David,

indeed, had I known beforehand Nick is among the Mozart-bereft, I would not even have replied to his query. (Still Reger's Mozart Variations don't hurt, do they now?)

Am I to infer you've had traumatic Reger experiences?

Herman

Hi Nick,

21 Wolfies perhaps merits one Reger, though I'd really like to know what David's problem is. Maybe I just have this prenatural way of understanding the beauties (another unwarranted plural, guys!) of the toilet seat composer Reger.

I have loved the Piano Concerto as long as I have loved the Rachmaninov Concertos, and that's a long time. I do like certain types of density, though dislike certain other types of density, such as Schönberg, whom I rarely ever listen to. Reger is always reaching for song. (His songs are not very succesful, BTW.)

By this time I found out there's not a good Mozart Variations recording available at the moment, which is a sad reflection on today's music business. (Thanks Universal Vivendi! Hopefully there's still water coming out of the taps in France!) There is however the Colin Davis recording of the Hiller Variations Op 100 on Orfeo, another label with excellent audio recordings, that don't get remaindered five minutes after release. Another great variations symphony, perhaps a tad more boisterous than the Mozart Variations.

The other recommendations are the Nimbus Clarinet Quintet with Karl Leister, or the Piano Concerto on Koch, with Karl Oppitz. It kind of depends on what you feel like: (1) Symphony in Variations (2) Mellow Mature Chamber Work (3) Heroic Piano Concerto.

But first I want to know what David's problem is.

Herman

herm,

In my defense, I was somewhat under the influence when I wrote that. If I remember correctly in the overrated thread, Nick nominated Mozart and then made some comments along the lines of composing by numbers. Based on that, I didn't think that taking an elegant Mozart theme and submitting to tortuous variation was likely to appeal. Maybe I've just heard bad versions of his fugue pieces. Consider me well and truly chastised.

David

"Defense?" "Chastized?" All I did was wonder what your experiences with Reger were like, David. So you don't like the Mozart Variations?

I admit Reger's love for show-off fugues can get a bit out of hand, in the finales. However in my home there's no Arts Cop standing by to keep me from turning down the volume or walking away when I've had enough near the end...

Herman

herm,

Mozart Variations has never really appealed. If you're looking for common ground, I also rarely listen to Schoenberg, preferring either Berg or Webern if I'm in that sort of mood. Listening to an interview with Mitsuko Uchida a couple of weeks ago, she said that she thought that she had won so many awards for her Schoenberg Piano Concerto disc, because the judges felt so guilty that they never listened to any of his music.

Having been chez Lees last night, I can confirm the Arts Cops were in liberal mood until Mr Alves put on a horn ensemble version of Bohemian Rhapsody.

David

The new recording of the Enescu does sound intriguing. I do rather enjoy Enescu, at least that which I have heard. His Third Symphony is a masterpiece as far as I am concerned. I will keep my eye out for the disc.

As for the contention that Reger was the best pre-Great War chamber music composer, I must take exception with that if for no other reason than the fact that both Bartok and Schoenberg wrote there first two quartets before the war. I believe it is safe to say that those four works are possibly better than anything Reger wrote. My exposure to Reger is admittedly limited, but from what I have heard (always on my radio local station), his music reminds me of Hindemith: technically able and precisely crafted, yet somewhat lacking in inspiration. No one can accuse Messrs Bartok and Schoenberg of lacking inspiration.

Too bad, Todd, you're indifferent to Reger, though Hindemith is a totally different kind of composer, from a different era. Especially in his chamber works (like the brilliant Kammermusike) Hindemith took Bach as a model, writing a mile a minute.

Admittedly Reger was a fairly productive composer, too (though not on a scale of neo-classicists like Hindemith and Milhaud) but his aim and drive was late Romantic always: the expression of an unique musical sensibility, aiming to further the technical-expressive boundaries of the genre - though within boundaries, since Reger, like Brahms, was a classical romanticist. That's why Reger is taxing to play, but still doable, while Schoenberg is pretty much an impossible task.

I love that last lap of the long line of classical composers, from Bach's sons, Mozart and Schubert, Chopin and Brahms through, I'd say Reger, and I cherish every work in the canon before true twentieth century central european hysteria sets in (another interesting line, but very different). But never mind. I'm quite happy to keep Reger to myself.

And if you’re interested in Enescu: his two string quartets are on a good Naxos recording by the Ad Libitum Quartet.

Herman

Sandor Veress Cello Sonata

This weekend I enjoyed a couple of performances at the Delft Chamber Music Festival (a kind of mom and pop show formed around Dutch violinist Isabelle van Keulen and her husband clarinettist Michael Collins).

