MusicWeb Reviewer’s
Log: October-December 2004
Reviewer: Patrick
C Waller
A is usually a good
place to start and, recently, for me
A has meant the Swedish composer Hugo
Alfvén. Some years ago
I borrowed Neeme Järvi’s recordings
of the first two symphonies from a library.
Subsequently I started collecting the
Naxos series which has now reached No.
3 but seems to be progressing very slowly.
Spurred on by Rob Barnett’s positive
review, (see
link 1) and a cut-price offer, I
bought Järvi’s complete set and
have not been disappointed. In particular,
the 4th symphony is an important
and interesting work. If the 5th
is a comparative failure, the smaller
orchestral works are generally worthwhile
and the performances all excellent.
I found the aural perspective just a
bit distant and lacking in presence
but not enough to be a serious deterrent.
Mention of presence
(and coincidentally moving on to B –
this is not going to be alphabetical
any further) brings Loris Tjeknavorian’s
sharply focused recording of the three
Borodin Symphonies to
mind (see link
2). I have owned Andrew Davis’s
Toronto recordings for years. These
are well-played and very civilized but
the recording is mediocre. Having ordered
but not received the Tjeknavorian disc,
I heard a radio broadcast of the unfinished
Symphony No 3 one Sunday morning. Immediate
impressions were very favourable but
then some loud clicks and jumping occurred,
and the presenter had to stop and play
something else. I was a bit on tenterhooks
when first listening to the disc (twice
in the past I have had such discs and
there turned out to have been a fault
with the whole batch) but it was fine.
These readings hit you in the face,
positively extraordinary music-making
captured in excellent sound by RCA.
Bye-bye Toronto.
Paul Daniel’s Naxos
record of Vaughan Williams’
4th symphony is very much
in the same league (see links 3
& 4).
I was not the only person to be blown
away by it. This was the Gramophone’s
record of month and very favourably
commented upon by Andrew McGregor on
Radio 3. Back on MusicWeb, William Hedley
was also very positive and rightly pointed
out what an important bonus Flos
Campi is - I was so taken with the
symphony that, in retrospect, I did
not do this justice.
Another composer doing
well at the moment is Arnold Bax.
Now we have a choice between excellent
versions of the symphonies it is good
to see more of his other music being
released. In particular, Ashley Wass
is going to record a complete cycle
of the piano music for Naxos and the
first disc (featuring Piano Sonatas
Nos 1 and 2 and some shorter pieces)
is a great start (see links 5,
6,
7).
Also very worthwhile is a Dutton disc
of Bax’s Songs which Em Marshall’s review
encouraged me to order direct from their
website (see link
8). In particular, I enjoyed hearing
Ian Partridge again after a gap of quite
a few years (see below) and he remains
in fine voice.
A substantial amount
of the music of Peter Maxwell
Davies is now available to download
or order on custom-made CDs (see links
9
& 10)
through the MaxOpus website. Max’s music
covers a very wide range of ground.
For something to really get your teeth
into I would recommend his Piano Concerto
and Antarctic Symphony. For lighter
notes try An Orkney Wedding with
Sunrise or Maxwell’s Reel, with
Northern Lights.
I recently caught up
with Dmitry Yablonsky’s Naxos recording
of the four Ballet Suites by Shostakovich
(see links 11
& 12).
These are all arrangements of items
extracted from various sources but they
are great fun to listen to and the disc
is a very fine bargain.
My disc of the moment
is an important première recording
of Sammartini’s
cantata Il pianto degli Angeli della
Pace (see link
13), a work which moved me as much
as anything I have heard recently. This
is another Naxos bargain that is well
worth investigating.
All the records mentioned
above have been reviewed on MusicWeb
but it would be impossible, I suppose,
to review everything. Below are some
brief reflections on the most interesting
records I have recently come across
which have not [perhaps yet] been considered
on the site.
The most striking is
Marc-Andre Hamelin’s disc of Kapustin’s
piano music for Hyperion (CDA
67433). This composer, who was born
in the Ukraine in 1937, was a completely
new name to me and has an eclectic style
much influenced by jazz rhythms. The
programme includes the Piano Sonata
No 6 of 1991 (the booklet doesn’t mention
any subsequent ones) and, most memorably,
the Five Etudes in Different Intervals.
Assuming the opus numbers are "correct"
this is an even more recent work. The
etudes sound ferociously difficult to
play but, as one would expect, Hamelin
is more than equal to the task and the
sound is excellent.
Over the past year
or so I have been collecting Bernard
Haitink’s series of Brahms
symphonies on LSO Live, which seems
to be an excellent and inexpensive way
of obtaining these works. The latest
in the series is the 3rd
Symphony coupled with the Serenade No
2 (LSO 0056). This is well up to the
high standard of the previous releases
both artistically and in terms of sound.
The third movement of the symphony is
a particular delight. This is clearly
a very competitive field and, in addition
to great recordings of the past (of
which Boult’s are my personal favourite),
there is new competition around. John
Quinn has recently written very positively
about Semyon Bychkov’s complete series
with the WDR Symphony Orchestra of Cologne
for Avie (see link
14).
