title: Many pleasures and some valuable discoveries

text:
How I became interested in German music in Transylvania is a story too long  to be told here, but I half-heartedly browsed on Amazon, with no great expectation to find anything on that subject, and much to my surprise it yielded this CD from the Romanian label Electrorecord. Well, again, I didn't expect much from it, but it was cheap, so what had I to loose? In fact the disc provided many pleasures and some enjoyable surprises.

Transylvania is a historical region now in the North-West quadrant of Romania, best known by the wider public for its vampires, a breed now nearly extinct unfortunately, and shame on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) for not putting Dracula and his kins on the list of endangered species. As many regions of central Europe, Transylvania was subjected to the upheavals of history and - ok, I'll shamelessly cut and paste Wikipedia here - "dominated by several different peoples and empires throughout its history" - and, shall I add, religions. It was Hungarian, then Ottoman, then part of the Habsburg empire, then Hungarian again, then Romanian, in 1918. Simultaneously and consequently, it was Christian, then Calvinist (and the Ottoman rule didn't change anything to that - the Islamic Ottomans had a tradition of religious tolerance over their dominions), Lutherean, Unitarian, and back to Catholic (the Catholic Habsburghs obviously had NO tradition of religious tolerance).

Hence the presence of a German community in Transylvania, and the influence of German culture. As early as the 12th Century King Géza II of Hungary invited German colonists, known as the Transylvanian Saxons, to develop towns and cultivate the land of Transylvania. In 1211, at the invitation of King Andrew II of Hungary, the Teutonic Knights built, on the site of what was then the village of Brasov, at the southern border of Transylvania, the fortified city of Kronstadt to defend the border of Hungary (not the same city as the Kronstadt made famous in 1921 for its left-wing anti-bolshevik rebellion). Valentin Greff Bakfark, the first composer featured on the disc, was indeed born in Brasov in a family of saxon origin, and was possibly the first Transylvanian composer to be active outside of his country, as attested by the fact that he was published in Lyons (France) and died of the plague in Padua.

The compositions offered on the disc are presented chronologically. The earliest - from known or unknown 16th and early 17th Century composers - are modern transcriptions for brass of pieces originally for lute or organ. Not that I mind: it makes them sound like fanfares of Gabrieli, stark in the case  of Barfark (track 1), more dance-inspired with von Lebensdorf (track 2), festal and solemn in the anonymous fom the Codex Caloni, a collection of pieces intabulated for the organ by the 17th Century, Transylvania-born cleric Ioan Căianu.

Jump into the late 17th Century with the short excerpts from Georg Daniel Speeer's collection of ballet music in various folk styles, Türckischer Eulenspiegel (after, I suppose, the famous prankster of German folklore Till Eulenspiegel). Speer was apparently a full German composer, born in Wroclaw in 1636 and died in Göppingen, Württemberg, in 1707; the liner notes are not entirely clear here, but the excerpts seem included because the draw their inspiration from Transylvanian folk music and were published under the pseudonym of Dacian Simplicissimus: Simplicius Simplicissimus was the famous picaresque character created by the novelist Grimmelhausen in 1668 to mock the horrors of the Thirty Years' Wars, and the Dacians were the earliest recorded population of Romania, already mentioned by Herodotus. The music is run-of-the mill late 17th century, with lots of recitatives in the course of its short 8 minutes, and soprano Georgeta Stoleriu is a little thin-voiced.

Likewise, the two "dictums" of Johannes Sartorius Jr (born in Sibiu in 1712 and died in Brasov in 1787) are interesting more for their social significance than their sheer musical value. As the liner notes have it, a remarkable feature of sacred music in 18th-century Transylvania was the growth of the genre called "dictum" (or "Spruch" in German), in which a phrase of the Bible provides the basis of an aria whose musical parameters remain always melodic and simple, reflecting "a trend with the Evangelical church towards engaging the whole congregation in the practive of singing, even in rural areas, where performing abilities are modest". Hundreds of such dicta by Andreas Teutsch (lyrics) and the two Johannes Sartorius, father and son, "found their way to worshippers all over Transylvania, in either manuscript or printed form". The music is agreeable, lively, quite simple indeed, and you may be excused for thinking that Sartorius milks a little too much his theme in repeated 16th notes in "Gutter Sämann" (track 10). Nice harpsichord flourishes, though, that I think must be credited to harpsichordist Nicolae Licaret rather than to the composer. The arias might have made more of an impact if soprano Stoleriu had put a little more character and beef in them.

The Sonata of Schencker is better than that. R. (complete first name not given) Schencker is another Transylvania-born musician who made an international career, in the second half of the 18th Century, playing in Vienna, then Paris under the baton of Rameau and Gossec, alongside no other than Mozart according to the liner notes. The Sonata V is drawn from his collection of Six simphonies à trois parties published in Paris in 1762. It is lively and spirited, with fine themes, developped with craft. Here the sonata is played by the Bucharest Virtuosi, a chamber ensemble and they are fine, but I wonder how the sonata would sound one to a part.

If the disc is to give any clue, transylvanian music grew better as it aged. Dittersdorf was Austrian, but he is included here by dint of having worked as kapellmeister to the bishop of Oradea from 1765 to 1769, succeeding Michael Haydn who had held the post from 1757 to 1762, before leaving for Salzburg. It is not clear from the liner notes that the two pieces played here were actually composed during Dittersdorf tenure at Oradea, but anyway, they are lovely. The andantino for oboe and strings is the slow movement of a Symphony in D and it is in fact a beautiful slow movement of a concerto, to make on regret that Dittersdorf didn't write it complete, or, if he did, that The Bucharest Virtuosi didn't record it. The Sinfonia Concertante for the rare combination of viola and double-bass is a splendid work and a real find, the dark hues of the two instruments giving the music an almost pre-brahmsian flavor. Frankly, this is a composition that deserves to be heard often in the concert hall. It would provide a welcome change from Haydn's cello concertos and Mozart's violin concertos, and is worthy of them. You wouldn't know how good the work is if you knew it only from the competing recording on Supraphon, with Czech stalwarts Lubomír Malý and František Pošta, [[ASIN:B0000262NU Dittersdorf: Viola and Double Bass Concertos]] - in fact, you'd likely find it excruciatingly boring. It's terrible how an awful interpretation can kill a composition.

Jump into the 20th century and make another find with the music of Wilhelm Georg Berger (born in the county of Brasov in 1929 and died in Bucharest in 1993). The Three Miniatures of String Orchestra are light-hearted,  very lyrical, folk-inspired, evocative not so much of Bartok, a little more of Kodaly and Enescu, perhaps, but of Leo Weiner even more. They are charming and had Berger been born closer to the West, they'd be part of the standard repertoire of every pops orchestra in the world.

TT is 75 minutes and the disc has afforded many pleasures. There's another entry for the same disc, so check for best price, [[ASIN:B000A2GWPA 5 Centuries German Music in Transylvania]].


title: THE edition to prefer

text:
This is European Vanguard 08 6107 71, the 1996 reissue on their budget series Everyman of a recital already published in 1993 as 08 2005 71, [[ASIN:B0000254LR Passacaglia E Fuga Bwv 582 (1708) in Do]]. The same Bach recital by Anton Heiller also had a US edition, OVC 2005, [[ASIN:B0000023A7 Bach: Organ Works]]. The history of Vanguard CD reissues is a complicated affair and not the subject of this review, but in the 1990s Vanguard's founder Seymour Solomon had (through his company Omega Records) the distribution rights of the Vanguard classical catalog in America, while a Dutch company, Arcade, had them for Europe.

Reviewers of the US edition have complained about the botched sound of OVC 2005, and have forwarded instead to the later SACD edition,  ATM-SC 1554, [[ASIN:B0002MPQQY Organ Works]], praising its great sonics. I'm not putting in doubt what they heard on OVC 2005. But I thought it was a real bummer the SACD edition came shorn of Toccata & Fugue BWV 565 and Fantasia and Fugue BWV 542: 20 minutes of music and not the most insignificant either. So I took my chances and bought the European edition, 08 2005 71.

I do not hear there what the reviewers of OVC 2005 are talking about. Yes, heard, very carefully, on headphones, there is a minuscule, one-second dropout in track 2 (Fantasia & Fugue BWV 542) at 0:21, and a vague patch of flutter around 9:19 to say, 9:34, and in track 5 (Passagaclia and Fugue BWV 582), there are three seconds of distinct dropout from 2:45 to 2:48. Other than that and small tape hiss in the softer passages, it sounds simply grandiose. Frankly, 3 or 10 seconds of minuscule sonic glitches weigh nothing in balance with the sonic splendor of that recording and transfer, and the addition of BWV 565 and BWV 542. I also bought the SACD reissue. Heard on a normal, non SACD system, it gains little if anything sonically, while it loses those two major works. With what I hear on 08 2005 71, I really need nothing more sonically.

I don't have this Everyman reissue, but I assume that it uses exactly the same transfer as 08 2005 71 - and, at the time of writing, it sells much cheaper. I don't know what may have been the problem with the American edition, OVC 2005. Was it specific to the American transfers (but I always thought Omega/US and Arcade/Europe used the same) or maybe the CD "pressings" (I'm not sure CDs are "pressed", but you see what I mean), or only to some of the CDs that came out of the US production line? Anyway, if you don't want to take any chances, go for the European edition.

Just for the record, this Heiller-Bach recital was first reissued on CD in the late 1980s, when the rights to the Vanguard catalog were owned by the Welk Music Group, on Vanguard VCD 72014, [[ASIN:B0028FZWT4 Great Bach Organ Works]], with a French release in 1990 by Carrère Vanguard 92523. Comment under the American release complains, but not very specifically, about the poor sound. The program was complemented by two Choral-Preludes not elsewhere reissued to the best of my knowledge, BWV 730 & 731.


title: THE edition to have

text:
You wouldn't know it based on Amazon's typically botched product information (I'm not blaming it on Amazon, but on the careless marketplace seller who created this listing) but the barcode, 3351472005718, spills the beans: this is Vanguard 08 2005 71, with Bach's Toccata & Fugue BWV 565, Fantasy & Fugue BWV 542, Prelude & Fugue BWV 548 & BWV 536, Passacaglia & Fuguee BWV 582, Fantasy BWV 572, by Anton Heiller. It is the European edition corresponding to Vanguard USA's OVC 2005, [[ASIN:B0000023A7 Bach: Organ Works]]. The history of Vanguard's CD reissues is a complicated matter and not the subject of this review. Suffice to say that in the 1990s, Vanguard founder Seymour Solomon had the distribution rights on this side of the Atlantic, and a Dutch Arcade company had those for Europe.

