Listening anew

The symphonies of Anton Bruckner have been recorded many times by all the greatest conductors and orchestras, but a newly recorded series is under way (well advanced towards completion, in fact) which is challenging the long-standing performance tradition associated with this music.

The conductor is Mario Venzago, the label is CPO, and the series involves a number of different orchestras, all smaller in size than the usual forces which are normally used for Bruckner's music. Not everyone likes Venzago's approach, but I have a lot of time for it. All too many performances and recordings adopt a 'reverential' tone which involves mainly slow tempi, but this conductor really is allowing us to re-experience the music in challenging new ways. This is heard at its most striking in the longer movements, but these are not suitable for uploading here, so the difference may not be immediately obvious in the 2nd movement of Bruckner's 9th Symphony which I've chosen from the latest release in the series.

20th January 2014 was a sad day for the music world, which saw the passing of Claudio Abbado one of the greatest of all conductors. There have been quite a few deaths recently of musicians, but I was most upset when I heard that Maestro Abbado was no longer with us.

Returning after cancer surgery, he reached the greatest heights of his career in the ten years or so which remained to him. In particular, his founding and conducting of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra resulted in some of the most glorious music-making imaginable, with his performances of Mahler and Bruckner in particular achieving unimaginable depths of commitment and communication. We've been fortunate since his death in being able to maintain contact with his recent legacy, with the availability of recordings of his final performance in Lucerne and the last commercial recording he made.

The German label audite made its contribution to remembering Abbado by issuing two live recordings from the Lucerne Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, made in the summers of 1978 and 1988. On 5th September 1978, Claudio Abbado and the Vienna Philhar­monic performed Franz Schubert's 'Unfinished' Symphony, while on 25th August 1988, on the occasion of the festival's fiftieth anniversary, Abbado and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe performed exactly the same programme with which Arturo Toscanini had opened the Luzerner Festspiele in 1938, including Beethoven's Second Symphony and Richard Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, the latter written in Lucerne.

8th March 2014 was the 300th Anniversary of the birth of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. CPE was the second son of Johann Sebastian (the Bach). His music was held in high esteem during the later half of the 17th Century, being admired by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven among others.

Having fallen into neglect during the 19th Century, but has seen a revival since the 1960s — and deservedly so. The invention, originality and unpredictability of CPE Bach's music are remarkable. This fine release from Harmonia Mundi is a fine contribution to the anniversary celebrations. The whole disc is excellent, but it was Heilig ist Gott which really made me sit up and take notice at first hearing. Even without knowing anything about the technical aspects of the music or the text which CPE uses, this piece makes a really strong impression.

The CD booklet has this to say about it: Th[is] setting for double chorus , composed in 1776, is one of those Hamburg masterpieces of Bach that caused a considerable stir in their time. The work was published in 1779, after he had performed it several times in the framework of other festive compositions for ecclesiastical occasions. The composer … wrote in a letter to his publisher Breitkopf: ‘This Heilig is an attempt, using entirely natural and commonplace harmonic progressions, to arouse much greater attention and emotion than can be achieved with the most anguished chromaticism. It will be my swansong of this kind, and will serve to ensure that I shall not soon be forgotten after my death.’ … The unconventional structure of the work becomes clear if one considers the origin of the text. The passage ‘Heilig ist unser Gott’ (Holy is the Lord) comes from the sixth chapter of the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament. It is part of a vision of the prophet in which he ‘saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple’:

,Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried to another, and said, Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, but now it's time to pick up the thread again.

From the CD booklet: 'The First Piano Trio of Anton Arensky may be understood as an expression of admiration for a famous contemporary and fixed star in the musical firmament. Published in 1894, the score was written in memory of Karl Yulyevich Davydov, the virtuoso cellist from Courland in Latvia, who had died in 1889. Davydov had achieved the highest honours as a soloist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and later the orchestra of the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg, and had made a lasting contribution with his commitment to renewing the Russian tradition of chamber music, both as a performing musician and as a professor at the St Petersburg Conservatory. It was there that the young Arensky had come to know and admire him while studying composition in Rimsky-Korsakov’s masterclass.