Both the Bychkov series
and Haitink’s latest disc are available
in SACD format. The former is a hybrid
but in the latter case one can pay an
extra £2-3 for the SACD hybrid. I am
currently wondering whether I should
now be investigating this format given
the drop in hardware price and wider
availability of discs. I have acquired
a few hybrid SACDs by default but, by
way of future-proofing, should I now
start paying the extra? I haven’t yet
but, if I ever get SACD, I will certainly
regret not doing so for Stephen Hough’s
set of Rachmaninov’s Piano
Concertos on Hyperion - another label
which now offers the format at additional
cost (see links 15
& 16).
This was an automatic pick as one of
my discs of the year (see link
17 [dial-up]to
peruse those of other MusicWeb reviewers).
Until quite recently,
I doubt I was more than subliminally
aware of Rachmaninov’s
operas. However, he writes very gratefully
for the voice and his three one-acters
in excellent recordings under Neeme
Jarvi make a splendid bargain collection
(Deutsche Grammophon Trio 477 041-2).
The only blot is the lack of libretti.
My current favourite is the very early
Aleko but The Miserly Knight
and Francesca da Rimini will
both probably be more durable.
I can’t be the only
collector who was delighted to see Nimbus
come back from the dead and one of the
fruits has been Martin Jones’s complete
4-CD set of Korngold’s
Piano Music (NI 5705/8). The three sonatas
are amongst the major works, the first
two having been written at the ripe
old ages of 12 and 13. But Korngold
was a prodigy in the Mozart league and
you would never know if you hadn’t been
told. Also included are various arrangements
from the operas and The Snowman
– a complete pantomime. Martin Jones
does an excellent job and the recorded
sound is fine. This set is at bargain
price and anyone who likes Korngold
should be looking out for it.
The Korngold was not
my biggest bargain of recent times.
Pride of place there must go to Rubinstein’s
Chopin set (RCA Victor
74321 979062). Eleven discs in a slimline
box, I picked these up for £30 in HMV
in London a couple of months ago – the
easiest purchasing decision I have ever
made. I think it was a temporary giveaway
price, these discs cost about three
times as much not long ago. The final
disc duplicates some of the works in
earlier renditions for which the sound
requires some tolerance. However, generally
these recordings are from the late 1950s
and 1960s, and the sound has come up
well. The readings are beyond description
– a benchmark if ever there was one.
For me, the Nocturnes and Waltzes are
particular favourites and I suspect
they may have been for Rubinstein.
Over the past few years,
I have reacquainted myself with CD versions
of quite a few recordings I first knew
on LP. Now we seem to be reaching the
stage where this is a quite rare event
but I was delighted to come back to
Stephen Kovacevich’s 1970s Beethoven
recordings of Piano Sonatas
Nos 17 & 18 on Philips (475 631-9),
a disc that was owned by my father.
The "downside" is that purchasing
these involved a 6-CD set, although
at low-medium price. The discs are,
however, very well filled and contain
8 of the sonatas (the others are Nos
5, 8, 28 & 30-32), the 5 concertos,
the Diabelli variations and the
Bagatelles. I am still working through
this set but it has been a very positive
experience so far. Pity it’s in a jewel
case rather than slimline box (on grounds
of space and destructability – what
are you meant to do when a fancy jewel
case like this breaks?) but at least
they have fitted them all into one double-size
jobster. Apart from an occasional touch
of hardness (for example in the first
movement of the Pathetique),
the sound is pretty good for the period.
I think Kovacevich was still known as
Bishop (or was it Bishop-Kovacevich?)
at the time of the earliest of these
recordings. His readings of the solo
piano music are full of interest and
the concertos have generally received
very positive reviews over the years.
My final discs are
of similar vintage but in this case
they were honoured by being among the
very few LPs I kept when I upgraded
last my audio equipment about three
years ago and dispensed with the turntable.
Even though I could no longer play them,
I couldn’t bear to part with Ian and
Jennifer Partridge’s song cycles by
Schubert and Schumann,
recordings they made in 1973-4. In particular,
it is their reading of Die schöne
Müllerin that I cherish, and
I was delighted when this recently reappeared
on the bargain Classics for Pleasure
label (586181-2).
If you’re still with
me, you’ve probably realised that I
am generally "a stay at home"
listener but I have been following the
ENO production of Wagner’s
Ring at the London Coliseum. In early
November I saw Siegfried (link
18) and very much agree with Marc
Bridle’s view that it was a cut above
what had gone previously (if musically
not quite in the league of Goodall in
the 1970s, as judged from the recordings
available on Chandos). The production
still required some tolerance (or may
be one should just laugh) but Siegfried
as a recalcitrant teenager came off
well (having two of my own I feel qualified
to comment), and I’m certainly looking
forward to the Twilight of the Gods
in April.