There was a lot of Bartok, this year, with the violin duo's and the 2nd String Quartet performed by the Vermeer Quartet. However, I was most impressed by a solo cello piece by the Hungarian composer Sandor Veress of whom I'd never heard (he's from 1907-1992 - the sonata dates from 1967). His biography describes him as the third Hungarian composer, after Bartok and Kodaly, and as a great teacher, having Ligeti and Kurtag as his most renowned students.

The way the cello piece was announced in Delft made it sound formidable: the cellist who was originally going to play the Veress had called in sick, and finding a replacement seemed virtually impossible, as there aren't that many cellists with this piece in their repertoire. However, they'd managed to get hold of Johann Goritzki, a German cellist who knew the piece.

When Goritzki came on stage, set the music on the stand, and put a pair of bifocals on his nose, I thought: he's going to look at the piece and change his mind. He's going to walk. After all the biography stated G, at some point in his career, had agreed with Schumann's dictum that the cello was too confining, and he was doing more and more conducting. So why sit there sweating with a cello between your knees when you can make an entire orchestra sweat under your baton?

However, the Veress piece proved Schumann wrong. The range of expressive techniques (such as bowing with your right hand, and plucking left and full hand glissandi) and compositional techniques (occasionally using twelve-tone in clearly demarcated melodic phrasings) made this single instrument into a fullscale village band, and into a big tangible voice talking to us. Veress's voice. Apperently he didn't compose all that much, but he sure put all he had in this amazing, spellbinding piece. It's just totally beyond me how you can compose a piece like this, turning the instrument inside out (and yourself into the bargain) when you're not a cellist yourself - but I guess that's what makes a real composer.

I'm still thinking of this music all the time, and I'm getting this piece fast (there's a Queyras recording paired with a bunch of interesting Kurtag pieces on Harmonia Mundi).

Herman

My new-found fondness of 20th Century opera has driven me to do the almost unthinkable - well, at least for me: pay full price for a CD set. The set in question is Erwin Schulhoff's opera Flammen. I was originally going to wait a bit to buy it, but it looks like the recording may have been deleted so I decided to just accept the pain of paying $33 for a two-disc set. Fortunately, the recording is worth the cost.

The opera is a late-1920s setting of Don Juan. It is decidedly different from Mozart's Don Giovanni. The opera is relatively light in libretto and heavy in music, which ain't too bad, and the libretto has some extended sung monologues by some of the (small number of) characters. Bottom line is that Don Juan falls in love twice, both women die, but Death will not let Don Juan die because she - Death - is in love with Don Juan. Quite a story. Some of the lines are downright obscene (cool!), and I would love to see a production of the opera, what, with several scenes calling for long lines or piles of "naked, soulless" women.

Since music plays a relatively more prominent role, I will say that the music is quite fine. It most definitely sounds like Schulhoff, with jazz elements thrown in, and with some sort of hybrid Scriabin-Debussy-Ravel passages in there. This is the most ambitious work Schulhoff wrote. The recording itslef is quite sumptuous having been recorded in the lovely Jesus-Christus-Kirche by Decca's finest. The price is a loss of some instrumental detail. The cast, led by Jane Eaglen, does a fine job, and John Mauceri does a generally very good job conducting. That written, I got the sense that some of the tempi are too slow in this recording. I base this not on the score, but on my experience with other Schulhoff music. His music benefits from snappy tempi and usually that's what other performers deliver. His other big stage work - Ogelala - is more brisk, though not better. Minor criticisms aside, this is a fine opera and I'm glad I bought it. Okay, so it's not on the same level as Wozzeck, but how many more modern operas are?

After a couple of years of waiting, I finally got around to buying a disc of the music of Ahmed Adnan Saygun. I opted for his two piano concertos, the first from the mid-1950s, the second from the mid-1980s. They are quite fine works. But what do they sound like? One word: Bartok. The influence of the Hungarian master is everywhere evident, whether it's the percussive-only treatment of the piano in many parts, or whether it's the heavy use of percussion, or whether it's the wild 'n' barbaric sounding orchestral playing. You could almost call the concertos Bartok's piano concertos 1a and 2a. I guess some influence was inevitable as Saygun worked with Bartok in the 1930s while investigating the folk music of Anatolia.

I don't want to imply that Saygun was just a rip-off artist: there are some intriguing, unique passages, and much of the music has a sort of provincial or ethnic flavor that I have not heard elsewhere. Think of him as a Turkish Ippolitov-Ivanov, if you will. The works are most definitely worth a listen if you like Bartok. (I bought the Koch set with artists whose names I cannot remember at the moment, and I believe there may be a recording on the Hungaroton label.) No, these concertos are not of the same level as Bartok, Prokofiev, Ravel, or Shostakovich, but they compare favorably with other, lesser works of the last century. Do take a listen if you're interested.

