In its concise description
of violinist Gidon Kremer, The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music
quips that the 54-year-old Latvian violinist shows "a rare command
of the concerto repertory and a sympathetic approach in chamber music."
You have to love the Grove's command of understatement.
Of late, Kremer has shown
all of that and a strong commitment to modern music as well. Kremer—both
as a solo artist and as conductor of his Kremerata Baltica chamber ensemble
comprised of young players from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—has
released a string of widely acclaimed recordings on the Nonesuch label.
That association began two years ago with the Eight Seasons (which
alternated each of Vivaldi's famous Four Seasons concertos with movements
from Argentinean tango master Astor Piazzolla's Four Seasons of Buenos
Aires suite) and continued with last year's Grammy-winning After
Mozart, which brings together the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(and his father Leopold) and works by 20th-century composers inspired
by Mozart.
In this stunning new recording
(Nonesuch 79682), Kremer turns to the modernism of the great 20th-century
Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu (1881–1955), who
taught Christian Ferras, Arthur Grumiaux, and Yehudi Menuhin, among
others. In her liner notes, writer Julia Bederova points out that "in
French and Romanian cultural spheres, Enescu was seen as both weak and
uncivilized." The Octet, Op. 7 (for four violins, two violas, and
two cellos) with its complex sonic and emotional texture reveals Enescu's
formidable compositional power. It also underscores his love of German
romanticism, French impressionism, and Romanian folklore, the latter
of which is heard ever so subtly. The playing on the Octet is bold throughout.
The Quintet, Op. 29 (with piano), further showcases Enescu's compositional
strength and the ensemble's depth. This is heartfelt modern music at
its best, filled with bravura performances, adventurous harmonies, and
rich melodies that glow with an old-world charm beneath a veil of modernism.
Mendelssohn:
Violin Concerto in E minor; Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D major.
Joshua Bell, violin; Sir Roger Norrington conducting Camerata Salzburg.
(Sony Classical SK 89505)
Juilliard's ongoing attack
of the clones can make even the most unsentimental listener miss slurpy
old Mischa Elman. But just when we're about to surrender to the soulless
machine, along comes a release by someone like Gingold-trained Joshua
Bell to remind us that there are still violinists who know how to combine
precision, elegance, and heart. The selling point of Bell's new recording
is that the violinist wrote his own cadenzas.
In the Mendelssohn, Bell's
cadenza is more flamboyant than Ferdinand David's; this might pass for
Joseph Joachim—the violinist-composer who had his fingers in the
Brahms concerto—in one of his more extravagant moments. For Beethoven,
Bell's cadenza explores material generally assigned to the orchestra,
or drawn from introductory and transitional passages. This would be
an attractive release even without the cadenza novelty. Bell is unfailingly
expressive; the opening of the Mendelssohn is especially plaintive.
He employs more portamento than is common these days, and more vibrato
than was common in Mendelssohn's time. As for the orchestral contribution,
"Norrington" and "inflection" are two words rarely
found in the same sentence, but here Sir Roger's lean, alert accompaniment
nicely sets off Bell's more palpitating solo work.
—James
Reel
Meyer, Bottesini
Concertos. Edgar Meyer, bass; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Joshua Bell, violin;
Hugh Wolf conducting the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. (Sony Classical
SK 60956)
Edgar Meyer's previous Sony
releases have primarily displayed him in traditional American music
(and new music in traditional styles) in the company of Sam Bush, Béla
Fleck, and the like. This new disc reminds us—in the unlikely event
that anybody has forgotten—that Meyer is also an outstanding classical
musician, an able composer as well as an expert player. Meyer's two
double-bass concertos are assuredly not bluegrass for orchestra. Meyer
doesn't believe in the concept of "crossover," anyway; instead
of crossing from one style to another, he looks for things that link
the musics that interest him. So these are highly accessible, thoughtful,
unabashedly diatonic classical works that happen to incorporate a very
few licks drawn from blues and bluegrass. Meyer's ability to pull it
together is as seamless as his legato, and in Meyer's Double Concerto
Yo-Yo Ma handles the idioms equally well. Meyer's approach to Bottesini
is mainly lyrical, yet his attacks really snap. Joshua Bell is a welcome
partner in the Grand Duo Concertante, a 19th-century arrangement originally
for two basses.