David Wright’s
many articles on MusicWeb make interesting
reading. His latest, called "Opinion
or Fact?" (see link
19) contains some rather disparaging
references to Schubert which, as you
can probably imagine from the above,
I would not easily accept. Of course,
his Lieder are not all equally inspired
but nothing on earth is going to persuade
me that Schubert wasn’t a great song
writer or that his late great works
such as the C major symphony, the last
three quartets and seven piano sonatas,
and the quintets aren’t profoundly original
and wonderful music. Of course, that
is my opinion and David Wright is entitled
to his views. Some of these certainly
question received wisdom, for example,
suggesting that Barbirolli was not a
great conductor. Personally I wouldn’t
be want to be without some of his recordings
of Delius, Elgar and Mahler.
The more I thought
about this article, the more I inclined
towards opinion rather than fact. I
would imagine most people reading this
would readily agree that Beethoven was
one of the greatest composers of all
time but does that make it a fact? Surely
there is still a value judgment involved?
If someone wants to argue otherwise
I would listen to their arguments and
almost certainly still disagree with
them but would stop short of saying
they were factually wrong.
I also have a less
rigorous definition of plagiarism than
David Wright and much of what he alludes
to in that respect would be "influence"
in my books. We are all influenced by
others and it is often hard to judge
where such influences begin and end.
In December 2003 (see
link
20), Norman Lebrecht
confidently predicted the death of the
classical music record industry within
a year and invited us to remember this
one year on (well I have). Subsequently,
in September 2004 (see link
21), he signed the death certificate,
did the autopsy and wrote the obituary.
Lebrecht’s writings are invariably essential
reading but has he gone a bit too far
this time? As an avid consumer of classical
music, should I really be concerned
that the end of the world is nigh? I
enjoyed reading David Hurwitz’s
rejoinder entitled Fine Whine from
Stormin’ Norman (see link
22) but can’t resist adding my twopenny
worth here (views that happen to be
similar but I assure you are not plagiarised).
Close scrutiny of the
original article reveals that Lebrecht
was only really predicting the death
of the "major" labels. His
example of the loss we are to suffer
was Sir Simon Rattle’s never to be recorded
Bruckner’s Fourth. Now, whilst I dearly
love both Sir Simon and Bruckner’s 4th,
I shall not be losing too much sleep
about that. Nor would I be too concerned
if the major labels never made another
classical record because, over the last
few years, the vast majority of interesting
new records have been made by what Lebrecht
calls "cottage" labels. The
Naxos phenomenon is recognised by Lebrecht
but I fear he underestimates its achievements.
My view is that the
terminology merely needs changing to
reflect output rather than affiliation
with giant corporations. At least some
of what Lebrecht calls the "cottage"
labels should now be called the majors.
Which labels they are could be debated
but at the forefront of my mind would
be Naxos, Hyperion, Chandos, and BIS.
Regarding the majors of the past, all
that really matters is that they keep
their wonderful back catalogues in good
order and availability.
Far from there being
impending doom, from a consumer point
of view, the range, quality and value
of recorded music now available is stunning
– riches undreamt of even ten years
ago. Literally – we have never had it
so good! Whether it will stay that way
is another matter but we should certainly
enjoy it while we can.
Finally, this is only
my second experience of writing something
other than a normal CD review and feedback
would be very welcome in deciding whether
it is worth me (or others – does anyone
want to do something similar?) continuing
on a regular basis. My first attempt
at something different was an article
on Bruckner’s 8th
Symphony which went on the site in October
(see link
23). I received several interesting
e-mails, notably from John Deacon who
pointed out the full extent of the composer’s
association with St. Florian (where
the young Bruckner was a chorister,
later returned as organist and is buried
– somehow I only mentioned the former
– oops) and told me of his visit there.
Tony Reinhardt-Rutland also wrote and
engaged me in a debate about the first
versions of Bruckner’s symphonies, essentially
arguing that they are the most quirky
and therefore more interesting than
the revisions. As we were finishing
the exchange, I thought it a pity that
we had not used the bulletin board,
particularly given the level of interest
there seems to be in this composer at
the moment. Therefore, if you have any
comments or suggestions about this log,
please put them on the bulletin board
or, if you want to write one, please
contact Len.
Patrick C Waller
Links
1. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Nov04/Alfven_symphonies.htm
2. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Nov04/Borodin_symphonies.htm
3. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Dec04/RVW4_Daniel.htm
4. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Nov04/RVW4.htm
5. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Oct04/Bax_Wass.htm
6. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Sept04/Bax1_Wass.htm
7. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Aug04/Bax1_Wass.htm
8. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Nov04/Bax_Songs.htm
9. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Nov04/Maxwell_Davies_compilation.htm
10. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Dec04/PMD_Waller
11. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Sept04/Shostakovich_Ballet.htm
12. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Nov04/Shostakovich_ballet_Suites.htm
13. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2005/Jan05/sammartini_pianto_ferrari.htm
14. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Dec04/Brahms_Bychkov.htm
15. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Oct04/Rachmaninov_Hough.htm
16. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Nov04/Rachmaninov_Hough.htm
17. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Rec2004index.htm
18. http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2004/May-Aug04/siegfried0611.htm
19. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Dec04/Opinion.htm
20.
http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/031231-NL-recording.html
21.
http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/040901-NL-definitivecds.html
22.
http://www.classicstoday.com/features/f1_0104.asp
23.
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Oct04/Bruckner8_Waller.htm