Reviewers of that US edition have complained about the botched sound of OVC 2005, and have forwarded instead to the later SACD edition,  ATM-SC 1554, [[ASIN:B0002MPQQY Organ Works]], praising its great sonics. I'm not putting in doubt what they heard on OVC 2005. But I thought it was a real bummer the SACD edition came shorn of Toccata & Fugue BWV 565 and Fantasia and Fugue BWV 542: 20 minutes of music and not the most insignificant either. So I took my chances and bought this European edition.

I do not hear there what the reviewers of OVC 2005 are talking about. Yes, heard, very carefully, on headphones, there is a minuscule, one-second dropout in track 2 (Fantasia & Fugue BWV 542) at 0:21, and a vague patch of flutter around 9:19 to say, 9:34, and in track 5 (Passagaclia and Fugue BWV 582), there are three seconds of distinct dropout from 2:45 to 2:48. Other than that and small tape hiss in the softer passages, it sounds simply grandiose. Frankly, 3 or 10 seconds of minuscule sonic glitches weigh nothing in balance with the sonic splendor of that recording and transfer, and the addition of BWV 565 and BWV 542. I also bought the SACD reissue. Heard on a normal, non SACD system, it gains little if anything sonically, while it loses those two major works. With what I hear on 08 2005 71, I really need nothing more sonically.

I don't know what may have been the problem with the American edition, OVC 2005. Was it specific to the American transfers (but I always thought Omega/US and Arcade/Europe used the same) or maybe the CD "pressings" (I'm not sure CDs are "pressed", but you see what I mean), or only to some of the CDs that came out of the US production line? Anyway, if you don't want to take any chances, go for this European edition. It was also reissued by Arcade on their Everyman budget collection which at the time of writing sells very cheap on this website, [[ASIN:B0000257XU Bach;Famous Organ Works]].

Just for the record, this Heiller-Bach recital was first reissued on CD in the late 1980s, when the rights to the Vanguard catalog were owned by the Welk Music Group, on Vanguard VCD 72014, [[ASIN:B0028FZWT4 Great Bach Organ Works]], with a French release in 1990 by Carrère Vanguard 92523. Comment under the American release complains, but not very specifically, about the poor sound. The program was complemented by two Choral-Preludes not elsewhere reissued to the best of my knowledge, BWV 730 & 731.


title: Derivative (of Brahms, Wagner, Strauss, Tchaikovsky)

text:
Whoever created this entry or uploaded the product images uploaded the wrong photos: same recordings, but other edition. This entry is indexed on barcode 077776920627, wich is the earlier (and first I believe) release on EMI's mid-price line Studio, from 1988. See my own uploaded images for the correct photo. If you want precisely the edition from Classics For Pleasure displayed on the photo, barcode 094635240528, see here: [[ASIN:B000EHQ51W Music of the Four Countries]]

I bought this disc out of sheer curiosity, and to benefit from the rebates on postage cost for combined shipment on purchases from the famous auction site. Well, I came, I heard - and I left.

No wonder, as the excellent liner notes aptly put it, that this generation of British composers, who came to maturity at the turn of the 20th Century, was overshadowed by Elgar. It is so influenced by German music, especially Wagner and Strauss, and by Tchaikovsky, as to present (to my ears) little originality, except that of being British. In a way, the generation was overshadowed more by Vaughan Williams, Britten and Tippett than Elgar: they proved that British music was capable of producing music of more personality than the Wagner-Strauss-Tchaikovsky influenced model.

Ethel Smyth's overture to her most famous opera (out of six), "The Wreckers" from 1906, is suitably dramatic, evocative and not without its share of bombast, with many echoes of Wagner and a few whiffs of Brahms. It sounds to me like run-of-the-mill night at the Opera a century ago. Two years before, Puccini had composed Madame Butterfly and the previous year Strauss had completed Salome.

Hamilton Harty is best remembered as a conductor. As a composer, his descriptive tone poem "With the Wild Geese" points to Tchaikovsky and Strauss. Nothing to do with wildlife, by the way: it is about "the Irish soldiers who fought for France at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745". It is hardly original, but has its evocative moments. At 18:28, it is also way too long.

Ever heard of Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916)? If you have, then you are more knowledgeable than I am in obscure British composers. Like Harty, he seems to have been more active as a conductor and died at 48. The liner notes (reprinted from the original 1968 release) claim that he was the conductor of the first British performance of Tristan, but I owe to the Gramophone online archive and the original review of this disc back in 1968 that it was in fact the first performance in English language. He wrote his Concert-Overture "The Land of The Mountain and the Flood" at 19. Maybe because it is the earliest composition in this collection, it harks back to Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and early Wagner (think of the spinsters' chorus in Flying Dutchman). But it is colorful and lively.

Colorful and lively: I' say the same of Edward German's Welsh Rhapsody, in the form of a four-movement symphony based on Welsh tunes and played without break. For all its derivativeness and despite the negative comments I read not only from other reviewers on this website and its European sister companies, but also from the reviews in Gramophone, it is the piece I found overall the most enjoyable on the disc. Think of Tchaikovsky's ballets and you'll get an idea - and German's is a good imitation (despite its moments of maudlin sentimentality). German (1862-1936) was also seen in his days as an heir to Sullivan. I confess to not being familiar with the music of Sullivan, but it possibly sounds that way, too. That said, why setlle on German when you have Tchaikovsky (and Sullivan)?

Ultimately, I'm glad to be a music lover today in the global world, and not one confined to Great Britain in the days of Edward VII.

TT 55 minutes (but apparently the disc was reissued with a complement, Delius' Brigg's Fair with Hickox conducting Bournemouth, [[ASIN:B0012M4VFA British Classics: The Land of the Mountain and the Flood, Briggs Fair]]. Gibson and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra seem to play excellently and the 1968 sonics remain excellent. My copy is for sale.

attachment_type: IMAGE


title: Japanese edition of Teldec

text: The Japanese edition, King Records  K30Y 256, barcode 4988003038496 (1988), of a CD issued in Europe the same year by Teldec, 243 723-2, [[ASIN:B0015CFZNO Niederlaendische Komponisten]], reiissuing studio recordings made by Willem Mengelberg from 1938 to 1942 of now obscure Dutch composers of his time, including Cornelis Dopper, Juliüs Röntgen, Johan Wagenaar and his own nephew (or grand nephew, sources differ) Rudolf Mengelberg, plus his own arrangement of the Dutch national anthem and of Renaissance composer Valerius' Prayer of Thanksgiving (know in the US as We Stand Together). Doppers Ciaconna Gotica is the real find. See my review under the Teldec issue for all the details, and a cheaper price.


title: Mengelberg in rare, and sometimes even interesting, Dutch repertoire

text:
Any recorded testimony of Mengelberg is invaluable, any recorded testimony of Mengelberg in “contemporary” (from his time) music is even more (and among those, the recording of the world premiere of Bartok’s Violin Concerto with Szoltan Szekely in 1939 is a treasure deserving to be kept in Fort Knox), and any recorded testimony of Mengelberg in obscure Dutch music of his time is not just invaluable but invaluably rare. Among those for which we have recordings, very few have stepped above the status of local glories (and even then, only with connoisseurs of the off-the-beaten track): Julius Röntgen (1855-1932) and Johan Wagenaar (1862-1941) may qualify (the latter, thanks to the advocacy of Riccardo Chailly when he was one of the successors of Mengelberg at the helm of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, [[ASIN:B00000E45Z Wagenaar: Orchestral Pieces: Saul en David; Amphitrion; Cyrano De Bergerac; The Taming of the Shrew]]). Speaking of Dutch composers brought to the attention of the international public thanks to the advocacy of Chailly, one is surprised not to find any Diepenbrock in Mengelberg’s recorded legacy, live or studio. But a check on the great online archive of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, listing all the concerts given by the orchestra since the end of the 19th century, shows that this is due only to the fortunes and mis-fortunes of recording in an era when it wasn’t as common as today. Mengelberg performed a lot of Diepenbrock in concert.

But Cornelis Dopper (1870-1939) and Rudolf Mengelberg (1892-1959) are now all but forgotten, even in their own country (even though Chandos published two CDs of symphonies of Dopper in the early 2000s, [[ASIN:B000059LX9 Cornelis Dopper: Second Symphony - Paan 1 & 2]] and [[ASIN:B00005YUH4 Symphony 3 & 6]]), and it is even the case with Hendrik Andriessen (1892-1981), very popular with the Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1933 to 1980, but who now seems to have been completely overshadowed by his son Louis. Rudolf Mengelberg was Willem’s nephew (or grand nephew, sources diverge), also a composer and musicologist, and he was the Concertgebouw’s chief executive in the 1930s.

Teldec could have been more helpful by providing the exact sources of these recordings.  All these are all studio recordings, all originally published on Telefunken 78 rpms. Dating found on CDs or online is sometimes contradictory, but the best source I’ve found for elucidating these matters is a great online Mengelberg discography fond on three dabya willemmengelberg dot nl.

So, in chronological order, we get this:

Valerius/Wagenaar “Niederlängisches Dankgebet” (track 1) and what is credited (but about this see further) as Marnix von St. Aldegonde’s Wilhelmus von Nassauen in an arrangement said to be by Rudolf Mengelberg (track 7), were recorded on December 1, 1938 (but the CD and other Mengelberg discographic sources say 30 November) and originally published on Telefunken A 2899 (10”) or NK 1965 (12”).

Three compositions were recorded on 12 April 1940 (CD indicates 9) : Dopper’s Ciaccona Gotica (Telefunken SK3155/7), Hendrik Andriessen’s Magna Res est amor and Rudolf Mengelberg’s Salve Regina op. 20 (Telefunken SK3084/5), the two latter with soprano Jo Vincent.

Röntgen’s two “Ancient Dances of the Netherlands” (Nos. 5 & 6, “Bergerette” and “Pavane”) were recorded on 11 November 1940 and released on Telefunken SK3157

Finally Wagenaar’s Cyrano de Bergerac Overture, from 16 April 1942, came on Telefunken SK3744/5.