—J.R.
Music for Violin
and Piano by Saint-Saëns. Jasper Wood, violin; James Parker,
piano. Sonata No. 1 in D Minor; Triptyque; Sonata No. 2 in E-flat Major.
(Pelléas 0110)
It has been argued that
Gil Shaham owns the bragging rights to Camille Saint-Saëns' Violin
Sonata No. 1, but Canadian-born violinist Jasper Wood stakes his own
claim to this dynamic piece, offering a breathtakingly aching and ethereal
rendering of the haunting Adagio. Most notably, he rises to the occasion
on the combative Allegro molto, the last movement that The Rough
Guide to Classical Music once dubbed a "brilliant but technically
cruel moto-perpetuo," in which Wood holds his ground in an instrumental
duel with pianist James Parker.
—G.C.
Mendelssohn,
String Quartets Vol. 2. Eroica Quartet: Peter Hanson, Lucy Howard,
violins; Gustav Clarkson, viola; David Watkin, cello. (Harmonia Mundi
907287)
The Eroica Quartet began
its recording career in 1999 with the first installment of the now critically
acclaimed Mendelssohn cycle. Part two, offers an enthralling performance.
Looking to Mendelssohn's friend, Ferdinand David (1810–73), for
the source of the recording's editions, the Eroica sidesteps the norm
by employing the frequent use of portamento and smoother, more weighted
bow strokes (disregarding continuos vibrato). Widely considered Britain's
leading period instrumentalists, the Eroica continues to enliven the
Romantics by bringing new perspectives to old repertoire.
—Heather
K. Scott
Vivaldi: The
Late Violin Concertos. Giuliano Carmignola, violin. Venice Baroque
Orchestra with Andrea Marcon. Sony Classical 89362)
Prior to 1730, Vivaldi published
100 or so scores for "mass consumption." After that time,
he decided to offer his works only to patrons wealthy enough to afford
one-of-a-kind manuscripts. Whether this business endeavor succeeded
or not, it kept much of Vivaldi's post-1730 works out of circulation.
These later works are more "mature," yet more wild and asymmetrical
than the familiar violin concerti published and played in Vivaldi's
day. This recording is actually a premiere of six of these concerti
that conductor Andrea Marcon, violinist Giuliano Carmignola, and Vivaldi
scholar Michael Talbot reconstructed from Vivaldi's unpublished works.
Italian virtuoso Carmignola's expressive technique is well suited for
displaying these works. The spontaneity and expressiveness in the music
is brought out by his remarkable variations in bowing technique and
vitality of tone color. He is accompanied by the Venice Baroque Orchestra,
which matches Carmignola in rich, exciting articulation and tone production.
Marcon uses two harpsichords rather than the customary one, and these,
along with the lute and explosive string playing, provide extra dimensions
of percussive depth. Set in the usual three-movement form, these concerti
are unpredictable and adventurous, with sudden contrasts in mood and
texture. Carmignola is a wonderful addition to the ranks of Baroque
performance specialists and this recording is definitely a must for
any collection.
—Meg
Eldridge
Weill: String
Quartets. Hindemith: Minimax. Leipziger Streichquartett. (MDG 307
1071-2)
This enterprising
disc pairs youthful chamber works of Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith.
Weill's two quartets (written in 1919 and 1923) show little evidence
of his later genius of fusing classical tradition with the popular styles
of the musical culture of his day. The post romantic, earlier quartet
combines abundant lyricism with thickly textured scoring. The latter
mixes contrapuntally expressive textures, vacillating harmonies in a
neoclassic framework that reflects the musical ambiguity of the time.
Hindemith's Minimax from 1923 is a delicious parody of military band
music (march, waltz, polka, and so on) that shows the composer had a
sense of humor after all. Excellent performances and recording.
—Robert
Moon
4tet San Francisco.