The Trio's second movement is a cheerful Scherzo, while its cosy, somewhat old-fashioned Trio section sounds like a foretaste of the salon-like style of Arensky’s later works. The heart of the work and the true lament for Davydov is the Elegia in G minor that follows' — but that's for another day.

I'm a bit of a terror when it comes to making judgements about people when I first meet them. I know I shouldn't do this, but sometimes it can't be helped. It also happens when it comes to music, whether it's composers or conductors or singers or instrumentalists: I take a dislike, and it's hard to shake it.

But isn't it nice when you begin with a negative opinion and then find a reason to change your mind? That's just happened with the conductor Lorin Maazel. I've been lukewarm at best about him for a long time, but the other day I had a bit of a road-to-Damascus moment. I follow a forum about BBC Radio 3, a radio station which was once a shining example to the rest of the world but which is now a sad and sorry shadow of its former self. We don't just whinge about the good old days. No, we also discuss music in general, and compare notes about performers and recordings. So, one of the contributors asked about Lorin Maazel, wondering what our opinion was of him. I felt justified in my opinion when many others came back with negative comments, but gradually it became clear that he had some good stuff to his credit. In particular, many people mentioned his 1984 recording of Mahler's 4th Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic, and one reply went so far as to say that this was his favourite recording of the work ("even better that George Szell" was what he said). Since Szell's 1965 recording was until very recently my own favourite (until it was supplanted by Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra in 2009), in fairness to Lorin Maazel I felt it only right to have a listen to his recording.

I'm delighted that I did! This is a glorious performance. Maazel's pacing is utterly convincing in every movement, the orchestral detail is astonishing, the VPO play superbly, and Kathleen Battle is ideal in the final movement (the final stanza is heart-rending in every way). So, I owe a great debt to the members of the BBC R3 forum. This is a version which I will treasure from now on (and yes, it really is better than Szell — and better than Fischer also). So, hats off to Lorin Maazel in this case.

Dvorak's Rondo was produced with a specific performer in mind, namely Hanuš Wihan (1855-1920), who was also the dedicatee of Richard Strauss’s Sonata op. 6 (1883). It owes its existence to an 1891 concert tour on which Dvorak, Wihan, and the violinist Ferdinand Lachner played trios by the composer before his departure for the United States. Seeking duo repertory to fill out the programmes, Dvorak composed the Rondo in G minor for cello and piano and arranged for the same forces the fifth movement of his set of piano duets Ze Šumavy (From the Bohemian forest) op. 68 (1883). Their success was such that he orchestrated both pieces in the autumn of 1893. These delightful miniatures are highly inventive in finding instrumental combinations that allow the solo cello to shine. The Rondo calls for pairs of oboes and bassoons, no brass at all, but a pair of timpani that punctuate the sections containing the rondo theme. The soloist is required to play a fair amount of athletic passagework, notably in the faster episode in G major.

Ravel composed a number of works in the Spanish idiom, from his early piano pieces to the notoriously popular Boléro of 1928, and his very last composition was the song cycle Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, a by-product of his abortive score for a film treatment of the Cervantes classic. The impetus for these Spanish-flavored works was not provided by Bizet's Carmen (whose premiere, incidentally, took place only four days before Ravel's birth), or by Chabrier's España (though Ravel revered Chabrier and acknowledged him as his model for some of his early works), or by the general French fascination with Spanish music, but may be explained largely in terms of his lineage, which was by no means entirely French. His father was a descendant of an old Swiss family, and his mother was Basque. Spanish was spoken and sung in his home throughout his childhood, and when the family moved to Paris his closest friend among his classmates at the Conservatoire was the Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes, whose mother was a frequent visitor to the Ravel home.

With this in mind, it is hardly surprising that the first of Ravel's original orchestral compositions should be in the Spanish idiom. Actually, the Rapsodie espagnole was not Ravel's very first work for orchestra, but it was the first he cared to release for publication. He did not begin work on it until 1907, and the third of its four sections is the Habañera he had composed for two pianos a dozen years earlier.