How's this for an obscure title: Norwegian 20th Century String Quartets. That's the title of a Naxos disc I recently picked up with quartets by four different composers, none of whom I had heard of before: Klaus Egge, Fartein Valen, Johan Kvandal, and Alfred Janson. All of the works are very good, if not in the absolute top-rank of quartets of the last century. They all definitely sound "modern" and if they sometimes sound somewhat derivative at times (of Bartok, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, and Schnittke, respectively), they are worth a listen. Probably the best work on the disc, at least to my ears, is Janson's, but all are definitely worth a listen.

The best thing about the disc, though, is the young quartet playing the music: The Oslo String Quartet. They always play with commitment, and they most certainly possess fine technical ability, and their ensemble playing can match the very best out there. I look forward to hearing more from them. I believe they have recorded Grieg and some other titles for Naxos. I would like to hear them in more central repetoire, like Bartok for instance. A group with potential and worth a listen.

First, how about some Gieseking. No, not as a pianist, but as a composer. I heard his Quintet for Piano and Winds on the radio and found it a charming diversion. No, it’s not a masterpiece, but it is nice. What does it sound like? One word: Debussy. The announcer could have proclaimed the work a lost, early piece by Claude and I would have believed him.

Next, how about some Bernstein as composer? I’ve never been too fond of West Side Story or some of the other works I have heard by Lenny, but I recently listened to A White House Cantata and liked this work quite a bit. The recording in question is the Kent Nagano conducted version with Thomas Hampson as a number of the Presidents, June Anderson as the appropriate First Ladies, Barbara Hendricks as Thomaseena (called Seena throughout the work), a slave girl and then woman. (Hmmm, Thomaseena? Where’d Lenny get the idea for that?) The work is quite musically entertaining – in a Broadway Musical sort of way – and contains plenty of catchy tunes. The performers all do excellent work, and the sound is very good. The lyrics, or text if you prefer, is filled with some subtle and some not so subtle humor, and addresses the issue of race quite directly. I think some of the work is probably of more interest to Americans than to others, but I don’t foresee anyone not getting the gist of the work or potentially enjoying it. Of course, if you hate Musicals and don’t much care for Lenny, then this is probably best avoided.

I can be an impatient person. There are some things I just want right now. Or at least tomorrow. Case in point: I picked up the first CD in the Martinu string quartet cycle on Naxos almost three years, right after it came out. I was so impressed with that disc that I eagerly awaited the next two discs in the series. A year passed. Then two. Nothing. Damn Naxos! Oh sure, the remaining two discs were released internationally late last year, but the local CD hut has yet to get them in. Enough waiting. I decided I would get the complete cycle played by the Panocha Quartet on Supraphon. It turned out to be a wise move.

The Panocha turn in a memorable account of all of the works, worthy of consideration by fans of both the string quartet and 20th Century music. The works more or less chart the development of Martinu as an artist. The first two quartets are somewhat immature and for all their youthful energy and spirit, lack either technical wizardry or great insight. The Panocha do get the most out of the works, and make a more convincing case for the works than the Martinu Quartet on Naxos, though only marginally.

Things pick up somewhat in the Third and Fourth Quartets. The Third is a short (12 minutes), jaunty exercise in ensemble writing, and the Fourth represents a substantial step forward in writing, both technical and artistic. Indeed, if Martinu had stopped there, he would be worth serious consideration as an author of quartets, but the next works establish him as a serious composer.

Indeed, the Fifth and Sixth Quartets can both be characterized as masterpieces of the string quartet literature. Both are war quartets, if you will, dating from 1938 and 1946, respectively, and as one might expect they can best be described as dark, angry, violent works, alternatively exploding with rage and quieting, briefly, for contemplation. Furies of notes follow furies of notes, with just about every expressive technique utilized expertly. These are truly great works. If I were forced to choose one, I would say that the Fifth is Martinu’s greatest contribution to the medium, easily able to stand with the best Bartok and Shostakovich have to offer. If ultimately Martinu cannot quite ascend to the very summit that those two were capable of, he is within earshot.

After that the two great war-time works, the Seventh is a step down, but mostly in intensity, not necessarily quality. The work is a sunnier, happier work, filled with attractive music and concluding on a happier note. If not profound in the sense of its two predecessors, it is still worth a listen. More than worth it. I found these quartets absorbing listening: I listened to the last four straight through, and so got to hear the development and change of outlook in quick succession. It was quite an experience.

What to do now? Should I give the rest of the Martinu Quartet set a try? You bet. I think Martinu’s quartets warrant at least two complete cycles. The early digital sound (1979-1982) is acceptable if a little bright and glassy in places.