It took me some research to establish for sure what exactly were the so-called Valerius “Niederländisches Dankgebet” and its arrangement by Johan Wagenaar. Wikipedia gives an answer to the first question, as well as the piece’s original title in Dutch: “Wilt heden nu treten” (We Gather Together): a Christian hymn written by Adrian Valerius in 1597 to celebrate a Dutch victory against Spain, found in his collection of folk poems and melodies “Nederlandtsche gedenck-clanck”. Wikipedia adds that “the German translation of his most familiar song Wilt Heden Nu Treden (known in English as We Gather Together): Wir treten zum Beten or Altniederländisches Dankgebet (Old Dutch Thanksgiving Prayer), became a potent symbol of the “Throne and Altar” alliance of German civil religion until 1918. In the United States, it is popularly associated with Thanksgiving Day and is often sung at family meals and at religious services on that day, having been brought to America by Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam, now New York City”. The Concertgebouw archive shows that the piece had been performed a number of times by the orchestra under various conductors since 1898 (already Mengelberg then), but it must not have been in Wagenaar’s arrangement, since online records show a Waagenar arrangement for small orchestra dating from November 1938. Which seems to imply that he made it specifically for the recording, which took place the month after.The piece was apparently dropped from the orchestra’s concert repertoire after 1934, and the last time it was performed was on 10 December 1949, and it was Eduard van Beinum conducting then.

In the Concertgebouw’s archive the piece listed as “Wilhelmus” is always attributed to composer “none”, e.g. anonymous. Certainly: also known as “Wilhelmus van Nassouwe” or “Het Wilhelmus”, it is the Netherlands’ national anthem, and “Marnix von St. Aldegonde” is the (disputed) author of the lyrics. Teldec credits “R. Mengelberg” for the arrangement and many online sources have reproduced that info, but I don’t think this is true: the label of the original 78s on Telefunken NK 1965 clearly indicates: “bewerking: Prof.Dr. Willem Mengelberg”. And, other than in reference to this recording, I’ve found no trace online that Rudolf had ever written an arrangement of Wilhelmus. Incidentally, on the 78s label, Valerius is also credited as the original composer, and indeed he transcribed the song in his “Nederlandtsche gedenck-clanck” and also made a choral arrangement in his collection of Church Canticles and Hymns (Liedboek voor de Kerken), but the melody was not his own invention.

A lot of fact-checking for little substance: the anthem is a patriotic-bombastic parade and the Thanksgiving hymn sounds inconspicuous like a harmonized hymn.

As interesting as it is to have those testimonies of Mengelberg in rare Dutch repertoire, little of this is truly interesting. Julius Röntgen’s two Ancient Dances from the Netherlands (“Oud-Nederlandse dansen”, op. 46a) sound like harmonized Renaissance dances, one wistful, the other merry, something George Auric might have composed for a film in the 1930s or 1940s. Hendrik Andriessen’s Magna Res est amor is “interesting” only for sounding like a Verdi aria. It was written in 1913 (with organ accompaniment, and orchestrated in 1919), and after all Verdi had passed only 12 years before (and make it 20 years since his last opera, Falstaff). Johan Wagenaar’s Cyrano de Bergerac Overture op. 26 from 1905 sounds like a crossbreed of Puccini and Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel. Entertaining, but not original.

This leaves Rudolf Mengelberg’s Salve Regina for soprano and orchestra (stylistically somewhere between Puccini’s Tosca and the more pastoral Honegger, extremely lyrical and quite taking I find; incidentally, the composition had been premiered by Mengelberg on 15 December 1934, already with Jo Vincent) and Cornelis Dopper’s superb Ciaconna Gotica from 1920, starting in a somber and brooding atmosphere somewhat reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia, but traversing many moods, and with great orchestral invention.

The sonics are good enough for the vintage, which still means that you get surface noise and scratches. These pieces call for stereo recordings. I’m aware of only one for Dopper’s Ciaconna, from 1995, by Kees Bakels and the Netherlands Radio SO, on NM Classics, with the same composer’s 7th Symphony “Zuidezee” and Peter Van Anrooy’s Piet Hein Rhapsodie (1995), [[ASIN:B0000260EB Peter van Anrooy: Piet Hein Rhapsody / Cornelis Dopper: Ciaconna Gotica]].

TT 57 minutes. The same disc was issued in Japan by King Records (in fact it is the edition I have), so check for best price (liner notes in Japanese only), [[ASIN:B005H417SS Willem Mengelberg: Niederlandische Musik / Dutch Music (Telefunken)]]. Of related interest and for a possible complement, see my review of The Mengelberg Edition vol. 13 on Archive Documents with works of Dopper (the same Chaconne, but also his Zuiderzee Symphony) and Alexander Voormolen, [[ASIN:B00119TLA4 The Mengelberg Edition, Volume 13 - Voormolen, Dopper]]


title: worth the exploration

text:
Dutch minimalist Louis Andriessen is a much-influential figure in his native country, both as a composer and as a teacher at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. The CD gathers two entirely different works, Melodie for recorder and piano from 1974 (played by Frans Brüggen and the composer at the piano) and Symphony for Open Strings from 1978. Both were first published on LP, on Attacca Babel 8633-2, in 1986. Attacca reissued the symphony on CD, Attacca Babel 8844-2, with works for string orchestra by Willem Frederik Bon, Tristan Keuris, Leo Samama and Peter Schat, all played by the Caecilia Consort, and it is listed here: [[ASIN:B000M06GFQ Caecilia Consort]]. Attacca must be lauded for doing the necessary to avoid subjecting the record collector to the irksome obligation of duplication: all the rest was reissued on Attacca Babel 8952-5, with the addition of Glauco Cataldo’s Concerto for violin and string orchestra. These Attacca CDs were released at the end of the 1980s (the first two digits indicate the year of release) and came with no barcodes, which makes them sometimes hard to find on commerical websites. I've found a listing (but no offer) for 8952-5 only on Amazon Italy. On the other hand, type "Andriessen Melodie" here and you'll find a number of entries. Cheapest offer at the time of writing is here: [[ASIN:B000M5KTYA Melodie / Symfonie Voor Losse]].

In the very terse liner notes, Andriessen explains that one day he heard through his open window a kid next door learning a baroque piece for recorder, playing it very slowly, with his mom accompanying him by playing the same melody at the piano, so he “decided to compose what [he] heard”. The results is a very simple melody, but the fascination effect derives from it being played indeed very slowly, not always entirely in unison but close, likening it to some wistful Japanse ritual music. Because the piano strikes only single separated tones in the high reigsters, with very little resonance of each note, it sounds more like an exotic percussion instrument than an actual piano.There are a few quarter-tone glissandos and there’s one dramatic moment, starting at 15:34, a big crescenso on an ostinato repeated note of the piano with resonance pedal depressed, followed by a crashing chord, and then the mood returns to the wistfully ritualistic. Running 26+ minutes, it seems long, although the length is, I recognize, an element of the fascination effect.

In Symphony for Open Strings, Andriessen has twelve strings all tuned differently and playing only on the four open strings. The sonic results is extremely mysterious and fascinating, occasionally very powerful and dramatic. The music is not “repetitive minimalist” in the manner of Reich-Glass-Adams, it is neither entirely “minimalist” (although some passages do sound relatively minimal) nor “repetitive” (although there are a few repetitive structures). It evokes more, occasionally, the early String Quartet in Four Parts of John Cage or his ballet The Seasons. With hindsight Andriessen, writing in 1986, says that it evokes “a little trip on the water on a summer afternoon, while the waves gently slap against the boat in a rapid succession, whereas the boat seems to be quite still”. Well, okay for the aquatic metaphor, but then it would be the waters of the river Styx leading the dead to their last repose, music for Jim Jarmush’s Dead Man.

TT 54 minutes, this is worth the exploration.


title: A feast of trombone - but rarely the best meals

text:
There must have been a plan back in 2003 when this disc by the Dutch ensemble New Trombone Collective was originally published on Q Disc, the label of the Netherlands Radio, because its title, "Collective", makes sense only in relation to its two sequels, "New" and "Trombone", and as its last element. But its two pendants were recorded only in 2005 ("Trombone") and 2007 ("New"). I haven't found issues on Q Disc, but all three have been released by Etcetera:

KTC 1284 [[ASIN:B0009K33UA trombone]] (2005 recording)
KTC 1353 [[ASIN:B000TLWGDO New]] (2007 recording)
KTC 1354 [[ASIN:B000TLWGE8 Collective]] (2003 recording)

...and gathered in a single set, Etcetera KTC 1355, released in 2007, [[ASIN:B000TLWGEI Collection]], and you'll find my extended review there. In capsule, no great revelations, except for a very original piece by Martijn Padding, "And the trees would sing", contained on KTC 1353 "New". Here, as much as I like the arrangements of baroque music played by the Canadian Brass and similar ensembles, it is not the pieces of Louis Couperin, Debussy, Haydn and Sweelinck that are the most interesting, nor the Etude for low brass in the style of Bruckner of Enrique Crespo, nor is it , despite its occasional glissandos, the Broadway-jazzy piece of composer and arranger Ilja Reijngoud (he should have arranged Wagner’s Prologue for trombone octet, really!) "Where do you want to go today?" (track 17). Bourgeois’s "Scherzo funebre" may unfold effective brooding and funeral moods, turning again, in spite of the piece’s title, to slightly clowning, it still gives me the impression that this has been heard 1,000 times before already (the music of Arthur Honegger came to mind), and the first movement of Saskia Apon’s First Trombone Quartet is much in the same vein (the paragraph about her in the liner notes is omitted in the English translation). So what’s left? The dynamic and pointillistic second movement of the same, the atmospheric and mildly dissonant "Inner space – Trance of thought" of Ruud van Eeten, written for the ensemble (track 14), and Hans Koolmes’ Totter (tracks 10-12), a little more dissonant (but still very accessible), even more atmospheric and exuding fine drama. But ultimately, this is best reserved to fans of the trombone in search of new repertoires.


title: Another confirmation that “minor” Romantic composers have composed major chamber music

text:
Félicien David (1810-1876) (not to be confused with his near-exact German contemporary, violinist and composer Ferdinand David, 1810-1873) was French, and during his life better known for introducing a North-African and Middle-East-inspired exoticism (the so-called “Orientalism”) to choral and opera music (he had made a long journey to these regions from 1833 to 1835) than for his chamber music, paving the way for Delibe’s Lakmé, Bizet’s Djamileh, Gounod’s La Reine de Saba and Lalo’s Namouna. No trace of such exoticism in the Trios. Published in 1857, as David was writing his opera Herculanum, they are beautiful works in romantic style. There is a romantic sweep in the opening Allegro and Finale of Trio No. 3 (tracks 1 & 4) that brings to mind similar works of Mendelssohn and Brahms, and also Schumann in the cavalcades of the 3rd Trio’s Scherzo (track 3) and 2nd Trio’s Finale (track 7), and a songfulness in the first two movements of the 2nd Trio that evoke Schubert. Another figure that strongly comes to mind while listening to David’s third Trio, the chordal accompahiment of its piano part and the great songfulness of its violin and cello lines, is Alkan and his own Piano Trio, and the comparison seems particularly appropriate, as Alkan was only three years younger than David. But David also seems to stand on the edge of two stylistic worlds, and there is a charm to the slow movement of Trio No. 3 that roots its more in Haydn and Beethoven. At any rate, these works confirms an observation often made, that Romantic composers considered “minor” have composed major chamber music.