At the premiere of the Rapsodie espagnole, at the Théâtre du Châtelet, an encore of the Malagueña was demanded from the upper gallery and duly performed. This set off some agitated murmurs in the audience, provoking the composer Florent Schmitt to rise again from his gallery seat and call out, "Just once more, for the gentlemen below who haven't been able to understand!"

The following comes from the CD booklet:

With Spanish influence spreading over so much of continental Europe, the musical forms of the 15th, 16th and l7th centuries, though they retained local peculiarities, became increasingly homogeneous. And it is this that makes this recording so interesting. The programme is built round three 'Spanish' musical elements that spread throughout Europe and were taken up by composers in many different countries.

The first of these, la Spagna, simply became the most famous melody of the period. Popular at the time was the use of a known (or unknown) melody as the cantus firmus, the fixed voice in a musical work of several voices and often of great complexity. A glance at the list of contents indicates just how widely the tune Ia Spagna spread and, as we listen to the works that were based on it, we marvel at just how much inspiration a musical 'germ' like this can give rise to in the context of a vibrant musical culture. La Spagna was a genuine hit – and, according to scholars, of Italian origin!

The Spagnoletta, a dance form with a fixed harmonic plan, is also first known in an Italian composition. It provided the basis of numerous lute pieces and is particularly well known from its inclusion in two versions by Giles Farnaby in the Fitzwilliam Vrginal Book.

The third 'Spanish' musical element is the famous Pavana Hispanica or Pavana spagnola, a stately and sumptuous Spanish dance that (probably) first appears in a setting by the great Spanish composer Antonio de Cabezón, who gave his piece the title Pavana italiano. Cabezón was a great favourite of Philip II of Spain with whom he travelled to Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and England, and doubtless brought Spanish fashions with him.

As is well known, prior to the l7th century manuscripts of ensemble music did not normally contain any guidance as to the instruments intended for their performance. Gregorio Paniagua [director of the performing group] has scored the works for a large assortment of instruments that were played at the time – as well as some sound-making artefacts that had not even been invented (for instance the plastic beaker heard on one of the tracks!). Characteristic of these settings is the wide range of colours employed, which make the various strands of the music highly visible and which remind us of what a vibrant culture Spain represented at the peak of itsEuropean influence – a rich amalgamation of influences from its Moorish heritage,its lively Sephardic culture and its importations from beyond the Pyrenees, notably from its European possessions, the Spanish Netherlands and the Italian peninsula.

I've mentioned BIS before, and maybe even also mentioned the Daily Deal at eClassical, their wonderful download site. The text for each day's special offer is written by Robert von Bahr, the founder of BIS. The daily offer is chosen at random, and Robert is wonderfully honest in his comments, sometimes even to the extent of warning people off. He also shares personal memories from time to to time, and today is one of those times. This is what what Robert has to say about Oiseaux tristes from Miroirs by Ravel, a track on today's Daily Deal CD.

Brahms’s most important contributions to the repertoire of the viola came about as a by-product of his most important contributions to the repertoire of the clarinet. In the same way that the world owes Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and Quintet to the virtuosity of Anton Stadler, so the creation of Brahms’s last four chamber works was sparked by the artistry of Richard Mühlfeld (1856–1907), the principal clarinettist of the Meiningen Orchestra. Brahms had established a particularly close relationship with this orchestra since their then conductor, Hans von Bülow, had offered him the chance to try out his orchestral works before their official premieres. In March 1891 Brahms visited Meiningen to hear the orchestra under its new conductor Fritz Steinbach, and was struck by the polish and almost feminine sensitivity of Mühlfeld’s playing. He had apparently bidden farewell to composition the previous year with the completion of his G major String Quintet Op 111, but his admiration for the clarinettist’s artistry suddenly re-awakened the creative urge and he started composing again. Not only do the four works he wrote for Mühlfeld rank among the supreme masterpieces of the clarinet’s repertoire, but they represent the purest distillation of Brahms’s thought in the chamber music medium. They also reflect, in their innate expressive character, something of the personal isolation he was beginning to feel as many of his closest friends died off, in an increasingly frequent punctuation of his last years. When sheer beauty is evoked in them, it is as a consolation; nostalgia and melancholy often seem to underlie the most rhythmically assertive ideas. These works, in short, have established themselves as repertoire cornerstones not merely through their magnificent craftsmanship and powers of invention, but because they convey a particularly potent and complex nexus of feeling.

