After two acclaimed
albums of classical string quartets—by Schumann and Tchaikovsky,
respectively—the St. Lawrence String Quartet has issued an extraordinary
disc of modern recordings by Osvaldo Golijov, the Argentinean composer
best known for his work with the Kronos Quartet. Yet, when Golijov says
in the liner notes that his first meeting in 1991 with the redoubtable
St. Lawrence String Quartet (Geoff Nuttall and Barry Shiffman, violins;
Lesley Robertson, viola; and Marina Hoover, cello) was a life-defining
moment, believe it—you'll be hard-pressed to find a more dynamic
collaboration between a living composer and a contemporary ensemble.
No matter how
you feel about contemporary composition, Yiddishbbuk (EMI Classics
573562) is in all likelihood the most powerful piece of new music that
you will hear this year. Two of the selections included here, the title
piece and the closing track, each won first prize at the Kennedy Center's
Friedheim Awards for composition. (The Susan Rose Recording Fund for
Contemporary Jewish Music of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture
helped fund the recording project.) Think Hebrew mysticism mixed with
the visceral force of a piercing Astor Piazzolla street-fight motif
and the soul-shattering existential angst of novelist Franz Kafka, and
you'll get an inkling of the intense emotions that this recording
can stir. Not for the fainthearted.
Mortality rings
throughout this work. "Last Round" (the title is borrowed
from a short story on boxing by Julio Cortázar) was drafted in
1991 after Golijov learned that Piazzolla—the Argentinean composer
and bandoneonista who transformed the tango with jazz and symphonic
influences—had suffered a near-fatal stroke. "Last Round"
is heard here for double string quartet (with the Ying Quartet) and
double bass (Mark Dresser), with the two quartets confronting each other
in a tango marked by pistol-hot triplets and menacing bow slides. "Last
Round" segues into "Lullaby and Doina" (with flutist
Tara Helen O'Connor), a variation on a theme that Golijov composed
for the 2001 Sally Potter film The Man Who Cried, wedding lovely
Yiddish and gypsy melodies.
Yiddishbbuk
is a horse of another color. These "inscriptions" for string
quartet are an attempt to reconstruct archaic apocryphal psalms that
Kafka read while living in Prague. In a letter to a friend, Kafka once
relayed some of the surviving text: "No one sings as purely as
those who are in the deepest hell. Theirs is the song which we confused
with that of the angels." Those fabled psalms, originally "in
the mode of the Babylonic Lamentations," are transformed here into
a memorial to the Holocaust, alternating between the elegiac and the
chaotic. The movements of the piece bear the initials of the five people
commemorated in the work, including three children interned by the Nazis
at the Terezin concentration camp (their poems and drawings were preserved
in the book I Never Saw Another Butterfly).
The disc concludes
with "The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind," a piece
for string quartet and klezmer clarinets (by Todd Palmer) that is an
homage to a 12th-century kabbalist rabbi of Provence. It is a musical
expression—reflecting joy and sorrow, laughter and tears—of
a mystical Jewish belief in a constant state of communion in which human
consciousness nurtures and renews itself through meditation. The piece
deftly blends prayer and dance and leaves the listener in a state of
grace that is all-too-rare in modern music. Five years ago, Kronos Quartet
turned "The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind" into a
classical best seller, but the SLSQ raises this work to new heights.
Sonates pour
violin. Gabriel Fauré, composer, Isabelle Faust, violin;
Florent Boffard, piano. (Harmonia Mundi 901741)
Gabriel Fauré was the master of French song.
And this pairing of Fauré's first and second sonatas for violin
and piano stand like bookends in the oeuvre of this passionate modern
composer. The Sonata in A Major, Op. 13, written in 1875, arrived at
a time when French chamber music was undergoing a radical change, thanks
in no small part to the nurturing environment of the Saint-Saëns
Societe Nationale de Musique, which presented new works by young composers.
Fauré's Sonata in E Minor, Op. 108,
written 41 years later, found the French musical landscape transformed
by Debussy's opera Pelleás et Mélisande and such
influential works as Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Thus you have
here, played to utter perfection by Christoph Poppen student Isabelle
Faust, a musical microcosm of the man's melodious violin sonatas. "Fauré's
stylistic development can be traced from the sprightly or melancholy
song settings of his youth," the Grove Dictionary of Music
has noted, "to the bold, forceful late instrumental works, traits
including a delicate combination of expanded tonality and modality,
rapid modulations to remote keys, and continuously unfolding melody."
It's a thrill to hear that development so powerfully stated in these
two performances. Keep your eye on Faust—she is a savvy interpreter
of 20th-century song capable of evoking tremendous emotion and sporting
the technical skills to match.
—G.C.
Biber Sonatas
for Violin and Continuo. John Holloway, violin; Aloysia Assenbaum,
organ; Lars Ulrik Mortenson, harpsichord. (ECM 1791)
The Bohemian virtuoso violinist
and composer Heinrich Biber (1644–1704) never fell short of demanding
in his call for technical mastery of the violin, nor did he hesitate
to test the limits of the instrument—his 15 Rosary Sonatas called
for retuning the violin to produce different sonorities and unusual
chordal effects. As a result, his Baroque works have been called some
of the most remarkable and forward-looking music of the late 17th century.
The work that most firmly established his fame was the 1681 collection
of Sonatas for Violin and Continuo. Violinist John Holloway,
founder of the Baroque ensemble L'Ecole d'Orphée, has
recorded all eight sonatas. Four are included here; the remaining four
will be released next year. It's nothing short of remarkable to
hear Holloway firing off volleys of rapid-fire notes in a musical fusillade
that is filled with a gusto seldom heard in Baroque music. As Peter
Wollny writes, "No solo violin pieces of comparable compositional
and technical ambitions had appeared since 1664, when the Viennese violin
virtuoso Johann Heinrich Schmelzer published his Sonatae unarum fidium.