The scores are available from the International Music Scores Library Project. The Hungarian trio here plays excellently. Excellent and informative liner notes (at least in the French edition I have, in the collection “Patrimoine”, originally distributed only in France, and in French only, [[ASIN:B00004UYO2 DAVID Félicien Trios N° 2 et 3]]) mentioning that David also composed, in the years 1845-46, a cycle of 24 String Quintets which he titled “Four Seasons” – I want to hear them! …and Hallelujah, they’ve been recorded, by a group of musicians around cellist Christophe Coin, published in 2011 on Laborie, LC11, [[ASIN:B004V4GXSO David: Les Quatre Saisons]], and the same label also published a recording of David’s First Trio and 3rd Quartet, again with Coin (and Quatuor Mosaïques) under the title “Le Souvenir”, LC12, [[ASIN:B004NQ92D8 Souvenir]] (I've reviewed that one). That’s the problem CDs: however many you have and hear, even of the most obscure material, each CD will lead to several more, and it never ends. Those from Laborie, a minuscule French label that went under in 2015, are now hard to find, and for that very reason, even more desirable.

Other than the French edition on Naxos Patrimoine, there's another entry for the same Marco Polo disc, which is I think the one originally for distribution in the Far East, [[ASIN:B0000045ZL Felicien David:  Piano Trios 2 & 3]], but nothing is "far" in the ear of the Internet. At the time of writing, it's the French edition that sells cheapest - but remember: liner notes in French only.


title: of very specialized interest

text:
Kurt Schwaen (1909-2007) was an East-German composer, a collaborator of Bertold Brecht at the Berliner Ensemsble in the 1950s and an “official” of East-German music: “Schwaen has held numerous honorary positions, e.g. in the Association of Composers and Musicologists and in the Academy of Arts, to which he was named official member in 1961. His compositional output, which spans seven and a half decades, contains more than 600 works in every genre, from song and chanson to choral music, piano works, chamber music and orchestral works, and includes opera and works for the ballet.” There’s a website for Schwaen.

He said, quoted in the liner notes, that he enjoyed “writing music to folk poetry more than any other genre”. The cycle “Komm wieder zur künftgen Nacht” (tracks 1-8) on 16th century texts is subtitled “Deutsche Volksdichtung” (German folksongs), and that’s how they sound indeed.: folk music, maybe a sophisticated arrangement of folk-music, but not sophisticated modern or contemporary music. Perfect for an amateur choir. “Ein Zicklein” subtitled again “Volksdichtung” (track 10), is slightly more sophisticated, sounding something like one of Orff’s “pedagogical” choruses, but without the distinctive personality. “Schlaf mein Kind” (12), a lullaby, is sweet and mellifluous, very pretty in a Christmas Carol style. “Wenn du zu mir kommst” (track 11) and “Schlafe wohl zur nacht” (track 26) sound like simple lullabies or folksongs that Brahms could have written or harmonized.

Psalm, track 9, (not a psalm, it is the title of a poem of Brecht) and the cycle “Nimm an die Weisheit” (13-19), on proverbs of King Salomon), the cycle “In den stolzen Städten” on poems by Günter Kunert (22-24), “Sie sind nicht tot” (they are not dead) on a poem of Pablo Neruda, and the cycle of four “folk poems” (Volksdichtungen) “Untern Himmel, under Sternen” (tracks 27-30) are harmonically more daring and grating, but they don’t go far beyond Hindemith or Karl-Amadeus Hartmann. The one that sounds most advanced in its harmonic language is Gagarin, track 21, sounding (appropriately to its text about, indeed, the Astronaut, a poem by Günter Kunert) very “Ligeti-space” with the mysterious softness but without the violence, and it comes as no surprise that it the one composition of Schwaen here that starts being interesting.

TT 59 minutres, texts of songs given in their original German, no translations. This is of very specialized interest: collectors of music from East-Germany perhaps, or those looking for compositions suitable for amateur choirs. Megadisc was an interesting label, established in the early 1990s, that brought to the listener’s attention little-exposed Belgian composers and composers from the ex-Soviet area, starting with Shostakovich’s maverick student Galina Ustvolskaya. A new management took over a short time ago and obviously they don’t have the intention of keeping this one in their catalog: they’ve attributed the same catalog number, MDC 7795, to another release, Christian Zanesi's Paysage électronique avec train (2015), not listed here, barcode 9780201379655. Can’t entirely blame them.


title: A work of great sweep and extraordinary refinement - but short timing, better go to the more generous reissue

text:
Isang Yun (1917-1995) seems to be suffering the fate of many composers when they die - especially when they are stylistically independent composers, rather than leaders or members of a compositional “school” (the French André Jolivet and the Spanish/French Maurice Ohana here come to mind): he tends to be forgotten.

Well, I hope it doesn't last too long, because Yun was one, in my opinion, of the greatest and most original composers of the second half of the 20th Century, especially in his later years when he let his lyrical vein take over. Yun’s early works are rooted in the most thorny and gnarled style of the German avant-garde of the time, but in the early 1980s he invented a unique and uniquely beautiful style, combining those advances of the avant-garde and the melismatic traditions of Chinese and Korean Court music. A lot of his music then takes place in the upper reaches, often sounding like some wild aviary from outer space. His music is never “easy-listening”, saccharine and sentimental as it often is with the neo-tonal, neo-simplistic, neo-mystical minimalist composers that carved a niche in the 1980s and 1990s, but if you have the ear to hear it, it is achingly beautiful, all the more so as its lyricism is entirely exotic.

The Japanese label Camerata did great service to the admirer of Yun's music when they issued, between 1987 and 1997, an 11-volume survey of his music, a series called “Compositions of Isang Yun” (the last volume wasn't numbered as part of the series and was only titled “Last works of Isang Yun”), and this is how I have them. In 2009 they reissued their Yun collection on a 9-CD series titled “The Art of Isang Yun”, and did some reshuffling on the occasion. In the original series, the pairings were rarely entirely consistent, mixing orchestral and chamber, and various performers. The reissued series is genre-centered, with three volumes of orchestral, two volumes of concertos, and the remainder of chamber and instrumental music. Also, stacking the contents of the original eleven CDs on only nine, each offers more generous timings, almost always over 70 minutes, while those of the original series ran to about 60-minutes each, sometimes even less.

The CD at hand, Compositions volume 2, is a good case in point. Although the Violin Concerto, from 1981, is an extended work, running 38 minutes, which may have been fine when it was originally released on LP in 1983, it makes for a very short CD. It was reissued on “Art of Isang Yun-4”, [[ASIN:B002SZR38W 尹伊桑の芸術Vol.4【協奏曲 I】]] (also found under [[ASIN:B003OB5WEG The Art of Isang Yun, Vol. 4]]), now paired with the Double Concerto for Oboe and Harp, from “Compositions-4”,  [[ASIN:B000001ZHT Double Concerto / Images]] (where it was coupled with “Images” for Flute, Oboe, Violin and Cello, sent to “Art-8”, [[ASIN:B002SZR38C 尹伊桑の芸術Vol.8【室内楽曲 III】]] or [[ASIN:B003OB5WX2 Yun / Hollinger / Nicolet]]). It is a work of great sweep (try the orchestral surge at 1:27 into the first movement and again at 4:32), searing dramatic intensity, extraordinary refinement of textures (as in the ensuing harp-introduced moment at 1:43, with the hushed tapestry of orchestral violins in the stratosphere, or in the gossamer touches of celesta in the second movement at 3:20) and immense lyricism. Orchestral events seem to be sprouting everywhere, always with great coloristic invention, always melismatic even if it is a non-tonal, exotic kind of songfulness. Typical of Yun are also the gushing and pulsating woodwind tremolos (try 2nd movement at 3:51 and rising to a searing climax around 6:30), and the indefatigable gamboling of the violin it its highest registers, its continuous melismatic flow of upward and downward slides, tremolos and trills, the intense, throbbing lyrical lines of the second movement. More surprising, but equally taking, is the triumphant ending.

Given the CD's short TT, better go to the reissue on Art of Isang Yun. Notwithstanding, this is a great piece and Yun’s two other Violin Concertos, from 1986 and 1992, BEG for a recording. Klaus Heymann of Naxos, please read this review and take note!


title: Saint Anthony in a Harlem Church - entertainment for tourists

text:
I chanced on this CD while perusing the other offers of an eBay seller and bought it for Robert Wilson.

Wilson is the artist and stage director who survived Waco, Texas (because he left), the champion minimalism on stage and of the rejection of all the tradition of “Actor’s Studio” naturalism. His productions are highly abstract and sophisticated, never flaunting the emotions at the public, even cold if not icy, but with the ambition of communicating something like “the fire under the ice”, very choreographic, interested in spatial combinations, not psychology; they are not the representation of “reality” on stage but the representation of signs, symbols, on which the imagination of the spectator can (if he’s in the mood for that kind of theatre) reconstruct his own reality. A director so much in demand cannot always maintain the highest degree of invention and originality, and Wilson has often been content to imitate, if not caricature himself. At their best his productions are hieratic, but they can be loweratic when he's erratic.

Not that I’ve been closely following the career of Wilson, and I had never heard of that piece in particular. Re the liner notes: “The Temptation of Saint Anthony is a new and original musical created and directed by Robert Wilson, with music and libretto by Bernice Johnson Reagon, inspired by the 19th century ovel of Gustave flaubert, adapted by Wolfgang Wiens”. There’s even a Wikipedia entry devoted to what it calls an “opera”, that gives more information: “The production debuted in June 2003 as part of the RuhrTriennale festival in Duisburg Germany. Subsequent performances included the Greek Theater in Siracusa, Italy; the Festival di Peralada in Peralada, Spain; the Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria in Santander, Spain; and Sadler's Wells in London, Great Britain; the Teatro Piccinni in Bari, Italy; the Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam, Netherlands; the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao and the Teatro Espanol in Madrid, Spain. The opera made its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's BAM Next Wave Festival in October 2004. The official "world premiere" was held at the Paris Opera Garnier becoming the first all African American opera to perform on its stage since the inauguration of the Académie Nationale de Musique - Théâtre de l'Opéra in 1875.”

