LAST WORDS

posted by James Reel

Here are reviews I wrote for Fanfare of recordings of the last, incomplete works of two prominent Austrian composers ...

BRUCKNER Symphony No. 9 * Marek Janowski, cond; Suisse Romande O * PENTATONE PTC 5186 303 (hybrid multichannel SACD: 62:01)

In order to appreciate this release, it’s necessary to put some prejudices aside. First, the Suisse Romande playing Bruckner? Well, this is not the sour, scrappy band it was 50 years ago under Ansermet, and today it is fully capable of producing a sufficiently dense, rich Bruckner sound. Second, there’s Marek Janowski, a conductor with a great many ho-hum recorded performances on disc, mostly operas (including some rarities, by the likes of Krenek and Hindemith). Janowski’s Ring cycle many years ago was hopelessly dull from the orchestral standpoint, so the prospect of Janowski taking on Bruckner, Wagner’s ultimate acolyte, wouldn’t seem promising.

Forget all that, though, and what can be heard in this new surround-sound disc is a mostly effective Bruckner Ninth, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of the finest Bruckner Ninth performances (Furtwängler, Giulini, Jochum, and Wand, among others). The best work comes right at the beginning. The opening minutes don’t sound as disjointed as usual, the sudden contrasts now cohering into a unified statement before dying away to be replaced by the drawn-out, lyrical second theme. Other moments later in the symphony stand out: the ominous urgency of the second movement’s Trio, not as incongruously light-hearted as it sometimes comes across; the carefully shaped crisis-climax in the third movement. In between, conductor and orchestra coast along, never at a less than professional level, but without maintaining the focus they display in the most effective passages.

Typically of PentaTone, the DSD recorded sound is vibrant and precise. The sonic image reflects exactly what’s shown in a booklet photo, with brass and timpani positioned far in the back. I also imagine that I can hear them coming from the higher elevation shown in the photo, but that’s probably just the power of suggestion.

If you must have a surround-sound Bruckner Ninth, this is an honorable choice, but it’s not the last word on the symphony. James Reel

MOZART Requiem * Colin Davis, cond; Marie Arnet (sop); Anna Stéphany (ms); Andrew Kennedy (ten); Darren Jeffery (bs); London SO; London S Cho *LSO 0627 (hybrid multichannel SACD: 50:35) TEXT (live performance: 9-10/2007)

Colin Davis has already recorded the Süssmayr edition of Mozart’s Requiem for Philips and RCA, and done so well. This new production doesn’t amplify the conductor’s conception of the work, so the only real selling point is its DSD surround sound. Sonically, this is one of LSO Live’s better efforts, less acoustically claustrophobic than many of its Barbican recordings, yet not swallowed up in reverberation.

Generally, this is a satisfying performance. With a chorus of 89 and an orchestra of 62, it has heft, but Davis keeps things from turning sluggish. The Dies Irae, for example, is notably fast and turbulent, with an incisiveness frankly missing from his treatment of the score’s opening pages. On the other hand, the final, fugal Cum sanctus tuis is comparatively short of drama and fervor. As will happen in concert, some of the (choral) ensemble work is slightly imprecise, and there are a few very brief and minor intonation lapses from a soloist or two. And the heavily trilled R at the beginning of every “Rex” just sounds silly.

I seem to have been concentrating on flaws, but obviously most of them are quite minor, and all in all this is an intelligent, well-balanced mainstream performance. Still, if you’re shopping for a modern-instrument Mozart Requiem, a better choice would be Runnicles on Telarc (it’s the Levin edition). That performance is more consistently ominous and theatrical, partly because of the fuller bass in the chorus and the recording itself, and also because of the conductor’s more detailed dynamic shaping. James Reel

WHY PHOENIX SUCKS, CHAPTER 134

posted by James Reel

An Arizona Republic columnist rightly complains about low architectural standards in the Valley of the Sun. Very true, but I wonder how smug we can be here in Tucson? The public buildings aren’t uniformly horrible, but the real travesty is the expanse of indistinguishable, cheaply built, overpriced stucco hutches metastasizing through the suburbs. It wasn’t always thus; Tucson once boasted at least one distinctive domestic and commercial architect.

CONCERTO REVIEWS

posted by James Reel

Here are a couple of reviews I wrote a few months ago for Fanfare, covering very recommendable recordings of concertos by Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Glazunov ...

GLAZUNOV Violin Concerto TCHAIKOVSKY Souvenir d’un lieu cher; Violin Concerto * Vadim Gluzman (vn); Andrew Litton, cond; Bergen PO * BIS SACD 1432 (hybrid multichannel SACD: 70:58)

There have been many, many fine recorded performances of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, more than a couple of Glazunov’s, and no doubt many more will arrive in the next few years. Do we need Vadim Gluzman’s new traversal of these scores? Yes, indeed. While it’s impossible to classify this or any other version of the Tchaikovsky as the absolute best, Gluzman’s certainly stands among the finest.