Having produced a Clarinet Quintet and Clarinet Trio in 1891, the sixty-one-year-old Brahms presented Mühlfeld with two further works in 1894—a pair of sonatas for clarinet and piano, his very last pieces of chamber music, composed that summer at Bad Ischl. Mühlfeld and Brahms introduced them first at a private concert in Berchtesgaden for the Duke and Duchess of Meiningen on 19 September of that year, and in January 1895 they gave the public premieres in Vienna. Brahms lavished particular care and affection on these works, and he clearly wished them to have the widest possible circulation, for he adapted them—with a certain amount of recomposition in each case—in two parallel forms: as sonatas for viola and piano, and for violin and piano.

The violin versions are rarely heard, but the viola sonatas have become cornerstones of that instrument’s repertoire, just as the original forms have for the repertoire of the clarinet. Brahms was effectively establishing a new genre, since before they appeared there were virtually no important duo sonatas for viola and piano (there is an unfinished sonata by Glinka), though Schumann and Joachim had used the viola for a number of lyric pieces. While in the op. 114 Trio his viola part was virtually the same as its clarinet original, merely transposing some passages downward to come within the viola’s compass, in the op. 120 sonatas the recasting of the part went a good deal further. Brahms entirely rewrote some figurations, added double-stopping, and sometimes extended the melodic line at places where the clarinet part was silent. Subtly and unobtrusively, he accommodated the music to the different expressive character of the viola.

Every time I listen to Chopin's mazurkas I feel that this is where he was most revealing in terms of baring his soul, and most especially in those written in minor keys.

No. 13 is a case in point. From the very first aching phrase it grips the listener. It makes a couple of attempts at picking itself up, but these are short-lived, while the end is as enigmatic as could be wished for.

This has been a busy year for significant musical anniversaries. We've just celebrated the 200th Anniversary of Verdi's birth, earlier this year we had Wagner's similar anniversary, and next month (hard as it is to believe) it will be a hundred years since the birth of Benjamin Britten.

Our musical group marked both Wagner and Verdi with a day dedicated to the composer's music, and we'll do the same again in November. Meanwhile, the record companies have been busy issuing and re-issuing recordings of music by all three. Good old BIS (it should already be obvious that I hold this record label in the highest regard) have not been idle in this respect, and have just released this new recording of works for string orchestra by Britten. What is it about English composers and string music?! They seem to have a wonderful affinity for string writing (think of Vaughan Williams and his Tallis Variations or Edward Elgar's magnificent Introduction and Allegro), and Britten is no exception.

The main work on this new recording is the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, there's also the wonderful Lachrymae (for viola and strings), and the extraordinarily precocious Simple Symphony which Britten built around childhood compositions from the years 1923-26 (that is, when he was between 10 and 13 years old!). Each movement has an alliterative title (Boisterous Bourée, Playful Pizzicato, Sentimental Sarabande and Frolicsome Finale).

This is Volume 21 of Thomas Fey's survey of all the Haydn Symphonies. At this stage the credentials of the enterprise are well established. The first volume was issued in July 1999, and was received with glowing reviews. Each volume since has maintained the high standards of that first release, and this latest offering is no exception.

These are not 'pure' historically-correct performances. Instead, Thomas Fey and his players combine the better aspects of the Historically Informed Performance movement without slavishly following its every dictum. Most of the members of the Heidelburg Synphony have experience of 'authentic' performance styles in other ensembles, while some are conversant not only with the modern versions of their instruments but also with their historical predecessors. The brass and timpani players of the orchestra are in fact specialists in this field, and it is the fact that the orchestra's brass and timpani parts are invariably entrusted to original instruments which gives these recordings their special edge. None of this would be possible, of course, without Thomas Fey's input. His Haydn series is full of energy and drama and regularly challenges even the most hardened listener to think anew about these familiar works.