But then, here, you have the CD, not the DVD, so it’s the music you are experiencing. I had never heard of Bernice Johnson Reagon before chancing on this disc. What’s it like? Well’, it’s like what I might have expected if I had read her bio on Wikipedia first: “(born October 4, 1942) is a singer, composer, scholar, and social activist, who founded the a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973”.

So it sounds like gospel for choir and electronics (CD 1 track 1), electric, vocal and choral Negro Spiritual (track 2 “I Be Troubled”, 4 “I Can’t Find My Burden Bearer”, 11 the very clichéd “Coming Home”, 15), word-less “space” Christmas Carol with loud cymbal resonance (8 – supposed to depict a windstorm), James Brown Funk (6, 12), electric Soul (7), Rhythm & Blues (14), Africa-inspired crossover World-Music (track 1, track 3, track 5), sounding at times dangerously reminicent of “Hakuna matata” from The Lion King (9). There was, on CD1, a short track (10) of tougher electronica and percussion, and it came as a relief.

It’s “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” and there is no libretto to help you follow the narrative, but judging from the few pictures of the production reproduced on the CD, it must have been an Afro-American Temptations. I find their style of singing again very clichéd – some words I am not aloud to use on Orwellian Amazon, but you know, when people sing “In the moanin’”, it reminds me of Al Jolson painted in black, or even of George Gershwin writing a well-intentioned but perhaps slightly condescending opera for black people. But my negative reaction may come from the fact that here is no libretto, nothing to help follow the narrative. And after all, I guess there is an element of truth even in those clichés.

But it’s not just the pronunciation, it’s the music that I find very clichéd – a service in a Harlem Church for the tourists from Europe – and I have to confess that I didn’t lend as much attention to the second CD as I did to the first, just checking if there may have been anything different there. Track 1 starts instrumentally and then becomes vocal and sounds like a mixture of Blues and Indian raga with guitars, and that too came as a refreshing change. In track 10, the description of Jesus by “someone who knew the carpenter’s son”, sung like a “deep south” Blues, was fun. Other than that, CD 2 is exactly like CD 1. But listeners with more of a bent for African-Amercan music, or European tourists dreaming of “moanin’” service in a Harlem Church, might find a greater appeal to it than I did.


title: Moments of ineffable beauty

text:
Korean composer Isang Yun (1917-1997) invented a unique style, combining the most cutting-edge avant-garde and the melismatic traditions from Korean court music. It produced, especially in Yun’s later years, music of striking originality and confounding beauty, and of this these works for flute offer a great testimony. The CD collates works composed from 1978 to 1988, the last one (Pezzo Fantasioso) completed just a year before the recording.

The flute(s) suits Yun, because their blend can go from the sensuously caressing to the mysteriously other-worldly in the high registers and to the piercingly vehement. Pezzo Fantasioso (track 1) is enigmatic, subtly nostalgic and dreamy, softly playing, and replete with Yun’s stylistic signature, the flourishing and frantic melismata in the highest flute registers. The four Inventionen for two flutes (track 2, 1983) offer much of the same. They are in fact Etudes, each Invention exploring a different technique or effect, “Trills” (sounding like frantic exotic birds), “Glissandi” (starting at 4:12, again enigmatic, subtly nostalgic and dreamy, with moments of greater agitation), “Appoggiaturas” (“Vorschläge” can also be translated by “grace notes”, 8:48, agitated and anguished), “Harmony” (12:42, softly caressing). Softly caressing is also how the Quartet for flutes begins (track 4, 1986), before escalating to more agitated heights, again sounding like a voluble and frantic aviary from another world. Although traversing the same moods and tonal colors, Salomo for solo alto flute (1978, track 3) is more austere, because the solo instrument is offered nothing to blend with. Finally comes Novellette (1980, track 5), a duet for alto flute and harp, which offers moments of ineffable beauty, with its two ad lib strings (violin and cello) placed in a distant background, besides moments of great vehemence.

“CD recorded in close collaboration with Isang Yun” conclude the liner notes. I have another recording for both Salomo and Novellette. Roswitha Staege on Camerata (Compositions of Isang Yun-9, [[ASIN:B000001ZHU Compositions of Isang Yun, Vol. 9: Gong-Hu, for Harp & Strings / Concerto for Flute & Small Orchestra / Salomo, for Solo Alto Flute / In Balance, for Solo Harp]], or Art of Isang Yun-6, which can be found under two entries, [[ASIN:B002SZR39G 尹伊桑の芸術Vol.6【室内楽曲 I】]] - no kidding - and  [[ASIN:B003JYOFVO Art of Isang Yun 6]]) plays Salomo with more mellowness than the more forceful Machiko Takahashi here. The Attacca Babel recording is reproduced at a rather low level, but when you crank up the volume you hear lots of breath intakes from the flautist and noises of the flute’s mechanism. Novellette was also recorded by Roswitha Staege, now on Capriccio, [[ASIN:B0009RRRIW Kammermusik]]. Preference for either is very subjective, the Attacca Babel recording affords slightly more refinement to the instruments, the harp sounds more crystalline, the “distancing” effect of the two strings is rendered with slightly more  eeriness, sound is thicker in the tutti fortes on Capriccio, more in your ears, and Attacca Babel’s all-flute program is certainly more coherent, and immensely attractive. All the music gathered here is fascinating, enrapturing, I find it profoundly original, and no lover of contemporary flute (or just flute, or just contemporary music, or just music) should miss it. TT 70 minutes.


title: A pleasant recital of Renaissance music for lute, archlute and guitar, from 1975

text:
A pleasant recital of Renaissance music for lute, archlute and guitar, played on period instruments by James Tyler, recorded in 1975 and originally released on Saga 5420, and the reissue comes in excellent sound. Works by the tremendously productive “anonymous English” (tracks 1-4, played on Renaissance lute), Hans Newsidler from Nüremberg (5-7), Giovanni Paolo Foscarini (8-12, baroque guitar), Thomas Robinson (13-14, lute), Pietro Paolo Mellii (15, archlute), Carlo Calvi (16-22 baroque guitar), Michelangelo Galilei (23-24, archlute). Some of it is meditative, nostalgic, dreamy and/or plangent (beautiful slow Passacaglia by Foscarini, track 10), but even when the music is more joyful, dance-like or boisterous, there always remains an appeasing gentleness to the instruments. It’s all very soothing and easy-listening. TT 44:38 – this is the straight reissue from the LP. I came to this CD as I was researching the CD reissues from the Saga catalog. Saga was a British label from the LP era, but the CD reissues that I've seen came from the Netherlands. Some were made by a Sound-Products Holland BV, label numbers SCD 90XX, barcode 871157290XX2Y, no copyright date to give an indication of when they were released. Then, in the mid-1990s, they appeared or re-appeared under the auspices of Emergo Classics, Saga Clasics EC 33XX-2, barcode  01686133XX2Y. The one I have of this program is the one listed by this entry, SCD 9036, barcode 8711572903621, but it also came out as EC 3365-2, barcode 016861336523, not listed on this website (but it's on the UK sister company). In my edition the liner notes of the original LP (by James and Joyce Tyler) have been retained (with a few typos, like Robinson’s – he’s also spellt Robison on the back cover -“Lessons for the lute” becoming “lessons for the flute”), except, alas, for the description of the instruments used.

James Tyler was an American guitarist and lutenist, 1940-2010, closely associated with Anthony Rooley's Consort of Musicke.


title: It's not the flowers of paradise that Pelecis is gardening but cheap plastic avatars

text:
Having already heard Nevertheless, Pelecis’ Double Concerto for violin and piano, in Kremer’s previous recording on Teldec, [[ASIN:B000005823 From My Home]], I guess I knew what to expect: sentimental and sweet film music. Not that I’m attracted to that kind of music, it’s out of an interest for the label, the Belgian Megadisc Classics, really, that I bought the CD. Launched in 1992, Megadisc did great service by bringing to the attention of music lovers a whole array of composers from the, by then, ex-Soviet empire: some that had already had some recorded exposure in the West, like Silvestrov, but mostly some that didn’t, or not much – and, for the most of them, still don’t: Alexander Knaifel, Vladimir Tarnopolski (see my review of [[ASIN:B00004WHA4 Introduction to the Music of Vladimir Tarnopolski]]), Tigran Mansurian, Faradj Karajev, Alexander Wustin, Nikolai Korndorf, Alexander Rabinovitch, Avet Terterian, Alexander Rastakov, Rytis Mazulis, husband and wife Elena Firsova ([[ASIN:B0002ZL19C Firsova: Mandelstam Cantatas]]) and Dmitri Smirnov ([[ASIN:B00006J9MG An Introduction to Dmitri Smirnov]]) – and Pelecis, then. In particular, Megadisc was the first really to unearth the music of Shostakovich’s maverick student Galina Ustvolskaya, and if only for that it deserves eternal gratitude.

And in truth, I had forgotten about the Pelecis being featured on the competing Teldec disc, but by an extraordinary coincidence it was brought back to my memory by a comment posted under my none too enthusiastic review there, exactly when I had pulled this one out of my shelves to listen to it.

But, still, with all that, I didn’t expect Pelecis to write the same kind of music as Michael Nyman or Philip Glass: repetitive, fresh, propulsive, jubilant. Yet it’s what he does in Revelation. Also tonal, easy, sounding almost like joyous rap music, or like music for a kids choir, something like Pelecis’ version of The Little Sweep. The music could easily pass for absolutely corny, but it is so unabashedly so that I feel like a perverse attraction to it (and I like the music of Nyman also, sometimes). I like also what sounds to me as a total contradiction between the mood of the music – jubilant and facile, music for your kids’ show at the end of the year of elementary school - and what the piece is about. In the composer's own words, “Revelation presents three soloists – a countertenor, a pianist and a trumpet-player – refusing to accept the familiar dreadful prophesies, preferring the promises of a realm of light and joy, in the New Jerusalem. The theme is divided into three parts: the last lines of he Revelation of Saint John, Gloria in Exelsis Deo and Hallelujah in Paradise”. Do I read a subtext here, Pelecis talking about his refusal of “ugly” contemporary music, preferring the promises of a realm of light and joy in music in the style of Michael Nyman?