Jeremy Cohen, James Shallenberger, violins; Emily Onderdonk, viola;
Joel Cohen, cello; Jim Kerwin, bass. (Violinjazz 0110)
This independently produced
CD of string-quartet music is a delight. The project sprang from Jeremy
Cohen's personal quest to find good, fun, interesting arrangements of
nonclassical music for quartet. Luckily for us, Cohen finally settled
on the solution of creating the arrangements himself. The tunes range
from the familiar to the obscure, from tangos to cartoon music, from
Mancini to Brubeck to Wonder. Yep, Stevie Wonder: The wildly swingy
tutti interludes in "Sir Duke" more than compensate for the
almost-too-prissy verses. And the rest of the disc truly rocks,
particularly the selections by Raymond Scott, a name some may recognize
from Warner Brothers cartoons. Cohen's arrangements are innovative and
challenging treatments in which all the players share the spotlight,
even the oft-neglected violist: Emily Onderdonk is more than equal to
the task. OK, so five players do not a quartet make. But Jim Kerwin's
bass playing is impeccable, and he only slips into the lineup on the
final three tracks.
—Elisa M. Welch
Druckman: Viola
Concerto; Counterpoise; Brangle. Roberto Diaz, viola; Dawn Upshaw,
soprano; Wolfgang Sawallisch and David Zinman conducting the Philadelphia
Orchestra. (New World 80560-2)
The solo launching Jacob
Druckman's 1978 Viola Concerto is like an archer drawing back her bow's
string and letting fly an arrow. As the viola repeatedly strikes its
target row of notes, puffs of orchestral color rise like little clouds
of dust. During this 22-minute work, the viola alternates lyrically
atonal material with more rhythmic passages, a skittering figure often
preceding some extended, slow meander. Druckman keeps the viola in its
upper register much of the time, but demands only conventional playing
techniques. In this, the concerto's first recording, drawn from 1998
concert performances, violist Roberto Diaz gives every indication of
having lived with this music for years, with his firm tone, coherent
phrasing, and absolute lack of panic in the more difficult passages.
Sandwiching the concerto are Druckman's Counterpoise, indistinguishable
from a dozen other orchestral song cycles written since the 1970s, and
Brangle, a dance suite with a curiously faint pulse. On this
CD, the musical meat is all in the middle.
—J.R.
Speaking Extravagantly:
String Quartets of David Stock. Cuarteto Latinoamericano: Saul Bitran,
Aron Bitran, violins; Javier Montiel, viola; Alvaro Bitran, cello. (Innova
563)
David Stock, a professor
at Duquesne University and the founding conductor of the Pittsburgh
New Music Ensemble from 1976 to 1999, has written primarily for orchestra;
his catalog includes a violin concerto premiered by Andres Cardenes
and the Pittsburgh Symphony under Lorin Maazel. These three quartets,
spanning 1981 to 1997, survey Stock's mature manner on a smaller, more
accessible scale. The disc opens appealingly with his String Quartet
No. 3. Stock's sound world is very much that of the late Shostakovich
quartets; the music is sometimes astringent, but no more so than Bartók,
with some leavening lyricism and an unfailing sense of action. Here
and in the other two works, Stock loves pizzicato, tremolo effects,
and sudden contrasts between jagged intensity and hushed suspense. His
Quartet No. 2, "Speaking Extravagantly" (an allusion to a
Charles Ives definition of music), employs more fragmented material,
the players swarming around and pecking at longer, quizzical atonal
utterances. Quartet No. 4 pairs a fast 12-tone movement with a slow,
haunting lament based on a repeating, descending figure. Cuarteto Latinoamericano
plays it all with superb concentration and verve.
—J.R.
Menotti: Violin
Concerto; The Death of Orpheus; Muero porque no muero; Oh llama de amor
viva. Jennifer Koh, violin; Julia Melinek, soprano; Jamie MacDougall,
tenor. Spoleto Festival Orchestra and Choir, Richard Hickox, conductor.