Since 2002 Martha Argerich’s Progetto at the Lugano Festival has brought together many notable artists for memorable concerts of chamber and orchestral music. This 4-CD set offers a rich selection of live concerto recordings, all with Martha Argerich and all first-time releases. They include a number of works new to her Deutsche Grammophon discography (Mozart, Prokofiev, Bartók and Poulenc) in addition to scintillating performances of Schubert, Brahms and Milhaud – all CD premieres of pieces absolutely new to her repertoire.

It’s a mixture of the familiar and the new; but even the familiar gets an extra frisson through the tension and edge of live performance atmosphere. The Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana is Ms. Argerich’s excellent partner under a variety of conductors including Charles Dutoit, Ion Marin and Alexandre Rabinovitch; piano colleagues such as Rico and Paul Gulda (Mozart Triple Concerto) also join her on stage, while Karin Merle takes the seat at the second piano in this performance of Darius Milhaud's delightful Suite, Scaramouche. The performance took place in Auditorio Stelio Molo, Lugano, on 15th June 2004.

Turning 90 in December, Menahem Pressler was the pianist of the legendary Beaux Arts Trio for almost 55 years, and continues to enjoy a blossoming career as soloist and recitalist, while remaining as committed to teaching as ever.

This recording is very special, as explained by Robert von Bahr, boss of BIS Records. I am a keen supporter of eClassical, the download site which is predominantly devoted to BIS recordings. I receive regular emails with information about new releases, and this was RvB's commentary in the case of this recording:

About a week ago I screamed from the rooftops about Martin Fröst's Mozart release, and I was right to do so. In that blurb I referred to some other discs that could give Martin a fight for top position and here is one of them: no less a sensation than Menahem Pressler, packing a very long lifetime of wisdom into an SACD of pure bliss; the Beethoven Op. 110, the Schubert Bb Major Sonata and the Chopin C# Minor Nocturne.

I met Menahem (I still want to spell it Menachem, because that is how to pronounce it) in Finland, when we both got an important ICMA Award – he for a Lifetime Achievement and I for the Sibelius Edition. We got talking, and I fell head over heels in love with this little man in his late 80's with so much intelligence, so much warmth and so much wisdom, all totally etched in his brilliant mind. Of course he knew about BIS and all that, but he basically had considered his recording career to have ended. Well, I talked him out of that, and here are the results.

A very long recording period, with our Senior Producer Rob Suff, where he could have the peace and quiet to weigh every tone, every phrase on a diamond scale and, as I said above, condense his whole musical life into these major masterworks, played by a true Master. Indeed, after the sessions, he called me up and said: "Robert, we are now finished, *I* am finished, but let me tell you this: this is the very first time I walk out from recording sessions feeling that this is the best I can do, that I am happy and content with everything". Well, so am I, and so will you be.

I've already pinned my colours to the mast when it comes to Schubert and Beethoven, so getting someone like Manahem Pressler playing these two masterpieces is like a dream come true. The sublime slow movement from Schubert's D.960 sonata is astonishing music, and here it gets a glorious performance. Menahem Pressler has spoken about how he studied Beethoven’s Sonata in A flat major op.110 as a young man after having fled Nazi Germany for Israel in 1939: ‘I didn't really understand many of the things that I understand now. I only understood the enormous emotional … tearing, tearing on my insides … I felt the beauty of that slow movement, so overwhelming.’ In another context he has discussed that piece in the context of Schubert’s final work for the piano the Sonata in B flat major: ‘Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 110 illustrates idealism in the first movement, hedonism in the second and regret and pain in the last movement from which two fugues emerge triumphantly, as if saying, “Yes, life is worth living” – and this is what I feel. This is to be considered alongside Schubert’s last sonata D.960, which explores the emotions of a man who knows he has a limited time to live, and in which the slow movement resonates like a funeral march whilst also showing happiness and peace of mind.’

Tchaikovsky's 2nd String Quartet dates from 1874 and is in the usual four movements, though with the Scherzo placed second, a decision which Tchaikovsky may have taken because the first movement (as the booklet notes for this set of CDs puts it) "is not exactly easy to digest".

The unusual rhythm of the Scherzo results from the constant shifts between 6/8 and 9/8 metre, while syncopated accents further confuse the listener. It's all quite quirky, and acts like a sort of palette-cleansing sorbet after the relative toughness of the previous movement.