The rest is a it was expected to be: Nevertheless sweet, pretty and sentimental music, at times derivations of Chopin in the style of Richard Clayderman (that thing returns a lot in the double concerto), music for Elton John ballads, for a sentimental Hollywood romance (the moment of dreamy nostalgia, memories, hazy image, slow motion, gauze skirts rustling under the breeze), music that Yann Tiersen could have written, folk dances, moments that may hark back to late 19th and early 20th century English pastoralism – like Elgar, or Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. Sometimes the solo violin line even seems to want to reproduce that of Brahms’ Violin Concerto. In fact, just read what the composer says about it, and you can guess what’s in store: “this double concerto… reveals the importance of the psychological dimension in music. At the beginning of this piece, the piano plays in a minor key, in a state of permanent melancholy. The violin on the other hand, almost always in a major key swims in happiness and wants to convince his partner to join him there. For a long time he doesn’t manage it, and it is only after three violin solos, three passionate cadences, that the piano finally says “yes”. Because true happiness is happiness shared!”. Am I incredibly cynical or is this incredibly corny? Probably both. Always, when I have multiple versions of a same work, I’ll do some comparative listening. Here, sorry, but I cringe. Anyway, given the underlying program of the concerto, I’m in no doubt that Kremer plays it with more conviction with his partner Latia Skanavi here than he did with Vadim Sacharov in 1993.

Pelecis’ combined homage to Piazzola and Oskar Stork, track 3, is a mixture of symphonic tango (that’s the Piazzola part) and of more sentimental and crooning music with syrupy violins (Oskar Strock must be something like the Latvian Piazzola). 5 minutes of it might have been fun, nearly 20 seemed aimless. "The Last Song", the last piece on the CD, a solo for violin and strings, is 5 minutes-long, and although it is in the same sentimental, brooding, nostalgic, melancholy vein as the double concerto, with the same echoes of early 20th century English pastoralism (Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia comes to mind), it’s a piece that can hold its own in the neo-simplistic trend illustrated by Pärt’s Fratres.

At least, and to his credit (I guess), Pelecis is entirely unabashed about his aesthetic stance. He writes, in the liner notes (awkwardly translated to English, presumably from the German, by someone who obviously had only a vague understanding of German. When necessary I substitue my own): “I invite my listeners to be aware that the evolution of music has not only been a progression, but also a long sequence of losses. These losses are a painful memory to me and I cannot break away from them. I try to save and re-establish as much as I can. For the average listener, as indeed for me, the scope of classical music (from Monteverdi to Mahler) is a paradise that invites us into the most sumptuous realms that the mind of a composer can imagine. The imagination of a composer contemplates and rejoices in a certain ideal, that of sonic perfection in all its dimensions. Who then has chased composers from this Garden of Eden? I’m afraid that they’ve done it by their own decision [the liner notes’ translation of the German “auf eigene Faust” here is: “I rather fear that they have often escaped from their own master” This is senseless]. But I won’t let myself be chased away. So I remain there and I feel good. I see myself almost as a gardener, part guardian and part creator of pretty things in the musical paradise that belongs to all of us”.

So this is music for those who equate paradise and sentimental film music. De gustibus… But I'm afraid it's not the flowers of paradise that Pelecis is gardening, but cheap plastic avatars salvaged from dumps. TT 67 minutes, no complaint there – at least for those interested in that kind of music.


title: Witty, fun, a piece that deserves to be ranked among the major works for contemporary vocal technique

text:
You won't know from the very scanty info provided by this entry, but this is the second CD edition, from 1995, of Georges Aperghis' Récitations, sung by Martine Viard, on Audivis-Montaigne, MO 782007, barcode 3298497820073. The recording was made in 1983 and released on LP by Harmonia Mundi / Musique Française d’Aujourd’hui HM 5135, and its first CD edition was in 1992, when Montaigne had another distributor and was still called Disques Montaigne, label number 782007, different cover (see my uploads under the entry for that original edition), barcode 3383007820077, [[ASIN:B00002MYLY Recitations]]. The same disc was later reissued by Naïve (2000), label number 782118, but without, I think (it's the original edition I have) the lavish booklet that came with the original Montaigne CDs: [[ASIN:B00004WKJ1 Recitations for Solo Voice]]. The same recording is listed here under various distributors' barcodes, but I'm not sure which editions exactly they are: [[ASIN:B00000DT8L Aperghis:Recitations for Solo Voice]] and [[ASIN:B0000DETD7 Recitations for Solo Voice]].

Georges Aperghis is a composer born in Greece in 1945 and, like Xenakis, he established early on in France, where he was one of the main inventors of “théâtre musical”, music theatre, in the early 1970s, and still is today one of its foremost exponents. But he’s composed full-scale operas as well, like Tristes Tropiques after Levy-Strauss (1995, premiered at the Strasbourg Opera) and [[ASIN:B000BVRMK4 Avis de Tempete]] (2004, Lille Opera).

As for performer Martine Viard, though nowhere as famous as the late Cathy Berberian, she is an actress-vocalist of the same ilk, sharing the same attitude and exploratory mind in relation both to the many possibilities of the human voice and the old traditions of opera. She performed many Aperghis music-theatre compositions, as well as some by Kagel. Cage and Stockhausen wrote for her. It is while on tour on one of Aperghis’ music-theatre pieces, in the late 1970s, that he composed the 14 Récitations for her.

I wrote above that Récitations were "sung" by Martine Viard. That's very approximative. They are "spoken", "recited", "spoken-sung", you name it. Récitations are typical Aperghis, and possibly the summation of his art in composition and of what makes him so unique, so inventive and so fun: they are speech, spoken language, made music. No text, only phonemes, shards of texts, stuttering, obsessive repetitions, huge leaps, using the full gamut of vocal ranges. One of the strongest characteristics of the compositional art of Aperghis, it seems to me, is that he starts from the spoken language, considered not for the meaning it conveys but for the elements of "music" it contains, and then amplifies these elements, without actually making them into songs: it's more his own kind of Sprechgesang, or the voice treated instrumentally (but conversely, in many of his instrumental compositions, his instruments are very "talkative"). Récitations are marvellous inventions in contemporary vocal virtuosity, they are witty and fun, they are varied and employ the full range of vocal techniques and expression – a kind of modern Paganini Caprices for voice. Ligeti’s Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures may come to mind, as well as Berio’s Sequenza for voice and A-Ronne.

So the only regret is that the recording is LP-tailored and limited to 38 minutes. In fact Viard didn’t record all the Récitations: there are fourteen of them, and for reasons unknown, she leaves out 2, 4 and 6. On the other hand, she repeats 10 three times (widely varying interpretation) and 8. In at least some of the Récitations the score is geometrically disposed in columns on the page, and the singer can perform them reading horizontally or vertically; the booklet of the original CD release, which is what I have, nicely reproduced the score to Recitation 8 consisting of three colums, with each subsequent line of each adding a syllable (the right column actually ends – or rather, starts – with a cough and a sigh), in a manner reminiscent of the language games of George Perec and the Oulipo movement: Viard’s three versions present a vertical reading of each columns (but alas no horizontal reading of the whole). Likewise her fourth reading of 10 is actually of the right column.

Anyway, Viard having recorded what she recorded,  Montaigne/Audivis might and should have complemented it with something else. The 14 “Jactations” for instance, Aperghis’s similar work for solo baritone from 2001, would now be a perfect match, , but there are other earlier such pieces for solo soprano : “Six Tourbillons” (1989), “Cinq Calme-plats” (1992), both premiered by Viard, with so far as I know only Tourbillons was recorded, on the hard-to-find label La Muse en Circuit. They would have made a fine coupling. Frustrating.

In my opinion, this deserves to be ranked, with Berio’s Sequenza, among the major works for contemporary vocal technique, and I think the only factor that has so far limited its being recognized as such is that Aperghis works mostly in France, and that the piece draws on French language – rather than Italian or German or English. He needs to write versions in those languages, and since his website is easily accessible, I’ll suggest it to him. I also recommend Aperghis’ later “[[ASIN:B000009L76 Sextuor / L'Origine Des Especes]]“, a piece of music-theatre from 1993 in which he puts these vocal techniques to use in the context of a stage-work for 5 female vocalists and a cellist.


text:
You won't know from the very scanty info provided by this entry, but this is the original CD edition, from 1992, of Georges Aperghis' Récitations, sung by Martine Viard, on Disques Montaigne 782007, barcode 3383007820077. It reissues a recording made in 1983 and released on LP by Harmonia Mundi / Musique Française d’Aujourd’hui HM 5135. When the distribution of Disques Montaigne was taken over by the distributor Audivis and the label renamed Audivis-Montaigne, the CD was reissued (in 1995) with a different cover, slightly different label number (MO 782007) and entirely different barcode, 3298497820073 - and that one too is pretty badly listed on this website, [[ASIN:B000027NGI Recitations]]. The same disc was later reissued by Naïve (2000), label number 782118, but without, I think (it's the original edition I have) the lavish booklet that came with the original Montaigne CDs: [[ASIN:B00004WKJ1 Recitations for Solo Voice]].

Georges Aperghis is a composer born in Greece in 1945 and, like Xenakis, he established early on in France, where he was one of the main inventors of “théâtre musical”, music theatre, in the early 1970s, and still is today one of its foremost exponents. But he’s composed full-scale operas as well, like Tristes Tropiques after Levy-Strauss (1995, premiered at the Strasbourg Opera) and [[ASIN:B000BVRMK4 Avis de Tempete]] (2004, Lille Opera).

As for performer Martine Viard, though nowhere as famous as the late Cathy Berberian, she is an actress-vocalist of the same ilk, sharing the same attitude and exploratory mind in relation both to the many possibilities of the human voice and the old traditions of opera. She performed many Aperghis music-theatre compositions, as well as some by Kagel. Cage and Stockhausen wrote for her. It is while on tour on one of Aperghis’ music-theatre pieces, in the late 1970s, that he composed the 14 Récitations for her.