(Chandos 9979)
It's hard not to wonder
why Menotti's Violin Concerto has landed in concert hall oblivion while
his friend Samuel BarberÕs Violin Concerto has become a concert and
recording staple. Perhaps the reason lies in the immediate accessibility
of the Barber, while Menotti's gem needs at least a second hearing before
it reveals its considerable melodic substance, colorful orchestration,
and rich harmony. Jennifer Koh masters this difficult concerto with
a clear and radiant tone, but the work could use a richer, more romantic
interpretation. The premiere recordings of the three cantatas show Menotti's
strength as a vocal composer: lyrical contrapuntal lines, dramatic contrasts,
and emotional substance. Superb performances and the luxuriant Chandos
sound make this disc an important addition to the Menotti discography.
—R.M.
Debussy and Ravel
String Quartets. Borodin Quartet: Rostislav Dubinsky, Yaroslav Alexandrov,
violins; Dmitry Shebalin, viola; and Valentin Berlinsky, cello. (Chandos
9980)
The Ravel and Debussy string
quartets have been frequently paired on albums and concerts over the
years. Both works are seemingly parallel masterpieces. Neither Debussy
nor Ravel, young men when they wrote their monumental chamber works
within ten years of one another, wrote another string quartet. While
the pieces share similar pizzicato scherzo movements and have sensual
slow movements with delicate string texture, each also bears the distinctive
voice of its composer. The Borodin Quartet was originally founded in
1945 and the personnel remained unchanged from 1953 until 1974. These
phenomenal players came together at the Moscow Conservatory from different
regions of the Soviet Union, and they achieved international recognition
very quickly. The latest in Chandos' series of digitally remastered
rare recordings of the Borodin Quartet, this CD is a must-have for anyone
wanting to hear these beautiful quartets performed by one of the greatest
string quartets of the 20th century. The sound quality is magnificent.
The playing is wonderful. A rewarding experience for any listener.
—M.E.
New & Noteworthy
Nocturnal Dances
of Don Juan Quixote. Yuli Turovsky, cello and musical direction;
I Musici de Montreal. (Chandos 9973)
Finnish
composer Aulis Sallinen is best known for his modern operas, but Moscow-born
cellist Yuli Turovsky spins a fascinating musical yarn with Sallinen's
20-minute ode to the patron saint of dreamers, weaving his way through
a foxtrot, tango, and 6/8 time jazz dance. Bernstein, Hindemith, Bartók,
and Rossini round out this wonderfully diverse recording.
Rare French Works
for Violin and Orchestra. Phillippe Griffin, violin; the Ulster
Orchestra, Thierry Fischer, conductor. (Hyperion CDA 67294)
Griffin's
reputation as a passionate chamber musician is bolstered by this striking
collection of obscure works by Fauré, Saint-Sa‘ns, Lalo, Guiraud,
and Canteloube. Trained in America and debuted in the U.K. (under Yehudi
Menuhin), Griffin is right at home with these French composers. One
of the season's most alluring CDs.
Truls
Mørk, Edvard Grieg, Cello Sonata, Op. 36; and String Quartet,
Pp. 27. (Virgin Classics 724354550522)
Scandinavian cellist
Truls Mørk lends his warm Russian-School melodic vibrato to chamber
works by the composer best known for his Piano Concerto and the Peer
Gynt suites. The Cello Sonata (with pianist Håvard Gimse) especially
reflects the lyrical side of MørkÕs playing. The String Quartet
is a complex and beautiful affair.
Oregon
Festival of American Music Presents William Grant Still.
Oregon String Quartet, Victor Steinhardt, piano, Fritz Gearhart, violin.
(Koch 3-7546-2H1)
Afro-American
Symphony (1930) helped make William Grant Still the most successful
black classical composer of the 20th century. These later and lesser-known
chamber works are intricate scores that draw from such diverse inspirations
as an Inca melody and jazz dance.
Quatuor
Parisii. Darius Milhaud/The Complete String
Quartets. (Naïve 4900)
It took
Darius Milhaud, and one of the 20th century's most prolific composers,
40 years to complete these works and Quatuor Parisii 15 years to fulfill
a promise to record them all. This ambitious five-CD set is arranged
thematically, allowing the listener to savor Milhaud's exciting experimentalism.