(Those pieces were the subject of Holloway's 1999 ECM debut.) Never
before had there been such a poised synthesis of challenging virtuosity,
artistic expression, and intricate craftsmanship." In Holloway's
estimate, the nearest comparable opus "could be said to be the
sonatas and partitas for violin solo by Bach." Holloway, who won
a Gramophone Award in 1991 for his recording of Biber's Mystery
Sonatas, once again meets the challenge. Look for Holloway, Assenbaum,
and Mortenson on tour in October with concert dates in British Columbia,
the West Coast, and Southwest.
—G.C.
Henryk Wieniawski:
Complete Works for Solo Violin, and Violin and Piano. Daniel Stabrawa,
Konstanty Andrzej Kulka, Bartlomiej Niziol, and Piotr Plawner, violinists.
(Accord CD ACD 106-2)
The organizers of the Wieniawski
International Competition for Violinists have released a double CD with
the complete works of the violinist/composer for solo violin and for
violin and piano.
In an impressive demonstration of the ongoing vitality of Polish violin
virtuosity, four players are presented here representing two generations
of contemporary Polish violinists. The first generation comprises Daniel
Stabrawa, the eminent concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra,
and Konstanty Andrzej Kulka, himself a soloist of impressive credentials.
The younger generation is gloriously embodied by the two young violinists
Bartlomiej Niziol and Piotr Plawner, both born in 1974, and in 1991
both first-prize winners ex-aequo of the Wieniawski International Competition,
hence highly qualified interpreters for these CDs. Niziol throws down
the gauntlet with the first six tracks of the collection, which include
the famous Polonaise Brillante in D major, played with equal amounts
of charm and brilliance. This is a violinist of rare substance, of whom
we will certainly hear more in the future. Of pedagogic interest are
the eight Etudes-Caprices Op. 10 titled "L'école Moderne."
These are etudes that traditionally form part of the final education
of a violinist, and they are quite capably performed here by Plawner,
although he apparently doesn't dare attempt the ninth etude, "Les
Arpéges," which is at yet another level of difficulty.
Niziol again has the honor
of beginning the second CD, this time with the relatively long "Thème
Original Varié" Op. 15. After Kulka's rendition of "Légende"
(Op. 17), it's back to the classroom for the Études-Caprices,
Op. 18, with the accompaniment of a second violin. Stabrawa mans the
second violin part graciously (he will have his chance later in the
meatiest of all, the "Fantaisie Brillante sur 'Faust,'" Op.
20) while Niziol plays first violin. Plawner's "Grande Polonaise
de Concert," Op. 21, and "Gigue" in E minor, Op. 23,
round out this very authentic and rather complete offering of Polish
virtuosity. The violin concertos Nos. 1 and 2, performed by Plawner
and Niziol respectively, also are available on Accord CD (ACD 024a-2).
—Christopher
Whiting
Rautavaara: Complete
Works for String Orchestra. Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, Juha
Kangas, conductor. (Ondine ODE 983-2D)
"If an artist is not
a Modernist when he is young, he has no heart. And if he is a Modernist
when he is old, he has no brain." These words of the great Finnish
composer Einojuhani Rautavaara aptly describe this collection
of his string music written over a 40-year
period from 1952–1993. From the Finnish folk influenced "The
Fiddlers" to a trilogy
honoring the Hungarian composers Liszt, Bartók, and Kodály
to the expressive string cantilena studies of Cantos I through IV, Rautavaara
creatively explores serialism, neoclassicism, and neoromanticism in
works that are gripping, eerie, beautiful, moving, and quirkily scary
(as in the last Ostrobothnian Polka; 1993). An essential release for
string orchestra lovers.
—Robert
Moon
Short Takes
McEwen String
Quartets, Volume 1. (Chandos 9926)
The late-Romantic style
of the Scottish composer Sir John Blackwood McEwen (1868–1948)
gets loving attention from the Chilingirian Quartet on these premier
recordings. Acclaimed for its skill, fluency, and energy, the Chilingirian
is always in command, whether the material is the summery quiet of "Quartette
Provençale," the somber "Threnody" (and isn't
that a find?), or the giddiness of McEwen's "Fantasia."
William Lawes:
Consort Sets in Five & Six Parts (Alia Vox 9823); and Vivaldi:
Farnace, Les Concert Des Nations. (Alia Vox 9822)
Jordi Savall, Spain's
preeminent conductor and viola da gamba master, sets his sights on two
very different works. With his Hyperion XXI early music ensemble, Savall
marks the 400th anniversary of William Lawes, widely regarded as the
most important composer of English theater music before Henry Purcell.
On the other hand, Farnace, performed on period instruments, marks Savall's
first opera recording as well as his debut Vivaldi disc. This three-CD
set, accompanied by a beautifully rendered 176-page booklet, presents
Farnace for the first time in its complete version and is enhanced with
additions from Francesco Corselli's opera by the same name. Powerful
and often strikingly beautiful.
The Rabbi's Lover.
(Tzadik 7165)
As a member of New York's
avant-garde downtown scene, violinist Jenny Sheinman has made a name
for herself performing with the likes of Bill Frisell, Norah Jones,
the San Francisco Klezmer Experience, and many others. On The Rabbi's
Lover, Sheinman shines on a nine-part song cycle that includes a pair
of traditional klezmer melodies and a blend of American folk music,
klezmer, avant-rock, and jazz.