I wrote above that Récitations were "sung" by Martine Viard. That's very approximative. They are "spoken", "recited", "spoken-sung", you name it. Récitations are typical Aperghis, and possibly the summation of his art in composition and of what makes him so unique, so inventive and so fun: they are speech, spoken language, made music. No text, only phonemes, shards of texts, stuttering, obsessive repetitions, huge leaps, using the full gamut of vocal ranges. One of the strongest characteristics of the compositional art of Aperghis, it seems to me, is that he starts from the spoken language, considered not for the meaning it conveys but for the elements of "music" it contains, and then amplifies these elements, without actually making them into songs: it's more his own kind of Sprechgesang, or the voice treated instrumentally (but conversely, in many of his instrumental compositions, his instruments are very "talkative"). Récitations are marvellous inventions in contemporary vocal virtuosity, they are witty and fun, they are varied and employ the full range of vocal techniques and expression – a kind of modern Paganini Caprices for voice. Ligeti’s Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures may come to mind, as well as Berio’s Sequenza for voice and A-Ronne.

So the only regret is that the recording is LP-tailored and limited to 38 minutes. In fact Viard didn’t record all the Récitations: there are fourteen of them, and for reasons unknown, she leaves out 2, 4 and 6. On the other hand, she repeats 10 three times (widely varying interpretation) and 8. In at least some of the Récitations the score is geometrically disposed in columns on the page, and the singer can perform them reading horizontally or vertically; the booklet of the original CD release, which is what I have, nicely reproduced the score to Recitation 8 consisting of three colums, with each subsequent line of each adding a syllable (the right column actually ends – or rather, starts – with a cough and a sigh), in a manner reminiscent of the language games of George Perec and the Oulipo movement: Viard’s three versions present a vertical reading of each columns (but alas no horizontal reading of the whole). Likewise her fourth reading of 10 is actually of the right column.

Anyway, Viard having recorded what she recorded,  Montaigne/Audivis might and should have complemented it with something else. The 14 “Jactations” for instance, Aperghis’s similar work for solo baritone from 2001, would now be a perfect match, , but there are other earlier such pieces for solo soprano : “Six Tourbillons” (1989), “Cinq Calme-plats” (1992), both premiered by Viard, with so far as I know only Tourbillons was recorded, on the hard-to-find label La Muse en Circuit. They would have made a fine coupling. Frustrating.

In my opinion, this deserves to be ranked, with Berio’s Sequenza, among the major works for contemporary vocal technique, and I think the only factor that has so far limited its being recognized as such is that Aperghis works mostly in France, and that the piece draws on French language – rather than Italian or German or English. He needs to write versions in those languages, and since his website is easily accessible, I’ll suggest it to him. I also recommend Aperghis’ later “[[ASIN:B000009L76 Sextuor / L'Origine Des Especes]]“, a piece of music-theatre from 1993 in which he puts these vocal techniques to use in the context of a stage-work for 5 female vocalists and a cellist.


title: Arrived too late at the show, we are left with Aperghis' usual antics

text:
The cover photo is not very explicit: “Parcours – G. Aperghis / C. Brahem / J.P. Drouet”. Pieces of Aperghis, Brahem and Drouet, you’d think, interpreted by Drouet, as suggested by the cover photo. But the subtitle on the backcover tells you the true story: “Musics of Georges Aperghis adapted and interpreted by Jean-Pierre Drouet on the musical machines of Claudine Brahem”.

Georges Aperghis is a Greek-French composer, born in 1945 but established in Paris since 1963, and one of the pioneers, in the 1970s, of “théâtre musical”. Percussionist (and composer) Jean-Pierre Drouet was long associated with him, and so was Claudine Brahem, a scenographer, who invented those wacky musical machines for the theatrical shows of Aperghis.

The pieces comprising “Parcours” (journey, course) are selected from various compositions of Aperghis, “Conversations”, “Enumérations”, “Babel Tower”, “Partial Eclipse”. Some were written specifically for the machines (and the machines built for the pieces), others were adapted by Drouet for machines created in other contexts. The music is typical Aperghis - invented language, onomatopoeia, shards of scientific texts delivered at light speed (track 12), various vocal sounds, panting, laughing, a recurring repeated “yes, yes, yes”, voice used not to convey meaning but as percussion together with the percussive sounds of the machines, the usual Aperghis antics. I’m a great fan of the composer, but as a presentation of Claudine Dehem and her machines found online says, “the musical machines were conceived, studied, built to be used in the contect of a stage. Each type of sound requires a specific gesture, rubbing, pulling, hitting, inserting, turning, with all those manipulations generating different postures and attitudes.” Evidently, all that is lost on disc, without the visual aspect. So what’s left are the antics, and the percussive sounds. Track 10, an ostinato of laughter accompanied by various sounds, is great even without the visuals, though: it reminded me of a great song by the French comedian singer Henri Salvador, “The Fugue in Laughs”, from the album “[[ASIN:B000056W3I Henry Salvador s'amuse]]", worthy of Berio’s A-Ronne. Still, listening to the CD is like having arrived too late at the show and hearing it behind the closed doors of the auditorium. Frustrating. TT is a scanty 38:30. If you want to get a real idea of what Parcours was, go to YouTube and search Aperghis Drouet Parcours and watch the uploads of Zapo Babilee. I’m an Aperghis completist and am glad to have this rare disc in my collection, but it’s not the one I’d recommend for a first discovery of the composer. Go to [[ASIN:B00002MYLY Recitations]], [[ASIN:B000009L76 Sextuor / L'Origine Des Especes]], [[ASIN:B00006835M Die Hamletmaschine-Oratorio]] or [[ASIN:B000BVRMK4 Avis de Tempete]] for that.


title: A memento of a pioneer of IRCAM's electronic music

text:
To put it bluntly: Barry Anderson, born in 1935 in New Zealand, is the guy who created (at IRCAM, Boulez’ electronic studio in Paris) all the electronics for Harrison Birtwistle’s [[ASIN:B000026745 Mask of Orpheus]], didn’t get recognition for his work and for what he saw as co-authorship, starting from the composer himself, and then, when his recognition as a composer was about to happen (IRCAM having commissioned Arc), died (a few hours after the premiere of Arc, on 27th May 1987), for causes that may include exhaustion from the work done for Birtwistle. What’s left of him is not even an entry on Wikipedia, just this and a companion CD, [[ASIN:B00005YM9B Barry Anderson: Arc and Other Electronic Works]], published by Continuum in 1989 and a fine tribute masterminded by composer Stephen Montague (who was an associate of Anderson from 1975 to his death, and is a fine composer in his own right).

Mask, originally composed in 1976 and extensively revised until 1985, is a large-scale piece, for flutes (played by one flautist), percussion, speaker and tape. In the course of its 40 minutes, one hears flutes fluting in shamanistic dances and percussion interjecting over what is mostly a carpet of rumbling electronic sounds often souding like distant thunder, distant sea, distant space or the voice of one’s repressed anxieties. After 30 minutes, the speaker comes in and lectures for four minutes on the functions of the Mask (“It portrays. Reveals”). There’s atmosphere in the piece, and there’s a certain entrancing effect to its atmospheric 40 minutes, although I find that the tape part often sounds like mere filling, and one wonders if 40 minutes isn’t too much for what the piece has to say – or maybe it’s not enough, and the piece should have run three hours. But to have reduced what one imagines was the environing sounds and visual experience of the piece played live to the two dimensions of the music on a CD probably works to its detriment.

But I prefer the 10 minutes of "Sound the Tucket Sonance... And the Note to Mount" (titled after a line of Shakespeare in Henry V) for trombone and tape, from 1980, because there is more sonic invention and unpredictability in both the tape and the trombone, which often sounds like electronic sounds, so here the dialogue of both “instruments” works very well.

Before coming to electronics and to his own, Anderson was under the influence of Stockhausen. It shows in the two angular Songs Penyeach (1971), a setting of two poems of Joyce for soprano, violin, clarinet and percussion that obviously doesn’t aim for melodic beauty (a piece of cake for the seasoned listener of contemporary music, but a repellent for others), and Colla Voce (1978), a piece for solo voice in the style of Berio’s Sequenza for voice - no intellegible phrases, just shards of words, phonemes, gurgles. It's fun and virtuosic, if you find Berio's Sequenza fun and virtuosic.

TT 72 minutes. Composers die but, fortunately, CDs outlive them to play the role of sonic photographies, so to not entirely forget.


When you don’t speak Russian, it’s not entirely easy to connect with Elena Firsova’s Mandelstam Cantatas (composed in 1984, 1987 and 1994). Although Russian text and English translation are provided, it’s easy to get lost in the Cyrillic alphabet of the original, and the translation seems awkward, or maybe the translation is very faithful to Mandelstam’s poetry and it’s Mandelstam’s poetry that is awkward and cryptic. So it’s hard to relate to what’s being sung, the meaning of the words and the emotional content of that meaning. For all I’m concerned, the soprano could have been singing invented phonemes.

In fact, I found it best to consider that the soprano was singing simple phonemes, sounds without meaning or only with very vague meaning, and concentrate on the music of Firsova, as if it were “pure” music with soprano voice used instrumentally. And there are many beauties in her music, hushed whisperings of strings in the high or low registers over softly tinkering harp or celesta and caressing clarinet, solo flute dancing distressed or defiant dances, solo violin whispering in the high registers like a lost bird, sensuous surges of the string quartet like a geyser joyfully spurting, mystical and mysterious chromatic fantasies, occasionally seeming to play at a distance, a lamenting solo for cello, a solo for horn on a hushed carpet of strings that seems to pay homage to Britten's Serenade (track 12), moments of obstinate and pointillistic repetition, insect music in a manner that vaguely recalled the String Quartet of George Crumb (beginning of track 6), and a few, very occasional and short demented instrumental explosions. Firsova’s music here is more about suggestion and allusion than forcing it upon you. There’s a sensuousness of sound and timbre in the music that is very fascinating. I don't hear any significant stylistic evolution from 1984 to 1994.

Elena Firsova was born in 1950, and she’s part of that generation of composers who came to age in the decaying days of the Soviet empire and the stultifying Brezhnev years but, whether in the open or in concealment, embraced modernism, and not just an imitation of the trends in vogue in the West, but speaking very much their own voice. She also has the honor of being one of the seven that were violently decounced by Soviet music komissar-in-chief Tikhon Krennikov in 1979, the others being Gubaidulina, Denisov (members of a generation born 20 years earlier), Viktor Suslin, Vyacheslav Artyomov, Alexander Knaifel and Firsova’s husband Dmitri Smirnov – for some reason, Schnittke wasn’t afforded the same honor. She and her husband ultimately emigrated to England in 1991, the year of the demise of the Soviet Union, and became British citizens. I’ve just reviewed the Introduction to Dmitri Smirnov on the same label, Megadisc Classics, [[ASIN:B00006J9MG An Introduction to Dmitri Smirnov]], and I had reviewed other pieces of Firsova earlier, piano pieces on [[ASIN:B00004TAS9 Unveiled: Music From Russia's Women Composers]] and her third and fourth string quartets on [[ASIN:B00000DWCC Lydian Quartet in Moscow]] and [[ASIN:B0000024E2 Stravinsky, Schittke, Roslavets, Smirnov, Firsova - Chilingirian String Quartet]].