First, there’s Gluzman’s tremendous virtuosity—not the showy sort, but the kind that makes the pyrotechnics sound absolutely natural and musical. Just consider those double stops in the last movement of the Tchaikovsky, or nearly any bar in the tricky Glazunov, all featuring faultless intonation. The playing is both impeccable and elastic; you never have the sense that Gluzman is tightening up at the hard parts.

Then, there’s Gluzman’s lyric ardor. These aren’t the hottest performances available, but they do sing warmly, without making the music turn to goo. One can find greater nobility or poise in some other performances of the Tchaikovsky slow movement, and more throaty darkness in the low notes of some other Russian soloists. But that’s why we collect multiple renditions.

There are some interesting connections here. Gluzman separates the two concertos with Glazunov’s orchestration of Tchaikovsky’s three-movement Souvenir d’un lieu cher; he also performs on a 1690 Strad that once belonged to Leopold Auer, the (reluctant) dedicatee of the Tchaikovsky concerto and the man who premiered the Glazunov. Surely none of this affects Gluzman’s performance, but it does bring a special sense of heritage to the project.

Andrew Litton leads the Bergen Philharmonic in perky, alert accompaniments, soaking in a warm ambient bath. The orchestra lacks the presence it enjoys in its Grieg series for BIS—the most beautiful orchestral sonics I’ve ever heard—but it puts across what’s necessary here.

There are already other choices for this music on SACD, notably the slightly sweeter-toned Julia Fischer on PentaTone (with the Tchaikovsky works on one disc, the Glazunov on another). If you already have Fischer’s recordings, it’s less imperative to obtain Gluzman’s, but either artist’s discs would be a superb addition to either a basic or a comprehensive collection. James Reel

MENDELSSOHN Violin Concertos: in e (original version); in d. Concerto in d for Violin, Piano, and Strings. Capriccio Brillant. Rondo Brillant. Serenade and Allegro Giocoso. Piano Concertos: in a; No. 1 in g; No. 2 in d. Concertos for Two Pianos: in E; in A-flat * Isabelle van Keulin (vn); Ronald Brautigam, Roland Pöntinen, Love Derwinger (pn); Lev Markiz (cond); Amsterdam Sinfonietta * BIS SACD 1766 (two-channel SACD: 255:55)

Here’s the third incarnation of a series recorded in the mid 1990s. First, it came out on four separate CDs, then in a four-for-the-price-of-three box, and now on a single SACD. This is not a surround-sound version, but BIS takes advantage of the SACD’s great storage capacity to place four and a quarter hours of music onto a single platter. Note that although it’s a conventional two-channel production, this disc is compatible only with SACD players.

If you invest in this very satisfactory set, you’ll still need someone else’s recording(s) of the standard version of Mendelssohn’s popular E-minor Violin Concerto. What we have here is the original, pre-Ferdinand David version. Aside from a bit of inferior passagework, this is not a weak work that was vastly improved by David’s expert advice; this initial version is merely different, not worse. It’s less of a violin showpiece; David advocated moving passages up an octave, adding lots of extra double stops, expanding the first-movement cadenza, and so on, to produce a more brilliant effect. In the original version, Mendelssohn tends to employ sighing or dying phrases where later he would heighten the drama with rising sequences. The version we know is largely heroic assertion, whereas the early version is more of a Romantic struggle whose outcome is never assured, even if the stakes don’t seem as high as in, for example, the Sibelius concerto.

Three of the other concertante works are products of Mendelssohn’s teen years: the D-minor Violin Concerto, the A-minor Piano Concerto, the Violin-Piano Concerto, and the Two-Piano Concertos date from 1822-24, and inhabit the sound world of Mendelssohn’s early string symphonies (except for the two-piano works, the soloists are accompanied by string orchestra), although the Violin-Piano Concerto often comes off more as a chamber duo with string-orchestra commentary. The remaining works for single piano and orchestra are more mature products of the 1830s.

The soloists tend to play with the requisite nimbleness and spirit, although the two-piano works would benefit from greater verve, not just the precision offered here. Pianist Ronald Brautigam’s contributions are especially sparkling and impetuous, and Lev Markiz leads the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in fully complementary accompaniments (although the Piano Concerto No. 1 could use a slightly larger orchestra to convey the music’s storm and stress more fully).

These performances don’t necessarily outclass certain old favorites—Rudolf Serkin and Murray Perahia in the numbered single-piano concertos, Argerich and Kremer in the piano-violin work—but they serve the scores well, and present attractive music in a space- and money-saving little package. James Reel

LOOKING THE PART

posted by James Reel

Terry Teachout has posted an old thought piece expressing ambivalence over whether or not opera singers should be attractive. This is an old subject I wrote extensively about in the Star more than 10 years ago, and I won’t repeat my whole argument here, but it boils down to this: Those who claim that what’s most important in opera is the music are simply wrong. Opera by design is dramatic stage work, and all elements of the staging, including direction and casting, are every bit as important as the musical element. Singers who don’t look the part don’t belong there. Let them stick to recitals and oratorios and audio recordings. In straight theater, nobody would accept a 300-pound lump in the role of a waif, and it shouldn’t be acceptable in opera, either. (There are good parts available to 300-pound singers, but Cio-Cio San ain’t one of them.) I simply cannot comprehend how there can be any argument about this.

I WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD

posted by James Reel

A nasty cold kept me off the air and out of the blogosphere for most of last week, and even caused me to hand my weekend reviewing duties over to somebody else. At least I got lots of rest, worked on my 18-month backlog of the New Yorker, got well into Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica and made excellent headway in Carl Schorske’s Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, which I borrowed a couple of years ago from my friend the former head of the UA German studies department, but neglected to finish before I actually went to Vienna; over the weekend I started over, and will now make my way to the end, I swear.

Meanwhile, I appeared in the Tucson Weekly without warning you. Here’s what I contributed to the Aug. 28 issue:

Last week, a half-dozen black-clad Hispanic actors stood on the Beowulf Alley stage, giving a reading of Gavin Kayner's _Noche de los Muertos_. It was a departure for Beowulf Alley in many ways: opening a workshop to the public in preparation for a premiere, later this season, of a local play requiring a Latino cast, something otherwise found almost exclusively at Borderlands Theater. Every element of that sentence represents something new for Beowulf Alley Theatre. It's a house that nearly closed in the summer of 2007 during a financial crisis that shed the company of its artistic director. To cope, the board started some serious brainstorming about fundraising and audience development, and assigned artistic direction to a committee that solicited production proposals from directors in the community. Beowulf Alley is still operating with an undisclosed deficit; the tax form it filed late last year shows that, for the season ending in June 2007, the company spent nearly $38,000 more than it took in, a serious but not necessarily fatal figure for an organization with annual expenses approaching $200,000.

You’ll find the full article here.

DOWNLOAD REVIEWS

posted by James Reel

Deutsche Grammophon has been making a substantial effort to expand into the digital download market. Here are reviews I wrote for Fanfare of two of DG's download-only releases.

TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique” * Lorin Maazel, cond; New York P * DG CONCERTS 477 7594 (download only, from www.iTunes.com: 47:27)

Lorin Maazel has always been an effective Tchaikovsky conductor, especially in his early-digital recordings for Telarc. This live performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” is good, but not quite up to the conductor’s past standards. It’s available not on CD, but as a download in Deutsche Grammophon’s DG Concerts Series. At this writing, oddly enough, you can’t get it through DG’s Web Shop, but only via iTunes.

Maazel doesn’t dawdle anywhere in the first movement, which is good, but the urgency of this performance derives from tempo rather than attack and articulation; often, the result is more efficient than impassioned. Maazel does put his heart into certain passages, most notably the explosive portion of the first movement’s development, where he maintains not only drama but also an admirable clarity of orchestral voices. The second movement is also on the quick side, but this time with little attendant sense of tension; it’s merely a bit fast. The march is crisp, without the least hint of malice or desperation, but the brass buildup is well played and patiently managed for maximum effect. Everything finally comes together in the final movement, all the more devastating for its lack of weepiness.

The New York Philharmonic is on its best behavior here. The sonics are bright, even slightly top-heavy, but without glare. The recording actually sounds a bit better in mp3 format on my PDA, heard through good-quality earbuds, than as the .wav files I burned to a CD. There was a bit of signal degradation toward the end of the first movement, which I assume is an anomaly of my particular download.

I may be giving this production a less than whole-hearted endorsement, but it has enough attractive qualities to merit space on your iPod, especially since it’s a new major-league performance and recording sold for only $7.99. James Reel

SIBELIUS Symphony No. 2 * Esa-Pekka Salonen, cond; Los Angeles PO * DG CONCERTS 477 7447 (download only, from www2.deutschegrammophon.com/cat: 43:42)

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s concert reading of the Sibelius Second is austere, muting the triumph of the last movement and linking the earlier movements to the darkness to come in Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony. The performance is no funeral dirge, though. Without sudden gear shifts, Salonen emphasizes the contrasts in tempo; the second movement and the trio of the third are quite slow, while the outer movements are brisk, without feeling rushed. It’s one of those interpretations that lies just outside the mainstream, while somehow managing not to sound affected. The Los Angeles Philharmonic plays beautifully for Salonen, as it has for years. The recorded sound, despite a slight emphasis on the higher frequencies, is good, if close and a bit dry—there’s little sense of what Disney Hall sounds like—but it’s not so dry that the music withers. The left-to-right imaging is very precise, presumably thanks to multi-miking. You might prefer a more consensus interpretation as your primary recording of this symphony, but Salonen’s effort is a highly intelligent and valid alternative, especially as a download to carry on your mp3 player. James Reel