Spoprano Ekaterina Kichigina has a great Russian voice, very plumpy, almost mezzoish, but rising very high and capable of singing piano in the high registers. TT 59 minutes.


title: dirges, mostly elegiac and mourning, some moments of greater vehemence, but deeply felt and accessible...

text: ..but find it cheaper, together with my detailed review, under its "legitimate" entry, barcode 028947630524, [[ASIN:B000A2WF3I String Quartets]]


title: A great introduction to the music of Dmitri Smirnov - and a mystery-bonus

text:
Dmitri Smirnov was born in 1948, so he’s from that generation of Soviet composers who came to age during the decaying days of the empire and the stultified Brezhnev years, among whom Denisov, Schnittke and Gubaidulina, members of a generation born 15 years earlier, are the figureheads. Whether it was easy or not, whether they did it in the open or in concealment, these people embraced modernism, and weren’t just slaves to the trends that dominated in the West, they invented their own, original brand of modern music. Not entirely in concealment, it seems: they did get recorded by the national label Melodiya. On the other hand, his bio on Wikipedia reminds that in 1979 Smirnov was “blacklisted as one of the "Khrennikov's Seven" at the Sixth Congress of the Union of Soviet Composers for unapproved participation in some festivals of Soviet music in the West” – the other six being Smirnov’s wife Elena Firsova, Alexander Knaifel, Viktor Suslin, Vyacheslav Artyomov, Gubaidulina and Denisov. In 1991, the year of the demise of the Soviet Union, Smirnov and Firsova established in England and later acquired the British citizenship.

Some of those once-modernist Soviet composers, like Pärt or Silvestrov, later reneged and embraced a kind of mystical neo-simplicity, but not all, not Schnittke, not Denisov, not Gubaidulina – and not Smirnov. This CD, published in 2002, offers a good illustration of his stylistic evolution, as it gathers early pieces, from 1977 and 1978, and compositions that were recent when the disc came out, composed from 1997 and 2000. While the music is often agonizingly vehement and pounding, there is nothing abstract to it in the manner of serialism or post-serialism, Smirnov never loses touch with melody and expression. But, whether it is typical of Smirnov’s expressive outlook in general or not, all the works feature here don’t show much variety in the expression either: the music is always grim, mourning, rising to climaxes of violent and agonized vehemence.

The 1977 Trio for piano, violin and cello (tracks 6-8) shows fine timbral invention, moments of great sonic subtlety, with the use of mysterious and atmospheric glissandi, quarter-tone intervals and harmonics, pointillistic pizzicati, evoking the impression of lost souls. But the music isn’t just sonic effects, and the third movement opens for instance with an aching melody played very softly, as pain impossible to express or souls drifting away in nothingness. But the Trio develops also moments of great vehemence, introduced in the first movement when the piano plays in the highest and most crystal-hard registers over hushed string harmonics then descends pounding into the lowest, and that same vehemence is much in evidence again in the often screaming second movement. The music is highly expressive in its expressionistic and agonized manner. Shostakovich’s maverick student Galina Ustvolskaya comes to mind. Likewise, although it has its thorny and vehement moments, the Sonata for Cello and Piano, from 1978, remains always anchored in melody (however angular) and expression – again grim and somber.

Jump 20 years, and in fact I don’t hear so much of a stylistic or expressive difference. If any, it might be that Smirnov uses less of those sonic effects and playing modes, glissandi and all, he’s more about pure expression obtained through more rarefied means. But he hasn’t entirely abandoned those effects either, and anyway the expression remains very grim, mourning and agonized – no wonder, since the Violin and Piano Sonata (1998), Elegy (1997) and Postlude (1998) are all dirges, to the memory of, respectively, Firsova’s father, the physicist Oleg Smirnov, Denisov (who was Smirnov’s teacher in instrumentation) and Schnittke. Postlude and the Violin-Piano Sonata share many similar traits, a reliance on “pure” melody, however aching and agonized but occasionally elegiac, the occasional use of sonic effects like sul ponticello and harmonic tremolos, to great expressive effect. There are again many moments of expressive vehemence in the Sonata, and fine invention in sound and timbre in the second half of the last movement, but it sounds overall like the most traditional work on the CD, the one that is at times the most anonymously “modernist”. Postlude climaxes in something like screams of despair, or refusal, before receding into the oblivion of harmonics increasingly pianissimo were the mechanics of bow against strings are heard more than the actual vibration of the strings. The same gesture concludes the Violin-Piano Sonata.

Again Elegy to the memory of Denisov, for solo cello and three crystal glasses, is somber, mourning, vehement, stylistically post-Shostakovich but exploring even more outward regions of sound and perhaps the soul, until the harmonics of the cello become undistinguishable from those of the crystal glass. It would fit well in a program with Crumb’s solo cello Sonata.

In that context the Piano Sonata, Smirnov’s fourth, “String of Destiny”, the most recent piece on the CD (2000), stands out, if only because of the timbral nature of the instrument. Here the dramatic impact lies not on agonized melody whispered, sung or screamed by strings, but on the rise from hushed resonance to flurry of notes and massive explosions of sound, still with depressed sustaining pedal. It evokes a more modern Scriabin without the mysticism and aching chromatic harmonies.

On my copy, a very strange thing happens at the end of the last track, the Postule for solo violin. It ends at 11:35, as announced on the track listing (11:40), but at 11:41, without a break in the track, a new piece begins, for piano, in which the attentive listener will recognize the same Piano Sonata as on track 2. What a production blunder! he will first think - until, at the end, Smirnov’s own voice announces: “this was String of Destiny, Sonata number four, dedicated to my daughter Alissa Firsova, played by Alissa Firsova”. Nothing announces that, Alissa and the alternative version of the Sonata are nowhere mentioned on the CD’s back cover or booklet, the only hint is the 20+ minute duration of the last track. It’s the mystery bonus, for those who sat and listened to the end. The sonic perspective is exactly the same as on the “disclosed” recording of the Sonata, as if it had been recorded on the same piano, with same microphone placement, but while the two readings are quite similar, there are unmistakable differences… In a private correspondence following the publication of this review, the composer indicated that his daughter was fifteen then and recorded the Sonata, which she knew by heart, in one take.

And with that, TT is a very generous 80 minutes, not the 70:57 announced on the back cover, which would already have been very generous. This is a valuable introduction to the music of Smirnov. For those wanting to go further, sadly, there is frustratingly little of his available on CD, especially in view of his sizeable output, which includes five operas, three symphonies and many other orchestral pieces, twelve concertos, countless song cycles and pieces for smaller instrumental ensembles, nine string quartets and six piano sonatas. Among all this, here is how it goes:

The 6th piano sonata after William Blake (and piano pieces of Firsova and Rachmaninoff) played by Alissa, [[ASIN:B011A5GFWA Russian Emigres]]

Two Fugues for Solo Violin by Peter Sheppard Skaerved on Metier, [[ASIN:B00004SCLJ Etude Philharmonique]]

Partita op. 43 for solo violin by the same performer, published in 1995 on Fish Ear FECD621 (under the general title "Winter Journey"), with pieces of Jolivet, Henze (Etude Philharmonique, also on the previous CD), Sculthorpe, David Matthews (the title piece), strauss, Schulhoff, Nigel Clarke, for which I cannot find any commercial listing.

An early solo for harp op. 19 on Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, [[ASIN:B00000DWQR Works by Modern Composers of Moscow (Original Master Recording)]] (with a more substantial chamber concerto of Firsova)

An early Sonata for flute and harp op. 16 on “[[ASIN:B000027QC2 Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Vol.2]]", a series published by Olympia, OCD 282

Serenade op. 34 for oboe, saxophone and cello and Tiriel op. 41b for saxophone, baritone and piano on Visto 3703, "proyecto Moskva", with works of Gubaidulina, Firsova and Sergey Pavlenko. Contrary to what you'd think, this is not a Russian CD by one originated in Spain, and I haven't found a commercial listing.

The Second String Quartet (and Firsova’s Third) by the Chilingirian Quartet, originally on Conifer, [[ASIN:B0000024E2 Stravinsky, Schittke, Roslavets, Smirnov, Firsova - Chilingirian String Quartet]]

String Quartet No. 6 by the Brodsky Quartet, together with the opus 18 quartets of Beethoven and quartets by other contemporary composers, on Vanguard 99212 [[ASIN:B00004TGA0 Beethovem;Quartets 1]] and Challenge Classics CC 72009 [[ASIN:B0011V41F2 Beethoven: String Quartets Op. 18]]

An 8-minute Fantasia for saxophone quartet (1982) in Aurelia Saxophone Quartet: Four Generations of Russian Composers, Dutch Vanguard 99154 [[ASIN:B000024W5V Glazunov/Shostakovich/Denisov/]] or Challenge Classics CC 72039, [[ASIN:B0001Z24M6 Glazunov/Shostakovich/Denisov]]

Mirages for saxophone quartet on Vista Vera, [[ASIN:B0089Z9RU2 Glazunov. Hindemith. Smirnov - Lev Mikhailov, saxophone]]

Piano Quintet by the Primrose Piano Quartet on Meridian, [[ASIN:B003YCI224 Variations on a Burns Air]]

In the private correspondence mentioned above, the composer had indicated that the choral works featured on two CDs from Northern Flowers, [[ASIN:B000C6NO96 Our Lady's Rejoicing in Sorrow]] and [[ASIN:B006S1M5QM Dmitry Smirnov, Sergei Banevich. Choral Works.]], were not by him but by another Dmitri Smirnov from St. Petersburg.

The Smirnov page of Onno van Rijen's Soviet Composers website mentions many CDs on a Meladina label, but that is Smirnov’s own label and they are, or were, promotional CDs, not commercialized. Smirnov’s website is inaccessible at the moment. One consolation is that many works of Smirnov can be listened to on YouTube.